I'd hate to be...

An Australian cricket fan... at least, in the last 12 hours... 90,000 watched as they were all out for less than 100 in 48 overs at the MCG... and then were horrified as the tourists posted 150+ without loss... listening to the highlights, it sounds like England could have bowled underarm with a tennis ball and got away with it... they could do no wrong.

Their experience reminded me of those times when things I've been involved in have been outrageously blessed by God's presence... those moments when you could use a piece of imaginary chewing gum to connect your guitar to the amp and it would still work... on days like that, it's almost like God takes particular pleasure in demonstrating just how easily he can turn the world upside down for those he loves... failure isn't even a possiblity.

I almost felt sorry for the Australian cricket fans this morning... and in that spirit of largesse... Happy Christmas...

Who's the daddy?

The last few days in the Mome household have been something of a challenge...

Following a weekend away that was billed as 'Homegroup Christmas'... and ended up being 'Homegroup Sickfest' when 8 out of the 12 people present (including The Wife) succumbed to a vomiting bug, we limped home on Monday, only to find that Moo had brought the bug with her... There's nothing quite as guilt-inducing as ignoring her noctural chirping only to find that what she's actually been doing is yodeling her evening meal, and you have to wash pasta out of her hair before you can go to bed...

Out of date?

I travel to work on a tiny rail branch-line whose existence is constantly under threat.

This means that ticket buying has become a communal glue and a political strategy... Every ticket bought is scrutinised and used to calculate passenger numbers, and the viability of the service. No longer are those who travel the line individual travellers buying individual tickets to individual stations... instead, somehow, we've become a body of quiet revolutionaries

It's been... one week...

I've discovered that the best way for me to regularly read the bible is to leave one lying around where I know my bored eye will fall on it.

A few days ago, by chance, I left a bible on the dining room table...

The next morning, when I came down to breakfast it was sitting there so I thought - 'why not?'... and I opened it... and read some of it with my porridge.

The next morning I did the same...

The next morning I did the same again... and I got a book out of the bookcase to help me understand a bit more of it...

Later that day we tidied up at home and, because we needed the table for a family meal, we put the bible back in the bookcase...

It's been a week, and although I only read it for three days in a row, I realise now that I quite enjoyed it...

I'm going to get it back out of the bookcase tonight and put it back on the table again...

Taking things far too seriously...

This morning, over breakfast, I read Jon Acuff's post on the Jesus Juke ... no less than an hour later (well, maybe a bit more... Moo was up early this morning) I tripped over this comment on a cartoon posted on cake or death.

"I am not sure that the Darwin fish means you are a Christian and believe in evolution, that would be hypocritical…?"

I wondered how much further this kind of misinformed hyper seriousness could go... so I went looking...

And it turns out that it goes a lot further than mistaking the bible for a scientific proof...



Um... :|

Between 1 and 3%

In my work, I get to spend a fair amount of time with 'management consultants'... an optimistic, hopeful (and particularly expensive) breed of humans who spend their working lives telling people what they already know 'deep down inside'...

Rewriting the poppy

I am bemused by those who talk their way through life... like the archetypal tourist who only sees the landmarks they visit through the lens of a camera, there are some who seem to isolate themselves from the real impact of reality by constantly commentating on it... to my eyes, shying away from allowing moments of exquisite beauty or sadness, love or pain to really reach them by hiding behind a waterfall of words, words, words and more words.

I've always considered poetry to be a bit the same... the escapist waffling of those unable to really swallow what they experience, able only to experience it through a cathartic self-exposure on the page...

That is, unless it has something to do with war...