Tuesday, October 21, 2008

still on my mind.

Yesterday was the final lunch for this year of AIME--Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience, for Year Ten kids from schools near my uni. It was good fun. I'm so impressed at how effective the programme is--the students are great people, and they've changed and grown heaps this year. A lot of them told me yesterday that they're planning to stay on to the HSC and hopefully go to uni, neither of which they ever thought they'd do. It's so encouraging to see them equipped like this, and it's inspiring that they're so determined to respect their teachers and influence younger Indigenous students at their schools--some of which are pretty tough places to be. I've had a great time, and learnt heaps too about what it takes to make something like this work. It's great. I feel like I owe so much more than I can imagine for the chance to live in this country, and I want to understand better and be there if I can where there's such huge need.

Speaking of owing, today a girl from my Modern tutorial thanked me for something I helped her with and was like "I owe you..."--I felt like replying that I totally owe her, so it's no big deal. Then I felt like that's an interesting feeling to have, that idea of love that knows that it belongs not one bit to itself, and wants more than anything to see people met by the love it's known. I'm very aware of it. Why is that such a rich and deeply happy awareness, one of the greatest things we have?

This is cool too... On the train on the way home, a little German girl called Rochelle was sitting with her Papa a behind me; when the cleaning lady came through the carriage, the girl took the flowers she must have picked during the day and gave them all to the lady, which pretty much made her day. I thought it was lovely :)

Monday, October 13, 2008

nineteen.

The only time I've felt like this before is the last day of 2005. Tomorrow is my nineteenth birthday, and I feel like I've been eighteen for way too long. Without real reason I'm somehow feeling so ready, just hankering, for a fresh year with new things in it. So although things were incredibly different a few years (but long ones) ago, the feeling of waiting for a year to close, the quiet relief and excitement, is just the same. It's been a good year and an interesting one, nothing like any of the ones before it and in some ways a million times easier and clearer, but it's good to move on when a time is old.

I was talking with a friend yesterday, and I decided that nineteen is the best age to be right now: it's in a kind of hazy half-zone between teenager and adult, so I can pick and choose at leisure but partially have both for another year :) I also sense that the tone of this year will set the course for the start of my adult life probably more than many of my previous years, and I'm thinking a bit about this.

For the last few months, being in a totally different environment and also being on the other side of a few big things I've had to learn, a lot of the old anchors I've held have been taken away; I've had to be careful as I've explored life in the light of knowing God. That's been an important process and in the end it has strengthened what I value and the way I chase it, but now I just want to rekindle a heart that is always warm towards God, totally swept away by the assumption of his truth as it has been proven to me time and again--even though I realise too well how caught up I am in my culture and the not-yet-clarity of what I trust in. I am really willing to let him lead me through this ever-changing world that I could never grasp or be equipped for on my own. I'm so ready to re-route back onto a plane of simplicity, even within intricacy, and just start being more responsible in the little things that are clear to me at this point. That's what I hope will characterise this year, and I know that it's a fertile place for growing, learning, being challenged and vulnerable and being made soft and strong, more and more aware of dependence on his forever trustworthy closeness.

Sunday, October 12, 2008

the sounds.

I reverently listen
to the clamouring symphony running through our blood.
You come and sit beside me as we look towards your face.

Where is the word that will silence when it speaks?
Astounded, we gaze here at a library of faces,
your heart like the sky, the colliding seas.
Where between these covers is the pen to draw the lines
of a face, of a name, of the road to your home?
All have heard the speaking word, but who has understood it?

We turn from this tower with a world of tongues in our mouths
and drift across the earth, though we chase a single sun.
We have walked together on a thousand roads at once
and it troubles me.

We are all sleeping, hushed with hoping.
Each heart is caught in many dreams of morning.
Still, we wait side by side, and I know we will wake together
like those who wake to sing for the sun when it rises.

Saturday, October 4, 2008

ich spreche viele Sprachen.

The fourth of October, already? This is madness. Years just fly, and things keep happening and changing, just so fast.

I've been waking up early now that it's warmer, and I like that. Today it was raining; it still is, on and off. I'm working on finishing my Bonhoeffer essay today, so the rain is really nice.

Hey, it's my birthday in ten days :)

Friday, October 3, 2008

wanderlust.

I really want to go and visit my family in Holland, and spend some time there. It's rather expensive though, so I'm thinking not any time soon. Yesterday I non-seriously asked my dad when he would take Joel and me, since Steven got to go last time; he said, more seriously, that since I went with him to Adelaide last year and Joel has never travelled with him, he'll probably just take Joel next time he goes.

Adelaide. Not fair!

Still, the Arts units for next year have happily come out now :) The History topics are pretty limited in range, but I like what I've chosen. I get two each for English and History (plus four Education ones): I think in first semester I'll do the one on early medieval Anglo-Saxon/Scandinavian myths and literature, and one on ancient Greek and Roman literary history and how they recorded, invented, valued and exploited it; in second semester, the twentieth century Modernist literature subject, and one exploring urban tradition in Italy from ancient to medieval and Renaissance to modern times. Should be good fun :D