I don't know what the world's coming to," he went on, "People getting more worldly every day." Jess Birdwell ~ Except for Me & Thee.

The first time I read Jessamyn West's Except for Me & Thee, I read it greedily in a rush, as a starving woman.  It had to be returned to the library because a friend wanted to read it before the inter~library archives claimed it back.  I was bitterly disappointed.  I had known & loved The Friendly Persuasion so long I compared it unfavourably & found it wanting.

My children learnt early to head me off at the pass when it comes to bookshops.  I would rather read than eat & they know it.  For some strange reason they would rather eat than read.  Over the years bookshops became a thing of the past.  I couldn't afford the prices & besides one of the quirkier things about our little island is that it has always had an excellent library with a wonderful librarian who has always managed to get me whatever I wanted no matter how obscure it was ~ & believe me some of it has been very obscure!  So I stopped buying books.

We have had a computer for a while now & it has gradually dawned on me that there, at my fingertips, was the library wealth of the world, much of it affordable & so I have begun dabbling in the wonderful world of pre~loved books.  This time I can savour Except for Me & Thee for the rare & delightful treasure it is.

West has a rare knack for character & a sly humour.  I rarely laugh out loud but I snigger a lot.

If he had to be married to some~one, & it looked like he had to, proposing at the rate he was, he preferred Emily to Georgia.  But he didn't want Emily either.  She had less rise to her than a buckwheat cake.  After an evening with Emily he began to appreciate the merits of disorder & hard liquor.

He couldn't remember sleeping a wink that week.  The cornhusks in his mattress rustled all night long as he tossed & turned trying to figure out how in 3 short days a man could take such complete leave of his senses.

I might be gone a while.

I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people ~ Jeremiah 31:33

When I first began sharing the messages the Lord laid on my heart a very wise man shared with me from his own experience. 

"Any message," he told me, "is firstly for the messenger".  And I have found that to be true.  I'd actually be perfectly happy not to share.  I don't like what happens around me spiritually when the Lord gets in my ear.  I am always amazed by Jonah!  How on earth did that man resist the pressure of the Holy Spirit bearing down on him?! 

I struggled with Haggai.  I really, really did.  No, the study itself wasn't difficult & the things the Lord was impressing on my spirit were not difficult ~ but boy, oh boy! did the spiritual realms have a conniption!  I still never get why it bothers but bother it did & consequentially this household had a somewhat rough & rocky week.  At the end of it I breathed a sigh of relief but the Lord was not done with me yet.

See, there was one phrase that just stuck in my craw & wouldn't go away. Haggai is getting a little wild & woolly around the edges with a real head of steam on him & then he lets rip with this: " The glory of this present house will be greater than the glory of the former house!"   Now I know, how could I not, that Haggai was talking firstly about the second temple ~ but, & it is the hugest but, he was talking about something else as well.  If you want to know how I reached my conclusion please read the other post but what Haggai was talking about too is the New Testament temple, the temple made of the living stones that are you & I.

And I have been thinking about that.  See  Solomon's temple was something else.  It cost the savings of one man's lifetime & then some.  It put Solomon in debt to Lebanon because the temple cost something like a cool 20 million! It was built of limestone to dazzle in the harsh middle eastern light. It was lined with imported Lebanon cedar, cedar that Israel didn't grow, intricately carved, inlaid & overlayed with gold.  And there was an inner sanctuary known as the Holy of Holies, a room that only the High Priest could enter.  In Jesus day the High Priest only entered once a year on the Day of Atonement.  The room was completely bare except for one thing: the ark of the covenant ~ & in the ark of the covenant lay the 2 clay tablets with the 10 commandments inscribed on them. The floor, the walls, the ceiling were overlaid with gold. The holy of holies is where God's shekinah , His glory nimbus, rested.  All this the Israelites lost when Babylon carried them off into captivity & they were never to see its like again.

Now this is what I have been thinking about because the Lord says He will refine us like gold & the way to know when impurities are gone from the gold is when you can see your reflection in it.  He says He will raise up a people who will have His Law written on their hearts.  He says He will take away their hearts of stone & give them hearts of flesh.  And so you see, I know that we are the latter house whose glory is greater than the former.  We are the holy of holies wherein dwells God's shekinah, His glory nimbus, & we are to be a people who reflect their maker, who keep His Law, who evidence His Love.  We are His high priests who can go in & out of the holy of holies as we please for the veil has been torn asunder ~ & it is a most terrifying thought.  If it were not that Christ is the atonement I would not dare enter in.  I doubt that few of us would.  I also think we need to remember what an awesome responsibility we carry.  We are the dwelling place of the Most High God.  No other people can claim that. It would be nice if I always remembered that but I don't ~ & the glory departs. 

In the old temple, Solomon's temple, a veil shielded the holy of holies from common view.  The cloth was of fine linen woven in red & purple & blue: blue for heaven, red for the earth & purple for where earth meets heaven.  Where earth meets heaven is in Christ & where He dwells is in us.  There is no other: no other people, no other temple, no other testimony.  David saved for a lifetime for the temple Solomon built.  Christ died for His.

“I shall be honored to go down to posterity in the turn-up of Wilfred’s trouser”~ Lord Peter Wimsey.

For a while our front door was guarded by a large Golden Orb  spider.  Every morning I would find the strong silken wire strands spanning the arc between the eves & the palm tree & glowing deep gold in the morning light.  These spiders spin webs that are elastic enough & strong enough that Dunk Island fishermen have used them for catching bait fish.  True.

I haven't thought of my golden spider for a long time.  One morning I got up & she was gone.  No golden web glowed against the sky.  No spider scuttled anxiously along her golden threads.  The space between my eves & the palm tree was empty.

I thought of her this morning.  When I got up & opened my e~mail, as I invariably do first thing, my thick green mug to hand, coffee au lait pipping hot, sleep fogged brain humming like a computer booting up, the little sense of anticipation that this morning one of my blogging sisters [or 2 or 3] might have left a message for me making me smile inside while I waited I found that indeed there were a nice little pile of messages waiting for me.  I do like to get up & find love in my e~mail box!

This morning there was a special message.  A dear blogging sister had left a message asking if I had some way to chat.  There was something she wished to share but in person so I snuck into Liddy's room & borrowed her computer because Liddy's lap~top has Skype & I don't.  It was far too early to wake Liddy so all on my little lonesome ownsome I battled her computer to get Skype up & running & add a new address ~ & we had a short but very lovely chat & I got to thinking about the Golden Orb spider spinning her web.

See, I have heard people speak disparagingly of on~line friendships as not being the real deal.  I don't think that is true.  I especially don't think that is true for Christians.  Each of us spins her web, throwing our silken, golden strands out into the wider world, snagging stray passerbys.  Some, of course, don't stay but others do, forming a net of friendships that of necessity are strong but elastic, sustained more often than not by prayer because prayer is often the only thing we can do for each other.  Often we know each other better than we know our neighbours.  We bare our souls here in ways we may not be brave enough to do in real life.  Thoughts, the inner core of a person, shine forth.  Muscle & sinew peels away to reveal the glittering white bone of the self, the innermost desires of the heart, the deepest secrets.  I know this is true.

My friend, Siano, who has known me through university & as a new mother, & as the mother of teens, seen the best & the worst of me yet still reads my blog.  She says she learnt more about me in 6 months of reading than she'd learnt in 20 odd years.  Scary, isn't it?

So to the friend who shared this morning, & to the blogging sister who has honoured & blessed me " in the turn up of Wilfred's trouser", I thank you.  It is a deep joy to share the journey with you.

The book of life begins with a man & a woman in a garden; it ends with revelations ~ Oscar Wilde.

Technically our Liddy is home ~ but we've hardly seen her.  She has been busy gadding.  The thing with Liddy's gadding is it is seldom random; it just seems that way sometimes.

She took Star down the coast during the week then yesterday she was headed in the other direction with a couple of mates.  Bloke mates.  Lid has always had plenty of boys who are just friends.  Comes from having so many brothers & spending half your childhood running with the male pack.

She was pretty tired when I picked her up last night & the traffic coming back through Brissie was pretty bad but when I asked she rolled her eyes & said,"I thought I was mad agreeing to drive those boys 3 hours up, then 3 hours back but..."  I waited.  These stories always only ever have one outcome. Liddy always gets them.  Random conversation starters about God & religion ~ when the enquirer is trapped in a car giving Lid free reign & a captive audience ~ & she never ever starts these conversations!  She just finishes them. Decisively.  Mind you that girl has no trouble at all holding her own against an atheist & an agnostic & coming out on top.  Have no idea where she gets it from.

Anyway she called in briefly at her grandmother's & picked up half the Chrissie presents.  Dino's seems to have been left behind.  The one we thought was his turned out to be tea towels.  He was not impressed.  I think they were meant for me.

My mother is a wonderful woman & she has a knack for choosing wonderful presents.  Star was over the moon with the art things but ma surpassed herself with mine.  I use things up until they literally wear out & fall apart.  It's not just that I hate shopping for replacements, it's that I never remember when I am some place I could actually buy a replacement.  My purse is one of those things.  It has so much jammed in it because I always seem to have other people's bits & pieces as well as my own.[That's 5 library cards, 3 bank cards I don't own, student IDs, one passport {why is that in there?} & 2 strips of panadol.  Why 2?] It was literally bursting at the seams ~ until the seams began to split.  None of the zips function.  You have to hold it just so [so Anne of Green Gables~ish] or coins fly everywhere. It is tattered & fraying & looks like it has been through a war or two but of all things I hate buying I hate shopping for a new purse.  A new one is never the same as the old one & has to be worn in while I stand in shop ques [invariably long & impatient] fumbling my way through unfamiliar territory looking for my belongings.  Left up to me a new purse takes a long long time to happen.  So my wonderful mother took it upon herself to choose a slighter bigger purse to accommodate all the things I don't own & sent it home with Liddy.

The leather is beautifully soft & all the buttons & zips work!  I won't know myself.  Meanwhile ma's present is still sitting upstairs in the secretariat waiting on an opportune moment to deliver it.  I wish Lid had said she was calling in!

And he said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath: Mark 2:27

For a while now the Lord has been impressing on my mind the need to keep His Sabbath holy.  Not so easy when you share a house with 4 other people who are not on the same page as you are. 
 
"It doesn't matter," says Dearest, " which day you keep holy so long as one day out of seven you do that".
 
And I see his point, I really do.  No point in being rigid & legalistic about these things & there's stuff ~ all sorts of stuff ~ that gets in the way. 
 
The little niggle that is so often the still quiet voice of the Lord refused to go away.  Random searches on completely unrelated stuff turned up exegesis on keeping the Sabbath.  I figure I've been spoken to ~ & then some.  But what to do about all the other people in this house? The ones who conveniently find something else to do whenever mother broaches another of her weird ideas.
 
All this week I have been thinking about it because the Lord bore upon me there was no need, none at all, to jump in boots & all as is my want & scare everyone away.  Start with small things.  Pleasant things.  Things others will enjoy because, amongst other things, the Sabbath is a celebration full of the joy of the Lord.  So I was thinking of doing something special for dinner.  Even desert ~ & we all know how much I love to cook!  Candles on the window sill.  Just for me.  I am the only one who will enjoy them.  There is no need even to mention it to anyone else.
 
And here we are!  Friday ~ & everything is just falling into place.  No fuss.  No bother.
 
"Can we have chowder for dinner?  Chowder & rolls?" Asked Dino.  I could hardly believe my ears.  Chowder is an easy make~ahead meal, & an easy clean up. It is simmering gently on the stove.  I have made cheesecake & am nearly done with the housework.  Come 6 tonight we will see what happens.  These sorts of experiments with the Lord are always interesting.

We're all mad here.  I'm mad.  You're mad ~ the Cheshire Cat.

Kirby is my hard lovin' man, which is odd because he takes himself outside first thing in the morning & we hardly see him all day.  Oh, if someone actually goes outside & is pottering around he usually shows up to hang with them but he doesn't feel the need to be constantly drapped around someone's feet the way Marlow does.  The way that cat does get stepped on, run over [by chairs] bumped & knocked & however much we try to remember how much he shadows us it still happens.

Not Kirby.  Nope.  Kirby is up & at it at first light while Marlow is still snoring round someone's feet.  He knows as soon as my feet hit the floor in the morning & I hear him begin to call for me.  Usually he is waiting for me 1/2 way down the hall & races me into the kitchen ~ but though he is always hungry it is not food he wants; it is cuddles.

Now Kirby has very decided ideas on loving ~ & he is very hard to deter.  Nose touches.  A good sniff to make sure I haven't with~held choice tit~bits he hasn't got to share. Chin rubs.  Then topped up for the day & having done his duty in greeting his alpha female properly he's at his food bowl & out the door.  Most mornings.  Occasionally he feels the need to hang round a little longer & leaps from piece of furniture to piece of furniture as I move, just keeping me under surveillance.  I think he's mad but harmless.

Or I used to. Until the other morning.  There I was, sleepily stirring my first cup of coffee for the morning listening to the computer boot up when I heard Kirby begin his circuit: floor to desk, desk to microwave, microwave to bench top on his way to the box freezer top!  Only he didn't.  He got to the bench & suddenly launched himself at my chest with such force he nearly knocked me over.  His long front legs went round my neck & he pushed his face eagerly into mine & along my jaw with his enormous rumbling purr.  Um, yeah.  Love you too Kirby. ♥ Good grief! The cat's as mad as a hatter!

You've come a long way, baby!

The mind should be a thing that works ~ Sherwood Anderson

In a few short days my Star will officially start grade 11; unofficially she's been working at this level for several years now in English & History.  Math, well we just don't talk about math.  You hear me do a lot of griping about the child & school.  I'm sure that occasionally some of you roll your eyes & think the child needs a swift swat to the rear end & a mother that has something that resembles a spine.  You could be forgiven for thinking such things but I have been thinking the past few days, in between other thinks, & I want to share with you some of the things it is easy to forget & overlook now Star is 15 & big.

This house has 5 children: 3 boys, 2 girls.  All the boys have dyslexia.  Theo was functionally illiterate into high school & even now his comprehension of the written word is shonky.  I spent a lot of time up at the island school helping with the remedial reading program & for 10 years I watched children fall through the cracks in the educational system.  A lot of these kids were really bright.  My Jossie was one of them.  One of the things I learnt about bright children is they also often have learning disabilities but because they are bright & clever & innovative they compensate & normally no~one ever twigs how much they are struggling.  Things appear on their report cards like Could do better if he tried.  They are trying for all they are worth but it never ever looks that way.

I learnt a lot about teaching learning disabilities, especially reading, & I figured what worked reasonably well for children experiencing difficulties should be a breeze for a reasonably capable child.  Enter Star into the picture.  Star, our surprise baby, is 6 years younger than Liddy, 12 years younger than Jossie.  She was due to enter pre~school the year Liddy finished primary school with about 30 other preschoolers.  It was a large class that year & while it usually takes a small bomb under me to get me riled I'd seen enough to figure this was not good news for my Star.  That first year when all the pre~reading, pre~math skills are practised requires as much one~on~one help as possible.  Competing with 29 other 4/5 year olds is not the optimum way to do that.  So I didn't send her.  Star stayed home with me & we cooked & gardened & painted & I taught her to read.  I didn't mean to teach her to read.  It just happened because the pre~reading stuff I did actually works.

At this point even my dearest could see we had a problem.  You do not put a reading child in a classroom full of non~readers & expect them to function well.  So we didn't.  We enrolled Star with the BSDE ~ the state school of distance education.  Now Aussies will probably know how this works but for my non~Aussie friends it works like this.  The school assigns you a *teacher* who marks your child's returned work & is available for help if needed.  The school sends out a term's worth of work at a time; very workbook oriented.  One workbook in each subject area is to be completed & returned every 2 weeks. And it was easy~peasy.  Star & I settled into a routine & we were happy.  We had a lovely teacher, Star's reading skills were good & the work was very hands on, which suited us.  Lots of cutting & pasting & colouring.  Lots of math games.  Lots of concrete work for math.  Star did very well but of course at the end of the year she was still ahead so she stayed with BSDE.

By grade 2 I was beginning to suspect there was a fly in our ointment.  Star's handwriting was not developing as it should have & she was very loath to actually write herself.  She loved to tell stories & she loved me to write her stories down for her but getting her to put pencil to paper herself was becoming problematic.  "Not to worry", said our lovely grade 2 teacher. "Lots of children experience difficulties."  I knew this was true & our lovely teacher let us do whatever we felt we needed to do to help Star, to encourage her, to keep her on side educationally & we managed by hook or by crook, by cajoling & coercion & outright bribery to get Star to keep writing, even if it was just a little bit all through grade 2, & all through grade 3 & into grade four.

Grade 4 was not a good year for us.  Grade four the anti suddenly gets upped.  The games stop & education becomes serious business ~ or so our new teacher felt.  She objected to my highly visual child who liked pretty things writing out her work in a coloured pencil.  Plain lead, please! She got incredibly stroppy about Star's handwriting.  Now I am making no excuses for Star's handwriting.  It was large & uneven & sloped every which way because the child had almost no control over her letter formation & the physical act of writing caused her pain.  It's called dysgraphia & lots of children have it.  Joss has it too & even now his handwriting is like chicken scratchings.  We might have managed if this teacher had given credit where credit was due, if she had managed a little flexibility in her approach but she never complimented the content of Star's work, or her artwork [which always was lovely], only the messiness of her writing.  You have no idea.  Star would work so hard only to have her work come back with red lines all through it & terse comments about redoing her work due to its messiness.

So I rang this woman & I explained.  I wrote notes on Star's work reminding her.  We were doing extension work & sending that in but all this woman ever saw was that Star wrote like a bucking bronco.  So Star stopped trying.  Sorry folks but the child has a performance personality.  No applause, no performance!  It reached a point where Star was refusing to write anything at all & I had this woman shrieking down the phone at me accusing me of undermining my child's education & telling me people like me should never be allowed to homeschool.  I was in tears. I felt we'd done everything we could to appease this woman but there was just no pleasing her. I hated dealing with her & both Star & I were doing everything possible to avoid her.  I asked to change teachers but BSDE was stuffed to the ceiling with disenchanted state schoolers & there wasn't a spare space anywhere in the school.

Then she did it again.  This time Dearest was home.  Very gently he removed the phone from my hand & enquired in his softest, most pleasant manner, "Why is my wife crying?"  He then very calmly explained why she should not be allowed to teach, especially homeschoolers.  When he got of the phone he turned to me & said, "Change umbrellas."

Now the thing with Star [& Jossie too] is something I don't really like to talk about because in the long run it doesn't matter & my children are not academic but I am going to mention it because it affects the expectations others have of them.  Both Joss & Star have been identified as Gifted & Talented.  Not excessively so but enough that most things academic have come easily for them.  They get bored easily.  They have odd interests.  Their learning is uneven & their knowledge esoteric.  The lovely man  I spoke to at Groves DSE identified that never having even met my child & assigned us the most lovely teacher who accommodated Star as she found her academic feet again.  For 12 months Star sent all her written work in in coloured pencil, coloured ink, coloured textas, highlighters & crayons.  Some of her work every letter was a different colour.  None of it was easy to read but suddenly Star was getting As & A+s on her work because the focus was on content rather than her handwriting.

In November I signed her up for NaNoWriMo with me & Star suddenly took off.  She still doesn't like to write for school.  As she says, she knows she can, why does she have to prove it?  These days all her written work is done on the computer because, yes, her handwriting is still appalling.  And yes, she is still considered academically bright but  I know & Star knows: She would rather stand behind the till at Woolies & pack groceries to pay for being able to perform at QPAC than strain her brain to be the next Madam Curie or Virginia Woolfe.

So as I consider this year & the fact that we have have been assigned a new teacher you can see why I am more than a little alarmed.  We need just the right teacher to supervise Star.  One who is firm but not inflexible.  One who grasps that our first priority is not, & never will be, Star's academics.  Once it was, when she was little & learning to read & write & count.  Not any more.  Now education is just an aide to real life, the life Star chooses; one that will be a little unusual with unusual demands & we need a teacher that gets that.

And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God:~Ephesians 6:17

I used to do a lot of acting.  Not that I wanted to be an actress.  Nothing like that.  I was interested in understanding how written dialogue worked best ~ not that we actually studied that & I did a lot of acting by default ~ & there's one thing I can tell you:  Everyone should do a little acting.  It teaches you how to deal with public scrutiny.  It teaches you how to deal with fear.  With ridicule.  To cope when things turn catawumpus.  To think on your feet & to roll with the flow.

As a result the one thing that does not faze me terribly is public speaking.  Done it all my life & the way I figure it, no~one's going to whinge too hard no matter how awful I am because if anybody could do it, it wouldn't be me up on the podium!

If you've been following along you know I used to give the occasional message at the church we once belonged to.  Long complicated story as to the reasons behind that to do with super small communities & lack of the people who are in full time ministries wanting to minister in small, difficult communities.  It was either do it ourselves or do without.  We did it ourselves.

And I learnt something.    Several somethings.  I learnt if you ask, God will say.  God was always gracious to make sure I understood very, very clearly what He wanted me to say to His people. I did not understand how much I was working in the prophetic.  I thought it worked that way for everyone.  Apparently not but how was I to know?  I learnt that if I was given a message I could expect everyone in the house to come under spiritual attack ~ & believe you me it got incredibly bizarre.  When preparing a message I've had dying cats, hysterical children & phone calls announcing deaths in the family.  We've had cars that were running fine suddenly break down & sick people take a turn for the worse.  I've wrestled with  God & ranted at God & begged Him not to make me say what I'd been given to say but I never, ever worried about actually having to stand up before 50 or so people & talk.  That was the easy bit but I was not sorry when circumstances forced us to remove ourselves from the line of fire.

I am such a woos.  A pacifist woos.  The sort that skims over all those passages in the bible that talk about being a soldier, putting on your armour & fighting for the Lord.  Metaphorical.  Inapplicable.  Naught to do with me.  Besides, I had removed myself from the line of fire.

And there I was peacefully pottering around in my little backwater with a small, very, very small, home worship group when it dawned on me that God was still delivering His messages but I now had nowhere to deliver them.  Being the dunce I am I ignored the promptings.  Obviously that was for some unforeseeable time in the future.  Um, apparently not.  So I began that other place, the one we don't talk about here, & somewhere in my foggy little brain I had the idea that I was flying under the radar.  Undetectable.  Unimportant.  So much so that precautions were unnecessary.

I am such an idiot!!!

You'd think I'd recognize the signs by now. You'd think I had enough experience.  That I'd know better.  Nope.  I'm in the retarded class for absolute morons because I couldn't work it out, you know.  Why was I having so much difficulty?  What was going on with my insides?  Where was the depression coming from?  Um, hello!    It was glaringly obvious in the end.  My prayer times got interrupted.  My writing got interrupted.  Everyone in my house is starting to loop the loop.  The cats are unravelling, the phone is ringing incessantly.  Dearest wanted to put a listing up on E~bay; a 20 minute job turned into a 3 & 1/2 hour marathon that left me exhausted & ratty.  Have I said enough?  Do you have the picture?

Am now buckling on my breastplate.  Jamming helmet on head.  Grabbing my shield, looking for that misplaced sword.  What have I done with it?!  Such a fuss for a regular run of the mill sinner. *sigh*  I am so not good with swords but I do know which end is the cutting bit.

Haggai.  It's all because of Haggai; 2 chapters; 38 verses.  Hardly believable, is it.

I like a teacher who gives you something to take home to think about besides homework.  ~Lily Tomlin

I think I might Rip Van this year & just sleep it out.Waddaya think?   It's not like I'm not sleep deprived.  A hundred years or so of snuggle~byes is looking mighty good.

See, I don't like having my boat rocked.  It is precariously balanced ~ especially the school boat.  We had a really, really rough time with our umbrella round about grade 4/5.  In fact it was so bad Star has never really recovered.  It was so awful we changed umbrellas.  Dearest insisted on it. 


My Star is beautiful & talented & bright as a button but she is not academic & marches to a different drummer.  I am ok with that.  Really, I am.  What I am not ok with is having to justify our choices to others. The constant explaining.  The never~ending, "But that doesn't work; been there, tried that."  The higher the grade the more likely some *professional* thinks they know better & wants to box my daughter in & from sad experience that  is likely to have unpleasant results.

Now for the last 5 years we have had the same wonderful teacher supervising.  She leaves us alone to get on with it.  She doesn't fuss. She helps if we ask for help; well, she's a math teacher & I've watched Star tie her up in knots but she tries.  We really like her.  Now our umbrella school has gone & changed teachers on us!  I want to lift my muzzle & howl at the horizon.  What I do not want to do is apply my dubious interpersonal social skills to a new supervisor.  A male supervisor.  A left~brained male supervisor.  What on earth is he going to do with 2 right~brained females?!  Definitely not happy.  Not at all.

Some people have issues with God & money.  Will He provide?  Will there be enough for food & bills & money in the plate on Sunday?  Some people have issues with surrendering to God.  What if He asks them to go some place they don't want to go? Do something they don't want to do?  Be more than they think they can be?  Some people have trust issues.  Will God keep their children safe? Protect them from harm?  Save their souls?  I generally manage all of those.  Oh, I might do the occasional song & dance & spit the dummy just for effect but really, them ones are a breeze. Nope, I have issues with the people the Lord brings into my life.  The ones I can't choose.  The ones that get dumped on me.  The ones who are very different to me ~ & I don't do well.  I don't do well at all because my strategy ~ & it is obviously a wonderful strategy because I use it all the time ~ is retreat.  Discretion is the better part of valour.  Maybe I could leave the country? I have a hankering after the Orkney's.  Skara Brae. John O'Groat's.  Anywhere a long, long way away.

Anyone want to offer a temporary home to a stray homeschooler & her recalcitrant child?

Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about. ~ Oscar Wilde because Just living is not enough. One must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.~ Hans Christian Andersen

You know what I have noticed this morning?  And yesterday morning?  It's cool.  There is a slight breeze ruffling the waters of the bay & the air has a sting to it ~ an autumn sting. People, we are in January.  January. January is hot & muggy ~ stinkin' hot, sweat running like a river muggy.  It is days of breathless heat under a white hot sky broken at last by thunderstorms ripping apart the sky & torrential downpours.   
  

January ~ & here I sit in a cardi thinking I'm still not quite warm enough. Already the new year is well under way.  School goes back this week ~ well, not for us.  I refuse to start before February.  Silly to do a couple of days school & then break for Australia Day.  What was the government thinking?  Hard enough to get a routine going without stupidities of that sort.  And Star & I need this month.  All of it.  If only so the child has enough time to suggest she is thinking of going to stunt school...doing trampoline gymnastics [phuleeese!]...& that her mother should "Man up" when it comes to mice.  Biological impossibility, m'dear.

I have a pretty full house again & no~one's got any money. I have 2 semi~vegetarians & 3 carnivores ~ 5 if you count the cats.  I've never yet been able to convince a cat to give up red meat.  The sludge from the Brisbane river is swirling down through the passages & leaving wide brown streaks across the bay. It has been like this for a week & I sit here thinking, I really don't want to deal with this year, you know.  Everywhere I look there is so much pain, so much suffering, so many hurting people.  It is overwhelming but giving up is not an option.  I should think less.  Each day has troubles enough of its own.

That is the other thing, perhaps the biggest thing.  After nearly 8 weeks of constant & unmitigated rain, glowering skies, wet misery, we finally have sunshine & blue skies.  Star & I need a chance to enjoy just a little bit of that before the round of rehearsals, schoolwork, & violin lessons begins again; a chance to sit in God's sunshine & drink in the clean air, grub in the earth, let the sun fizz through our veins like bubbly.  And I am off to do just that ~ oh, & plant my beans.  Planting beans gives me so much pleasure.

Never play cat & mouse games if you're a mouse. ~ Don Addis

In the general run of things, few things upset me more than my cats catching something that's alive ~ like mice.   Not that I like mice.  They creep me out but you know, they're tiny & my cats are big & they cry. 

Last night Marlow caught a mouse.  Goodness knows where it came from as we thought we had dealt with our annual spring problem.  It was probably escaping from the wet ~ because yes, it is raining again.  Huge torrential deluges that have turned our yard into a pond & Liddy, who had to go out to Beaudesert yesterday  & was coming home via Beenleigh, discovered just how quickly the creeks are rising now & overflowing the roads. Which has nothing to do with mice.

That Marlow was even awake is something of a miracle.  How that cat can sleep!  That Kirby wasn't the catcher is unusual because that cat hunts anything that moves. Anyway Marlow whisked himself & his prize down the stairs into our back room ~ which, at present, does not have a light ~ with Kirby hot on his heels.  I hardened my heart.  I do not like mice.  I do not like mice.  I do not...

Then Star arrived in high dungeon demanding that someone, anyone, deal with the mouse.  She could hear it crying all the way at the other end of the house! *sigh*  So armed with a torch & a box we began hunting cats.  Have you ever tried to convince a cat it does not want a mouse that is still squeaking?  I've tried easier things.

My Dearest thinks I'm mad.  I keep cats.  Cats hunt.  Cats catch mice.  Why am I hunting cats to put the mice outside where, if they don't die of fear, they will promptly turn round & re~enter the house?!  I know, but I can't bear it.  Star can't bear it.  We have goo for insides.

And you know the worst part?  I felt sorry for the cats.  They were such good boys & they were having so much fun & I'm a real party~pooper!

Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening. ~ 1 Samuel 3:9

When I first began looking at the different ways God's people have come to worship him down the centuries one thing really struck me.  From the moment the Israelites begged Moses to go to God on their behalf [And they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die Exodus 20:19].to the present day people are reluctant to stand in the presence of God themselves, reluctant to take responsibility for their own walk.  They want someone else to do the hard yards for them & then tell them what they should do.  It's one reason we have priests & ministers.  They've done the hard yards.  The rest of us get to excuse ourselves by saying, " Well, I'm not a theologian..."  I don't think God wants churches full of theologians...


For me one of the appeals of Quaker worship is that  this flimsy excuse is removed.  It means you have to risk much in worship: that God will be silent; that your conscience will rise up & accuse you; that you may publicly weep for you know not what; that God may get your attention & start whispering in your ear things you do not want to hear that will lead you into places you do not want to go.  It means you risk being wrong.  Very, very few of us are willing to risk so much.  There is nowhere to go, nowhere to hide.  You can't hide behind the music & pretend you've worshiped when you haven't.  You can't hide behind the prayers & pretend you've prayed when you haven't.  You can't nod your head wisely over the sermon & give up none of your sweet personal little sins.  You are stripped bare in the searching glare of the Holy Spirit & God himself holds you accountable ~ & I will be the first to tell you that that is a very scary place indeed to be.  It is an awful thing to fall into the hands of the living God!  I have also learnt in is the safest place I can ever be.


So for me there is no anomaly between Quaker worship & dealing with the Jewish Festivals & prophecy.  If I am listening for God, if I believe God still speaks to His people [& I do] then I should expect to hear from Him.  I should expect to find Him absolutely consistent ~ & I do.  As God walked with Adam & Eve in the cool of the evening chatting as intimate friends, so too does he walk with us today & if we are listening we will hear Him speak.


He is still saying the same things He was saying centuries ago: Draw near to me & I will draw near to you; Be thou holy as I am holy; Consider your ways...




How it must grieve the heart of God that so many of His people are still saying, "Speak to God for us".  [Exodus 20:19] Look at how scripture puts it.  We are the temple for the Holy Spirit [1Cor;6:19]~ & what has the temple ever been but the dwelling place for the glory of God?!  And how can we be His glory if we do not let Him in?  If we keep Him at a distance, afraid of what true intimacy with Christ will bring us. Moses said, "(I stood between the LORD and you at that time, to shew you the word of the LORD: for ye were afraid because of the fire, and went not up into the mount;) " [Deut;5:5] 

We are afraid to go up into the mount & face the fire of God.  That is understandable.  What if God is not who we thought He was?  What if we are consumed by the fire?  What if we become a laughing stock & our fellow Christians mock & condemn us?

But

What if the Lord meets us there & we talk face to face?  Will we not come down from the mountain so radiant with the love of God that we must needs veil our faces ?  And what if the unbelieving world saw that?  What then?

 No fear! No retreat! ~Reepicheep.

This was the Narnia movie we most wanted to see.  It was shot in Queensland just up the bay from us & at Star's insistence we watched the construction of the Dawn Treader & some of the shooting.



That's as close as we got, folks ~ much to Star's chagrin.

It is, perhaps, my favourite of the Narnia books along with The Last Battle.  Always a little dicey when someone decides to meddle with a favourite book & a character like Eustace Scrubb ~ who almost deserved it!  It came out here just before the Christmas holidays began but of course December was a mad, mad month for us so I put off going to see it thinking, why wouldn't I?, that it would be around for most of the holidays but of course, when I finally got around to it, it had outworn its welcome & was no longer available at either of the local cinemas. Hmph!

Anyway the garage finally rang to say they'd fixed the car [spark plugs, leads, rotor thingy, carburetter ~ no idea about any of it but a good thing they looked under the hood by the sound of things.]  Now if I absolutely have to go to the mainland I may as well make it worthwhile so I trolled through the cinema listings & found an accessible one still showing Dawn Treader ~ one session only & it was early.  Star so loves it when I do this to her!  And Liddy; Liddy who arrived home from Melbourne the night before & is still over~tired, under~hydrated & grouchy but who wanted to come.

Yes ladies, we enjoyed it very much.  Will Poulter as Eustace was a brilliant choice.  He was beautifully obnoxious & very believable.  Which reminds me that one of the reasons I like this book so much is that the 3 remaining characters are the strongest.  Susan was always rather insipid, Peter stereotypical but Edmund has depth & Lucy is nicely 3~D.

Great special effects.  It does also remain a children's movie.  The potential for exploring darker themes [to overcome the mist each individual must overcome the darkness within] is there but never really gets explored in the way the Harry Potter movies gradually became darker as time went on.  From an adult viewpoint this is, perhaps, unfortunate; the movie lacks quite a bit of depth because of it.  However I don't think a children's movie needs to go all Conradish & explore the depths of the Heart of Darkness. Probably not a good idea at all.

Star would like to star in one of these but somehow I think her chances are slim.  They really have done a great job with these books & Liam Neeson as Aslan's voice is to die for.  Yes? *swoon*  Oh, & the car is running beautifully.

My ear is open like a greedy shark...

It's been a long time ~ 15 years in fact ~ but we have a baby again.  Strictly speaking, of course, he's not mine; he is our friend's but come Sunday morning he becomes mine for just a little bit.

Is there anything quite like a newborn baby?  The smell, so clean & new; the downy softness of hair; the wide~eyed gaze as they absorb the wonders of the world they suddenly find themselves in.  Yep he's absolutely adorable: loved; wanted; petted & coddled just as every baby should be.

Sundays have had to be adjusted a little bit to accommodate bubs & mum ~ but isn't that how it should be?   Funny isn't it?  You never lose the knack once you've learned how & babies always seem to know when they're being handled with confidence.

The spiritual life's like that too, don't you find?  Once you've learnt how it's all so easy but until you get the knack you wonder how other people can breeze through things without batting an eyelash.  So, the Lord & I have been having one of our sessions where I do a Star & roll my eyes & go, "Must I?" & the Lord digs in His heels to wait patiently till I accede. *sigh*  Just sometimes I'd like to do things the easy way...well, alright; I'd always like to do them the easy way instead of batting round wildly like a netted bird trying to figure out how this stuff works.

Now I don't know how any of you learn.  Probably not the way I do.  You can tell me & you can show me ~ & if you're really brave you might try making me do it myself ~ & nothing happens except I get more confused & even stupider than I at first appear.  What I need to do is study it from every angle & then quietly experiment with different approaches until I randomly hit on the one that is going to work for me this time.  I can't be relied upon to get it the same way every time.  I am a nightmare to teach because I never want to do it the way I'm told to do it & am likely to be majorly distracted by random sidetracks which are far more entertaining & end up at my destination by a very circuitous route.  It drives people batty.  I think like that too.  Ever notice?

Anyway....I have been sitting on some stuff the Lord showed me like a broody hen hatching a clutch of cuckoo eggs ~ & I have been sitting on this stuff for some time, years in fact for some of it.  And whenever I went to the Lord & said, "Look, what do you want me to do about this?"  I got a big, "WAIT".  I'm not strong in the patience department & my patience was being stretched thin.  Bit of a worry when that happens.  I tend to take things into my own hands & create havoc & mayhem.  Yeah.

So for Christmas Liddy gave me a couple of books on dealing with the gift of prophecy because like I said I am waaay out of my depth with this stuff with no~one to ask.  The chappie who thinks I'm going to do the exercises he sets out is delusional.  Um, no. However I am pondering two things that have stayed with me after my first quick read through to see what's in there.  The first is so obvious I wonder about me, I really do.  Character first.  God is far more interested in developing our character than he is worried about our spiritual gifts.  Um, yeah.  I knew that.

The second has got me floundering because it was completely unexpected.  The flip side of prophecy is intercessory prayer.  Now logically this makes perfect sense.  I can see how this works.  And chances are if you are anywhere at all on my blog roll I have prayed for you.  Sorry Sandra. 

Now I don't do intercessory pray.  I have never ever thought of myself as an intercessor. Some days I feel quite silly praying for people when God knows so much better than I do what they need & how best to provide for their need.  I prefer God tell me what He wants me nattering at him about.  I don't really know the first thing about standing in the gates.  My prayer life has not been like that.  I don't even have the sort of mind that thinks wrestling in prayer with God is a good idea.  Job tried that & got told; big time.  I can be a little slow sometimes so what am I missing here, girls?  [I think I need to go out & buy another book or two...]  Who does intercessory prayer & how does it work for you?  "My ear is open like a greedy shark..." Don't you love that quote?!  Keats.  Some things really are inexcusable!

Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain, and a path for the thunderstorm Job 38:25

As if I needed reminding!  But this is where my bible fell open this morning.  Spoken to a man who had lost absolutely everything & had no desire to continue living.  He asked for an explanation & God gave it to him!  Bottom line: God calls the shots.  How we bear up in the face of adversity, hardship, undeserved loss is our witness & a testimony to an unbelieving world that no matter how it seems or what devestation overtakes us, God is good.

Yes, I know you know that but it is good to have a reminder now & then.

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. Genesis3:1

Sometimes I don't like me very much.  I have to live with me ~ & the voices in my head.  I know what goes on in there & there are days it's like living in the middle of the local dump. 

Life was jogging along, rather wet & muddly, but pretty much as usual then one morning, for no discernable reason, I woke up ratty as.  Nothing pleased me.  My house, my cats, my children were all unmitigated nuisances I could have cheerfully wished to the bottom of the deep blue sea.  Deary me!  Does this get included in the "Pick up your cross & follow me" mandate?  I should live on an island.  Ooops.  Already doing that.

And this is where the tire meets the road.  It is easy, relatively, when things are going well & your insides are happy & your feelings line up tidily on the cheerful & happy side of things to apply all those high principles Christ so thoughtfully gave us to live by.  But the flesh is weak.  Given the smidgen of a headache, the least bit of an emotional upset, a tad too little sleep & believe you me my flesh is screaming.  It does not make me happy & I can assure you I do not make others happy either.

So for my family who put up with me anyway & forgive me my sins, thank you.  And for my Lord & saviour who died that one day I might be free of the sin that so easily entangles, for grace & mercy extended I am grateful.  For my cats who don't know I am a weak & flawed human being & love me lavishly I am more than grateful.  I thank God there are new days, new beginings & forgiveness of sins but dear God in heaven, in the New Heaven & the New Earth let there be no talking snakes!

20 million dollars worth of plastic surgery. And that's the face you choose. Angelina Jolie as Elise.

The blue barina is sad. :(  I have had to put her in the garage because her little insides is all upset & she wouldn't even start for me when Star & I went over today.  I flooded the engine twice in my efforts to get a little life out of her before ringing for a tow.  In the end I did get a spluttering start, cancelled my tow & cautiously made tracks for the garage.  Think Lid hit a puddle  a little too fast & found that was a little too deep; water in places that give cars upset tum~tums.  Anyway the nice men in blue overalls are going to look under the bonnet & tell me what they think ~ eventually.

So seeing we had errands to run that we absolutely hate [like buying the meat we don't eat] we treated ourselves to the movies.  We wanted to see Narnia ~ already departed from our local ~ so settled for The Tourist because it is full of male actors we actually like: Jonny Depp, Paul Bettany, Rufus Sewell. Bettany can get more snarkiness in an innocent one liner than just about anybody else & Star & I were beside ourselves ~ to other patrons bemusement ~ but the girls subjected me to A Knight's Tale many moons ago [which teemed Bettany & Sewell] & the potshot references to that particular movie had us howling.  All my girls know of Chaucer they learnt from A Knight's Tale  because I howled my way through it & they would keep asking me what I found so terribly funny.

As an actor I prefer Bettany to Depp [English accents can only be topped by Irish ones ~ think Liam Neeson!] & I generally dislike Jolie but both Star & I enjoyed this movie.  The end, unfortunately, was highly predictable & lacked the punch it should have had but it was good fun & surprisingly clean; always so nice not to have to self~edit.  It was just plain classy.  Little bit of bad language but no nudity & only a little bit of *spit~swapping* as my children so charmingly refer to it.

 However as a movie it doesn't really work on a number of levels.  Jolie & Depp don't really light any furnaces ~ & that should have been one of the driving forces of this movie & distrated from the all too obvious outcome.  Then there was a terrible lack of suspense for something that is, at least in some ways, meant to be a thriller.  No thrills. Overall the supporting cast was better than the mains ~ something a director should never, ever allow to happen.  Just the same we enjoyed it ~ & as Star & I rarely agree that alone was a novelty.

Got home to find Marlow had lost the plot entirely.  How that cat does hate for his people to be gone for any length of time!  Fed the boys meat scraps to mollify their hurt feelings

I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth. ~ Genisis 9:13

Amidst the devestation there is great hope.  We know that all of creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. [Romans]   We know it hopes to be set free from decay. We know that things must happen before the end but the end is not yet.  Soon, but not yet.




If you have not Christ who watches over your going out & your coming in?  Who guards your thresholds while you sleep?  Who ensures that all things are working together for your good?

I am not without pity but everything in this world is passing away. The only things that will remain are faith, love & hope ~ & the greatest of these is love.  Things are only things.  Love will outlast this world.  It is the sign by which others will know to whom we belong.

So as I watch the news [& we have a king tide today, just to make things even more interesting], watch the wall of water heading inexorably towards the coast & down the large river systems into N.S.W, feeding all the way south into Victoria & South Australia, a little part of me is singing in exhultation.  Christ is coming.  Come soon, Lord Jesus, come soon!

Brissie's turn now.

The only thing that stops God sending another flood is that the first one was useless. ~ Chamfort.

Where we walked all during December along the Southbank boardwalk is now under water.  The city cats [ferries] have been moved out to sea.  There's not much to say really.  All that water coming down the rivers has finally arrived. Pics here.

For the cat is cryptic, and close to strange things which men cannot see. ~H,P. Lovecraft

A cat & his box are not easily parted.

My mother won't admit it, but I've always been a disappointment to her. Deep down inside, she'll never forgive herself for giving birth to a daughter who refuses to launder aluminum foil and use it over again. ~Erma Bombeck January.  January is the month Star & I go away.  Each year since my parents moved back to Queensland I have taken the kids & spent at least 10 days with my mum.  This has been particularly important to us since first my dad, & then my youngest brother, died.  For the last few years my other brother has been gadding about Asia so mum & I were all of our family there was.

Now Liddy & my mother are like two peas in a pod.  Star & I, well we flip them out.  They are just really, really pleased not to share our head space but we are family, quirks & all, & the bond is strong enough for me to regularly uproot myself from cats & garden to make the 2 hour trek north.  We have tried to do it at least once a term but January is our long stay.  I keep my Christmas reading for January.  I try & plan to be around for dad's birthday.  I have mum's Christmas present wrapped & ready ~ & she has ours!  We anticipate quiet hours of reading time, long walks on the Sunshine Coast beaches, trips up into the hinterland for bush walks & window shopping all the little curiosity shops.  We eat & talk & the children hear ma's stories about being the oldest girl in a family of 8 growing up on a farm after the war, & being a young girl about town in a Brisbane that has disappeared.

This year Star is auditioning on dad's birthday.  This year it is wetter than usual.  This year my schedule is more crowded than usual.  I was chatting with mum last night.  The roads up her way are awful.  The driving conditions are awful.  She has more rain coming down than we do.  We would be house bound & going stir crazing in her house rather than our own.  With great reluctance we have agreed to defer our visit until the weather conditions improve.

No biggie, you think.  No biggie except ma & I know, who better? that there is no future guaranteed us.  There are only so many years, so many days, so many hours, vouchsafed us & we do not know how much of that is left to us.  I know  trying to wrangle a similar space later on in my year is virtually impossible.  Yes, I can pack all Star's work into her bag [& won't she just love that!] but Star has put her hand up to work backstage for Creative Generation this year.  We hit the ground running & it isn't going to stop.

Gloom & doom, gloom & doom.  I think we've had enough rain for now, don't you?

Ok, for those with a delicate constitution be pre~warned. I am going to rant about a couple of things that have been bothering me for some time.  Perhaps they shouldn't, but they do. So I am going to talk about it long & loud & you can tell me I'm insane [nicely] because it's not bothering anyone & it's personal choice, yadda, yadda, or you can tell me why you agree with me & that, in point of fact, I'm not totally illogical & off the wall.

The two things are not related ~ except for one rather disturbing fact; they are symptomatic [to me] of adults who do not wish to grow up & behave like adults.

Do you remember [you may if you are as old as I am] when there was this really clearly demarcation line between adults & children?  Short shorts for the boys, short skirts for the girls. Only men wore long trousers; women wore longer skirts. And stockings.  I loathe stockings but that's beside the point. Adults got to stay up late & do interesting adult things like drink coffee & the after dinner port.  Adults also did boring adult things like pay the bills & watch the news.  Cartoons were for children.  Not that I was ever real big on cartoons.  I have serious issues with Tweetie~pie & wish that to put us all out of our misery Sylvester just got to eat him!

Now if ma wants to squeeze her size 16 figure into her daughter's size 8 jeans & pretend she's not lamb dressed up as mutton that's one thing.  If she looks foolish there's a lot of it going round these days.  As Rabbie Burns so happily put it, O wad some Power the giftie gie us,/To see oursels as ithers see us! 

Adult cartoons, on the other hand, are another matter entirely.  Starting with the Simpsons ~ which promptly got banned in this house, & is still banned to this day along with South Park, Family Guy, Ren & Stimpy, & all the others that followed along in their wake because, despite the packaging which appeals to most children, these are not children's cartoons.  The humour is adult.  The language is adult.  The innuendos are adult.  There is a lot of highly questionable content & context.  That so many children watch these things surprises me not at all.  That so many adults do I find more than a little disturbing.  When I was a child, I spake as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child: now that I am become a man, I have put away childish things. Corinthians. The dumbing down of adults?

Put it down to taste.  After all I don't like Monty Python either.  I get him, I just don't like him.  However there is an even more disturbing aspect to this ~ one of which I was blissfully unaware until fairly recently & one I would have happily remained blissfully unaware of; one, that for me, goes hand in hand with the deeply disturbing trend of dressing tiny little girls as down town tramps.  Is that too harsh?  I don't think so. If it dresses like a hooker, walks like a hooker, talks like a hooker I can be mistaken for thinking it is a hooker, yes?

So being rather unworldly & extraordinarily naive I had never heard of a *Brazilian Wax*.  I had to look it up.  Oh. My. Then some.  Um, someone please explain to me why it is that grown women want to look like little girls?  And what is wrong with the men who want their women looking pre~pubescent?  Seriously.  We have an epidemic of paedophilia in this country yet fail to celebrate women who look like women were meant to look, the way God meant women to look.  This appalls me.  I find it deeply, deeply disturbing.  Children are children.  They are not small adults.  Adults are grown men & women who should act like adults rather than out of control teenagers with a hormonal imbalance.

And just recently, because I allow Star to get back issues of Dolly from the library [because no~one in this house knows the first thing about make~up & there are certain things she needs to know I can't help her with] there was a whole article on this.  For teen girls.  My head is spinning. For me  me this crosses so many lines that shouldn't be crossed: the sexualising of our children; the babying of grown women; training our men in inappropriate ways.

Ok, I'm done.  What do you think?