mountain masala

new music

well it's been a long time between posts.... all a bit crazy here with our annual synod coming up, trying to get a new promo brochure for our 2006 lay ministry programs finished TODAY, and lots more, including a trip to the West Coast (which was great).

I'm playing CD/DVD catchup with jonny - just got Hexstatic "Masterview" and Global Communications "76:14" from the UK along with the Zen TV DVD.

really enjoying the lastest Paste mag and DVD. The DVD has short movies from a religious film fetsival - some really impressive.

bck to the brochure. real life returns soon...

blog bottleneck

i have at least 7 blogs in my head, maybe 25, and no time. off to wudinna Friday - helping aging rural churches think about worship anf multimedia. about 7 hours drive each way. too busy. blog later. sigh.

ernabella pics

I've just made a quick album of some of the family's Ernabella pictures here.

paul is 50!

my older brother paul turns 50 today! happy birthday paul and sorry I couldnt be there. lucky I'm sooo much younger - not that I'm ageist. here we are all those years ago - me on the left, him looking older. and anne and andrew. very weird to look back on the house that my parents still live in, and see how different it is and we are.

just working on the birthday audio-visual... he he he....

sigur ros "Glosoli" video

You can download a Quicktime version of the Sigur Ros "Glosoli" video here.

Link: Glosoli.

everything sounds like coldplay now

a clever and funny song from Mitch Benn

http://www.everythingsoundslikecoldplaynow.com/

aliens or angels

tonight i started doing my occasional "plumb the archives" thing here. I was looking for something "youth ministry-ish". and this is what I came across...

I have on more than one occasion invited adults to consider whether they see young people as "aliens" or "angels", as a problem to be solved or a gift to be received? I came across a five year old commissioning sermon for James, a rural school chaplain who now happens to be living down the road from us and working in the next town in both school and church. It wasn't so much a church service as a civic occasion in a town of 2000 people, and I probably made it too much like a sermon (although I did use a video clip...)

how sad and presumptuous is it to put out a 5 year old sermon that you just stumbled across? Well, I don't know. I'm trying to decide whether a blog is a CV, a job or my life. I don't know which. Here's a slice of all of them, I suppose...

the weird thing is thinking about my whole sense of preaching and worship has changed in those 5 years. So I suppose this is my bit of nostalgia.

Download Aliens.doc

I've decided to slip this into James' letter box this week as some kind of reminder...

Next time I'll have to try to find something more currently relevant from the archives!

[angel image from a video clip from one of the many excellent CD-ROM resources included in Alternative Worship]

international youth ministry thingy

after jonny's recent prompt, I went and joined IASYM, the International Association for the Study of Youth Ministry which started in the UK a few years ago. I know that Fuzz went to one of the early conferences and that Chris Gapes has been to a few of them. The whole thing felt quite removed from Australia, probably because we heard little of it here apart from through the couple of people who've been there. That is not a criticism - it started before blogging took off etc. However, having membership in the UK and US and beyond (South Africa, Netherlands. etc) certainly makes it non-parochial. I'll have to try to find out what other Aussies are connected. Joining has meant access to the online journal which seems to have quite a few good articles (just going by the titles so far.)

It makes me lament the demise of "New Trends for Youth Workers" which Carolyn and Fuzz started and Bruce kept going, and "Youth Ministry Australia" which Nick had up and running for a while. I guess part of darren's hope for digitalorthodoxy is an online clearinghouse. I am wondering how much work is involved in starting and maintaining such a thing.

so I'm looking forward to connecting with IASYM, maybe writing some stuff, and being prompted to help darren get some local content on his new site! let's look forward to an IASYM conference hosted in NZ or Australia, the occasional rugby and cricket capitals of the world...........

new music

just got the new eel's album (a double) blinking lights. this is e's optimism album, believe it or not, where he sings

i'll go none too bravely
into the night
i'm so tired of living
the suicide life
that ain't no reason to live

a great anti-drug lyric.

the music is almost trippy folk with bells and synth stuff and e's mournful voice. I like track titles like "In the yard behind the church: a field trip for the grateful living" and "theme for a pretty girl that makes you believe god exists". perhaps e is almost enjoying himself after all this time. a long way from "novocaine for the soul" which so many christians ironially picked us as a jesus song.

In a similar but quite different vein, I also bought Ben Lee's awake is the new sleep. the sleeve cover salutes his new Taoist friends. I actually know nothing about Taoism, but its clear than Ben is now on an elightenment path. the music is very rhythmic, repetitive, but not in a chanting sense. The lyrics range from rather silly in my view to more insightful, yet all reflecting his current spiritual quest.

gamble everything for love
gamble everything
put it in a place you keep what you need
you can gamble everything for love if youre free
you gotta gamble everything for love

lyrically it's a very mixed bag, but still an interesting listen. it's kind of loopy, folky background music. hmm... i'm not being very convincing here, am I.

e's album has a lot more going for it.

it finally arrived

my youth study book finally arrived from the US today. the design is very boring, not at all what i had hoped, and they completely left off my bio and photo. sigh. still, nice to have it in my hand.

and I finished the text for the youth version of Companions in Christ intro volume. another author has worked on it too. apparently they come out next May.

what to write next?