Desert Files - Day 20

Desert Files: Day 19

T-shirt printing

The last few weeks for Pain in the Arts we've been doing t-shirt printing.

The t-shirts are for volunteers to wear at Where the Heart Is Festival, which is being organised by Royal District Nursing Service.

Desert Files - Day 18

This might be slack, but I'm doing it anyway.

Laneway Cricket

Laneway Cricket is starting at 5pm Friday, at Living Room.
More about Laneway Cricket here.

Desert Files - Day 17

Desert Files - Day 16

Desert Files - Day 15

Pine Gap Four charges dropped!

Got this message from Simon about an hour ago:

Pine gap 4's
convictions quashed
and retrial refused!
Woo hoo!

(Me and Simon and the other Simon went and visited the US Consulate last year during the initial trial, to talk with them about the Pine Gap military base.)

Media coverage:
'Christian activist 'curious' about jail' - ABC News
'Pine Gap activists to appeal convictions' - ABC News
'Court hears appeal from Pine Gap protesters' - ABC News
'Australian Christian anti-war activists appeal prosecution' - Ekklesia
'Pine Gap protesters' convictions quashed' - Herald Sun
'Court finds in favour of Pine Gap protestors' - ABC Darwin

Desert Files - Day 14

Desert Files - Day 13

Stuff has been pretty full-on here the last few weeks, but I've been finding it a lot easier than normal to be disciplined, so I've been managing really well, and not get caught up in chaos. I think that's because it's Lent. I mentioned to Tomsy the other day that Mark probably has power over Lent, and should make it go all year so I can be well disciplined all the time. Got this email from Mark a couple of days later:

To whom it may concern
This is to advise you that Pope Mark has officially declared that from now on the season of Lent will run all year, and every year. This is to ensure that those of the Faithful who find it easier to be disciplined during the season of Lent are given a fair suck of the pig.
Mark

Desert Files - Day 12

Desert Files - Day 11

Have been thinking today about Jesus telling Peter, 'Now I will tell you who you really are.' (Matthew 17)
One of my friends has schizophrenia, and he's been telling me today that there's another person around here who looks just like me, but isn't, and he wants to know who that is. There's a few other people who he reckons have doubles too.

Desert Files - Day 10

Desert Files - Day 9

Have been thinking more about the Sorry Day stuff. I think there needs to be a sharing of pain, because I think everyone in Australia shares the pain of not having a home. Some had their home taken from them when Britain invaded, and others lost their homes because they were sent here as prisoners, or came here for economic opportunities, or were granted asylum here. (I'm not sure how well most people can relate to that consciously though.)
I also think it's a big problem that most Australians who aren't indigenous don't even know anyone that is.

Desert Files - Day 8

Desert Files - Day 7 (Sorry Day)

This week's reflections are on identity. Have been thinking a bit about where I get my identity from.
I think one way I form my identity, which isn't helpful, is from what I'm against. Like the glass wall that's currently being built in front of our building.

I've been thinking a bit about Jesus asking his followers, 'Who do people say is the Human One?' (Matthew 16:13-20) and about what it means to be human.

PM says sorry

(It's one good step in the right direction.)

Desert Files - Day 6

Today's been very busy. Credo has been open again for just over a week. This week and next week we have some people away in Wellington doing community development training with Praxis. This morning I cooked, and this time we told everyone that the meat was kangaroo and not beef, and a few people didn't like that! We also had our first Credo Team meeting, I've been putting some stuff together for the Youth and Schools team, and we had friends over for tea. Tomorrow morning I'll be cooking (some of the others will be down at Fed Square for the apology) and in the afternoon we're starting off Pain in the Arts with a t-shirt printing workshop.
And of course, there's the usual dramas of living in community!

Desert Files - Day 5

Desert Files - Day 4

I don't know if yesterday's post makes that much sense to anyone else. I'll probably come back to what I was talking about there later in Lent, I think. Then it might be clearer how it's related to Lent.
Evelyn's been blogging about dying to self, I was thinking about how I tend to do my best art (and non-art) when I forget about myself. I'm a type 4 (the romantic/individualist/artist) on the Enneagram, and 4s often are prone to being self-conscious. I find that I often spend a lot of time and energy trying to work myself out, and this can end up with me furiously going round and round in circles. Sometimes I end up with a churning stomach from it.
This picture's about dying to self-consciousness:

It's an homage to Tomsy (you'll know why if you've seen his recent artwork), who is also a 4, and who was at Mark's place in Auckland last time I heard from him.

Desert Files - Day 3

I've been thinking a bit today about Jesus being tempted to turn stones into bread, and about how we produce our food.
This morning me and Ali and Nigel drove out to the retreat centre at Gembrook to do some work. On the way we stopped at a couple of places to try and find some food for our lunch.
First we stopped at Menzies Creek, to try and get some cumbungi (spelling?). Cumbungi is a kind of bullrush, and the local indigenous people used to eat its roots. We did manage to find some, but the creek was pretty polluted, and the flesh of the roots smelled like the water they were growing in.

When we stopped at Avonsleigh, however, we did manage to find some good food, quite close to the road.

You can actually eat the young, curled-up fronds of the tree fern, and they taste a lot like walnuts. (You can eat young bracken fronds too.)

When we got to the retreat centre we broke up the fern fronds, and put them in a soup, with potatoes, lamb and butter.

I don't normally eat lamb, mainly because of the impact that sheep have on the land. When the European settlers first started grazing sheep in Victoria, the sheep wiped out a lot of the myrnong (indigenous daisy yam) which was a staple food of the local people. Perhaps if we didn't have have sheep we could have had myrnong root in the soup instead of potatoes, which originate in the Americas? Maybe the creek where the cumbungi was growing wouldn't be polluted either?
Anyway, we're going to try and find somewhere where there's healthy cumbungi, and where there's myrnong. Ali wants to try growing his own too.

Desert Files - Day 2

I've been continuing to think about the cross as a (necessary) distraction, and I think I've portrayed that a bit better in this picture:

Desert Files - Day 1 (Ash Wednesday)

Today was Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. At church gatherings on Ash Wednesday, the sign of the cross is traditionally drawn on people's heads with ash, to symbolise repentance.
This evening I burnt some paper for ash, and drew some crosses.

This week's reflection for Desert Files is on distraction. I was thinking a bit about whether one is distracted from the cross or by the cross? I don't know if that's what this picture says, but it's what I've ended up with all the same:

Desert Files - Day 0 (Shrove Tuesday)

For Lent (the 40 days, not counting Sunday, leading up to Easter) I've decided to take part in The Desert Files, a project of Cityside Baptist Church in Auckland (Mark Pierson's mob before he was our director).

Choose one of the last 7 things that Jesus said on the cross, using this as starting point for your creative process.
Then use the next six weeks of Lent to create something, using the weekly online prayer meditations, daily blogging from others on the journey and an artists workshop or two to spark ideas, contemplation, thoughts, discussion.

I've chosen, 'Into your hands I commit my spirit.' (Luke 23:46) It's believed that Jesus was quoting Psalm 31.
I have been having trouble getting to sleep tonight, so I decided to start early. (It's Shrove Tuesday now, so Lent will be starting tomorrow.) This is what I've come up with:
I guess I've been thinking about this saying apart from it's Easter context, and how it seems to be coming from a place of vulnerability. And I think that for a lot of my life I've felt pretty vulnerable in my body, as though it's not very adequate because I'm thin.
Normally when I portray myself in my art I make mysyelf fairly brown (for a European). My face and may arms are pretty brown, but under my clothes I'm very white - and I think that feels kind of vulnerable too.