A week-long holiday in the city of hole-in-the-wall bars followed by a frantic scramble over to the city of churches for a work trip has left me with a severe case of emotional whiplash. I’ve been so busy and so socially active for the last couple of weeks, my normal, do-very-little life feels really frigging flat.
I’ll bounce back, but in the meantime blogging just doesn’t seem like much fun.
As someone born in Sydney, raised in Queensland, educated in Melbourne and now once again residing in Sydney, I reckon I’m pretty immune from parochial bullshit. So I had a chuckle at the recent comments of the head of the NSW hotels association, arguing that Sydney should avoid a “Melbourne-style” drinking culture at all costs. Apparently Melburnians have to sit in dingy bars and engaged in — gasp — conversation, because they don’t have a big iron bridge hanging over a stretch of water to look at (actually, they do, but the Westgate isn’t really iconic).
Dom Knight from the Chaser responded beautifully from a Sydney-sider’s perspective, so I don’t feel like I need to cover the same ground. I just am struck by the stereotypes that we perpetuate about ourselves and our cities.
After all, it made sense when I lived in Canberra to be described by others as “very Melbourne” - I’d just moved from there and I’m a bit of a hipster. But in Sydney? There are hundreds of hipsters, great live music venues and cool record shops right here. Why is a stripey sweater and a love of jangly pop music somehow more southern than local? It’s not as if Melbourne isn’t full of Irish-themed pubs with cover bands doing “Man, I Feel Like a Woman” every Saturday night.
This might not be my home town (wherever that is) but it’s still a pretty good fit.
The thing about Facebook is that people who have never, ever been on a social networking site are on it. Which means that you now stumble across the most unlikely people - exes, former crushes, year seven best friends. It’s messy stuff - in fact, it’s like a high-school reunion every day.
I’m trying to fathom why it’s taken off so dramatically, but I have a sneaking suspicion it’s not just voyeurism or internerds looking for popularity in any form they can get. I think it’s at least partly to do with the fact that my generation is the most mobile generation yet. Travel is unbelievably cheap, jobs are available almost anywhere - so you move around a lot. This means you accumulate a lot of friends over time and it’s nearly impossible to keep track of them all. So once one site builds up sufficient critical mass and there is a pretty good chance most of your friends are on it? Well of course you join.
Of course it’s a poor kind of contact. For the most part, people are happy to add you once, exchange a brief “Where have you been the last ten years?”, which is impossible to answer, and then move on with life.
I’ve been living in Sydney for three months and I have been at least as busy as I was last year. How did this happen?
At least I’m mostly doing things I love doing and hanging out with good people. And for some reason I’ve been sleeping like a baby. So let’s see how long I can keep it up for!
Tuesday’s outing was to see the movie Amazing Grace, about William Wilberforce. It’s a cut above the usual hagiographies we get served up these days - the dialogue and cast are pretty top-notch - but it’s not a masterpiece.
Still, it got me thinking a lot about Christianity and social justice and the kind of response we should have to the equivalent injustices of today. Yes, light viewing indeed. I should have gone to The Simpsons.
The bit that troubled me most was the driven nature of people like Wilberforce - the almost complete absence of peace and tranquility. Except for an early scene in which Wilberforce is chilling out with God’s creation, he’s mostly driving himself into the ground.
I know that it’s often the single-minded, driven people who get things done, but I’m increasingly doubtful that it’s something to aspire to. Maybe I’ve been reading too much Rob Bell. It strikes me that a God powerful enough to create life and resurrect people and who cares about the poor and disadvantaged is more than capable of changing the world without our help. So when we do his work, I figure we should be able to do it out of a peace and assurance that we’re getting some serious help. And we can rest sometimes, even.
Listening to Steve Chalke speak last night at a World Vision seminar, I was hit by the fact that he is a guy with that peace. I mean, entirely committed to action and teaching and community and all the good things. But with a sense of humour, a smile and an assurance that it doesn’t all depend on him.
Why do we ennoble people’s shortcomings because they achieve things? I don’t think God is so utilitarian.
