Well I am finally having a chance to catch up from the weekend.  My woderful wife has a bad cold bug or similar and so I am home minding teh super son.  We just had a blast with a little outing and now I am back.

Over the weekend, and possibly the cause for my wonderful wife’s woes we went to the Queen Victoria Markets and to see the latest David Williamson play, Scarlet O’Hara at the Crimson Parrot.  Both were great experiences.

The markets were a fun experience as a family.  I always think of the Queen Vic as a quintessential Melbourne experience and recommend them to most visitors.  We had a little bit of breakfast before we went but had more when we were there.  Including some gluten free food and nice coffees.

We have also joined a baby sitting club which means we can now get a baby sitter for no charge but then have a debt to sit for someone else.  Which is fine by us.  Our baby sitter arrived after dinner and we took ourselves off to the late show.  When we arrived we had a little walk around and then ran into friends from Sydney.  Talk about a small world.  We both enjoyed the show, some of the Williamson plays I have seen have been light and some have been very heavy.  This was definitely light but charming even with a sick actor replaced by the assistant director with a script in his hand.

I recently had to fill out a form that in some way asked for my relationship status.  I am sorry to say I can not remember what form it was or why I had to fill it in.  However the thing that surprised me was the section about defacto relationships.  Living together was not sufficient evidence of a relationship you had to give evidence of a shared bank account or similar.  I found this fascinating as it reflects that even defacto relationships, common law relationships as they are called elsewhere, need some legal joining and commitment to each other.

I find it intersting in light of this that there is a paper being presented concerning cohabitation patterns and repartnering around the world and that Australia has a high rate of serial monogamy.  Similarly I find it distressing as I know people who have cohabited that cohabitation in the UK is seen as incredibly destructive.

So what is the theological response to this.  Funnily enough Jesus speaks directly to this situation.  In John 4:7-42 we have the encounter of Jesus with a woman who is cohabiting.  What he offers her is living water which if she drinks she will never thirst again.  There seems to me to be the idea that serial monogamy and cohabitation is rooted in some needs in our life that only Jesus’ living water will fill.  Having these needs is not wrong but seeking their filling in something that will not quench our thirst is foolishness.

So what needs do you have and are you asking Jesus to fill them?

I will get back to critiquing L Dee Fink’s Creating Significant Learning Experiences but possibly not today.

For those reading this and thinking of doing a PhD. John Stackhouse has written a wonderful article Thinking about a PhD?

The questions are great and need to be considered by everyone thinking of doing a PhD in Theology and its related forms.

It looks like I missed a great opportunity to discuss the term missional.  See Blind Beggar for such an example of what I missed.

In the busyness of the end of semester, documentation for government departments, an interstate wedding and the other regular stuff of life I feel a little disconnected from some of the blogs I like to read.  As someone else put it I missed the boat.

So this Friday no details about films or fiction, just some feelings.

Considering the class I am taking this week and other things going on at work at the same time and the weather stopping me from riding it has been a bit of a different week.  Somewhere along the way some old aches and pains have started again which I realised are probably related to eating too many biscuits and sitting too long.

Now it has been years since I ate lots of biscuits and I know that if I eat lots of sugary floured baked things, such as biscuits and donuts I end up in pain.  I have monitored my diet and there has not been that much of a problem.

Spiritually I think we do the same thing sometimes.  We let things creep up on us, we know if we binged it would be bad but little bits are ok.  We think a little negativity won’t hurt but lots will.  So we indulge in moderate amounts but not too much to make sure we are still doing good spiritually.

So how do we maintain our spiritual health?  I think we need to be more ruthless than we think.  We need to remove the things before they become a problem.  It is letting the little things in that cause problems.  I realise I am preaching to myself as much as any of my readers.  We need to pray that God would shine his light in our darkest corners and help us get the dirt out.

So what is bad for your health that you are letting stay around?

It is funny going to weddings and watching the people around you.  This time I had the delight in seeing the next couple to get married looking deeply in each others eyes and obviously looking forward to what will happen in a few months time.

I saw other people who hardly looked at each other, even though they may be dating or married.  It reminded me of a song from “I Love You, Your Perfect, Now Change” which I have seen a few times around the world (New York twice and LA once).  The song “Shouldn’t I Be Less In Love With You?” is sung at a kitchen table while the couple read the paper and do the morning routine.  The guy starts singing and questioning, shouldn’t I love you less, shouldn’t I have had an affair, shouldn’t I have left by now?  The song, which usually leaves me in tears, at the end says, quite simply, No.  It is not an ode to romantic love but to commitment in the midst of life.  A song for commitment not a song against adultery and other relationship destroyers.

The song and people at weddings reminds me that we have two choices in relationships.  We can let the relationship grow together or grow apart.  It is easy to get into a mindset that growing apart is normal and that divorce is totally unacceptable or totally acceptable (see Richard Mouw’s ingisht into this).  The underlying issue is the intimacy that defines the quality of the marriage.

Scripturally we are told that we will see Jesus face to face.  There is an intimacy in the relationship we are to have with Jesus in looking in each others eyes.  We should have a similar intimacy with our spouses.  There should be sparkles that are noticeable by others when you look at each other not a spark-less relationship.

So is your relationship with God and your significant other sparkling or fading?

I know I should be writing further on Creating Significant Learning Experiences but I have been in a course all day so I have not had a chance.

The reason the whoops is in the title?  I fell asleep in class.  We got back late last night from the wedding in Brisbane and were playing catch up on sleep the whole time we were there so the two combined, a comfy seat and listening to a lecture after lunch was a killer.

This is the last post for this week.  The project I have been working on is just about wrapped up and their is a wedding for me to go to so I will be away from my desk for a few days.

Breaks are good as a time to reconnecting, refreshing and hopefully kicking the cold I have picked up from somewhere.

So do you need a break?

I am not sure if I have ever mentioned but as part of my wonderful wife’s and I pre-marriage counselling we did a course called Engaged Encounter.  We liked it so much we wanted to be involved in doing this sort of thing.  Last week I was told about a similar course that a friend’s church runs so I looked it up last night.  In the process I found a whole heap of resources.  So they will be posted below.

Why do I think relationships are theological?  Partly because they reflect our relationship with God and we always could improve in that area.  Partky because I think God is relational; God did not send a book for us to know him but a living person, Jesus Christ.  Finally I think relationships are theological because God said it is not good for the man to be without a helper.  And to think I almost never use the phrase “God said it, that settles it” which is my thinking in this area.

So the resources I know of you can use to have better relationships are:

Worldwide Marriage Encounter

One for Life, Married for Life, Parents for Life

And feel free to check out your local Christian bookstore while not everything will suit you and your situation heaps will be helpful.

Every so often you have a conversation that is bizarre.  Last night we asked our super son what he had for a late snack at Kindergarten.  He replied “Mermaid on Pikelet.”

A few moments later after thinking of Marmite we realised he had eaten marmalade on his pikelet.

Just a random revelation of our life