On the Blog!

Author: Angela M. May

  • The world needs one talented persons too

    The world needs one talented persons too

    What talent has God given you and I that we have not used?  Maybe we have thought it so tiny that we have not dared to use it or grow it. Perhaps you like me considered using it but then looked at what others have and counted this talent as insignificant in comparison. So, we bury it and spend our time and effort doing anything else except that which we were called to do.  

    In the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30), the Master calls the servant who did this with the one-talent entrusted to him-‘lazy and evil’.  At the very least, the Master said, he could have taken a safe investment approach (and put it in the bank). The other servants who took what they were entrusted with and invested it, were blessed with a hundred percent return. 

    Sometimes I think, we forget that our talents are a gift from God himself. Our response should be one of faith and not fear. This involves taking risks using our talents to love God and others. 

    While our talents differ from the next person, at the end of our lives we will be called to give an account.  Our talents are not given without thought. God himself has also equipped us with the capacity for investing these.  Why then are some of us filled with doubt and prefer to hide our talent instead of taking a risk? 

    I have come to realise that much of my strengths are not necessarily the talents God has given me.  Much of my responses to life and the world have been ways I have learned to protect my self and please others. More often than not I have been exceptionally busy doing everything but the very thing I have been made to do.  

    Why then is it so difficult for some of us to invest this one talent given by God himself?  Perhaps, like me that is because it is a place of deep vulnerability.  We must leave behind what is comfortable and safe, and enter into a space not planned for nor can we always control the outcome.  We are uncomfortable with being a novice, with failure and with embarrassment. We have chosen to hide rather than take a risk.

    God has both gifted and equipped us with the capacity to use the talent we have been given. We need not fear embarrassment or failure.  Perhaps a few knocks and tumbles, as a child learns to walk, but you and I were born for this!

    The world is waiting for you and I to use our talent to serve God and others.  It is poorer for the talents unused or hidden.  Imagine how silent the woods would be if no bird sang except for those who sang best. (Henry Van Dyke)

    Will you join me this week in daring to use the one talent you have been gifted by God? The world needs every single one of us one-talented persons.

    Photo by Jason Rosewell on Unsplash

  • P.S. Where is God in this-my bucket list?

    P.S. Where is God in this-my bucket list?

    Confession time! Making lists, including bucket lists are a favourite pastime of mine.  Planning and doing though are two different things: although not mutually exclusive.  I have come to realise that I am one of those people who are guilty of ‘paralysis by analysis’.  There comes a time when I must take a first step rather than thinking, planning, reading or writing about it.  Alas, these are habits of mine. I have come to realise I am a person with a rich interior life.  It is my natural default to both ponder and dwell. Sometimes the dwelling is unhealthy as resentment festers in the recesses of my mind. Sometimes the pondering results in wisdom and creative solutions.  That is not always so bad. 

    I grew up highly sensitive to conflict around me. Daydreaming seemed like a safe place to go for a little girl who could not always change her world. As she got older she would plan and she would second guess. All this took place in her mind; my mind. These too have become habits of mine. Deep grooves that will take considerable diversions for alternative habits to develop.

    Spontaneity, flexibility and going with the flow seem much harder for me than it seems for others. Planned routine and structure are comfortable places. In the past ten years I have been on a journey of facing some of my inner world barriers to freedom and the abundant life Jesus promises. (John 10:10b) With the reassurance that God is there for me and with a sense He is the author of this spiritual and emotional journey I have faced some challenging times that have rocked my need for structure and control of my world.

    Some of my childhood ways of staying safe have been challenged and under pressure my shadow side has been revealed. So much so, I have struggled to love or like myself at all. We all have a need to be ‘innocent’. Some people will blame others to maintain theirs. For me I blame myself and try harder to be good, be nice, please others by second guessing their response and their needs, and plan and plot to keep safe. But I am not ‘good’. No matter how much I plan and plot to keep safe or improve myself I will always fall short. I know that I will never be perfect so why do I try so hard?

    When I shift my focus from myself and my inadequacies and focus on Jesus and His promises I find an amazing and freeing gift of grace. I can sink into His amazing love and forgiveness purchased by His blood on the cross of Calvary. Only in Him will I find the innocence, and perfection I crave. That truly is a freeing gift to stop striving and know I am lovable and likeable just as I am-in Him! Over the past 10 years I have changed as I’ve allowed Him to change me from the inside out. At times I have felt pressed on all sides and ready to implode. But by His grace I have not.

    The Bible talks about refining fire. As the impurities within come to the surface in the heat of the furnace, the dross can be removed and the purer substance remain. I hope through this process I reflect Christ more and more. He and you may be the judge if that. But for me, I have known deep inner healing, a growth in my inner strength and courage and a tempering of some of those inner drivers that seem to urge me along breathlessly. It is good to be still, to know there is an awesome God that loves an imperfect me; loves me enough to guide me through change so I can stop being so rigid and start dancing in the abundance of life He promises. What will it be this year for me? Will I trust Him with my priorities and stop fussing with the details? Will I allow him to co-write my bucket list? Will I look back in a years’ time and say what a ride with Jesus as my guide?

    When I pause long enough from my analysis and listen to the still small voice of His Spirit I can hear what He is calling me into and to do. Some of it is scary as it is not comfortable; but that requires faith and courage- something He can provide too. To me, that is my ultimate bucket list adventure: to trust God enough and to take the risks He whispers to me and is calling me to take in those quiet, still moments.  But, first I must quieten that mind that is always planning.  That’s my resolution for 2018. 

    Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

  • Bucket list adventures

    Bucket list adventures

    Sometimes I have to pinch myself as a reminder that I live in a part of the world that other people mark on their bucket list.  On my doorstep is one of the world’s seven wonders; the Great Barrier Reef.   And at certain times of the year, one can witness sea turtles hatching and turning to the sea.

    A couple of months earlier their mother, a huge lumbering green turtle would have dragged herself up the beach, dug a hole for her eggs, before lumbering back down again.  After incubation, the nest of around 100 infant turtles or hatchlings, bubble up from under the sand and with almost magical sensitivity scramble to the waters of the ocean.

    My first experience of turtle hatchlings was ten years ago when our family camped on North West Island.  This coral atoll of the Great Barrier Reef is populated mainly by seabirds and visited by no more than one hundred and fifty camping tourists at any one time.  Our first visit was in April when the camping season had just opened.  This amazing island, less than seventy kilometres off the coast of the Queensland city of Gladstone, was an overnight ferry trip for us and our camping gear.     

    I remember relaxing for the evening in a camp chair, with a nightcap cuppa under the shadow of the island’s undergrowth.  I was contemplating bed when something bumped into my foot. The small creature, only about 5cm in length, was attracted to our camp’s light instead of the moonlight and was heading inland and not to sea.  One calls out and everyone in the campsite is up; out of beds and chairs to get up close and see these delightful leathery little reptiles scrambling in confusion.  With buckets and torches, we collected dozens of hatchlings before releasing them into the waters of the lagoon surrounding the island. 

    Of course, not all baby turtles are so fortunate with tides and the advantage of darkness.  Nothing prepared me for the despair I felt as I watched swooping gulls grabbing at another batch of hatchlings emerging in the daylight from the dunes.  For those that made it to the water’s edge, it is then a long paddle across the shallows to the ocean beyond. 

    One little boy in our camping party, was not going to give up on one little hatchling. He followed it down the beach, across the shallow lagoon and to the reef’s edge.  He was determined no gull would eat ‘his’ hatchling and willed the little fellow to survive.  Of course, once in the ocean, any number of predatory fish could have been waiting to eat this little leathery chap for lunch. The odds of any hatchling making it to maturity are one thousand to one. 

    Last camping trip to the island (my fifth time) I didn’t even bother to get up from my chair when someone yelled ‘turtles’!  As I look at this picture, taken on our third trip there, I want to pinch myself for forgetting what a privilege it is to have witnessed multiple sea turtles hatching on the Great Barrier Reef.   If I had a bucket list filled with exotic adventures around the world, I could have marked off two that happened at my back door! 

    Do you have a bucket list?  I first heard of a bucket list from watching the 2007 movie of the same name, starring Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson.  Freeman’s and Nicholson’s characters are terminally ill, aging men who set out to mark adventures off a list before they ‘kicked the bucket’.  Facing death, these men decide to live life fully until they died. 

    Death is indeed a sobering thought and one that causes lots of us anxiety.  One thing is for sure, we are all going to die- one day. Worrying about it is not living. 

    I have witnessed people giving up on life, years before their death and then others seem to defy the natural barriers that come with age and are still living a life filled with adventures. 

    What will it be for you in 2018?  What adventures on a bucket list will you mark off?  What will you add on?  Remember: “Life is for living; not worrying about dying.” (Author Unknown). 

  • One habit at a time

    One habit at a time

    Tomorrow is the first day of a new year.  Many of us will make resolutions for 2018 that we have no chance of keeping.  Even when we set SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timebound) goals, the odds are that we will falter and fail. 

    What if we scrapped setting a bunch of goals and instead worked on changing one or two habits?  Jeff Goins reckons forget goal setting and instead start small with simple habits to get results.  Gradually, these habits will become a part of our daily practice; our daily routine.

    The general rule of thumb, is it takes 21 days to form a new habit or to change an old one. For some of us our habits are grooves so deep that it is a bit like changing the course of an ancient river by digging another channel by hand. These ones might take a little longer or call for more excavation or experimentation than most, before a new groove is formed.  Once that new habit is formed though, who knows what the flow on effect may be. 

    In his book “The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do, and How to Change”, Charles Duhigg tells the story of Lisa, who by changing one habit transformed her life.  At aged thirty, she had been smoking and drinking for fourteen years, was overweight, in debt and the longest she had been in a job fell short of a year.  She decided to give up smoking and take up jogging. In four years, she lost sixty pounds, run a marathon, started a master’s degree and brought a home.  At aged thirty-four she was lean, fit, no outstanding debts, didn’t drink and was in her thirty-ninth month at her job.   By focusing on one pattern Lisa had taught herself to reprogram the other routines in her life, as well.  Old impulses were crowded out by new urges. 

    We all have habits. In fact, most of our daily lives are habitual, with routines. Try living in a new country or starting a new job and you may realise just how much the new routine or the loss of the familiar is unsettling.  What is the first thing you do in the morning, what music or radio station do you listen to when you hop in your car; at a coffee shop what is your usual order? At the end of a busy day, what groceries or takeaway do you usually pickup? Where does you mind go, when you daydream?  What is your usual phrase when you walk in the door at home each night?  These are but a few examples of what can and often starts of as a choice soon becomes an unconscious habit and even accidental. The question is, which ones are getting in the way of living an abundant life or fulfilling a dream?  What if by changing one of those habits in 2018, you or I could change the course of our lives for good? 

    Duhigg explains in how habits work that there is no one prescription or formula, although he does offer a framework- a place to start for changing habits.  It starts with identifying the routine that has become a habit. In his case, it was going to his workplace cafeteria at 3.30pm and eating a chocolate chip cookie. He looked into his habit and could not decide at first if it was about getting a sugar fix, boredom or a craving to socialize with co-workers there.  He then experimented with various new alternative habits that might reward his craving.  He resolved that walking over to a colleague’s desk and having a 10-minute chat would satisfy his craving, rather than the need to go to the cafeteria and eat an unnecessary cookie.  To ensure he changed his habit, he intentionally set his watch alarm for 3.30pm and would actively visit a colleague for a chat. After some time, he no longer was in the habit of visiting the cafeteria in the afternoon and would visit a colleague instead.  (I’m not sure what his colleague thought about his new habit though.)  I can only assume his health and weight was better for his habit change. 

    Here’s a thought. What if instead of focusing on a physical action as a new habit (although these are good), what about a change in mental or spiritual habit?  What if instead of focusing on the negative, the new habit was writing in a gratitude journal at the start or the finish of each day?  Instead of checking social media or emails first thin in the morning, what about checking in with God? 

    Here’s to a New Year filled with good things, starting with the small, tomorrow morn’. 

    “Tomorrow is the first blank page of a 365-page book.  Write a good one.” Brad Paisley

      Photo by NordWood Themes on Unsplash

  • An Aussie version of the Christmas story

    An Aussie version of the Christmas story

    In a season, full of traditions and symbolism, the Christ story-the Christmas story is often some vague and cliched backdrop to the season’s celebrations.  The nativity scene or the Christmas play has become condensed to a scene with three wise men, a bunch of shepherds, some angels, livestock and of course Mary, Joseph and a baby doll in a box. 

    Like any story, told over and over again, it can lose its impact and even its relevance.  Sometimes hearing the story told afresh is enough to remind us of how wonderful the Christ story was, and still is and to bring the Christmas story to the fore.  

    Kel Richards wrote a book over ten years ago, called “The Aussie Bible-(Well bits of it anyway!)”.  He took the story retold by Jesus’ disciples Matthew and Luke and wrote it in Australian vernacular.  I hope you enjoy the extract of the Christmas story-Aussie style as follows: 

    “…God sent the same angel-this Gabriel bloke-to a backblocks town called Nazareth, in Galilee shire, to a nice young girl who was engaged to a local carpenter, Joe Davidson.  Her name was Mary, 

    The angel said to her, “G’day Mary.  You are a pretty special sheila.  God has his eye on you.” 

    Mary went weak at the knees, and wondered what was going on.

    But the angel said to her, “Don’t panic, don’t chuck a wobbly. God thinks you’re okay. You’re about to become pregnant, and you’ll have a son, and you’re to call him Jesus.  He will be a very big wheel, and will be called the Son of God Most High…. 

    “God’s in charge,” Mary answered. “If that’s what God wants, then it’s what I want.”  Then the angel knicked off and left her alone…. 

    In those days Caesar Augustus ordered a head count of the whole Roman world. (This was the first big tally, when Quirinius ran the Syrian branch of the empire.) And everyone had to go back to the bit of country they were born in to fill in the forms. 

    So Joe hiked up from Nazareth (in Galilee shire) to Bethlehem (in Judea shire) because his spot in the mulga was where King David came from, and Joes’ family tree had King David up in the top branches.  He went there to fill in the forms and sign the register with his fiancée, Mary, who was pretty near nine months by this time.  While they were there, she gave birth to a baby boy. She wrapped him in a bunny rug, and tucked him up in a feed trough in a back shed, because the pub was full to bursting. 

    There were some drovers, camped out in a paddock nearby, keeping an eye on their mob of sheep that night.  Their eyes shot out on stalks when an angel of the Lord zapped into view, and the glory of the Lord filled the air like a thousand volts of electricity.  The angel said:  “Stop looking like a bunch of stunned mullets. Let me give you the drum, the good oil, it’s top news for the whole crew-everyone, everywhere. Today in that little town on the hill a rescuer has been born; he is the Promised One, the King, the Lord. And here’s how you’ll find him: the little nipper is wrapped up in a bunny rug, and lying in a food trough. 

    And before you could say, “Well, I’ll be blowed!” the whole sky was filled with more angels than you could count, all singing away at the top of their lungs (if angels have got lungs, that is): “God is great! God is bonzer-and to everyone on this planet who’s on God’s side: peace and goodwill, and by the way, Happy Christmas.”  (Which rather confused the drovers because they’d never head of Christmas before.)

    Suddenly the whole choir had nipped off in the blink of an eye. The drovers said to each other, We’d better make tracks to Bethlehem and have a squiz at what’s happened-check out this message from God.” 

    So the lot of them shot through like a Toorak tram to Bethlehem-and they found Mary, and Joe and the baby who was, sure enough, wrapped in a bunny rug and lying in a food trough.  When they’d seen this they told every Tom, Dick and Harry about what happened, and everyone who heard the story was blown away by this…

    …some egg-heads from out east turned up in Jerusalem asking everyone: “Where’s this new Prince of the Jews, this Promised One, who’s just been born?  We saw his star out east, and we’ve come to say ‘G’day Your Majesty”. 

    … They … found the baby, with Mary his Mum, and they bowed and scraped and gave him some terrific pressies: gold and frankincense and myrrh (strange pressies for a baby, but better than a hankie or a pair of socks).”

    photo by marvelmuzhko on pixabay.com

     

  • Oh Christmas Tree, O Tannenbaum, how lovely are your branches…

    Oh Christmas Tree, O Tannenbaum, how lovely are your branches…

    Our Christmas tree in the Queensland bush as a child was a spindly, needled tree that was more grey than green. My Dad would venture into the nearest scrub to cut down the tree on Christmas Eve.  Its trunk was placed in a crepe paper covered metal bucket of river rocks and water. We would drape its branches with crepe paper streamers before hanging a few special and colourful glass balls from it.  The most important decoration was the angel that had to be placed on the top of the tree.  

    Today, my tree is artificial and dark green,and lives in a box  during the year.  Our decorations are much more sophisticated and mass produced.  These days our family can afford tinsel and fairy lights and grand baubles.  Most years the tree is setup in early December.  This year I have not even unpacked it. 

    Why do we put up a Christmas tree?  Why did my Dad set ours up on Christmas Eve and not the beginning of December?  He is not around to ask but I suspect it has something to do with his German and Protestant roots and customs.  Some say legend has it that Martin Luther invented the Christmas tree, although there are many pagan and Christian examples of the tree being centrepiece to Christmas celebrations before then.  It was German immigrants who introduced the Christmas tree to England and America in the nineteenth century and of course why we as Australians have associated a tree with Christmas today.

    I confess I have placed more symbolism in the decorations rather than the tree itself. I have associated it with a place to lay the gifts rather than it being a gift itself.  Tradition says the evergreen tree symbolises faithfulness during a time when most trees in the forest during the European winter are without leaf.  And so it is with Christ, whose birth we celebrate at Christmas time which represents God’s faithfulness to mankind. Just as the tree is evergreen, so is God’s love for us. 

    The Christmas Carol “Oh Christmas Tree” is translated from the German song ‘O Tannenbaum’ that is centuries old. There are many versions it seems. Here is one that is said to be a translation that is truer to the original than many others. (Credit to Tradition in Action.)

    O Christmas tree, o Christmas tree
    How steadfast are your needles!
    Green not only in the Summertime,
    But also in Winter when it snows.
    O Christmas tree, o Christmas tree
    How steadfast are your needles! 

    O Christmas tree, o Christmas tree
    You make me very happy!
    How often at Christmastime has
    A tree like you given me great joy!
    O Christmas tree, o Christmas tree,
    You make me very happy! 

    O Christmas tree, o Christmas tree
    Your dress wants to teach me something:
    Your hope and durability
    Always provide comfort and strength.
    O Christmas tree, o Christmas tree,
    That’s what your dress teaches me.

    Will you have at tree this Christmas?  Have you thought about the why?  Perhaps you, like me will look at the tree itself differently this year.  I think I shall go and put mine up. Or should I wait and get an evergreen on Christmas Eve?

    Photo by Manuel Will on Unsplash.com

     

  • Wedding weirdness or justifiable tradition?

    Wedding weirdness or justifiable tradition?

    Have you ever considered why we do certain things when we get married?  Why are the engagement and wedding rings placed on the left hand’s third finger?  Why does a bride wear a veil? Why does she wear something blue?  Whose idea was it to tie cans to the bridal couple’s car? 

    This weekend I had the occasion to consider the answers to these questions while completing a quiz at a bride-to-be’s kitchen tea. Considered I said, as I still really do not know the correct answers. Like many traditions, often the reasoning behind the ritual is no longer recalled. Sometimes, it is no longer applicable. 

    This reminds me of a story of a woman who would cut a joint of meat a certain way in order to roast it in the oven.  One day when questioned about her practice she shrugged and said ‘that’s the way my mother always did it!’  Her mother when questioned said the same.  When Grandma was finally questioned, she explained that her roasting pan was very small and that was the only way she could fit a whole joint into the oven in her pan.  In the meantime, two generations had followed her practice assuming it a tradition of significance. 

    It seems as if many wedding traditions are based on pragmatic reasons-just like grandma’s roast. Others seem to be based on outdated superstition. 

    Take for example the tradition of the groom standing to the right of the bride.  Apparently, this was so he could then tuck her safely into his left-hand side, freeing his right arm to wield a sword to protect her. How many grooms today carry a sword or need to defend off attackers?  What about a left-handed groomsman? 

    I have been to a wedding where tin cans and toilet paper were surreptitiously tied to the groom’s car for a laugh. No one would have thought or believed for one moment that there were any evil spirits that needed to be warded off! 

    Is all of this tradition wedding weirdness; is it comforting folklore or is it just a bit of fun?  What do you think? 

    Mark Twain said “The less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it.” 

    Perhaps that is why so many wedding customs remain.

     

    photo by Morgan McDonald on Unsplash.com 

     

     

  • Tweety’s last tweet.

    Tweety’s last tweet.

    Once upon a time, in a land far across the sea, two little girls gifted my daughter a tiny bird.  The little bird had been caught in the rain-forest near their village and  a piece of grass was carefully tied to its little leg to keep it captive.  My daughter loved this little bird and named it “Tweety”. 

    Tweety loved to eat insects.  While my daughter and her brother sat on their bed doing their home-schooling work, he would hop around the little hut eating spiders and other tiny insects.  Tweety would never encounter the huge cockroaches that roamed about at night poking their feelers out of the cavities in the concrete block-work. Tweety was murdered in his bed that night. 

    The murderer was a huge, hairy bush rat that entered our hut from the roughly hewn timber rafters that held up the corrugated- iron roof.  The rattling of the fishing rods first woke us, announcing that he was coming down to ground level.  We fumbled for our torches and aimed the beam towards the corner of our concrete room.  As soon as the light hit him, he would scamper back up and peek at us from above.  He was relentless. He was determined to carry Tweety away.  Something had to be done. 

    Clad in my pyjamas, I would hold the torch steadily while my husband held his spear gun in readiness.  At the appropriate time the elastic band was released and the barb impaled the rat.  The children were told that Tweety died of a heart attack. They believed this. They were eleven and nine.  The next morning, the same man would bury Tweety in a shallow grave alongside his murderer’s body. 

    This wouldn’t be the first time our family encountered a home invader in a Vanuatu village.  In one guest house, we would set traps to catch the rodents and would sleep with an overhanging mosquito net tucked around our mattress on the floor.  In another place, our sleep was interrupted by the sound of a rat gnawing on soap on our dresser before it scampered around our room that night.

    At no stage, did we fear for our lives. However, our possessions were not safe.  No muesli bar or piece of chocolate was safe from these nocturnal raiders. If we were not careful, the invaders would make a forced entry to steal these items.   While many lived another day, another did fall under the hammer of a trap.  We slept much easier knowing that while we slumbered one less Vanuatu bush rat was terrorising Australian tourists and their possessions.

    “Tweety” 2001 R.I.P.

     

  • Are friendships necessary?

    Are friendships necessary?

    I caught up with a friend this weekend who I have not seen for several years.  She does not follow social media, so our communication has been irregular and mostly by occasional email. It was and is special to spend time together face to face.  It was as my friend said, “…like picking up where we left off last time.” 

    Some friendships are like that.  Separated by distance and time, the friendship endures and when we meet again, it is like we were never apart. 

    C.S Lewis said “Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… it has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which gives value to survival.”  He also said, “…I have no duty to be anyone’s friend and no man has a duty to be mine. “ 

    Perhaps that is why I find friendships so beautiful.  I am free from the expectations of duty and responsibility: I can just be me and I can be.  And like spending time with art and philosophy, my life is enriched as a result of spending time with a friend. Friendship provides the gift of beauty and depth just by its presence. 

    I have noticed something else about friendships.  There are seasons where they are very welcomed and almost necessary.  I wonder if C.S. Lewis had considered the importance of girlfriends? 

    One season of my life where friendships were particularly meaningful were my years at university.  That block of years was a season in between childhood and adulthood, where there was just me and study; and the freedom to explore the bigger questions of life; or not.  These were the years before I picked up the role and the expectations of wife, mother and even daughter.  A season before those responsibilities would eclipse anything as unnecessary as friendships. These friendships have proven to be like my friend I caught up with this weekend. Whenever we get the chance to get together-and that has proven to be quite difficult, it is like we only met together yesterday.   Our friendships have transcended our roles and together we get to be the girls underneath life’s responsibilities. 

    Another season where my girlfriends and their friendships have been life giving has been this one. This season of my life is mid-life; a season where it feels as I have given the best of myself to marriage, raising children, to aging parents and to a would- be career.  I am staring into a space where many of my roles and responsibilities have ended. In the space remaining I have encountered both the plain and pain.  At times, I would say that my girlfriends have been more than necessary. Most certainly they have added colour and depth, just by their presence. 

    The more I reflect on my friendships, I am not sure that I entirely agree with C.S. Lewis. Maybe he did not understand what it means to be a woman and a girlfriend. What about you?  Do you think friendships have little survival value and are like art and philosophy?  Or would you say, they are necessary?    

    Photo by Caroline Hernandez on Unsplash

  • Life is too short to drive boring cars!

    Life is too short to drive boring cars!

    Who said “Life is too short to drive boring cars”?

    No one told me when I hopped in my first bright red convertible that real life does not always deliver what you dream about. Life is indeed short! However, in spite of good intentions you get to drive plenty of boring cars.

    My first real car was a second-hand gold coloured Ford Escort I nicknamed Ernie. I bought Ernie on a student loan for $3,000 in the 1980’s. I qualified for my driver’s license in Ernie.  I drove through flooded rivers (with my nervous Nanna as a passenger) and learned to navigate the traffic of the big smoke in this little car.  Whilst Ernie suffered no penalty from traffic infringements or accidents, we did get into a few scrapes.  There was the embarrassing incident of side swiping a parked car while my workmates looked on from the staff-room…and there was also the matter of the brick mailbox we reversed over the top of!   Good old Ernie though, never missed a beat and would go on to be my younger sister’s first car. I would go onto another.   

    Along came marriage and then came family and there was no room for impractical cars.  Country roads and recreation, along with the children’s paraphernalia called for big four-wheel drive wagons. There was a procession of those; according to budget and season. First came the old two-toned ‘cruiser, which we rattled around Australia in and almost rattled ourselves out of, before it retired. Then there was the near new white one and later, a brand-new blue one- for a season.  

    Sometimes we did not get to choose the car. The time, the place and the promotion of the day would decide for us.  Occasionally though, life offered better than boring cars. 

    Another forty years would pass by before I got to drive-and own another convertible. This time it was a bright blue beetle that was in the right place at the right time.   For a season I enjoyed driving around in a less than boring, shiny blue convertible Beetle. Sadly, it too had to retire when Australia’s harsh climate played havoc with the electrics. Sometimes, practical reality crashes in on your dreams.

    Today, I’ve compromised. I drive a near new SUV that is bright red.   It’s not a convertible but it does have great air-conditioning and comes with new car warranty.  Who gets to define boring anyhow?!

    Life is not finished yet and I can still dream.  Maybe, just maybe one day I will get to drive my very own bright, red convertible again.