mountain masala

not sure what to say

we'll be offline for a few days as we go and remember and celebrate the life of yvonne's mum, doris, who died last night. she passed away relatively peacefully at 90 years of age. (yes, my wife who is younger than me had a 90 year old mother...  she was a late child...)

a bunch of mixed feelings today - grief, anger - wishing the rest of us had been over there at this time. and wondering what it will be like when we get there.

i will write of her life when we get back.

what can i say?

its all a bit crazy here. yvonne has gone interstate because her 90-year old mother is failing. we may follow any day... 2 of 3 girls still finishing study assignments. 2 of 3 girls looking at changing their studies next year (much driving to interviews today and tomorrow...). job interview for me at college yesterday. christmas holiday plans up in the air. trying to sort out new VET qualifications and programs for 2010. trying to paint our front room, half of which has been my home study (hopefully no longer..) - painting currently stalled with stuff all over the house and in the shed... laptop going to the doctor's tomorrow...

but it's just started raining. sweet relief.

good on the liberals!

i can't believe i just said that, but hear me out. i'm glad that liberal party members are persisting with solid and serious debate about the carbon emissions trading scheme. i'm also glad that they're not simply falling in line behind their leader like they did with john howard. i'm sure that the two issues are related.

thirdly, it's interesting and good i think that the electronic media have leaked enough information to give insight into malcolm turnbull's manner of leadership. it will be interesting to see whether we and our political parties are looking more for leaders who can bring consensus.

that's a much longer conversation.

on the negative.... kevin andrews, joe hockey, tony abbott..... gosh the libs need to work on succession!

i voted for the libs once - it was for malcolm fraser and one the one hand i didnt know any better (died in the wool liberal parents...), but on the other hand he has proven to be a true saint.

oh, for an escape from the two-party parliamentary system....

john and olive drane

john and olive drane are here in adelaide, and last week we hosted a two day session for ministers. it was a great couple of days, and far too short for the range of material that they opened up.

day #1 was on spirituality, and day #2 on culture. although we asked them to draw on their books, they brought a much more personal touch to the whole thing.

I am drawn to their engagement with 'new age' spirituality, mainly because of their broad analysis. there's no question that contemporary spiritualities are influenced by the range of new age spiritualities, and the recent australian research seems to confirm this.

grand vj 1.2 beta

arkaos have released a beta version of GrandVJ which supports Quartz Compositions on the Mac. Woo hoo as they say...

details here

'how to' here

music for easter

i have no idea why, but my worship year is focused on holy week, the pre-Easter stuff. every year I want to run our holy week chapel service, and whenever i hear music that might 'fit', a part of me files it away. i'm sure that it is because i am always deeply bothered by easter. i've spoken at a few easter camps (not a lot, actually), and easter saturday has always been a big hole in the weekend. i pretty much crawl away and hide. i could say a lot more about easters. maybe i will.

anyway, i'm blogging to say that I just bought "white lunar", a double album by nick cave and warren ellis, containing music from films etc. some is from the brilliant soundtrack to "the assassination of jesses james by the coward robert ford", which i blogged about here re our 2008 holy week chapel.

O God Today Has a Human Face

Apparently quite a few people have been searching this site for this song. It has been published by "Seasons of the Spirit" for use in Advent and the sheet music and their recording of it are supposedly available online, but I'm still trying to find out where.

i don't want to undercut the Seasons people, even though neither of us make more than a few cents out of any online 'sale', but if you want the melody sheet or my GarageBand recording of it, email me. 

i mainly want people to use it in advent if they want to. I'll post the "Seasons" link when I find it.

flash apps coming to the iphone

read about it here!

spirituality, creativity and culture

in march next year we'll have jonny baker and cheryl lawrie here, partnering with steve taylor (who will then be a 'local') and tim hein for a week of seminars, public conversations and art installations titled "a spirit of wonder."

A Spirit of Wonder: Brochure (1.2mb)

a central part of the week is an Adelaide Fringe Festival event. called "the landscape of desire", it will be an interactive, multi-sensory installation space at Pilgrim Uniting Church in the centre of the city. jonny and cheryl will curate it with support from me.

really looking forward to the whole thing. if you like the look of it, come along or send some people.

college book club launched

we've just launched our college book club - whereby groups can borrow a number of copies of a book for 2 months to study.

details here.

over the last year I've been going into koorong books about once a month and going straight to the sale tables at the back. there are often multiple copies of great books - I'm sure that koorong decide that they're heresy or something. I'm trying to get stuff that has depth or edge or both - theology & culture & spirituality and mission, etc.

we have 6-12 copies of each of the titles.

if you're in SA, we'd love to have churches give $200 or so which would let us buy another 2 titles for the library.