I adore this country. We are so lucky. But we are so far from perfect and being without problems. I am wordlessly grateful to live in this country, but I hate the racism and simplistic idiocy that goes with Australia Day. I cannot put my argument better than just posting this status from a friend on Facebook:
“F*&K this!!! Why the F*&K are people putting up these messages questioning the greatness of this F*&king brilliant land of ours? If you don’t like Australia just the way it is, then F*&K OFF OUTTA HERE!!! This is the best country in the world.”
My response: “Seriously [redacted name]. Don’t say s*&t like that. It’s simplistic and ridiculous. No one is questioning the amazingness of living in a place like this. But there are many things that are problematic with our country. We are not perfect. I am grateful I live in such an amazing place which I truly appreciate, but we are far from perfect.”
I didn’t know how to write more without getting into a debate which I clearly can’t win. Sigh…
I never really bought into the whole ‘one right person for everyone’ thing. It seems overly idealistic. No one is perfect, we all make mistakes, and despite our best efforts, we hurt each other. Love is a choice. Yes, there are emotions involved, but they aren’t sustainable, so you need to choose to love your partner through the good and bad times. I always thought you chose a person you liked and were compatible with, but you could easily have chosen someone else and been just as happy, because it’s a mutual choice to put the other person ahead of yourself. I don’t think you could be happy with just anyone, but I think there are multiple people you could be happy with.
However, I recently thought, perhaps that’s not true. Perhaps you don’t just choose someone. Actually, I think you do, but I don’t think that was God’s original intention. I think there really is one right person for everyone. There must be. However, that’s not usually who we end up with, because we stuff things up all the time. What if your person chooses someone else? What if you do something bad and you break up and they don’t forgive you?
Unrequited love is truly awful. I’m sure everyone has experienced it at some time. It hurts. I am convinced that God does not want that. Therefore, in a perfect world, the person we loved would love us back. No unrequited love. One right person for everyone.*
*This is a very poorly written post, and rather inarticulate, but I hope you get my point.
Christmas is a fantastic time, and if you don’t think so, bah humbug to you too! Actually, scrap that. I’m going to tie you down, sing carols at you and cover you in glitter and tinsel UNTIL YOU LOVE CHRISTMAS!
Tonight was our carols service at church, and this is a photo of it before it filled up. Yes, we have a music bowl in the beautiful greenery of Eltham. It was lots of fun and rather impressive. Lots of great music and great people. I miss my church.
This is the first year that I haven’t been involved in any carols service of any kind. I only just realised that this afternoon. It makes me sad. I love carols and I feel a bit weird that I haven’t been a part of anything this year. I guess living somewhere else has broken my networks. Although I was meant to play at a carols service in Hamilton but ended up being double booked. I tried to make up for it tonight by singing my heart out!
We even had a live painting! It was very impressive. What you can see is part way through. It was a desert land, all brown, then a cross was painted on top of one of the hills and the sun started shining through and all the hills started being painted green and the dry, cracked river bed had water flowing through it. It was really fantastic! I wish I’d taken a photo of it at the end.
Christmas is a wonderful time of family, friends, fun, food, fellowship and alliteration. And most importantly it is a time to remember that Jesus gave us the greatest gift of all, himself, and a relationship with him. Not one of condemnation and rules, but of grace and forgiveness. We get to live in that truth and freedom!
I’d like to recommend you listen to the talk at our church this morning. It’s free on iTunes. Whether you’re a usual church goer or not, it’s really worth a listen. I’m always amazed how the Christmas message can be repackaged year after year! It’s the Dec 18th podcast HERE.
As of Monday (yesterday) my teaching year is over. We had our presentation night last night and that’s it for me and the students for 2011. My final staff day is on Thursday, but the kids are done. Now to get tidying up this year and planning for next!
I had a really fantastic year. It obviously turned out very differently to what I originally thought this year was going to be, but it has been a positive time for me. At times I have missed my family and friends and having a build up social network, but thankfully I get back to Melbourne often enough so that I don’t miss people too much.
I have truly loved my job this year. Obviously no school is perfect, but I really have loved my job. I have very much enjoyed getting to know my students and seeing them grow and achieve, both academically and personally. I can’t imagine a more rewarding profession. I’m really looking forward to next year!
Discrimination is discrimination. If you afford some people a legal right and deny others the same right, it is discrimination, pure and simple. The whole point of a free and democratic society is that my values don’t impact on your choices. Let’s say for arguments sake that I disagree with the idea of same sex marriage, the whole point of our freedom is that my beliefs don’t determine your ability to choose for yourself.
I know I’ve said this before, but I feel the need to say it again after the Labor National Conference. The issue has flared up again. It makes me sad and angry that people think they have the right to dictate how others should live their lives. I wouldn’t want our legal system to mandate that I follow Islamic law, because I don’t subscribe to Islam. Therefore why on earth do (some) Christians (and I know there are non Christians in this category too) in this country feel that they should tell others, who aren’t subscribing to Christianity how they ought to choose. I feel it’s wrong, and it’s actually the opposite of what Jesus was on about. When people walked away from him, he let them. He never forced anyone to do anything, he let them choose. If it’s good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for me.
Give people the legal right to make their own choices and not feel like second class citizens. Discrimination on any other basis would be abhorrent, so why isn’t this?
This year I’ve been doing some creative projects with my maths students. They’ve been creating presentations (mostly digital) explaining a concept they’ve learned this year so that someone who doesn’t understand it, will. This was my example digital storybook, explaining the mean, median and mode. Most of them made videos, and some made some fantastic stop animations. I might upload one of those soon.
