Week 1
Friday, 23 July, 2004
I've decided this semester to make sure I can stay at home on Fridays. I still might be doing work but I won't be meeting people at Uni and I'm trying to clear things as much as possible so that Friday can be a rest day of sorts, since Saturday often isn't. This morning I had a nice sleep-in. I still don't feel like I've recovered from MYC and Week 1 really hit me like a brick wall. I'm all over the shop with a million things to do, growing increasingly anxious about the things I've forgotten to do, writing lists and crossing things off but never really feeling like I'm on top of it all. But MYC was great! Once again, John Woodhouse didn't get through all his talks (apparently at college he doesn't either). That was a little frustrating and several people I spoke to mentioned that which seems to show a real eagerness to hear what he had to say. I'd never really thought about the doctrine of justification by faith before but now I realise how important it is and how central it is to the Christian faith. At the heart of it is really a great mystery: how is it that God the righteous judge who cannot abide sin and, being just, would never convict the innocent or pardon the wicked—how is it that God the righteous judge should declare us, wicked unrighteous sinners, righteous (ie. “not guilty”) in his sight through his son Jesus who perfectly satisfies God's requirement of righteousness (ie. the law) on our behalf and transfers to us his own righteousness while at the same time taking upon himself our unrighteusness? John Woodhouse called God “clever” which kind of shocked me at one level but I can see why he said that. We had around 120 from Wollongong come along—many for the first time. The girls in the small groups I was overseeing really seemed to be enjoying the manuscript discovery on Galatians. Some were a bit frustrated by the seminar material but others found it stimulating and challenging. One told me that, after hearing John speak on the first evening, he couldn't sleep because he just kept going over and over what John had said. He didn't disagree with John—he just couldn't stop thinking about it. Ben and Stacie ran an elective on depression (over the course of two days they got 110 people come to their elective). I ran an elective on homosexuality which was for girls only (Peter Hughes was running one for boys at the same time). I got about 30 people over the two days and many came up and thanked me afterwards, or asked to talk to me further about the issue over lunch or dinner. I managed to get The Page done for Week 1 while I was there by interviewing some first-timers about their experience (got a good cross-section of opinion too) and I also did the posters and outlines for Week 1 as well. Ben came down with a virus on the last day of MYC. We had a laidback evening when we returned—borrowed out The Man Who wasn't There (Coen brothers film) and ate takeaway Thai with Tim and Liz. On the Saturday he stayed home while I drove off to Sydney to have yum cha with my dad, stepmother and brother, pick up a birthday gift for Peter (why is it only Collins Booksellers had Cryptonomicon in stock??), went to Ros' kitchen tea with my sister-in-law (Lizz), her friend (Ange) and my mother-in-law, watched bits of an appalling BBC production of Pride and Prejudice with Lizz and Ange and had dinner with my mum, Peter and Kenneth. I drove home again that evening and pretty much crashed on Sunday. I slept in, went to the shops to buy flu drugs for Ben, vegged in front of the TV and skipped church (and yes, I got permission from Richard to do so).Posted in:
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Is that the BBC Pride and Prejudice where they’re all wearing blue eyeshadow? And Lizzy is wearing that dreadful high-neck dress?
did you know that if you have an NRMA card, you can get a 10% discount at Collins’ booksellers?
did you like ‘man who wasn’t there?’
Dave,I should have known that but I didn’t! I’ll know for next time. I must get rid of my prejudice against Collins which dates back to the days when I viewed them as a rival to the Dymocks where I worked for four and a half years. Really, they’re very nice; when I was job-hunting, the manager of Collins wrote me a very lovely rejection letter expressing regret that he couldn’t hire me, and when I bought my copy of Jane Eyre, back in Year 11 they had a deal whereby I could get Hard Times for free (later had to read this at Uni so it was a good thing I had it!)
I did like The Man Who Wasn’t There—beautifully done. I think I am slowly becoming a Coen brothers fan, though The Big Lebowski is rather stupid.
Deb, I think the P&P I saw was this one; Lizzie was a blonde with this really infuriating wide-eyed look of pretended innocence, all the sisters looked the same except for Jane, Mr. Darcy looked like a pin-up footballer, Mr. Wickham had the most awful sixties hairdo and the script was just too appalling for words.