Joshua

There is a little house near me with a sign outside saying "House of Books". Ive driven past many times and until now have never stopped to investigate further. I dont know why not, sheesh! a house full of books is more or less heaven on earth!
Well last week I took myself off for a child free date at the bookshop, and it was bliss! I met a sweet man sitting at a table in what would have been a front loungeroom when the house was sans books. He had a lovely smile that reminded me of my Dad, so I immediately felt fond of him! He was sitting next to a stack of books on theology and Catholic saints. He explained that the shop was run by the nearby Catholic diocese and most books were around $1 to $2 dollars! Bliss again! I ended up sitting in the religious section for an hour just thumbing through books on every type of religious dogma you could imagine. I ended up coming away with 4 books for me and 10 for my children ;) I just couldnt help myself!
One of the books I am now reading is a book called "Joshua, A parable for today" by Jospeh Girzone. Now I have to say when I began to read this book I almost put it back down again, the first few pages are really quite awkward and I winced at some of the dialogue, but I continued on. He is not the best writer I have ever come across, but I decided to keep going, after all, this is a classic book written in 1983 and still popular! There must be something in it?!
Well Im now three quarters of the way through the book and I will probably take myself back off to the "House of Books" first thing tomorrow to get the second in the "Joshua" series. There is something so simple and yet remarkable about this book..it's basically a book about a man called Joshua (Jesus) coming to live in a small American town and changing everyone around him. There are, as with any book claiming to represent what Christ would think or do, some things I may or may not agree with, but on the whole it's an insightful look at how man has got it wrong! Jesus is love and freedom, and Joshua has that in spades! I cant put it down now!

Dogsitting

I love this blog: ;)

http://www.headrambles.com/2008/03/23/dogsitting/

Lyric of the week

Hounds Of Winter - Sting


Mercury falling
I rise from my bed
Collect my thoughts together
I have to hold my head
It seems that shes gone
And somehow I am pinned by
The hounds of winter
Howling in the wind

I walk through the day
My coat around my ears
I look for my companion
I have to dry my tears
It seems that shes gone
Leaving me too soon
Im as dark as december
Im as cold as the man in the moon

I still see her face
As beautiful as day
Its easy to remember
Remember my love that way
All I hear is that lonesome sound
The hounds of winter
They follow me down

I cant make up the fire
The way that she could
I spend all my days
In the search for dry wood
Board all the windows and close the front door
I cant believe she wont be here anymore

I still see her face
As beautiful as day
Its easy to remember
Remember my love that way
All I hear is that lonesome sound
The hounds of winter
They follow me down

A season for joy
A season for sorrow
Where shes gone
I will surely, surely follow
She brightened my day
She warmed the coldest night
The hounds of winter
They got me in their sights

I still see her face
As beautiful as day
Its easy to remember
Remember my love that way
All I hear is that lonesome, lonesome sound
The hounds of winter
They harry me down

Schools out for Easter

Well it's the end of the first term of school for 2008, and Alex has finished his roughest school term yet! Have I done the right thing? Have I chosen a path for him that will mess up his entire future?
In the four years he was at a private Christian school he was sent to the sickbay once or twice, once was a wasp sting and a couple of other times were playground related. In the first term of a public state school he has been sent to the sickbay 5 times, all related to playground incidents, only one of which was his own fault. He now has a broken finger as a result of a football being kicked at him, he also had a lovely red mottled chest for a few days after another boy threw a rock at him.
Am I being too precious with my first born? Does this sort of thing make a man out of a boy? It worries me, it makes me want to whisk him back to his previous "safe" private school.
*sigh* He is also had the worst term academically, but I did expect this to happen with a change of school and all the stress it causes. I guess we shall batten down the hatches and walk into the next school term with a positive attitude (I think!)


I remember this quote and it is so apt
Having a child is to decide forever to have your heart go walking outside your body. - Elizabeth Stone

Song Lyric of the week!

Fisherman's Blues - The Waterboys
(Mike Scott, Steve Wickham)


I wish I was a fisherman
tumblin' on the seas
far away from dry land
and it's bitter memories
castin' out my sweet line
with abandonment and love
no ceiling bearin' down on me
save the starry sky above
with light in my head
with you in my arms...
i wish i was the brakeman
on a hurtlin fevered train
crashin head long into the heartland
like a cannon in the rain
with the feelin of the sleepers
and the burnin of the coal
countin the towns flashin by
and a night that's full of soul
with light in my head
with you in my arms...

And I know I will be loosened
from the bonds that hold me fast
and the chains all around me
will fall away at last
and on that grand and fateful day
I will take thee in my hand
I will ride on a train
I will be the fisherman
With light in my head
You in my arms...

Light in my head
You in my arms...

Light in my head
You...

With light in my head
You in my arms...

My little piece of whatever

I'd like to start a tradition!
Posting song lyrics that I deem to be interesting/strange/beautiful/meaningful once a week. I just love song lyrics and I'd like to celebate them here on this little piece of blog real estate.
One thing I do like about this blogging thing! I can do what I want on it! I can post pictures of interesting things that might be of no interest to anyone else, but so what! I can do it :) Maybe I'll celebrate unique glockenspiels next month ;)

Archibald Prize

Del Kathryn Barton
You are what is most beautiful about me, a self portrait with Kell and Arella



I wouldnt normally notice who won the Archibald Prize, but this paticular painting caught my eye. I now realise why, it's just how I feel. I love the way she has painted her children.

From Del Kathryn Barton about the painting.

“This painting celebrates the love I have for my two children and how my relationship with them has radically informed and indeed transformed my understanding of who I am,” she says.

“The title of the work – you are what is most beautiful about me – alludes to that utterly profound ‘in-loveness’ that all mothers have for their children. Both my children have taken my world by storm and very little compares to the devotion I feel for them both. The intensity of this emotion is not something that I could have prepared myself for. The alchemy of life offered forth from my inhabitable woman's body is perhaps the greatest gift of my life.”

I also really like one of the finalists





Zai Kuang
The sisters - Celia and Julia

Sisters

There is a beautiful woman at church called Jacqui. She always seems so surrounded by the beauty and warmth of God's love and she makes you want to hang out and capture some of that peace.
She saw me one Sunday and with a beaming smile said " Now sit down my gorgeous sister in Christ and tell me when we can get together!?" It's funny how that line might make me feel squirmish if said by someone else..but with her it just sounds so sincere and welcoming and wonderful. It reminds me of why I DO love other people in God's family, people who are not perfect, not even pretending to be, but do try and live a life thats not consumed by this world and all it's trappings.

Church is a wonderful thing when it works, I feel that I can stomach the not so good parts if I can just have some of those moments when Christ is there, where two of us are gathered together. We are all imperfect silly homans, no more so than at Church..when we're all trying to pretend how perfect we are, but another friend has made me really see that throwing the baby out with the bathwater is not always the answer. If I can have those glimpses of real stuff, real connection, real understanding and real Christ...I want to be there.

To Me

I wrote this about 6 years ago after watching old movies of my childhood.



Little Andrea

Hello little Andrea, the girl I used to be
I watched you smiling down from the smokey wall
Filled with your own self importance and joy
You haven’t got a care in the world, and why should you.
You have love, overflowing, unconditional
You have future, bright, sunny, never-ending
Beaches, birthdays, comics, bread and soup on Sunday, Christmas lights, dad's never fading attention, mum's care and worry.

Its me big Andrea, the woman
Still have that little girl hope; still have that little girl joy
childhood feelings and love of life
But with a few tears mixed in, a touch more pain.
I wish I could be you again little girl, shining bright
I wish I could live it again, go back to the start, have the sunny days forever
I hate reality; I hate the voice in my head telling me that I can’t have it
I can’t go back. That’s its gone, its moved on…it passed by me one day when I didn’t even see it.
One day I was young, stocky legs in long white socks, pretty hair, precocious smile
Then it was now, and I wasn’t even ready to go yet, I hadn’t had enough of all the loveliness. And it was lovely!
I was there, and I can remember the not so lovely, but why? When the good was so good
Little Andrea, Please come back and live in the place you should be, I know you are there somewhere and I lost you somehow. We may be alone, but we can be that person.
I love you. I love me, most of the time, I smile when I see you, when something reminds me of you. I want to share these moments with you, and maybe you could help me get through.

Love Big Andrea

Meaningful randomness

Sometimes when uncertain of a voice from its very loudness, we catch the missing syllable in the echo. In God and Nature we have Voice and Echo
Henry Drummond



Buried At PhotoCasket.com


For I know the thoughts that I think towards you , says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.
Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.
(Jer.29:11-13)


Buried At PhotoCasket.com


Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering."
Saint Augustine


Buried At PhotoCasket.com


"The truth is, of course, that the curtness of the Ten Commandments is an evidence, not of the gloom and narrowness of a religion, but, on the contrary, of its liberality and humanity. It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted: precisely because most things are permitted, and only a few things are forbidden.

The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man





G.K Chesterton


We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and private: and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship


You find out more about God from the Moral Law than from the univerise in general just as you find out more about a man by listening to his conversation than by looking at a house he has built
C.S Lewis





It is easy enough to be friendly to one's friends. But to befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy is the quintessence of true religion.
Mahatma Gandhi


We should view everything in this world by the light of redemption, and then we shall view it alright. It makes a wonderful change whether you view Providence from the standpoint of human merit or from the foot of the cross
Spurgeon