Sharing is caring

from here

Here is (one of) my problem(s): I feel like I do all of the talking here on this blog, and this makes me uncomfortable – I do care about you and would love to know your thoughts rather than just spewing mine all of the time. BUT I also have a debilitating fear that if I ask questions in any of my posts, no one will answer and I’ll look like a right fool and probably end up crying over it. So here is my solution, which hopefully makes everyone happy: I’m going to post some songs and ask a few questions and you can write/answer in the comments and it’ll be a blast.

AND because I’m about to start watching a movie and then it’ll be the weekend and then I’m going away for a few days, I won’t be checking my emails from now until, like, Wednesday, so by then I’ll either have some responses (yaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!) or none, but if it’s the latter I’m banking on the fact that I will have forgotten about the post by then because my memory is so terrible (unless you count my ability to remember the lyrics to songs I didn’t like from 1999) and we can just move on as if I’d never tried to stir up the comfortable little system we had going before this post. *gasps for air* 

Does this sound like a good plan? No? Hush, you.

While listening to older CDs over the past month or so I’ve been rediscovering songs and bands I’ve loved for years but which have been replaced on my high-rotation piles by the albums and bands that have grabbed my attention in more recent times. I am (mostly) convinced that introducing someone to a good song is the equivalent of helping an old lady across the street (although if you ever have to choose between the two, pick the old lady); my hope is that you’ll enjoy those I've listed below and then introduce me to one/some of your favourites in return. SO: here’s a mini playlist of a few of my favourite songs for a quiet, neutral or bordering-on-melancholic mood:

Sweet Song – Blur

I Thought You Were God –  Clare Bowditch

There is No Such Place – Augie March

I Don’t Blame You – Cat Power

Feeling Oblivion – Turin Brakes

Black Cherry – Goldfrapp

Have a listen to the YouTube videos or find the songs in Grooveshark, then do a good deed by letting me know your favourite quiet song, or a beloved song/band you’ve recently rediscovered. You’re also allowed to tell me that you passionately hate quiet or bordering-on-melancholic music.

Or, if none of that takes your fancy, you could respond to one or more of the following:

1. A band you still love that was first introduced to you by a sibling or parent.

2. A song you’re slightly embarrassed to admit that you loved in high school.

3. A song that always reminds you of something.

OR, if none of these apply/you have no desire to answer any of them, you could just say hi. I really don’t mind (I DO! Please write to me!). Here goes...

Complementarity in Genesis 1

from here

I led the church service on Sunday. When asked, I’d explained to our pastor how much I hate standing (let alone speaking!) in front of groups of people and how my hands shake and I feel like vomiting or crying or both simultaneously and that saying yes would most certainly mean I’d spend the whole month prior to the date feeling anxious and insomnia-prone and so I’d really rather not, thanks. He said, “It’s just that we’d like to see more women--” and I said, “I’LL DO IT.” It turns out my husband was on crèche this week, which made me smile. I’d been thinking about Genesis 1-2 (and particularly 1:26-28) thanks to a recent post on Ben’s blog:

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

So God created mankind in his own image,
    in the image of God he created them;
    male and female he created them.

God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

I love this glimpse of true complementarity, of man and woman working in harmony with each other on exactly the same stuff. I can picture the scene in Eden: one morning, Eve would yawn and say, “Ugh, I don’t really feel like ruling today,” and Adam would say, “Would you like me to do it? Give you a break?” and Eve would say, “Do you mind? And I could take over the subduing the earth for a bit?” and Adam would say, “Of course I don’t mind! It’s a plan!” and then they’d high five each other and Eve would make a cheeky comment about being fruitful a little later on, and they’d kiss and then set out to work feeling that kind of oneness and mutuality and beauty that you see in good marriages.

In this kind of relationship there can be no simple assumptions that the man will do these things and the woman will do those; it has to involve listening and talking and compromise, which, done with respect and in submission to each other, can only breed deeper intimacy. In Genesis, God doesn’t send Eve to the crèche and Adam to the pulpit, He lets them figure out together where they’ll work best. And if He calls that plan “very good,” then who am I to argue with Him?

As it turns out, I think my husband and I may be having a similar conversation to Adam and Eve’s in future, except with service leading instead of ruling, and crèche instead of subduing the earth. Obviously (to me, at least), the fact that I’m not a comfortable and charming up-the-front person has nothing to do with my femaleness and everything to do with the fact that I feel it’s wise to avoid things that steal my sleep and make me ill. If I explain to my husband that at least when I hang out with the crèche kids I know the spew and tears will not be my own, I’m pretty sure he’ll swap with me. Though these kinds of discussions at our place probably wouldn’t reach Eden’s perfection, they’re almost always very good.

A bestseller, an achievement, and my terrible/amazing memory

from here

Can someone please write a brilliant novel about a group of women that ends with them living full and interesting and friend-filled lives, contentedly single? It’d be kinda like Sex and the City but with more depth; they’d talk obsessively about social justice and theology rather than fashion and boys. Celibacy in the City? I’d like to write it but I won’t, partly because I’ve read enough brilliant novels by now to know that I’m not capable of reaching anywhere near those literary heights myself, but mostly because I’m married, which I fear would take something away from the message of the book. I’ve been thinking about this idea for a while now, but reading this article earlier today revived it.

While we’re (not actually) on the subject of marriage, I really liked this post (language warning); after comparing my relationship with my husband to my ecstatic newlywed friend’s last night, it was nice to read and relate to someone else’s description of how love evolves over the post-honeymoon years.

///

I got an HD for my Jeremiah essay! I’m just slipping this news in the middle here so it doesn’t sound too desperately affirmation-needy, but I’m so excited I decided to share it on my blog rather than climbing onto the roof to shout it to the neighbourhood. I really didn’t believe that my blood, sweat and tears had earned me much more than a few whiney blog posts and a pass, so I was crazily happy to receive my result yesterday. *smiles crazy-happily*

///

Every now and then I scan the tops of my CD case stacks (where my favourite albums live) and find absolutely nothing I feel like listening to, which launches me on an Ecclesiastes-style sigh-fest about how all my music has been heard before and there’s nothing new under the sun. This usually lasts until I direct my eyes to the middle and bottom of the stacks, where I find all kinds of gems I’ve managed to forget about over the years: Gorillaz! Pearl Jam! George! My embarrassing collection of So Fresh albums!

It’s the latter that recently made me ponder, because I hadn’t listened to them for at least seven years, and yet I can still sing along to (too) many of the songs without thinking twice about the lyrics. As I’m currently in the midst of exam preparation, it worries me to think of how much information I’ve discarded over the years in order to hold on to the words of songs from 2001, some of which I never even liked. How come I can’t remember anything I read about the theological themes of Isaiah last week, but can sing along and trumpet like a pro throughout She Bangs by Ricky Martin? This has led me to realise two things: 1) my brain has some seriously messed-up priorities, and 2) I should probably write my study notes to fit the tune of Britney's Oops! I Did it Again.

Grace's Wedding (aka The Post I Would Have Written)

photos taken by Sonia, Jules, Alicia (with Sonia's phone and Jules' camera), and a nice stranger at a cafe in Byron (with Sonia's phone). I have no idea how to correctly credit photos...

I’m feeling particularly uninspired to write at the moment, which is partly good and partly bad. It’s good because my exams are next week, and the less time I spend here explaining how flustered I get these days when I come across a tin with no ring pull (I panic for a full minute or so before remembering that this is the one job our neglected can opener was created for), the more time I can spend getting flustered over how few questions from past papers I’m currently able to answer. It’s bad because I was hoping by now to have put up a heart-warming post about my friend Grace’s wedding in Byron a couple of weekends ago. Last week I forced myself to sit down and make the most of an opportunity to collect the sentences that had been rattling around in my head, however my 30 minutes of effort produced nothing more than the modern-day equivalent of a bin filled with and surrounded by scrunched-up paper (an empty Word document, basically).

The post was going to be about amazing friendships and silliness and laughter and shared faith and conversations about everything from lipstick to apocalyptic literature. I wanted to try to describe the feeling of peace and joy and blessing that covered the wedding, and the bride who looked so stunning and blissful that I was brought to tears more than once just by looking at her. I thought I’d also attempt to articulate that feeling of sad-happy upon realising at the reception that she was sitting at his table rather than ours, and wonder how a simple speech act in the church earlier in the day could in a moment change nothing much and yet everything.

I was going to throw in a paragraph or so about the food (which was was so good it demanded to be enjoyed with groans and closed eyes) and the music (which was so good it kept us on the dance floor for longer than I’d have thought possible given the recentness of the meal and the lateness of the hour and the highness of the heels). I‘d include the story of how we’d cut out a photo of Liz and stuck it on a ruler so that she’d be able to be part of the day despite being many miles away in Uganda, and that an aunty at the wedding had asked quietly, was she our dead friend?, which made us all laugh – “No, no, no!! We wouldn’t dance around with a dead friend on a stick!”

Throughout all of this I planned to weave Sonia’s fascination with an excerpt she found in the Women’s Weekly (which she’d bought simply because it had Hugh Jackman on the cover) from a book called Proof of Heaven, about a neurosurgeon’s spiritual experience during a coma. The post would have ended with a comment about how I’d had such a beautiful time with such beautiful sisters and such beautiful food in such a beautiful location that I had no problem believing that this guy had tasted heaven; I’d say exactly the same thing, and I’d been conscious for all of it.

It would have been one of the best posts I’d ever written. 

Alas.