« October 2007 | Main | December 2007 »
here is some of our college promo stuff for 2008....
Download Youth Ministry degree topic brochure (1.8 mb PDF)
Download 2008 College Courses (384 kb PDF)
Download Becoming a Mentor
(44kb JPG)
Download Preaching & Teaching Matthew
(80 kb JPG)
Download Pastoral Ministry in Aged Care (600kb PDF)
Visit www.parkinwesley.org.au for more information.
not random at all really.....
today "The Celtic Book of the Year" arrived, thanks to jonny's recommendation. looks really good. a combination of Christian and pagan Celtic prayers. reading spiritual stuff that is outside the 'orthodox' is great for making you ask 'do I like that or not?' 'can I affirm this?'' 'what is it about it that makes me a bit uncomfortable? actually, the prayers are gorgeous and poetic, and make you realise how much the church has limited public prayer to rational, abstracted statements of belief, separated from the sensuality of living in the world. even Bruce Prewer's prayers, while containing vivid descriptions of Creation, lack the feeling that is in these pages. And for this reason and others it has a feminist feel without being defined as such. The prayers have a sense of sensuality, intimacy, flow and earthiness that reflects a refreshing wholeness. This is so good that I'm going to get two more for the twins for Christmas.
went into the city of Saturday to the Allan's music sale, only to find out that the Christmas pageant was on! so much for easy parking. we went back Sunday after taking part in the "walk against warming". it had such a nice political bite to it. i wish I'd had a camera with me. there were some large portraits with short bios on hand-held poles, along with moving puppet hands. clearly the saints of the movement - Al Gore, Albert Einstein, David Suzuki (I think...) and an Indian woman scientist whose name I cant remember but read her bio. I was reminded that ecologically-attuned people look to like-minded scientists rather that religion (well, Christians...). The only well-known Christians with an interest in the earth are Creationists. (apart from Charles Birch.) Since I'm at the College that helped start the Earth Bible project (!) this was a bit of a kick up the bum. likewise, while marchers don't have to carry UC banners, it would have been nice to see one or two.
we then wandered down rundle mall and did some christmas shopping. while yvonne and maddy were off looking at clothes, I stopped and watched a couple of singers in the centre of the mall - doing old covers, good musos but very dated songs. anyway, a tall, rather unkempt looking guy went past twice with three dogs on leads - one very big, one medium-sized, and a little white terrier thing. each time the dogs were dragging him in three directions and his legs were getting tangled in the leads. very funny. on his second pass, the dogs tangled him up right in front of the singers, and one or more of them pooped in a number of places - then they dragged him off.
anyway, the couple started singing Dragon's "april sun in cuba" and people were walking towards the you-know-what completely oblivious. the singers couldn't help noticing but didn't want to stop the song. so it was "I'm tired of the city life" (look out sir!)... "summers on the run" (don't step in that poop!)... after a minute the singers (still singing and yelling warnings between lines) were in hysterics and so was I, the lone standing audience member. when they got to a line that mentioned birds, i kid you not, a pigeon came over and started pecking at one of the er... items. the singers lost it and so did I - very, very funny. you had to be there...
(sorry to take you there in your imagination)
the twins are still in year 12 exams, finishing shortly. I spent the weekend cleaning up the shed for their summer garage band plans. we're running the Fender and keyboard into Tracktion on the computer. Grace wants to try delay guitar and found out today how very hard that is. I have to say though that once we get it all up and running it will be a lot of fun. My Tascam US-428 was one of the early MIDI/audio USB controllers, and it's hard to figure out and manage (not to mention getting latency and monitoring issues sorted). so we'll see what the summer brings.
and when we went back to Allan's i pointed out what I'd like for my forthcoming milestoneish birthday... but we'll have to leave it at that.. just let me say that VJ stuff and live keyboard stuff for worship etc might become very possible. how I'd LOVE to have a month or three just to mess with all that. Arkaos and Reason upgrades would definitely be on the cards.
I've finished my study unit on digital publishing and did reasonably well, although if I'd had more time I could have done really well. great material and a great lecturer, Dr Robyn Sheahan-Bright. but the other subject ended up in a deep hole and unless they give me an 'incomplete' and time to finish it will be a fail and try again next year. once again I learn the limits of trying to do too much.
on that note, go and look at www.betweenthelines.com.au, Penguin Books' carrot for younger readers.
iTunes has Sarah Blasko on sale. very nice.
piles of unmarked essays. heaps to do for 2008.
gosh I need a holiday.
I made a movie clip for the worship at synod called "ripples of grace" - snippets of the "Visual Bible Gospel of John" (just go and buy it and then my copyright conscience will be all good), and the first track from Harold Budd's album "Agua" which I bought as part of my 50 songs per month subscription at www.emusic.com. (I started at 30 songs per month for US$9.95 and love it so much that I upped it to US$14.95. So much good, obscure music - old and new.)
the backing clip is some movie texture from a magazine DVD. I have to say that those freebie textures are always worth the price of the mag. I spent ages trying to get the effect with the text that I wanted but still didnt - the text outline is clear and I wanted it to fade - hard to explain. Part of the problem is that I have a Premiere background and trying still to learn Final Cut Pro.
Click on the image and have a look and tell me how I should have done the masking in FCP. It's a Quicktime mp4 file...
don't you love that movie texture.
did I mention that the Indigo Girls were sensational last week?
the annual valedictory service tomorrow and I'm going to play the Telecaster for the first time in chapel.
did I mention that the highlight of the synod was Andrew Dutney singing Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" as part of his Bible studies (and segueing into Reuben Morgan's "Hear Our Praises" which has almost exactly the same tune and timing for its chorus....)... and then he finished by playing the "Choir of Hard Knocks" recording. stunning. sublime. deeply moving. and I haven't seen Andrew sing in front of a band for, oh, 26 years!
the blog silence has been the result of a ridiculous level of busy-ness. I've been trying to catch up on uni study, the twins have been approaching Year 12 exams (starting this morning), and we've just had our annual synod/presbytery meeting, so I've been madly getting 2008 promotion ready for that. Here are our final postcards, and thanks to Nic for tweaking the artwork at the lend to make it look a bit more professional. the back of each card has a blurb about the College.
