| Michael and Jen...'s profileextra bucksmithPhotosBlogLists |  Tools  Help |
|
December 25 five minutes to gositting here hot on the heels of christmas i want to say that there are dozens of people who have helped me this year. both of you who read this blog have spurred me on to be a reflective person. i know my weaknesses. i try to avoid them. in coversation that is. it's great that christmas occurs at the end of the calendar because in thinking back on my achievements since the last time the tree was up i have much to regret and more to be thankful for. my world is full of generous people. like the italian family that had us for dinner tonight to share awesome pasta, wine and broken english. more than i deserve and enough to humiliate me each time i am stingey, tight and unnecessarily melancholy.
anyway, i've been saying it for years now, with no friut to show for doing so, but, i want to be better next year. kinder, more sharingy, less stupid.
please keep up being the the wonderfully good friends and family that you are because without you, i'm even less than this.
it's midnight o five.
for today in the city of david a savior has been born for you who is Messiah and Lord and this will be a sign for you: you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. and suddenly there was a multitude of the heavenly host with the angel, praising God and saying: "Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests."
December 21 inescapablei'm not the only one sitting down this week to type some cliche christmassy blah blah. it's hard not to. as it approches i can only think of my childhood and the times my mother bought me skateboards or gave me the means to do so myself. i can explain this depth of feeling using maths or as some people at my place of employment call it: math. skateboarding =ed life. christmas =ed skateboards. using one of many maths (algebra) i come up with skateboarding =ed life. unbeknownst to my mother she was in fact giving me life at each christmas. as i got older christmas, and life, grew to mean different things. like for years after a school friend was killed on aro street when his scooter hit a lamp post (on 23.12) christmas was sad. moreso for quentin's family than for me but i always remember them. i'm sure the world still takes a deep breath when it turns on the news on boxing day after the earthquake in bam, iran in 2003 which pretty much flattened an entire city and it's population. followed in 2004 by the tsunami that devastated south east asia. i know that it did - not because we saw it on tv, as we didn't have one in those days, but because we found ourselves in sri lanka a month after the waters came. i can still hear the lady speaking to me in basic but perfectly communicated english: baby -no, mother - no, sister - no, house - no... you get the picture. google has just reminded me that this dear lady lived once with her family in the town of hambantota. she also lived several hundred metres inland. i couldn't see the sea from where we were talking. not only did we stay in the sheraton in colombo that night i had nightmares of watching the tsunami come in to these peoples lives, for weeks.
i remember years ago, in whitby, as christmas approached, taking my year 5 class through the biblical account of jesus' birth and early life. we focussed our attention on jesus' parents sweeping him away to egypt as a young boy and waiting further instructions. he lived as a refugee and we studied refugeeism briefly too.
reading ben a story of mary and joseph tonight i was reminded of how nice the story sounds sometimes. ben particularly likes the picture of a cat sitting by the manger.
and so he should.
anyway, christmas is life so enjoy it together with our love.
December 11 we've had some fun recentlyas well as being absurdly busy the past few weeks we have also really been enjoying ourselves. the cooler weather (broke the 30 degrees mark on the way down), the imminent christmasness, family. to save forty five thousand words i have posted heaps of photos next door. remember, i can't work out how to improve their quality. :(
we've had birthdays, a camping trip, a flugtag, body art, home fun, the x games and more.
we break up for christmas next tuesday.
it's literally been a ball.
and the fun will start all over. |
|
|
