Surrender 2008

We were at Urban Neighbours of Hope's Surrender Conference on the weekend. This is Spriggsy driving the van on EastLink when we realised we weren't going to be late for the panel that Gin was going to be on:

This is where Spriggsy, John, Jono, Mehrin and I camped:

Spriggsy, Mehrin and I were looking after the Urban Seed table. (They had this area where there were tables for mission organisations to put propaganda on.) We built a wall out of cardboard around our table, to hide it. On the outside it had images and 'beatitudes' representing what the global economy promotes as success, and on the inside (hidden, for people to find) it had the beatitudes of Jesus, along with images to represent the economy of God. (I also used the vine from State Youth Games.) Here are some pics (some from when we were still constructing):

I don't think what we did was that worthwhile, but that's okay because it's the first time we've done something like that at a conference, and I know how I'd want to do it differently next time. And someone from one of the other missions organisations (with a much bigger budget) said they wanted to copy our idea.

Urban Seed staff retreat

Last week (Wednesday to Friday) we has the Urban Seed staff retreat, down at Aireys Inlet. It was mostly a lot of talking, which is not that interesting for most people. So rather than having pictures of people talking, here are some pictures of the new monument to William Buckley (an escaped convict who was the first European to live in Victoria):

And these are some pictures I took down at the lighthouse (where they filmed Round the Twist):

Credo Zoo day

This week and next week Credo is closed. Tomorrow we're going away on staff retreat, to work out how we're going to manage to all keep working together for another year. Next week we'll be doing training. It's really nice to be having a break from doing lunch, because stuff has been really full on the last two months, and there hasn't been much time for a rest at all. A lot of us are sick. (I had influenza really bad last week.)
Today we went to Melbourne Zoo with Credo team. A lot of the enclosures were very nice, but as I said last time I went to the Zoo, some of the enclosures are actually quite awful. They really don't have enough space for animals like tigers or leopards.


This is the psychadelic meerkat video:

'On Earth as in Heaven'

I'm working with Marcus on an art installation for Tear's national conference in Sydney. The theme of this year's conference is 'On Earth as in Heaven'. These are some images I've produced using Gustave Doré and Philipp Veit's illustrations for Dante's Divine Comedy, and star maps from Ball's Popular Guide to the Heavens:



And here is an interview with N.T. Wright (Bishop of Durham) from Time: 'Christians Wrong About Heaven, Says Bishop'