'Imam and pastor unite for message of peace, tolerance'

Imam Muhammed Ashafa and Pastor James Wuye are visiting Melbourne from Nigeria, to share about how they used to be militia leaders who wanted to kill each other, and are now close friends.

Pastor James Wuye lost most of his right forearm to a machete attack, and Imam Muhammed Ashafa lost family and a spiritual adviser before they met and to their surprise discovered common ground and eventually trust.
Their journey sparked the establishment of a body called the Muslim-Christian Dialogue Centre in the religiously divided city of Kaduna in predominantly Muslim northern Nigeria.
However, even the name became contentious, as Pastor Wuye recalls: "Some Christians objected that we had the Muslim name first. I told them the order did not matter."
Eventually the organisation reached out to a growing Nigerian Jewish population, as well as people of traditional animist beliefs, and evolved into the Interfaith Mediation Centre.

Read the Age article here.
(There is a documentary film about Imam Muhammed Ashafa and Pastor James Wuye, called The Imam and the Pastor.

'Urgency & Sustenance'

We were looking at this article on Tuesday afternoon, as part of working out how we make decisions as a household about when we should let people (generally people who have been sleeping rough) come and stay with us. It's an article Dave Fagg (from the Seeds mob in Bendigo) wrote about the tension between urgency and sustenance in mission:

As an 18 year old, I helped to organise a national conference on poverty, for Year 12 students. The CEO of an organisation that served people on the street gave a firebrand address on the need for young adults who would burn themselves out in service to the poor. I thought it was a great message for the high-achieving audience for whom ‘service to the poor’ would be squeezed around careers. But the conference organisers gave a corrective speech the next day, explicitly rejecting the CEO’s message, and emphasising that doing the little things is what matters, doing what you are able to. Which for those listening meant serving the poor in the context of a career which would give them status and wealth. Although I said nothing, I realised that I disagreed with this corrective. The state of the world requires urgency, a desperate plunge into the pain of the world and of its people.

Read the full article here.

Laneway Labyrinth is on tonight

Installation art

'I am worried about being involved in the political stuff...'

Age from morepraxis has done a good post in response to feedback he's been getting about people who are going to NCYC (National Christian Youth Convention) in January, but are worried about being involved in the polictical stuff:

The question comes in a few forms …. I am scared of being arrested, yelled at, looked at…. I don’t know enough to be interviewed about what I think, I don’t know enough about what I am interested in……
The fact that you are worried is good. (Smart people count the costs.)
The realisation that you don’t know enough about the cause you support or are interested in is good. (looook haarder Simba)

Whole post is here.

The good news

City of iron

The lost sheep

Mehrin and I found the lost sheep this afternoon. It was in Treasury Gardens.

So we took it home.

Street magic

So on Friday night I was doing a city walk with some high school students from Canterbury Baptist Church, and we had to do the first bit on the front steps of the church, instead of in the sanctuary, because our annual fundraising concert was on in the sanctuary. So I was reading with the kids from the start of Mark's Gospel, and this lady who was walking past, looking like she was dressed for a night out on the town, stopped and said to us, 'What are you doing? Are you reading the Bible?' I said, 'Yeah, we're going 'round the city a bit and reading scripture in a few different places,' and she said, 'Are you Christians?' and I said we were. She said, 'Okay, I've got something to show you then.' I was thinking, Uh-oh, what's she going to do... She showed us a little red hankerchief and said, 'Sometimes people tell me that because you can't see God, he doesn't exist.' She squashed the hankerchief into her fist, and then opened to hand to show us that the hankerchief wasn't there anymore, and said, 'You can't see it, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist!' And she meade it reappear again.

Waratah Festival at Gembrook Retreat

Today we were out at Gembrook Retreat, for the annual Waratah Festival.

(Not all of the flowers are waratahs, some are leucadendrons and some are proteas.)
Got some waratahs for our house:

New computer (doen't work in the office!)

So on Thursday morning I went to a computer shop and bought a new notebook computer. Brought it home, and had almost finished setting it up (downloading and installing software and stuff) when it blue screened, and after that it just kept blue screening over and over again, before I could even log in. So I took it back to the shop, and the guy was pretty confused, and gave me another one. Took it back to the office and started it up, and this one blue screened the first time I started it up, so I took that back too. The guy was confused again, and said they hadn't had this problem with anyone else, and said that maybe it was because of the RAM upgrade the computers had had done, so I got a refund for the upgrade, and took one of the non-upgraded ones home, and exactly the same thing happened! So I took it back, and said I was very disappointed and wanted my money back (pretty much my whole day had been wasted by that stage), and the offered me a better computer for the same price, so I took that back to the office. This computer did exactly the same thing, and by this stage the store was closed. So I was quite angry by this stage, because I had some work I had to get done for the next day.
Anyway, I took it up to my house and tried to start it up again, and it was fine in my house. It also works fine in the church sanctuary, and in the staircase outside the office. But it doesn't work in the office. It makes no sense!
But otherwise it's a really good computer, particularly for the price I paid, and I want to get to the bottom of this, because it doesn't make any sense!

What my computer is saying:

Going to get a new one today. Trying to salvage stuff off it at the moment. (Luckily I have everything I wasn't working on at the time backed up on my external hard drive.)

Safe city

Do you feel safer knowing that you're on camera?

Only 85% dead

My computer is pretty much dead. Yesterday when I tried to start it up the screen wouldn't work properly, like everything was jumbled up.
Today I tried plugging a monitor into it to see if that worked, and both screens worked fine for a while ...

... but then both screens stopped working.
So either way, I'm going to have to get a new computer. I have a couple of options for how to get a decent secondhand computer but if anyone has any other ideas, please let me know.

Kyneton

So today is Mehrin and I's second six month anniversary since we started going out. (See here if you're confused about why we'd have two.)
We're going up to Kyneton, on the Campaspe River, for the day. (But at the time that I'm writing this Mehrin doesn't know that that is where where going.)
I went up there on Thursday to see what it's like and what we could do up there. It was really nice. Took some pictures.

North Shore candles, grey zucchinis and lamb pie

Went down to North Shore again this morning.


Afterwards went and got some grey zucchinis (I had never heard of them before) to take for lunch. (Luke has organised some lunches where everyone has to bring a vegetable to contribute to the meal, so that people can make a contribution rather than just being 'clients' who need to be helped by the 'workers'.) Luke cooked a lamb pie. We also had some potatoes that a lady called Sue had brought.