reluctant ramblings

One of the finest things you can do in winter is walk the cold cold beaches in a warm coat…

Queenscliff beach.

A new friend said to me today, “comfortable is when I can buy bread and toilet-paper in the same week.” That’s going to stay with me for a while.

It seems odd writing this from home now, but of all the stunning places we went, I think Belfast had me at hello. I know, I know. Don’t rush headlong into a relationship with a city you’ve just met! Nonetheless, I think I could spend some quality time getting to know Belfast.

It’s not the fields and kangaroos I’m used to, to be sure, but theres an industrial beauty to it.

The Duke of York. Great company made for an excellent night out! Not to mention the pissed Irishman hitting on my Australian travelling friends and buying us all drinks!

My cab drivers on the “political tour” of Belfast. Unashamedly biased, but decently even-handed. A political tour in Canberra earlier this year amounted to a walk through the houses of parliament. Totally different understanding of politics.

Mural detail from the Protestant side of the fence.

Belfast city centre – as vibrant as any, with new developments springing up. Of course, there are difficulties with any re-birth of a city, and some small snippets were revealed to us. Tourism is huge, too.

Everyone wants to know where I’m going, and what I’ll be doing in the UK. I’m getting to be able to recite the itinerary pretty well.

What’s interesting in these conversations is how inadequate my language is – how to talk structurally about artistic, alternative worshipping communities. I had this very problem tonight at a regular chamber of commerce meeting.

I thin it’ll come in conversations about context, and in looking at what works in its context. I think that I’ll pick up the language like a native pretty quickly! (I’m also good with accents!) I think that by the time I get back, I’ll be fully buzzword compliant!

I was just staring at the pictures I took on the weekend at a baptism. It was a great baptism, and affirmed for parents in the congregation (and the congregation in general) the promise to raise this child in a loving Christian community. There’s no doubt that this is a community of that kind. Which is why the photographs are all the more odd. There’s just no way you can commune in rows of pews. Its you and the person up front, obscured by the backs of other people’s heads. I suppose we’re all symbolically facing God, but I think I see more of God in the faces of my community than in the flouro-tubes at the front…