Dark Days at the Rooftop Cinema

Tonight we went to the Rooftop Cinema at Curtin House, to see Dark Days, a documentary film about people who live underneath New York City. Mark had been given some free tickets to the film, because the guy who owns it came to visit Credo a little while ago. It was a little strange being on a roof other than our own, because it seemed like all the buildings were in the wrong place.
The film was interesting. It seemed that while most of the people shown in the film knew each other and hung out together, they were very independent, and mostly just looked after themselves. While the film was being made, the people were evicted from the subway where they were living, and given housing. Unfortunately you don't get to see how they might have been going a few years after their eviction, though.

Sri Lankan asylum seekers

Last week 83 Sri Lankan asylum seekers were intercepted by the Australian Navy, near Christmas Island, and the Australian government is planning to send them back to Sri Lanka without giving them a chance to apply for asylum in Australia.
There's an article about it here, from the Townsville Bulletin.
Tim Jeffries has posted some info here on Advoc8 about who to write to about this, and what to bring up.

MLC retreat day

Today we were hosting the year twelves from Methodist Ladies College, for their Religious Education retreat day. (It's their one day of RE for the year.) Several of us were up most of last night getting stuff ready.
This is Marcus being overhelmed in the Land of Easter Eggs:

And this is when Marcus lost his pen under one of the shelves in the Land of Easter Eggs:

And this is a special little installation me and Ray and Stella did for the elevator:

What took most of the time was setting up the contemplation and prayer stations in the sanctuary. (I helped with that last year.) This is what they looked like last night before they'd had prayers written all over them:

Today I was taking groups of students on city walks with Brent and Kate, while Marcus was looking after the installation in the sanctuary, and Simon was running nonviolence workshops to do with competition.
Took these pictures of some of the prayer stations at the end of the day:

(The international time map is from this screensaver.)
If you want to make some slightly coherent sense of what the stations were all about, read what Marcus wrote about last year's MLC retreat day.

Even young men grow weary

Some time last week I was projecting photos through my window onto the adjacent building, late into the night.

And I found this note attached to a TV in a church I visited the other day:

I've been way too busy for a little while, and hadn't had much of a break for eight days, plus I didn't have much of a break over the Christmas/New Years holidays, so I've just been on leave for a few days, staying at Gin and Jeff's place and not doing very much except reading and writing and drawing ...

... and watching Monty Python films. I came back this afternoon, and read this piece of scripture, which someone or other that used to live here stuck up in our toilet:

I was thinking that people who put their trust in God will probably run and don't grow weary because they realise that God doesn't need them to always be running, and so they're making sure they get enough rest.
When I went down to the office there was a parcel from the US. It was a Christmas present! (I took part in the Relevant messageboard Chris Cringle thing last Christmas, and we were wondering why my present hadn't arrived yet.) One of the things in the parcel was a new candle, so I've had that going.

I feel much better having had some rest.

New shoes

Yesterday John was in Melbourne on his way back to Adelaide from Sydney (via Canberra, Sale and Traralgon) so he came and had lunch at Credo, and then I got a lift with him to Ballarat, to get some new shoes, because there's a shoe factory in Ballarat, and so you can get decent shoes pretty cheap. I got my old pair of shoes there in 2004. This is what they look like now though:

We also saw a few people we were friends with when we lived in Ballarat, which was nice.
Took these on the train back to Melbourne last night, going through Bacchus Marsh and the western suburbs:

Evening prayers on the fire escape

Last year the five of us who live here didn't pray together as a group very much. So this year we've decided that those of us who are here at 9pm each evening will meet between level 7 and level 8 on the fire escape to pray.

Weird Indian toe-socks

Gin and Jeff got back from India on the weekend. After work today, Gin gave me these weird toe-socks she got in Calcutta:

She got some for Ray as well. They're supposed to be for wearing with thongs (flip-flops). And they're supposed to be skin-coloured.

Gembrook

Coke and water

I've just done a post on Advoc8 about Coke's water use. Click here to read it.

Going to Gembrook

Tomorrow we're going out to Gembrook for our Urban Seed residents retreat, so we can get to know each other a bit better. I have to come back Saturday night, so I can go to work the next morning.
Seeds gatherings at the Den (116 Little Bourke Street, Chinatown) start again Sunday night, and Credo lunches start again on Tuesday.

Credo renovations

We've been doing a bit of work in Credo the last few weeks, like cleaning, painting, getting indoor plants and rearranging everything.


Last week I cleaned the flu in the kitchen, which has supposedly never been cleaned before. (Normally Uncle Smithamsy tells new volunteers that it's their job to clean the flu.)I spent most of today priming the flu, and hopefully I can get it painted before cook on Wednesday. (That's probably not very likely though!)

Gardening on the roof

This afternoon Tomsy, Nomes, Ray, Stella and I did some gardening on the roof.
We planted mostly small, coastal plants along one edge of the roof. Hopefully when they grow they'll form a windbreak to shelter other plants.



We planted some herbs as well, to use in Credo:

We're hoping to grow vegetables to cook in Credo as well, and to get people who come to lunch involved in the gardening.
The chilli plants we have on the fire escape are starting to grow fruit...

...and the kangaroo apple (or poroporo if you are New Zealish) is flowering:

What's been going on

Haven't blogged for a while (but have been updating on how Dad is) because I've been very busy and pretty exhausted.
Dad's been recovering really quickly, so he's going to be discharged tomorrow morning, only four days after his operation.
We've been doing orientation stuff with the new residents (Dave and Stella), which is mostly training and workshops and stuff to help prepare them for the year. On Thursday we did training for responding to heroin overdoses, and the next day (Australia Day) we responded to the first overdose of the year, and people started turning up for a barbeque I'd organised, while the paramedics were trying to get this guy to take narcan!
We had my 'travelling Nana' (last year she went to Borneo, this year she's going to Vietnam and Cambodia) over for dinner.
Last night I went with Bevan to see this band Maverick play at The Stork, in Elizabeth Street. Then this afternoon I was walking through Chinatown to The Den, with Nomes and Stella, and someone yelled out something like, 'Hey, man in the orange t-shirt!' and I expected that I probably had imagined it, but then someone grabbed my arm and said, 'Hey you came and saw us last night!' I had no idea who she was for a sec (I think she had sunglasses on) and had to try and remember what I'd been doing the night before, then realised she was from the band.
Just been skating on the roof of the carpark down the street, and someone was leaning out the window of one of the buildings across the street, yelling out, 'Hi! Hi!' and waving, so I waved back.

My dad's in hospital

Some oof yous will already know this, but my dad had a heart attack on Sunday so he's been in hospital since then, having tests and stuff. Me and my mum have been in to visit him a bit and he seems fairly well, but pretty annoyed that he's not going to be able to go home for a while. This morning we found out that he's going to have to have open heart surgery so that they can do a triple bypass (so his blood can get around a big clot in his heart). We don't know yet when that'll be, but he'll be moved to another hospital near where I live (close for me, but a long way for Mum), and he'll have to stay there for about a week, and then have another six weeks off work.

Moving downstairs

Last week me and Ray sawpped rooms. I did this a few nights before I moved downstairs, with the paints Justin gave me for my birthday:

This is what level 8 looked like when me and Ray were moving all our stuff:

Took these during various stages of setting up my new room:

Have been rearranging the living area a bit as well, because there wasn't really any space for a decent-sized dining table or anything. Also, Marcus' Leviathan painting's been brought back. (It was in his shed.)

Brian Houston on poverty

I got a text message on Friday from John, saying that he'd been channel surfing, and come across Brian Houston (the main pastor at Hillsong in Sydney) talking about poverty. I thought it might be interesting, seeing as they've gotten a lot of criticism regarding their emphasis on individual prosperity. So this afternoon I checked out their podcast - you can find it here, if you have iTunes. I managed to find a sermon that Brian gave at the Hillsong conference in London last year about the Make Poverty History campaign and about why Moses and Jesus both said that there will always be poverty (Deuteronomy 15:11, Matthew 26:11). Although he seems to say at one point that you need to be rich to help the poor (I may be misinterpreting him), he does say a lot of good stuff about the church's responsibility to help the poor.

Visiting Warrnambool

Thursday night I went down to Warrnambool to visit the Scripture Union teams that are down there at the moment. (I cam back yesterday morning for work.)
At the primary school where they're having Champion City (the kids program) they have really interesting gardens:

I spent most of my time there with the Ignite (the youth program) team. Friday afternoon/evening we were at the beach playing volleyball and cricket and getting sand in our eyes and ears and mouth and nose.

Dr Pompo/TV cake

Very late last night, when everyone was home, we had drinks on the roof, and Ray brought out a birthday cake she'd made for me. It was shaped like Dr Pompo, on TV:

You can also see the other Dr Pompos that Ray made, one from a real pumpkin (it's all shrivelled up now) and the other from a pumpkin pot. (Ray likes Dr Pompo a lot.)