This weekend I went “home” to my parents’ place. It was really nice to see them and experience a slightly different culture to down here (not from them but from the other people we encountered).
Mum and I visited a fair and had a look around the stalls. On our way to go home there was a choir from one of the local schools singing a song about Australia. What I found refreshing was that it mentioned the Bible and Holy Spirit – there are still places, not too far away, where one can mention those things (at a not necessarily Christian event) and not be ridiculed.
This morning I went to church with Mum and Justin. Mum was on Powerpoint so I sat with her and tried to help her not stress. The first time I visited this church (Easter 2004 I think) I didn’t like it at all. It was so weird, to the point of offensive. There were people in robes with candles and for communion they looked to be pouring the wine into people’s mouths and I thought “You are not my intermediary to God – Jesus is my High Priest!” They had a fill-in minister at that time who drank all the left over wine after communion, he just scoffed it down. I thought there were too many unexplained traditions that gave impressions not faithful to the bible. It’s a bit different now, I guess I had a better idea of what to expect. There were still two robes and a couple of candles but I didn’t see any scoffing of wine and while the service wasn’t my preferred style, liturgical recitation, I didn’t have a problem with the things that were said. They have a new church building. It’s quite nice and fairly practical looking. They use moveable chairs rather than pews, I can understand the practicality of doing so however, it means that they don’t have any bibles. There aren’t any pews with shelves to keep bibles in and no one was looking at one during the service. Add to that that there was no main bible reading but instead a dramatisation of the temptation it kind of seems like the bible is not their main authority. That’s just an impression and not necessarily true, the rest of the service was quite good (if not long trying to fit in a liturgy including communion and a baptism).
I spent much of the rest of the weekend unpacking boxes with Mum. It was our chance to unpack the things I still had from the first 18 years of my life. We through about half of it away, kept a quarter there and I brought a quarter home. I have of course had a previous culling of belongings when we moved in 2004. I have put away my bag already but there are still three boxes in the car, hopefully they’ll get unpacked over this week.
Now I’m home and I’m sleepy! It’s always tiring unpacking, eating a bigish lunch and driving on the Freeway. I took a nap, hopefully it’ll keep me going through church tonight.
