mountain masala

the week that is

well, the blog has been rather slow. i've barely blogged about our national assembly, where apart from a lot of important business, seeing lots of friends and meeting some new people, i had a couple of profound spiritual experiences... by the time i work out how to blog about things like that they're not current any more.

in the midst of all that we're praying for the people of Fiji and the church there:

Catholic News

ABC News

ABC Religion Stories

Christianity Today

BBC News

Journey Online

this week the college semester has started up again. we've had henry kirk for 2 days - a visiting lecturer from the UK in religion and art. yesterday robin pryor arrived from vic. today robin and i led our chapel service and he led a colloquium on spirituality drawing on urban holmes (a writer, not a builder...) and richard foster. robin is here for our winter retreat on the weekend that we're leading together.

craig bailey, our new leadership lecturer is on board this week. great to have him here and looking forward to what he will bring.

steve taylor arrives friday evening for several local events. steve is becoming a good friend and i deeply value his ongoing relationship with us and the broader church here. his voice resonates with us. many people come as guest speakers, but steve is able to hear us and to help us hear ourselves. looking forward to some local horticultural research with him at the southern vales.

in praise of me

here's a picture of my community working group at assembly singing a hymn of praise to their leader! well, actually, it was a 'team song' that three of the younger members wrote to the tune of "guide me, oh thou great jehovah" - which had featured on the first night and the president named as a favourite. we brought some much-needed levity to the proceedings.thanks to bethany for the photo.and thanks to bronte, sebert, anne, jenny, amy, ian, andrew, jill, paddy, ian and bev for being such a great group to work with. (did i leave anyone out?) we were a bit chuffed that the business committee took our revised proposal on a constitutional review word-for-word to the assembly for deliberation... (sounds thrilling, doesn't it?)

at assembly

i've been in sydney since sunday at the uniting church's national assembly. it meets every 3 years, and i'm one of 250 members, elected by the presbytery & synod of south australia. as well as the members, there are a stack of visitors from overseas churches, and a visitors program. we're at the university of new south wales, and i was last here for the uca assembly in 1994.

i first had 2 days at our national ministerial education commission where i presented work done on competencies for oour new lay ministry of pastor. i'm pleased to say that they were received with only minor alterations. there was also major discussion about the review of our theological college, and questions about our changed approach to training ministers. since there's a review report yet to be discussed within our synod, i won't make comment here.

had dinner with fuzz and carolyn tuesday night - great food and wine as always.

the assembly started wednesday afternoon, and we 'installed' our new national president, al mcrae that evening. a great worship event which managed to successfully blend a whole bunch of elements while fulfilling all righteousness. well done al and anita and company!

Andrew Dutney was elected as President-elect, so we'll lose him from the College for 2012-2015. That's great for the church nationally, and rather sad for us.

a bunch of things have been discussed since, most significant being the adoption of a preamble to the UCA constitution, recognising the place of the First People of our land and something of our history. This has been a contentious and difficult debate, particularly yesterday. In the end the preamble was adopted by formal vote rather than consensus, with a small minority voting against. There were only minor amendments to the proposal. What might have been a time of celebration was a much more muted response. Mixed feelings across the Assembly. Some quite profound things were said, particularly by our indigenous members.

I'm about to go and move a resolution, so more later....

break-dancing babies

last night's dinner menu

we had friends from melbourne over last night .... somehow that seems to say "baked baby"... please keep reading!

word art

i came across something not long ago where you could paste in text and it would turn it into a poster.

thanks to darren, i think this is where it was, although i do remember a black background....

Wordle website

Here's a Wordle made from John 1:1-18 (NRSV)

roast honey-orange chicken

i blogged a while ago about a chicken dinner with geoff, sandy and cheryl where I made three spice crusts or marinades for the chickens that we then barbecued on the Weber. I made up a spice mix on the day and recorded the ingredients without any amounts.

today I tried one of them again, and as far as I'm concerned it was fantastic. the family gobbled it up in their own polite ways. i apologise for not measuring the ingredients.

I was roasting two smaller chickens. one of our local shops sells a twin pack, and I always find that these smaller ones cook much juicier than the big ones. I kind of split the earlier ingredients so it went like this:

I rubbed the chickens with mixture of sumac, cinnamon, orange zest, olive oil, indian chilli powder and pepper.

they went into the oven, while I simmered the juice of 3 oranges (really dry, so make it two), freshly ground cardamom seeds (at least 1 tsp), about 1/4 cup sugar, and then later about 4 tbspns honey). simmered it down until it was pretty thick, then cooled.

I poured the orange syrup over the chicken twice during the last half hour of its cooking.

the veg were a tray of baked shallots (you know, french onions, not spring onions), sweet potato and red capsicum, with dates (softened in water) added towards the end and honey drizzled over the top. the kids said they loved the veg the most... I call it sugar...

served with coucsous, pan juice from the chooks sprinkled over the meal.

this was so good that I have to work out an actual recipe. with better orange flavour this could be a winner.

what is the body?

i'm writing  an article for a journal about young people, technology and embodied spirituality.

I just did the MS Word thesaurus lookup on "body" (cause I've used the word too much) and it came back with...

corpse
dead body
cadaver
remains
carcass
stiff
deceased

apart from the obvious fact that these people have been watching too many monty python parrot sketches, isnt it bizarre that 'body' means 'dead'.....

thanks bill gates. and the corporate body microsoft...

i blog, therefore i am

"i blog, therefore i am."

(just posting this so I can quote someone as having said it for a journal article! ha!)

is it original? who knows?

crafting sacred spaces

continuing our theme of trans-tasman brain-draining, we're delighted to have mark pierson from auckland joining us 14-17 September for sessions on crafting or curating alternative worship and participatory public art installations.

the idea is that over a couple of days we will explore and create a series of public installations for the annual World Day of Peace that is celebrated at the end of that week.

Download Mark Pierson brochure

It should be a great experience. We are encouraging churches to bring teams.

go and visit the cityside baptist website and have a look at their easter, lent and advent stuff!

(the photo is from an easter thing that mark and cheryl worked on.)