Friday
Saturday, 05 March, 2005
Another 8 am start. I look forward to the weekend when I can sleep in. We find John sitting under the grapevine listening to his iPac. Ben goes off for Church History 1 and I have History of Christian Mission. I'm rejoicing in the fact that I only have two hours in the Kelvinator today, but am dismayed to find that Room C also has air conditioning. We have three hours of Mike Raiter today and I feel lucky to be able to be taught by him before he leaves for Melbourne next year.
Mike's lecture is about the problems we have with early church history (in terms of sources, unanswered questions, the version of the gospel they preached and hagiography [saints, relics and miracles]). He told us Venerable Bede's version of the life and times of St. Cuthbert: how St. Cuthbert lived on a remote island and flocks of ravens brought him pig fat to—wait for it!—polish his shoes. Often such stories were written primarily, not to capture facts and present the truth of what happened, but to encourage the edify the Christian reader. Bronwyn's Nick also got a mention in relation to a question about Brother Yun's The Heavenily Man.
Joint chapel followed. We found the rest of our comrades in Church History 1 stacking tables and putting out chairs while the uppers years stood at the door and chatted. John Woodhouse preached on 1 Samuel 9 and I fell asleep because I was so tired. (Is knitting in chapel disrespectful?) Morning tea followed but I was whisked off to a Societas meeting where I met the rest of the committee (which included Luke, formerly of FEVA, Mark Barry, formerly of MTS, and the fabulous Geoff Robson who used to be the chief editor of Southern Cross). I'm the only girl. We had already been allocated to roles and Stuart just wanted to check if we were happy with what he had put us down to do. I know he was just trying to be efficient given our deadlines and the amount of time we had to meet, but I would have appreciated being consulted first as well as brought up to speed about the aims of Societas. I assume that it's a yearbook as well as a way of raising the college profile in our churches and getting them praying for the work that Moore college is doing, but that could all just be guesswork. Anyways, I've been put into Advertising (pending—they might move me because they need someone who's going to stay on beyond this year to handle it) and writing an extended profile for a married second year student.
It was a quick dash up to Greek where everyone was quizzing each other on vocab. We went over the impertive and the passive again and started conjunctions. Conjunctions are important in Greek because Greek doesn't have any punctuation and, in a way, conjunctions act like punctuation in Greek. Gibbo took us through our course booklets, showed us the weekly vocab lists that we must memorise and bamboozled us with the regular verb table (eek!) I am glad Greek only goes for an hour at a time.
Cross Cultural Communication with Mike Raiter followed. Mike said we could just sit back and not take notes if we wanted to because the course isn't assessable. He talked about cultural differences and how they dictate the way we act and view the world around us and how they affect the way we view the Bible. He used a lot of examples from his time in Pakistan as well as drawing on our own cultural experience. The lecture really hit home for me for a number of reasons I might talk about later because it made me feel rather sad.
We had a bit of a break and then started on our second hour of History of Christian Mission and then finally it was lunchtime. I was keen to go home because I was feeling so exhausted by this stage (this is one thing that people neglect to tell you about college; you just feel so fatigued from meeting so many people and from thinking so much. It surprises me that I do but I do). Tho, however, wanted to meet up and do more Greek. However, he wanted to go to Sydney Uni first to see if he could joint the badminton club so we went for a walk into campus and got distracted by the CD stall (same guy who comes to Wollongong Uni market day). I got two Soraya CDs for $1 each. We were there for too long and so only got to do half an hour of Greek. We were pretty stuffed by the end of it and drove home in a bit of a stupor.
Tim and Liz were due at 6:30 and I started preparing dinner. I thought I would relax for an hour and then finish it off but then a pair of Mormons came knocking on our door. We invited them into our lounge room and had a two-hour discussion with them (might blog about that separately). Tim and Liz arrived halfway through it and also chipped in to the discussion however we really weren't getting anywhere as the central problem was the question of authority (the Mormons have their Prophet, Gordon B. Hinckley, and Joseph Smith as their highest source of authority, whereas we believe that the Bible is the highest source of authority and you don't need any one to tell you what it says).
After they left, I cooked dinner and we spent a lovely evening with Tim and Liz chatting about college and various other things. They left at around 10 and I spent the rest of the time before bed upgrading my anti-virus software and trying to install eSword Bible software.
Blinks:
A way of funding writing in the future: pitch and idea and get people to support it.
Place where you can hire play equipment for parties, etc.
How to recalibrate the home button on your iPhone.
Unsolicited manuscripts accepted by Pan Macmillan with certain conditions.
Thought Balloon is a group blog in which the writers tackle a new theme every week? month? with one-page scripts. This URL is for their Phonogram ones.
How to sew a zipper on a knitted garment.
Issues organised by tale.
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