Friday, December 28, 2007

Happy New Year

Just a short update today. Most people are still away on holiday so there's not much going on yet. It's been a case of business as usual, though Ruth has done a few bits and pieces in preparation for our move. We're going to be moving to a different house in the community sometime in the next couple of weeks. The new term will be starting as well, so there will be plenty to do shortly.

I've read a bit more of Art Gish's book. Parts of it are not as compelling as the opening chapter that had me so enthralled and he's advocating an even more radical manifestation of community that Cornerstone currently practice, but it's still a great read. However, there might be some topics that he doesn't comment on which he probably should. For example, there is a chapter about 'The Discipling Community' which I thought would be worth a read, what with Cornerstone attempting to be just that. It turns out that they made a pretty big proof-reading error and the chapter in question should actually be called 'The Disciplining Community'. Maybe there will be something on discipling in a later chapter. There should be.

However, his comments on authority and communal decision-making are excellent and well worth reading if you're involved in a church that has congregational government. Of course, the chances of you getting a hold of this book are very slim anyway so maybe you should just smile and nod politely as I rant away.

So that'll do for today. Have a great week ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls.

Here's SAAANNTTAAA!


We hope that you all had a great Christmas. We were in Sydney for the festive season. You may remember that we were in Sydney once before, staying with parents of one of the couples here at Cornerstone. Well, they invited us back for Christmas. Dave manages a Christian conference centre and it was empty in the build up to Christmas so they let us stay there. We had all the facilities to ourselves. It was like being in The Shining except with less snow and more Cornflakes.

Speaking of snow...the weather was incredible. As in 'unbelievable'. As in 'it
rained a lot'. We drove to Sydney and back to Dubbo in torrential rain. It was crazy. There were a couple of very nice days when we in Sydney but it wasn't as warm as we were expecting it to be. Christmas day was very grey, just like back home. The difference was that it was still warm enough to wear shorts - but I wore a long sleeved top for the first time since winter. Apart from that it was all very nice. We're thankful to Dave and Ros for their generosity, and we've been blessed by the generosity of people here in Oz.

We had a BBQ for Christmas lunch. Prawns were included in this event, so I guess we've now had the stereotypical Aussie Christmas lunch. Reid certainly enjoyed his 'frozen prawns' as he called them.


We did quite a few nice things while in Sydney too. We visited a couple of beaches. We didn't get to Bondi, but we did visit Manly beach - which was pretty stunning as you probably won't be able to tell from the photo below.


Reid managed to get totally soaked at Manly Beach - he seems to love splashing in the waves fully dressed. Ruth managed to knock up this little number out of Xanthe's kanga, so Reid wondered around Manly looking like a tiny little Hare Krishna. He enjoyed that too. Basically, every day is a celebration for little Reidy.


We also visited Palm Beach. Now why would we visit that beach, you may ask? What's so special about Palm Beach? Well, listen up. Palm Beach is where they shoot the beach scenes for Home and Away. That's right - we've been to the beach where Alf Stuart lives. If you look at the photo below you can see that piece of land sticking out into the sea. That's Stuart's Point. From Home and Away. Even having to get out of the water because someone spotted a shark couldn't dampen the magic of being at such a hallowed place. Tune in next week to see if I can crowbar another Alf Stuart reference into this blog.


We visited Taronga Zoo which was pretty good too. We had to, seeing as we include Ruth Webb : Zoo Visitor amongst our number. Here are some photos of our day out - including the rather nice view we had while eating our picnic lunch. Bonus points will be awarded for posting "That's a nice photo of you James - no wait, it's a gorilla" comments.






I've actually enjoyed receiving a few annual newsletters and e-mails from Pommie friends this year. I'm always very keen to find out what everyone is up to now that we've left the country. I expect the quality of life in general has gone down.

I'm reading a book called Living in Christian Community : A Personal Manifesto by a fellow called Art Gish. I wasn't really keen to read it at first because the author's photo on the back of the book looked like a medieval woodcutting of a leprechaun, but I'm glad that I did. It's got nothing do with Cornerstone, but it's probably the best effort I've come across of communicating exactly Cornerstone's vision for community. I've only just started it so it might go downhill rapidly but I don't expect it to. If you wonder what's at the heart of our decision to live communally then try and get your hands on this book. If you can get your hands on the author then even better. I think he'll be forced to give you a pot of gold if you do.

I'll finish with a photo of a St Andrew's Cross spider, so called because it's completed web usually has a clear 'X' structure in the middle of it. This web is not completed and the photo is a bit blurred but Ruth was quite proud of it (bless her) so I'm putting it up for everyone to see.

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

The Amazing Adventures of Ruth: Zoo Tourist


First, the photo at the end of last week's blog was Reid. I can't believe that no-one even dared to have a guess, let alone get it right.

It's been another busy week. Xanthe had her first birthday (although, technically, I guess that the day she was born was her first birth-day) this week. She wasn't as interested in her presents as the boys were, but that's par for the course. Ruth worked her cake magic again. It's odd to think that Xanthe has been around for a year now.






It's been raining quite a bit here. Everyone's happy, even the boys.


What with it being Christmas soon Calvin had his end of year concert. It involved the children singing a few songs and doing some silly dances, some of which Calvin excelled at.


We're off to Sydney for Christmas. We've been offered a place to stay over the holiday so we'll head down there next week. Ruth is hoping to get a chance to visit Bondi beach when we're there, just so that she can say that we've been to the beach at Christmas time.


Finally, I managed to get into the Dubbo PhotoNews again. What can I say? The camera loves me. You'll see me in the photo above. What? What do you mean you "can't see me"? There I am. Right there! Click on the picture and look at the bottom right picture. There! Behind that table! Yeah. Yeah, that's my head. That's me. That, of course, means that I've been in the Dubbo PhotoNews twice now. My mission for this year has been well and truly accomplished. Ruth hasn't even been in it once yet. But then again, why does she need to? Watch the video below.



How can I compete with that? Have a good week.

Friday, December 7, 2007

Punishable by Death


I'm a changed man since moving to Oz. You may remember the old James, who very much adopted a live-and-let-live policy to insects. In fact, I even felt twinges of guilt when I considered taking the life of an innocent spider. I would much rather have chased them out of the house or let them be - neither option was quite good enough for my arachnophobia wife. Since arriving here I've lost all compassion for the
insect race. I now maim, slice and dice with the best of them. The insects in Australia are a different, mutant breed compared to our peace-loving UK versions. As
far as I'm concerned, a spider forfeits its right to life that moment that it grows as big as a man's face. Now you'll see me chasing a beast around the house with murderous intent. Is it in our shoe cupboard (where it's clearly been trying on our footwear)? Is it hiding behind an ornament? Who cares? It's a dead spider walking.

I've decided not to print any further photos of my fingernail. It's not looking great at the moment but soon it will be healed totally. Consider this matter closed. CLOSED, I said.


Back to an Englishman's favourite topic - the weather. We're in summer here so we've got appropriately summerish weather. There's also been plenty of rain so you could say we're having something of an English summer. Dubbo's December record for rainfall has, apparently, already been broken so everyone is pretty happy at the moment. It's working out very nicely too. We generally have very warm days (or days that are a bit too warm) and then some cracking thunderstorms in the evening / night. They're torrential. I've seen the most amazing lightning storms in my life over the past few weeks.


It's also Christmas soon. You may have noticed. It's weird here because it feels all wrong to be so hot. We've done a bit of decorating (that's one of those 'we's that refers to everyone in the family except me) and so on. Our Christmas tree is pretty small and we've loaded it with candy canes, which is something of a risk when you have small candy cane thieves moving around the house unsupervised. Still - none of our children would even be able to get away with such a crime, would they? Would they?


As a little bonus 'something to do this week' here's a photo. See if you can identify which of our three children it shows. It should take you about 0.005 of a second to figure it out. Just call me The Riddler. Answer next week.

Saturday, December 1, 2007

Muster Report


Hello everyone. This'll just be short update to let you know a bit more about what happened this week during Cornerstone's 30th anniversary muster.

There were a many hundred people there (which is my way of saying that there were a few hundred - more than three but less than seven - without having to be exact). I missed the Thursday and Friday sessions because I was working, but they were primarily reunions for ex-students of specific centres. I was involved in the Saturday morning session, interviewing some of the ex-deans of Cornerstone centres through the ages. You can see me on the left with a funky radio mic. I'm so rad.

For those of you have heard of him, Colin Buchanan did a couple of songs. He was very good. The Saturday evening was a concert with various Cornerstoners (including Colin again) taking part. There were some exceptionally good acts. I missed the end because, like every session I have ever attended at any Cornerstone event, it over-ran and I had to go home.

It was a tiring weekend, but it was really good to get to meet some of the people we've heard about.


Despite not getting top billing, the fingernail saga continues. I took matters into my own hand and begin to peel off the last remaining fragment of nail. The photo above was taking during this process. I had managed to detach all of the nail bar one small corner, which was still stuck to my skin. The photo just below was taken shortly after I completed the process of removing the whole nail. It hurt and there was a fair amount of blood, but I was a very brave boy and Ruth said that I could have some ice cream. I'll write again soon. Maybe I'll have to damage another fingernail so that I can continue this section; clearly the most popular part of my blog. Have a good week.