Prose

Thursday

written by: alf hickey

THURSDAY

1. BLUDGE MONEY
Went to the bludge money- find me a blooming job place. They were setting up a new office, after winning the tender off a previous provider. Like usual, and as is typical of all good conversation (you know its true : )), it veered towards "religion." The guys there were training. Luke had been retrenched from the banking industry after some workplace politics. He explained how, he went to a Christian school, they talked about church, church, church all the time, the Indian girl (MBA marketing) kept out of the conversation, it seemed clear that she felt a little out of it there, we were explaining how the education in India was really good. Jane, the trainer, used me as a case for what they are going to be doing, I let my self be a guinea pig, after all , guinea pig brains are very close to humans, for real- they are used to study brain structures and neuron behaviour. A Christian guy from St Barnabas, discovered that neurones follow what I proposed about the body. That they fire without being prompted, a sortof proto action creating the possibility for the next. The same philosophy I had proposed for embodied social and self perpetuating action- only physically.

Anyway, Luke said the reason he didn't like church was the taste of the communion wafers, he used to not take them, hide them and use them as frisbies. Jane cut in, "they're not supposed to taste good, they're the body of Christ." I reminded Luke that its not about the church but Jesus, he said he had some faith.

Jane then competed with a better story- well. She said she had Irish heritage. The first time she had communion she thought the wine goblet was all for her and drank the whole thing in one scull. After the mass, she went outside and puked out the communion. Her Irish grandma saw this, and shocked that she had puked out Christ, in such a desecration of God, asked the priest to bless her or something, thinking she was damned.

I said, "so you have faith then." She explained, she lost her faith after the priest from her first church was found out to be a pedophile, the priest from her second church made three women pregnant. There was a third reason that made her lose faith, that I forget. But I invited her to church, and was kicking myself for not having some "cards." I told her she might like the church I go to, she resisted, she said, my grandma would kick me. I said, tell her this Irish guy told me to go (we're Hickeys to be sure).

I let it go, but kicked myself that I didn't talk more about Christ.

2. STUPID
Someone asked Alf, "why am I stupid ?" Alf replied, "its because the word is still in your vocabulary. You should get your dictionary and cross it out, then you can never be stupid."

3. THE SWIM @ CITY BATHS
Went swimming with Laura tonight and we had a more balanced competition than last time. Last time I beat her in the freestyle. I recalled how we used to swim as a kid there and there used to be changing booths on the side of the pool, and how mum used to take me there to swim as a kid, sometimes after getting her inhaler pump from the QV hospital, now QV. It seems that our floor-boarded house has taken her asthma away or something- beats a pump. Last time I was a member there, city baths was getting a reputation as a gay hangout, told to me by my department head who was gay. We had gone painting there one day too, its so hard to capture water ripples in paint. I don't think I succeeded that well really. Over the years, if there is one constant with the city baths it is that its always being renovated.

Anyway. Laura won the butterfly and the backstroke. I won the breaststroke and freestyle. So we're even. Except for the $58 dollar parking ticket outside. Well I got the $60 footy tickets the day before- The Pies will die again ! I don't know how we are going to decide on who buys the doughnuts and hot dogs. Maybe dutch.

Then we watched Mamamia. I recited our primary school version of the song, "Mamamia I got diarrhea, 2 4 open up the dunny door, too late, do it on the kitchen floor." This was quite novel for a South African who had never heard it. Man I thought I'd forgotten about Abba, totally ripped off.

4. MILO'S PRISON OF FREEDOM
Milo has demarked his own territory by a curious type of prison. The gate at the top of the balcony, is thinner than his body length (Chewawa x fox terrier) yet he can contort himself to get through it not bad for a guy over 70 years old in dog years. Anyway the gate is usually locked. This means milo can get through and Rocky can't. So Milo lives upstairs and Rocky runs the rest of the yard. I think Milo is over the way Rocky just rips out his bedding and rips them up from His kennel, he has found his own space. Rocky has found his meaning in life, which is getting you to throw a ball, which he then returns back to you. We need to buy him some sheep and a ute.

5. GEORGE PATTERSON'S INTERNET
Dad handed me a file outlining the brethren missionary George Patterson's vision for Internet evangelism. Where he dug this out from I don't know, but it came from India, with him dating back to the sixties. It even talks about superconductive lossless signal transmission and other technologies. Who could have thought that evangelism, and the bible could be disseminated so efficiently by technologies like email, facebook and skype. These guys were radical forward thinkers, true revolutionaries for the gospel.

6. REFLECTIONS ON LIVING FOR CHRIST
Was thinking about living the gospel. On light FM, the guy keeps saying, "do everything without murmuring and disputes." Have been wondering whether a strirrer is a right idea. The scripture iron sharpens iron came to mind. And then the issue of the weaker brother and love for the benefit of another and the contradiction of this if it seems relative. Because how then can peace and love abound if people disagree, and the scripture is full of disagreement. How is it possible to be of like mind ? How is it possible to be one in Spirit ? I think now, could it be the beautiful plain simplicity of the gospel, and the growing that God can only do ? I was troubled after the message the other day- yeah I can proclaim the gospel, yeah i can preach and blaah blaah, but what to make of people not getting saved ? Sure I can counsel, be there and love, tell the Word whatever, but if they don't get the big kahuna burger, to know Jesus personally what's the point. This troubled me. It is not something we can do only God can make it grow. I was told after you proclaim, preach or its their job to do something with the gospel. Let it go. I realised I need to take some notes out of my own book, to really point people to Jesus, that they get on their own two feet. The bible says it like this: "I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow" (1 Corinthians 3:6). Jesus also explains about sowing seed:

"Then Jesus said to them, "Don't you understand this parable? How then will you understand any parable? The farmer sows the word. Some people are like seed along the path, where the word is sown. As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown in them. Others, like seed sown on rocky places, hear the word and at once receive it with joy. But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful. Others, like seed sown on good soil, hear the word, accept it, and produce a crop—thirty, sixty or even a hundred times what was sown." (Mark 4:13-20)