Returning

I have come to the end of my April projects, with a new appreciation for book indexes and magazine pages that fit nicely, so perhaps now this blog will get more attention.

I haven’t done a great deal in the last few weeks to write home, or even blog, about. I did really enjoy catching up with an old friend Simone a couple of weeks ago, as I have previously mentioned. Simone and her husband Andrew led the 21+ bible study group at the church I attended in Townsville, once upon a time, and there was a small enough group of us in the church, most of whom were a long way from home and family, that we all hung out together quite a lot (one of the advantages of less homogenous churches being that including everyone of a particular demographic can be manageable, unlike large homogenous churches where subgroups are inevitable).

We spent weekends exploring the far north, doing such things as driving to Charters Towers just to see what was out there (after fooling about in the gazebo of the town’s park for a while we came home), one memorable visit to Chunder Bay, which lived up to it’s name with a putrid stench coming from somewhere, visiting Magnetic Island and many nights spent playing fly on the beach at Cape Pallerenda. So, it was nice to catch up, and we have recently discovered some new common loves, such as poetry, which we didn’t know about back then. And just a plug: keep your eyes out for songs by Simone (Richardson), featured on some of the EMU CDs, particularly the children’s CD “A Very, Very, Very Big God” and on an upcoming CD of the songs of herself and Phillip Percival (she’s actually turning poetry into something!).

Last week a friend, Bec, came for dinner. Bec was a student minister at the church I was last year, during her final year at Moore Theological College, and I thought she was nice and we chatted, but nothing too involved. Then one evening, about two weeks before her final night with us there, we found ourselves in a pew and just got into one of those conversations – you know the ones where you feel your eyes mist over in places because the other person just simply understands, and you do too - and I thought ‘why haven’t we done this before?’, because then she was gone. But, thankfully, we have managed to stay in touch. Anyway, Bec actually did her 4th year project on “Towards a Pauline ethic of contentment with special reference to singleness”, so, as part of my self-imposed “research” for this year I told Bec I’d love to take a look at it. She then came to dinner with my very own printed and bound copy, which I made her autograph :), and I look forward to reading that!