ROFL (literally)

Last night our little boy woke up at 12am. That is actually fairly unusual these days. He normally sleeps till about 3am and then does a stint of rolling onto his hand and knees and waking up and me rolling him back. We play that game for about 1/2 hour and he goes back to sleep till 6am. It's not a bad system. It could improve, but I can live with it.

Last night he woke up at 12am.

Wide awake. Arms and legs waving about in the air. Eyes wide open, looking at everything.

I was tired, and didn't feel like a long drawn out battle. So, I brought him into the lounge room and we lay down together on the doona. He gurgled away and whacked one of his toys with the enthusiasm which tires an adult just by observing it.

I went into one of those micro-sleeps you do when you are very tired. When I woke up he had turned himself onto his hands and knees practically on top of me, so his face was right next to mine. When I opened my eyes, startled, he burst into peals of laughter.

The incongruity of the situation made me laugh. Which made him start giggling infectiously. Which... well, you get the idea.

So, there we lay on the floor in the middle of the night, laughing out loud. It was extremely fun.

Midwife Moments

My midwife is hilarious. She is a large, German woman with a fierce kind of determination and mild ferocity. She appears to be a very good midwife (not that I would really know), but she has a good reputation and does seem to know what she's doing. She's obviously done some of those 'personal interaction' type courses because she gets a lot of the external positive signals right (like eye contact and smiling and so forth), but it is accompanied with such intensity and strength, and bluntness that it is quite disconcerting.

Some examples...


* She asked me whether we wanted to have the baby in the hospital. I said 'yes'. I was fairly strong about this. I've not wanted to have the baby anywhere else really. I'm fairly old-fashioned about pain. I don't like it and see no reason why I should embrace it or see it as a 'natural part of life' or anything. And I'm pessimistic. I see no reason why quite a few things shouldn't go wrong and I'd like a very clever, well-trained person on hand to do something about these things. And as these things are best resolved in hospital, I'd be quite happy to go there. But this was not satisfactory. The midwife told me to: "...go away and think about it some more". (In rather the same tone as you would send a small child to its room to 'think about what you've done'). So, I did think about it. And came to the same conclusion. Not just for the above mentioned clearly selfish reasons, but because as we live on the top floor of a building in which all the sound travels down, it would be profoundly unloving to give birth at home. So, I'm going to hospital for purely sacrificial reasons, and I'm allowed. The midwife is going to let me.


* She had a student (whom I felt so sorry for by the end of my visit), and the student was instructed to feel the baby and work out where the head was. The student couldn't feel the head and so said that it was too early to work out where the head was. The midwife said (to me, not the student): "The baby's head is pointing down." The student tentatively asked how she could be so sure. The midwife said, "Well, if I can feel its spine and hear its heartbeat in this position then its head must be pointing down; its the only logical conclusion. I don't need to feel its head to know where its head is". (Student became very quiet after this).


* Today was priceless. She sent me away from my last appointment with strict instructions to fill out the first page of my hospital notes. This I duly did. She then had a look at them today and turned to me and asked, "Is this your handwriting?" I nervously admitted to having written there. She looked at me as pleased as anything and said, "This is really good handwriting. It's very neat. You have excellent handwriting." This was said with an absolute beaming smile as though I'd just done something really rather remarkable.
I wasn't exactly sure how to react to this. It's been a long time since I was in Year 2 and I can't remember whether you're meant to ask for happy stamps or whether they are just given to you. (I didn't get one).

I rather like my midwife. She is always so certain, which gives me a lot of confidence. And one of these days I might just get a happy stamp. If I'm really good.

The Angels Have Left the Building!

I have a confession to make.

I do not like publicity, whether it is good or bad. Of course, good publicity tickles my pride, but it makes me conspicuous and I really don't like that. And bad publicity messes with my head and I find myself slightly freaked out.

And I'm married to a guy who is going to attract bad publicity throughout our lifetime. He will always call a spade a spade, and even kindly offer to label the different parts of the spade for those whom he thinks would benefit from such an education. He won't back down on issues of principle, nor where he sees someone in a powerless or relatively powerless position being treated unfairly, and he's in a position to do something about it. He will put himself on the line rather than have people think that he is wonderful, and frequently goes out of his way to demonstrate to students that he is a broken vessel so that they don't think too highly of him by showing them aspects of himself which other people would keep hidden under all circumstances. He won't pretend to believe what other people want him to believe, whether he is from their 'party' or not. Of course, like everyone he does it well sometimes, and other times clumsily. Sometimes the effect of his actions don't match his intentions, but I honestly can't think of many times over the years I've known him where he hasn't acted out of a desire to further the interests of others.

I admire him immensely for these things. And for his ability to count the cost of each of them, and decide to wear it, so that when it comes back to bite him he isn't resentful and doesn't think someone 'owes' him because he did the right thing.

I do however want to invent a machine which beeps when the angels leave. When the angels fear to tread somewhere and they all take off - I think then is a good time to sit down and be quiet. And its usually the time when Levor starts to speak. Actually, to be honest, it is usually the time when someone needs to speak if the principle or the person are to be defended. But increasingly, I am beginning to realise that Levor is one of those someone's, and that it is likely that he will be increasingly visible. And so I have forlorn hopes that we could get a machine which beeps, so that at least he knows when that situation is happening. Not that it would change anything.

I really don't want to change him, because there are so few people like this, and he is quintessentially like this. And I really admire it. But the cost is so high.

One of the things I was really looking forward to when we came to Oxford was sinking out the public eye for a while. And it has been so nice. I thought to myself that I would have a few years to get my head together on the issue before we came back to Sydney and quite possibly found Levor cutting a more public figure. Time to work through the anger and defensiveness and the desire to say, "But does it have to be you?"
But already - after a month - Levor is currently engaged in debate on a particular blogsite designed to demonstrate that Sydney Anglicans are heretics. These guys are going to paste him. He knows that, but he tries to engage them anyway, being firm (but not strident) and asking genuine questions.

Me? I would say that they weren't worth engaging with. I wouldn't even bother reading the blog. I wouldn't care about them. They are jerks. (Who sets up a blog just to attack a group of fellow Christians???)

Levor? Totally engaging with them - at least having a go and drawing on training with lots of other similar situations in an attempt to engage them for their good. Because he does care. And in the process he's using his real name.

The angels have left the building. *beep* *beep* *beep*

10 Things I like about Oxford

In no particularly order…

1. It’s a beautiful place, with an abundance of gorgeous trees, interesting buildings and cobbled streets. It’s a great place to just walk around in.

2. Levor smiles for no reason. It’s been years since I’ve seen him just smile.

3. No-one knows who we are. We aren’t important (either in a good or bad way) and no-one cares what we think or say. What I say in the Bible study group I’m part of isn’t the ‘right answer’ just because it is me saying it.

4. Church is enjoyable and enriching.

5. There are a lot of very edible cheeses to be had.

6. The pace of life is delicious. Our diary has blank spaces after being crammed full for months. I don’t have to do things on particular days. Levor can just study. He doesn’t have to do that plus sixty million other things, while juggling something else on the side. We are having evenings off and Sundays off and having conversations and watching Lewis (Morse spin-off) and listening to music… and on Thursday we are hoping to go out and see Antigone at a playhouse. This is really, really good. I’m sure it won’t last but it is almost like a holiday at the moment.

7. We haven’t had a phone for two and a half weeks. We have one now, but we don’t have an answering machine and have decided not to get one. People can ring again or email us, and returning phone calls is not something we’re good at anyway. I think we deal with change by bunkering down and not having a phone has really helped with this. Other people need to feel connected to people, but I think we are completely the opposite. We can only connect with people when we are sufficiently together to have something to give them. So, being by ourselves has been really therapeutic.

8. The medical system here is really good. Except for the tendency to not give people tests and drugs because it increases the NHS bill. I’ve seen the midwife and the doctor and next week we go to visit the hospital where (God willing) we’ll have our baby. It’s been so easy and is a lot more patient friendly than Australia.

9. There are lots of berries in the supermarkets and they are reasonably cheap.

10. We have a window in our apartment (on the fourth floor), which has a tree right outside it. Squirrels climb the tree and dance about in the branches, and when they are busy doing other things, pigeons come and sit quietly in the branches and think little pigeon thoughts. We can also see across the top of some of Oxford, a skyline of chimney pots perched on terrace houses and off in the distance there is a hill of some kind. We can see the rain clouds coming across the horizon and when it rains hard (which it did just this morning), the rain drums on the roof. It’s been a long time since I’ve lived in a place where you can lie in bed with a book under the covers, and listen to the rain.

Church

I am enjoying church.

We entertained notions of at least visiting a different church and even flirted with the idea of belonging to a church somewhere else. Most of those in exile from the Antipodes in the area wind up at St Ebbe’s, so we wanted to be contrary. But it’s tricky without a car, and without access to the internet to find out what else is available. So, we have given into the inevitable and gone along.

It’s hard not to keep going though because it is genuinely enjoyable. We’ve gone to the evening congregation which is slightly clueless on our part, but we refuse to be entirely predictable. Although I can’t see us taking a newborn out in the middle of winter on public transport at 6pm to church, and I predict that we will succumb to the inevitable and wind up at the family service, I think we’ll miss the 6:30pm service for a few reasons.

Both weeks we’ve been the preaching has been really very good. And at the moment we are in the middle of a series on 2 Samuel, and its being preached as narrative in its salvific-historical context without a clumsy ‘Jesus-jump’ for the third point. That is such a rarity in the western world as to invite attendance at church just for the novelty value. Besides, the preacher reminds me of Cynergy’s preaching a bit – the same nimbleness of expression and neatness of arrangement, and a couple of similar hand gestures. It’s kind of cool.

And then there is the music. The guy who is music director is from our year at College, but he’s done something quite unique with the music. I don’t know whether it feeds off the service (and something unique to the English), or feeds into the service, but the service with the music is profoundly doxological. I don’t know how he blends the music so that it is neither workmanlike and stodgy, nor giving the sense that music is a concession to a weakminded congregation, but provides a context in which both the horizontal and vertical dimension of fellowship is given expression in such a way as to be both meaningful (without being sentimental) and worshipful. So I find that I’m not just looking forward to the sermon but I’m busily engaged in the whole service and almost surprised when it is over.

Overall, it feels like a service for grown ups, who are serious about trying to be Christian, trying to repent, and wanting to remember who Jesus is and what he has done. I am really enjoying it.

Prize

There is a prize that really needs to be given out. This prize is for the weirdest goodbye we had as we were leaving.

This guy was telling Levor that there were two things he would always remember about him. The first was his gentleness in dealing with a particularly complex pastoral situation. The second? He said, “Don’t take this the wrong way. But you have all the qualities of a bear”. And then he walked away.


(PS: I deleted the last post in a bemused attempt to continue to conceal my identity, which as most regular readers already know it is rather strange. But there you have it.) Oh, and we now have internet access at home, so I'm back.

Australian Christians and their history

This is a small rant about Australian Christians and their disconnection with their own history. It's a rant because so many assumptions are made on the basis of no information, and because how we see our history determines how we make decisions and live now. What we think of what happened form our 'blinkers' in the here and now. It's always good to know you are wearing blinkers and what they are.

But so many of us don't. We think...

1. That Australia has no Christian heritage to speak of, buying the very successful lie propagated by Manning Clark and others who have crafted Australian history to suit their secular or actively non-Christian agendas. The story of Australia is peppered with many people who were Christian and have a profound impact on the shaping of the nation. David Jones (of department store fame) was an active Christian, for example, and had an impact on society beyond merely economic stimulation. If you take the Christian data into account with the secular data, you bump into Christians all over the place, having an impact on all kinds of sectors in the development of Australia.

2. That Australian Christianity has never done anything. This is frankly ridiculous. If you have a society (as Australian society was in the early 19th Century), which is populated by a bunch of unmotivated, drunk, immoral people, you don't have a healthy society because nobody gives a damn about anyone else and there are no reliable structures which enable society to function well. The one group which consistently challenged this ethos were the Christians. If they hadn't challenged society and put their money where their mouth was and made changes to how society ran, lobbying Britain and sometimes just making changes, it is hard to see how Australia could have been healthy enough to start expanding and developing in the mid-19th century.

3. That Australian Christianity was so tied to the state that it lacked any possibility of impact on society. The only way you can run this argument is by ignoring people like Richard Johnson. Yes, he was a 'government employee' chosen by the Evangelical Anglicans in England. He was supposed to be paid, get a cow (for his family), a church and given various rights within the colony. He wasn't. He built his own house and church, grew his own crops, and got stones thrown at him as he walked down the street. One of the governors marched his soldiers out during his sermons each week. Why? Because he preached the gospel and spoke out against the immorality he saw damaging the people in early NSW. He also taught people how to read and thought Aboriginal people should be treated with dignity, even to the point of volunteering himself as a hostage in an early negotiation between the Aboriginal people and the English.
Sure there were other 'state employees' who did do a fairly dreadful job of preaching the Gospel and probably didn't even believe it. But to dismiss someone like Johnson (and later Marsden and others) is to deny evidence which refutes the conclusion that the state church hindered the work of the Gospel in the colony. Further, the absence of Johnson in the early colony would have rendered the colony without any Christian witness at all.

4. That there are no Australian heroes or heroines. Hopefully Johnson's example has already questioned this, but part of the problem with this is that we don't invest in Australian Church History. Our records are appalling. A basic introductory text on Australian Church History only stays in print for about 3 years and has a small run. Most of them are written by Anglo-Catholics or Liberals with a strong desire to negate evidence of Evangelical presence or impact in Australia. And primary source material has less hope of ever being published. So, we simply don't know very much about the missionaries on the goldfields, the bush preachers (inspired by Spurgeon), the men and women who started churches in the middle of nowhere, the ministers of some of the key denominations in some of the capital cities - the evidence for this is destroyed, lost, locked up in a library somewhere. Who knows what is really there? In America, it would be published. But we don't publish and buy what we don't value. And we don't value our Christian heritage because we refuse to believe it exists.

End of rant. It's hardly going to change anyone's mind, but it made me feel better.