I have had an inspiring day with my work colleagues. We had a day of thinking about how things have been going and where we want to go from here. Sometimes my job can get quite depressing. You never feel like you finish anything and never quite do enough and could always do better. But I do think it is true that without a vision the people perish. One of the women I work with told us why she came to teach at my school. It was inspiring and liberating to hear the hope she has and the exctiement she feels about facing challenge and being part of change. Often these kind of days are very airy fairy adn nothing practical comes out of them but we came up with a whole lot of practical ways we can use to improve the way we do things.

Yesterday I felt that there was nothing I wanted more than to walk out the front gate and never come back. It was one of those gloomy, wet and humid Auckland days where the school smells like only schools can and everything seems dreary. I was walking up the stairs for about the 5 th time that day and I just thought "I've got to get out of this place"(imagine the sound track of Good Morning Vietnam). But today has given me fresh energy and enthusiasm. I know why I am here and there are things I can do and offer that could change the future for the department and the school. I also feel the need to grow up, to move on from needing everything to feel exciting and to be prepared to persevere even though I don't really feel like it. I am going to try not to talk about leaving teaching and focus on the things I want to do here in the near future. Though I know there are other things for me in the future I know that right now is not the time to find out what they are.

So I am going to stick it out and dig it in and any other expression for keeping on keeping on that you can think of. It is just another example of me having to accept the reality of being an adult!

I think I am becoming co-dependent. It is one of those very "now" pop psychology terms which basically means I often feel like I am dependent on others helping me to get the stuff I need to do done. A basic example: the other night my husband was out. So I sat in front of the tele for the evening. He was rather late. I kind of just waited for him to come home and tell me it was time for bed. Sick eh!

But to put this all into perspective, I am a pretty extreme people person but need alone time and I tend to set pretty high standards for myself. So when I do relax I tend to turn into a passive blob, lethargic and unable to make even basic decisions, like that it was time to go to bed. It may sound like I am blowing this totally out of proportion but yesterday I had another wakeup call about my co-dependency issues. I am going to a Media teaching conference in October. Our accomodation and transport is paid for. A collegue from school is going also and she has lots of friends she can stay with. I don't. Therein lies the problem. The idea of staying in a hotel by myself for about 4 nights fills me with dread. I know it is irrational and to many people an opportunity to be alone is absolute bliss. But for me my first reaction is panic and intense loneliness.

I know that part of the reason I have become like this is getting married. There is always someone around now. We do the supermarket shopping, run errands, clean the house, cook etc. together so I am not by myself very much. I am determined not to lose the independence I so valued before by becoming a wimpy heap! So I will try to take responsibility for myself a bit more.

I hope this doesn't sound completely pathetic but even if it does, so there! I don't need you to like it! (supposed to be said with an independent and cheeky tone if there is such a thing!)

You would think that now that I have internet at home that I would blog more often. But sadly no. I have been very slack about making the time. I have been thinking about a lot of stuff. Here's a list:

• human rights abuses in Uzbekistan - the US and Britain are supporting the use of torture in Uzbekistan for the purposes of obtaining intelligence. The U.S flies in 'ghost planes' carrying those who have been detained at places such as Guantanimo Bay and uses the fact that torture is legal there in order to gain information. The British government has no problem in accepting this information as they feel that they are not doing the torture themselves so it is okay! The governement in Uzbekistan has been known to torture the children of those who they have imprisoned in order to extract information.
  
• It is World Fair Trade weeks from this weekend until the 21st of May. Support free trade by shopping at Trade Aid stores and asking tricky questions when shopping. When in Starbucks next ask why they are labeling coffee produced in the United States as fair trade coffee. It think they have missed the point. For more infor visit the trade aid website or www.cws.org.nz.
  
• Dafur - over 3.3 million people have now died. They have the largest number of internally displaced people in the world. I saw a moving and motivating report on CNN where a reporter travelled with a family who had fled the Muhajadeen when they had attacked their village. They travelled to a refugee camp where they waited for 6 weeks before receiving any food or shelter. The men feel ashamed that they have lost their land and have not been able to protect their famlies. Their social structures are in tatters. Where will they go and what will they do? Also many have witnessed unbelievealble violence and brutality. Why isn't the international community intervening?
  
• Pentecost - 2 weeks away! I have been thinking about what my deepest passions and heart dreams are for my life and my place in the world. I want to follow that passion that the Holy Spirit has placed in my life even if it seems crazy and risky. Now I just have to come up with the courage! And do it with wisdom from God and not just to ease my own conscience and grow my ego. Hmmmmm! How do you do that?

So that was heavy, but the world is. Heavy with strife but in the midst of it you have people in Dafur who despite their terrible experiences share their little food with each other because if we lose our hope and humanity what have we got?

Discipline hmmmm... Well it is a tricky subject and something of an issue which I don't seem to have made much headway with in my few short years here on earth. I tend to swing between the fear of guilt side of my personality who views discipline as something which leads to failure which then leads to guilt so better to avoid it altogether. Then I swing back to the hardline self-flagellating view where the harder it is and the less you want to do it the more disciplined you should be about always doing it. This of course always leads to failure and again the pendulum swings.

I recently finished reading the M Scott Peck book The Road Less Travelled which sets out a "new" psychology based on the belief that all people should be working towards spiritual growth in the widest sense and the enemy of this growth is laziness so by applying discipline and living consciously we can see reality as it is more and more which then leads to growth. Peck argues that all sin is actually laziness and he makes a very compelling case. He also argues in favour of grace, that despite often horrific trauma in a person's life they still seem to be able to function and grow more than people who have had apparently sweeter lives. He discusses the fact that love is also a form of discipline and not just an emotion. Overall a very challenging and invigorating book and I agreed with much of it.

But now I am here. 3 weeks since finishing the book and trying to put it principles into action and I am lacking discipline. The thrill of new ideas and resulting passion is over and I feel tired. It's the end of the term for goodness sake! But I know that this is when it really counts. When you don't feel like it.

I guess what I really need to work out is my definition of discipline. I see it as punishment instead of freedom and in this I do think I need an act of grace to help me to see it in a new light.
While reading the book I knew I needed to learn something from it. Now I need an act of God and a growing of myself in order to avoid falling into the same narrow view of just poopooing the ideas. Saying to myself "Isn't this just an example of people demanding more from me?" or "Isn't Christianity about grace and freedom not guilt?". But I know truly that the problem is with me and my ideas and my issues. So I will nut away at this and I guess where grace comes in is to realise I cannot be perfect and never will be but not to let that gift become an excuse to stop and stand still and say "I've done enough".

So here we go. I will try to mark a set of marking which has been sitting on my desk for a couple of weeks tonight. Not because I want to, or I will enjoy it but because it needs to be done. And I will try tonight to read the Bible and pray. Because I know I need it and I know Jesus loves it and what kind of relationship am I having with Jesus if I can't be bothered to even communicate?

I am a bad, bad blogger! It has been so long since my last post (last confession). I have been survivng at school adn trying to get work done before I blog but now that we have internet at home I have no excuse!

I have been going through some major ups and downs. Nothing major has happened but a couple of weeks ago I was so motivated to make so many changes and improvements in my life. I am now sick, it's the end of the term and I couldn't care less. If I get to work not naked and can bluff my way through the day i figure I am doing okay for now. The holidays start in one week and they can't come soon enough.

It is our one year wedding anniversary next week. Wow, a whole year! It has gone so fast, and been pretty fantastic. We are just carrying on. Hubby is doing Uni, I am doing school and we are planning a holiday in Melbourne in July. I am becoming more and more content and settled.

A couple of weeks ago I had a breakthrough with my habitual restlessness. I said to someone that I thought God had given us this time for preparation. we are both quite tied down to what we are doing at the moment adn we can't make any drastic changes but suddenly It clicked. There is a purpose to this time. We are not getting "left behind" and there is a reason for this season. Since then I have felt a real peace. It is amazing how powerful verbalising something can be to help you realise it is true.

Since then my attitude to work and life in general has improved and I am thinking about the little things I can do to prepare for whatever God may call us to in the future. I know what my passions are and there are so many possibilities for using them so I want to use this time to explore them and what the future could hold. I am considering doing a mission discipleship course to explore where I see myself and to work through issues still unresolved since I was invloved in leadership in a Christian group at Uni. I also want to find a way of further intergrating my faith and life.

So yeah, I am sick and tired but thinking and looking forward to keeping on keeping on!

What a weekend. The transformation of me continues. I went to the Ecoshow in Auckland at the weekend. There were some very innovative adn visionary people there who were very encouraging. Grat composting methods, rammed earth homes, eco friendly paint, permaculture gardening, the list goes on. THe whole time I was frustrated that I can't do more of this now. tHere was a distinct lack of info for thise of us in urban areas without much land. However I did feel very motivated to make a few more changes on the road to greeny land.

One thing I felt afterwards was that I desperately wanted to get dreds and show the world the conversion that was happening within me. That lasted about 2 minutes before I thought through the implications of dreded hair. I think humans tend to do extreme quite well because we want to know where we stand, whose in and whose out and what is wrong and what is right but unfortunately very little in life is that simple. So I will continue to struggle through this stuff without dreds but hoping to make a gentle difference and encourage seemingly normal people to be a bit more radical in the way they live.

For every green issue I think I have sorted in my head another complication arises so I have to trust that my muddling along in a rather meandering fashion is going to make some sort of difference and hopefuly God and creation's grace will cover the rest.

I have been snowed under at work and it does not seem to be getting better yet but I want to keep blogging. There is always something to keep me from it!

About 2 weeks ago I went to a conference on environmentalism and Christianity. Never the twain shall meet you may say. I have grown up in family where the environment and God were inextricably linked. The creation shouts about God's glory adn love for us as well as revealing hsi character, especially his sense of humour. Have you ever thought about the pelican or the sloth? We could learn a lot from the sloth in the world we live in now.

Anyway the conference brought together a very wide variety of people, from people with degrees longer than their arms to plebs like me who just have a gut feeling that christians should be doing more to care for the environment. Some parts of the conference were very challenging, such as the lessons we can learn from the ecological colapse of Easter Island. How can we just be going about our lives like normal when the reality is that the clock is ticking and many scientists are saying it is too late to save ourselves from our own over-consumtion?

The wonderful thing about the conference is that as Christians we have hope. Not a hope which depends on God transporting us to another world cause we've wrecked this one but a marvellous creator who through his grace has allwoed humans to have some part in the future of creation. There were lots of gifted and passionate people who want to see more action from Christians adn I believe it will happen.

Personally I am feeling all the more challenged ot live differently. to live a radical life which may seem incredibly uncool ot the students I teach. One girl said to me that she felt sorry for my children because she thought I would dress them in home made tie dyed T-shirts adn hemp collotes. Passibly, but isn't that the point? We should be living for the good of all not just the personal sel esteem issues of one. So I aim to challenge my self to embarass myself for the envoronment or at least to try to put the big picture above my own insecurities about the clothes I wear, the food I eat, the house I live in and the other things I own.

Another challenge I felt was the reality that developing coutnries cannot develop. tHere is not enough to go round. For 2 thirds world countries to improve their food supplies, education, health adn overall standard of living the west will have to give up some of its wealth and the process of development may cause the destruction of ecosystems on which people depend. So what should we do? I vite for revolution. I can because I am an irrational dn idealistic woman. But somethings got to give. If we carry on like this it will be like watching a train wreck in slow motion. And when oil stocks start to run out and there is no food at Foodtown I know I would rather be a subsistence farmer than living in an apartment in Auckland central. THe clock is ticking and it just won't stop. as christians we are always aware of this as we wait for Jesus' return but what are our responsibilities now?