Early starts are so not Star's thing ~ but she will make exceptions.  Performances are an exception.

I did say I wasn't driving her in.  I had no intention of driving her in. Working day.  Lunch time Brissie. To even hope for parking is a joke.  Then another mum rang because she works & her daughter was desperate to attend the concert & her only hope was if I would take her along with Star.  I said we'd be training but then Liddy said if there were that many of us she'd do the driving.  I should have stuck with the original plan & gone with public transport.

We left in plenty of time.  In fact Liddy was complaining we could have gone one boat later, possibly two.  What was I thinking?  That was before the roadworks began.  It took us the best part of 2 hours to crawl into Brisbane & it was a stinking hot day.  Isn't that always the way?  Star & I, having created mayhem & chaos down Turbot street &  heart failure in the busway knew exactly what Liddy was not to do & gave her very clear directions up Elizabeth street & across Creek & down Ann ~ because Brisbane is a network of one way streets.  I swear, the place is a diabolical maze!  By then we were pretty short of time so I told Lid to pull into the first Garage knowing it was going to cost us a small fortune ~ which it did. *sigh*

All this to sing here: the Albert Street Uniting Church ~ one of our older church buildings ~ & not the prettiest one around either.  The red brick's a bit much but they have a pretty decent organ & a good crowd.  Super high ceiling with all the fans dangling up high where they were no help to anyone.  Forget air con.  The kids in their long B&Ws were suffering a bit.  Plus  a number of new kids there for the experience more than anything else so it sounded a bit thin on the ground in places.  I always say rehearsals are the best place to hear the kids.  They are comfortable, relaxed & generally happy to sing out. When they are a tiny group & right in the audience's faces it is another can of worms.  Some of what they sang:

Lassus: Adoramus Te


Bach: Bist Du Bei Mir

Bach: Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring

Weelkes: The Nightingale

Gibbons: The Silver Swan

Faure: Ave Maria

Watch Us Shine
 
Not the easiest repertoire but lovely to listen to.  So glad to get home though!  Island breeze & about 10 degrees cooler!  Liddy's still over there, lucky girl!

It is not only fine feathers that make fine birds.  ~ Aesop




There are certain things I just don't want to hear.  "Mum! The cat's got a bird",  is one of them.  Pheasant coucal chick not impressed about being rescued from Kirby, whom he was taking on with a great deal of hissing & spitting.  The booming oooomp, oomp, oomph call of the amorous male is a familiar sound round here in spring, as is the rapid scuttling across the road in front of the car & the low slow gliding flight through the trees.

Liddy has left an up~date & thank you here.  People,  We can't thank you enough for your prayers ~ far more important to us than financial support.  I am quietly confident the finances will work themselves out but we have some seriously weird & frightening stuff going down around us ~ spiritual missiles detonating all around us; & we all know what a woos I am.  Two of us are quite ill from what is going on ~ not Liddy; she's rather a hardy soul in that department.  Dino & I are a little more sensitive & coping less well.

Tomorrow I have to take Star into town for a concert & I am refusing to drive as there is no parking ~ less than before since the Brisbane floods.  Star is not impressed but I can only cope with so much & just for now I have enough already.  Proper post soon, I promise.  Each & every one of you is a blessing on our lives & we are grateful for you.

One girl, one mission, destination Chile.

Good Evening!


1 Corinthians 12:26-27 ‘If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honoured, every part rejoices with it. Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.’

As you will be aware I cried out for your help and asked for your prayer support. So to give you a little bit more background and as is my usual style to share how God has answered.

Wow! I sat in church a week ago completely disheartened after a meeting with the Missions Team Leaders of BBC. Nearing the end of the service we sang a song which had these lyrics ‘My Saviour, he can move the mountains. My God is mighty to save, he is mighty to save.’ which brought me to tears. I couldn’t see how and if God would chose to remove the obstacles, my mountains. Realistically I felt that once more I had been presented the chance to go to Chile and it was going to be postponed once again. It has been a very up and down week and I have struggled to keep focused on the preparation.


Despite the challenges that have been presented I’ve seen God place his hand upon my life. God is building daily those that are willing to listen to my story but to also pray. On top of this I’ve witnessed once again how OM will step in and support which only confirms how much they are filled with the fruits of the Holy Spirit. (please remember that OM also realised the need for me to grow, which admittedly I didn’t take to well at the time)


The meeting went for about 3hrs. I can praise God for the result of that meeting even down to the nitty gritty details of how I was able to keep calm, mediation was happening and most importantly we tried not to tear each other apart. The end result of this meeting was; BBC is happy to take me on board and continue to follow the journey but are un-willing to support financially. (that I hope sums it up) This is a massive change of heart from two people and I have not one explanation but that of God and how he has gifted people for the growth of the kingdom. I’m extremely enthralled because unity is a huge thing. I deeply desired to have ‘the body’ of Christ in unison instead of split.


Could I ask you to ask you to continue praying for me and the preparation and ministry in Chile

Blessings ~ L

Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.  Romans 12:12

Some of you, unlucky enough to have expressed an interest in what's going on, will already have received a copy of the brochure thing Lid has to send out.  Others of you are on our hit list & only haven't received something because we ran out of oomph last night. The rest of you have wisely lurked in the shadows. ☺Family, you are in a different category & we are getting to you ~ so watch out!

With that in mind I must say I am finding this post really difficult to write.  How do you share what's going on because you consider your blogging buddies friends & part of the wider body of Christ [or actually church *family*] without making people feel guilty & obligated ~ so there are no obligations people.  If you feel led to pray: Wonderful beyond words!  Prayer is our greatest need.  If you feel led to give ~ also wonderful.  If you do none of these things: Terrific!  As friends we simply appreciate you listening to our wafflings.

So as things stand, without going into all the gory details, Lid has been advised to proceed as if there are no hiccups to her going to Chile & August is her departure month. When a spanner first got thrown in the works ~again! ~ I admit  I built up a full head of steam in about 2 seconds flat.  Now I am finding the whole circus hysterically funny, much funnier than Liddy is finding it, as I watch God sort out all the tangled lines, make the paths straight & otherwise deal with obstacles.  In the end the telling factor will  be whether or not Lid can raise the necessary funds.

Now Liddy hasn't had time to update her own blog in a while; funny that; but some things don't change so what I am going to do temporarily is link this page  from my side bar & if you are interested in receiving a copy of her prayer letter, her brochure etc, drop us a line c/~ my bloggy e~mail.  We will need your e~mail address ....sorry folks; it's just the easiest way for us to update everyone.  Please be patient with us as Liddy has a lot of calls on her time & as we all know, I'm not the most practical person in the boat.  You would not want to be stranded on a desert island with me.

Lastly, as Liddy has expressed, we appreciate your prayers, your interest, your support more than we can say.  This is such a difficult journey in so many ways, both expected & unexpected, that having people journey with us is a delight & a comfort.

One plain Quaker woman...

And it shall be in the last days, saith God, I will pour forth of my Spirit upon all flesh: And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, And your young men shall see visions, And your old men shall dream dreams: Acts2:17




Since their inception Quakers have held to gender equality in ministry ~ as did the early Methodists.  Something of a surprise that.  I hadn't realised Quakers weren't the only ones to be given that insight though over time the Methodists bowed to prevailing cultural tradition.  What is interesting is that the practise has given rise to a long string of women who have had very public ministries even in times & ages that considered women to be quite illogical & incapable of reasoned thought.  One of the more prominent of these is a lady called Elizabeth Fry.

Now Elizabeth is interesting less for her ministry, which was phenomenal because almost single~handedly she reformed not only the British prison system but also the French & the American, but because her spiritual journey is so very modern.  Quakers tend to be rather *elastic* in their Meetings so you are likely to find everything from a downright aethiest [I have no idea how that works ~ & I've asked!] to the plain dressing, plain speaking,  fundamentalist Christian Quaker.  Elizabeth, a birthright Quaker, belonged to a very middle of the road, moderation in everything, Quaker family & there was nothing in her life that she should ever be anything but a giddy lightweight Christian with a nominal devotion to Christ. That is until the Holy Spirit began leaning on her.  And He leant HARD!

One of the first things, & all my plain friends will be fascinated to study this! ☺is that the Lord dealt with her frivolity.  Yep, the pretty dresses, the frippery, the theatres & shows & love of the world went out the window & in came the plain Quaker dresses, the caps & bonnets.  It was an outward sign of an inner conviction.

When you read her biography you get an inkling of the sort of conflict this  ministry created in her life & in her spirit.  Here she was, a married woman with children at a time when a woman's sphere was very much hearth & home & the Holy Spirit is telling her He wants someone who is listening to do something that needs doing.

I guess most of us understand something of the prompting of the Holy Spirit in our lives.  Quakers, who sit in silence & actually listen with the expectation that they will hear from God often hear very clearly & unmistakably ~ but not necessarily.  Like everyone else they are assailed by doubts & influenced by the culture that surrounds them & to her dying day Elizabeth was never 100% sure that she was right in how she went about what she did, only that it was right that she should go about it. 

What's more Elizabeth went about her ministry with the blessing of her Meeting.  This is no small thing in Quaker circles.  A call to ministry is always tested.  It is put before the meeting & weighed in the silence.  Often, as in Elizabeth's case, a *concerne* is put in the care of more mature Christians who ponder, test & pray about a person's leading ~ & this is often a slow & tedious process.  This *instant porridge Christianity*  of our present day is fundamentally flawed & reeks of Satan's misleading.  God has all eternity with which to work & He is in no hurry.

The other thing that I found in Elizabeth's journey, & it is such a modern thing, is that her ministry came with a cost.  Sadly her husband was not as spiritually mature, nor as wise as he could have been in temporal matters, & his flaws created havoc in their marriage & major disruptions in her ministry.  It also created terrible stress.  His words affirmed her ministry; his actions distracted her from God's purpose.  Into this unhappy mix add a gaggle of children, I think they has something like 8. 

For someone who had so profoundly tasted of the goodness of God & who had grown into a deep & abiding love for the way her faith was exercised in Meeting, Elizabeth had no greater desire than that her children should walk in the faith of their father's.  Inevitably the disruptions to their home life that Elizabeth's ministry caused meant that many of them chose an easier path & were baptised into the Anglican faith. 

And here's the sting: All the great reformers of the time, including William Wilburforce, were profoundly & deeply affected by the quiet but determined ministry of this softly spoken little Quaker woman with her thees & her thous & her silent prayer.  Without her much of the humanitarian work that effected great social change would never have been accomplished.  She just quietly got on with the work she felt the Lord had called her to & let the rest take care of itself. Given the times she lived in she faced plenty of persecution ~ even from other Quakers who felt she was glorying in her calling more than in God.  And the interesting thing too is she started with the gospel  Everything else she did arose out of sharing the gospel first.

We in Australia owe her an unimaginable debt.  As part of her prison ministry she outreached to the transport ships sitting in the Thames for months at a time before setting out on the perilous journey to Terra Australias at the end of the world.  To each woman on board she gave a new dress, a bar of soap, a little sewing kit ~ & a bible.  She organised bible study groups with a literate woman leading the illiterate in the learning & study of the scriptures & when the ships set sail for the unimaginable terrors of a new land her prayers followed them.

Interesting woman.  Interesting impact.  Fascinating to see how God worked His wonders through her frail hands & feet.  Hard to believe she died in 1845.

Blog Sharing ~ From my Liddy [Libby] to you.♥

Good morning!



25I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. 26I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. Ezekiel 36  {Lib's mission verse}
Just a brief request for prayer support.


This coming Saturday the Qld State Directors, the Missions Team Leaders of BBC and myself will be meeting to have a chat. There are complications currently within the situation. If you could spare a moment to pray for this particularly I’d appreciate it. J

With Love - Libby

On a lighter note: Sibling Wars: the Great Couch War.

The bone of contention &...

The winner.

The Loser.

Opting for 2nd best.

When my mother moved house she had a couch going spare ~ & we snavelled it.  All our cats have adored this couch.  No idea why.  The back is good for sleeping along ~ but so is our green couch.  It is usually bereft of humans ~ but so is the brown couch.  However this couch is unique for being the one that interrupts Dearest's line of vision to the t.v set as soon as a cat's body is draped along it's length.  Our cats know this. On the days Star & I are absent & the boys are feeling particularly insecure they bookend together at the critical point.  When we are home the cat who owns the couch is king of the castle.

The fight to own the couch has been prolonged & ongoing.  Marlow is a chunky cat & hefty in the beam end.  He has weight on his side.  Kirby is just plain smart.  At present, smart is winning.

The war to be top cat starts the moment Kirby comes in at night.  Round & round they go: around the walls, across the ceiling, over chairs & tables, cups & people.  The winner plonks himself bang between Dearest & the t.v set. The nearest human removes cat ~ & around they go again.  The winner plonks his butt between Dearest & his t.v!

I tell you, these cats have it worked out.  They both get plenty of attention mileage out of this one ~ & trust me it is all about attention.  When they don't wish to be disturbed they sleep at the other end, well out of visual interruption.  They'll even share.   Hmmm.  Having raised one set of males twins you would have thought I'd have more sense than to take on another twinned pair!

Can you up the prayer ante, please.

...and having done all, to stand. ~ Ephesians 6:13It can be hard sometimes to decide what to share here.  We're a diverse bunch & we don't always see stuff eye to eye & sometimes in the heat of the moment people forget to speak the truth in love ~ especially if our church tradition conflicts with another church tradition, so it was really nice yesterday to put all the angst on the back burner & just sit on the sidelines yahooing for my boy, Dino, playing his cricket finals on the island. Heaven alone knows what the other team, all muslim, thought of the beer swilling islanders [no, not me; I stick to yahooing] shouting encouragement to their cricketers.  I certainly heard from one or two of the islanders what they thought of the muslims using the lunch break to face Mecca & pray.  Not repeatable.  The heathens won.  I think we are still celebrating.




You have all been following along, haven't you?  You remember that I made gurgling noises about prophecy & even gurglier noises about speaking & ended up creating another blog just so I could gurgle in peace. And I only did it because I felt the Lord leaning on me really hard.  But it's ok.  It's quiet over there.  No~one talks to me.  Very few people even read over there & it's all good.  That's the Lord's business, you know.  I just gotta put up what he tells me & I try to be quiet about it over here because in all honesty some of what I've been seeing is downright terrifying ~ so lunacy making in fact that the Lord's gone to rather great pains to make sure I know I'm not the only one seeing this stuff & that other's with far more street cred are seeing the same things.

And I was paddling along nicely. Calm is good in this house.  I have 5 kids.  I already have all the chaos I can handle.  I had almost forgotten, almost but not quite, a conversation I had back with the Lord months & months ago ~ back when I started up that other blog because the Lord was talking & I had no~one to talk to about what He was talking to me about ~ & the conversation went something along the lines of: Well, Lord, you know I am never ever going to initiate this stuff so if you have a message & you want it spoken you are going to have to get someone to ask me.  That was my fleece.  I'm so pleased Gideon was an insecure man.  It makes me feel heaps better.

I happily prayed & wrote my little messages & checked occasionally to see if anyone had anything to say but mostly they didn't & I'm ok with that ~ & then it came.  The invitation I never really expected to get.  I missed it the first time because I didn't recognise the format it came in but the 3rd time ~ well, unmistakable is the word that comes to mind. And I am not a happy little vegemiter.

It is none of the things you might expect.  I do not melt down about having to stand before a crowd of strangers & speak.  I do not suffer stage fright, whatever it looks like.  By the time we've got that far I am really sure about what God's got to say.  I'm a Quaker; I accept women's ministry.  Nope.  I just know, that everything's going to hit the fan & explode all over my life in a smelly, smelly mess.  It's already started ~ & I'm not the warrior sort.  I just want to pick up my metaphorical skirts & run for the hills.

Nothing is set in stone yet.  It may yet fall in a wet miserable puddle but the stuff's already hitting the fan & I'm just gob~smacked every single time. It's not like I'm some sort of brilliant super Christian ~ just your usual messy inadequate sort doing their best to walk with Jesus. My little house of cards is wobbling badly ~ but I have the message ~ or at least the first bit of it & some idea of the general direction.

If you belong to the *no women in the pulpit* brigade ~ please, take it up with the Lord, don't rant at me.  This is not my idea & quite bluntly I've always wondered how Jonah managed to defy the Lord under the weight of the Holy Spirit's conviction because that is something I just can't manage myself.  I may be a little slow of hearing but once I'm sure the Lord's said, "Jump!" I'm a~hopping all over the place. So can you pray please, for me ~ & especially for Liddy.  Some days I just get so tired of standing plonk in the middle of a war zone.

"I loved Mr. Darcy far more than any of my own husbands."  ~ Rumor Godden

It's  well known that  Rumur Godden is pretty much my all time favourite author ~ & there is a reason for this; She makes the ordinary fascinating.  I worked my way through her children's stories as a child, her short stories as a teen & gradually found my feet amongst her adult novels before I was done with high school. 

It was only much latter, long after I had read Black Narcissus & In this House of Brede that I waded through her biography & read her father's quote that went, if I remember correctly, something along the lines of: You don't want to write a book about nuns; no~one will read it.

Well, Godden not only wrote one book about nuns; she wrote several ~ & people read them!

Black Narcissus was the first & it was made into a fairly memorable movie with Deborah Kerr & Jean Simmons. It is not my favourite, mostly because Godden wrote it as an unbeliever & it lacks that deep sense of spirituality that her latter books have.  My favourite is the one that has stood the test of time & endured unscathed: In this House of Brede; the story of 3 very different women pursuing life as contemplative Benedictine nuns. Don't yawn.

Now one of the reasons I really like Godden is that she almost never writes her books in sequential order.  They do tend to hop all over the place which is like sweet ambrosia to me. I have tried to explain to my highly sequential children that books, like history, can be pieced together like a jig~saw; it is not necessary to have all the pieces in order before one starts.  One can begin anywhere & slot  the pieces in place as one finds them ~ an attitude that simply horrifies Liddy.  But what about suspense? she is prone to wail.  Well, what about it? See I am far more interested in character than I am in plot & happily ignore all sorts of inconsistencies in plot so long as the character development makes sense.  Screw up a character & believe me not only will I notice, I'll complain, usually long & loud!

If I had been born Catholic I might have chosen such a life with it's round of prayer & worship.  Religion wasn't always a dirty word in the media & I am of that era that fell in love with Audrey Hepburn playing Kathryn Hulme in the Nun's Story ~ do you remember that one?  An oldie but a goodie.  Or Spencer Tracey as Father Flanagan in Boy's Town Or Bing Crosby in Bells of St Mary's...or even Halyey Mills in the Trouble with Angels. Against these I had Godden's books, with her footnotes, indexes & bibliographies to explain all the odd things in Catholicism I didn't understand. What's more she spoke about religion in a sane & reasonable way ~ which is hardly surprising from a long time agnostic raised in the religious hot bed of diverse Indian religious ideas. As a homeschooler I find it fascinating that she never set foot in a school until she was about 12 ~ & her home education was just a tad erratic. Here you can listen to her speak about the very last book she wrote at the end of a long & eventful life that survived both world wars.  If you have never read one of her books you have missed an inestimable pleasure.  She is an extraordinary craftsman, a formidable storyteller & a very unique lady.

He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God? ~ Micah 6:8

It continues to fascinate ~ & sometimes apall me ~ how diverse this thing we call Christianity is.  Surely we cannot all be right...& if we cannot all be right then some of us must be wrong ~ & that opens a whole 'nother can of worms!
 
I have been reading here...& here ~ sober, thoughtful, Quaker posts that are not afraid to tackle the difficult questions & wrestle with them in prayer & discussion to a reasoned & prayerful conclusion.  Which is more than I can do.  It's not that I can't follow the arguments.  It's not a question of what I personally believe or actually endorse or even where I am in my own walk.  It's not even that I don't see the point because actually I do. Having the truth is important but...here we go! Again.  It's not the most important thing! And because it's not the most important thing I actually think it's a lot of wasted hot air.
 
See I happen to think, my thinks, that it all rather misses the point because thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. [Deut.6.5] It is all about relationship. This was all rather drummed into my thick skull by a wonderful little book  The Lord Our Shepherd  by J. Douglas Macmillan.  Macmillan was a Scots shepherd before he came to Christ & his insights on Psalm 23 are fascinating but what I concluded was profound was his comments that go something like this: if you do not know the shepherd of the pslam, if Christ is not your shepherd, then this pslam has nothing to say to you & you cannot claim its promises because the personal pronoun is possessive: my shepherd. It's like talking about my husband or my children.  It speaks of an existing relationship.

Now the thing with relationships is they tend to be messy.  Messy is ok.  Really it is.  King David screwed up big time & by biblical account he was a most apalling father but God still calls him a man after His own heart!  I used to look at that & think, huh?! This adulterer, this murderer, this crummy father. Yep ~ he was all of that & then some but he had this most amazing relationship & it transcended everything else that he was. No, I am not advocating a wayward lifestyle.  What I am saying is we need to grasp our nettles &  sort out the important things.  There is no point in being right in our theology if we are wrong in our relationship.  Our theology cannot save us.  Only our relationship with Christ can save us ~ & because that is so I tend to think we can be wrong in matters of faith & still be saved.  First things first.  Do you have a relationship with this Jesus they called the Christ?  Because if you do all else will fall in to place.  How do I know?  When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.  He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you.  All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you. John 16:12~15 & I can trust the Spirit because Christ also said My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me; John 10:2


Now I can hear the theological hounds baying for my blood but you can argue theology till the cows come home & the world ends not with a bang but a whimper & it will make absolutely no difference to anyone. But, if you love God you will ask, what does God require of me? And that changes everything. The only requirement is love; love of God, love of one's fellow man. The bible is all about how we then go about loving God & loving our neighbour as ourselves.

No, this is not what God's been on me about.  I'm merely entertaining myself ~ &  I don't mind if you disagree with me.  You are entitled & I am open to whatever is said so long as it is said in love & with respect for differing opinions. Floor's all yours.

Condemned man's last meal.

Boys will be boys.  And even that wouldn't matter if only we could prevent girls from being girls. ~ Anne Frank.
Theo is on a boat headed back to Hamilton Island where he works.    Despite the fact my sons drive me nuts I am nagged by the desire to tuck all my chicklets under my wing & under the one roof come nightfall.  I sleep better when I know the head count is right: 2 cats, 3 boys, 2 girls ~ & Dearest ~ all tucked up snug in their own warm beds, safe & cozy.  This wandering around the planet jangles my nerves.

So knowing he was going back today Theo asked for a *Last Meal* ~ which is invariably meatballs.  Meatballs is one of those time honoured childhood meals that nourish the soul as well as the body.  My brother, Mark, adored this meal & everywhere he went people served it up knowing they had a sure~fire winner.

It is a good thing he's gone back though.  Schooling has been at a minimum as the house has been in constant uproar for the last month. *sigh* The girls have been complaining loudly how noisy the boys are ~ noisy enough that  Liddy raised no objections at all about driving him in to the airport. ☺

Today the house reeks of Theo's aftershave & deoderant.  As I work my way through the debris & detritus he has left behind, calculating which small items of mine found their way into his possession, but not out again, I will gradually sweep up & tidy away all traces of his presence until, unexpectedly finding a forgotten shirt jammed behind a sofa cushion the faintest hint of his scent brings a rush of memories.  Life is full of bitter/sweet moments.