Last night I was at a Seder dinner. Its passover at the moment (one of the strange years where easter and passover are not at the same time).

This Seder was at a Jewish persons house and was attended my Christians, Muslims and Jews. It was fascinating.

We went through the passover story, which is in all 3 bibles (or sacred texts or whatever you want to call them) and ad some amazing conversations. I cant remember enough to be able to go into detail, the problem with really good conversations is that someone says something and you think ‘thats amazing, I hadnt thought of it like that, I need to think about that more” but then 2 mins later the same thing happens with something else and you lose the first one.

The only one that sticks in my head at the moment is that the Torah explains when Moses sees the burning bush and says he had to turn side on to see more clearly. We were talking about how useful that concept could be in life if we look at disputes or something and actually change our position to see more clearly.

I was also amazed at how similar so much stuff is across the three religions. The compassion, the love of God, the view that you have to stand up for what is right in the world. I apologise now if my spelling of these words are wrong, but for food to be kosher it means that it is also halal. So everyoene could eat the food that was served. The ideas presented in the dinner were great, things about removing all ego.

Well, I dont know what else to say really, but it was really cool. Im keen to participate in more of that kind of thing and learn more. Everyone there was so tolerant of each other, there is the basic understanding that our religions have the same roots – they all come from Abraham. There was respect that we are all people of faith and we are all spiritual people, so hurting or insulting someone was just not an option. It was fantastic.

I was at this other thing last week where the guy lecturing said that he didnt care if people ignored the rest of the bile, as long as they read the gospel. I didnt like it then, but I like it less now. If the bible is a way that we can see, learn and experience something of God, then that applies to the whole bible. And if we are going to understand the new testament properly, we need to understand the old testament too, because that is what is referenced and that is the culture and context that the new testament is set. That is (was) Jesus’ religion.

Since I have been feeling so much better and have had all this extra energy I have been getting quite passionate and excited about things. I was very excited to go to Synod, while I was there I was very passionate about our Fair Trade stall and my speech and proposal about fair trade in the Church.

What I am learning is that to by the type of person who is passionate about things, you also have to be willing to get disappointed, to get mad and upset when things dont work out as planned. I can handle that, I now know that there are going to be things people say and do which upset me or offend me because they are not as excited about something as I am (or because they have to follow a process). That is fine with me.

Now I just have to learn how to respond to those situations when I am upset or offended in a useful way. Causing problems and taking it personally doesnt really help, it can be hard sometimes to see that at the time though.

Since I have been here I have been making a conscious effort to spend more time in prayer /more time with God.

Its working out quite well for me, im starting to feel like there is some direction/point to all this now. Its good.

I have decided that part of my problem is that I was trying to live too many lives at once because I had not made a full decision about the path to take. I was trying to live the corporate live, working full time and travelling for work, looking at buying houses etc. And I was trying to live a full church life too, youth group, church, church council, council of synod, ncyc, etc. And I was trying to fit in some other stuff like going to the gym and the footy and doing oxfam stuff and fair trade stuff.

Its just all too much, especially because I wasnt doing it in a balanced way.

Anyway, the point is that I have been thinking over and over about what to do with my life. I wrote a post about this the other day. I was praying and I came to the conclusion that none of it matters anyway. I want to travel, I want to learn languages, I want to earn money and have cool things, none of that matters. I ended up at a kind of trade off, I decided the things that I actually really want for my life and scrap the rest.

What is comes down to is that I want to be happy, not all the time but at least for parts of my life. I want a real relationship at some point. I want to be healthy, this wasnt a ‘make me healthy’ type of prayer it was more like a ‘im going to keep trying to be healthy anyway because I cant do anything useful while I am sick all the time’.

So now I dont care what God wants me to do, I can do it. I dont have these other ideas of what I should do any more. I was a bit worried that this mindset would last for 24 hours and then id be looking up where else I can go snowboarding, but its been a few days and I still feel really good about it. I have even arranged to go to the National Youth Worker Inservice in a couple of weeks on the Sunshine Coast.

The plan is to just carry on living, doing what I feel God wants me to and assume that along the way I will find happiness and love. I know that this should scare me, but Im just feeling quite relaxed about it all.

OK, so the idea is to spend some time focussing on being healthy and doing nothing.

Im thinking that there is no way that I can get away from this anxiety and depression stuff if I dont deliberately do something about it. So I am going to go to New Zealand and have some fun get a casual job and work on getting fit and eating well. Im not setting a time frame on that, but I dont think I will stay for the summer too. After that I am thinking that I will spend some time ‘on retreat’, living somewhere learning to have no specific goals or things that need my immediate attention. Learning to just ‘be’

It has taken me a little while to convince myself that this is not a waste of my time. I think its going to be frustrating, especially the second part, but worth it. Maybe this will help me be less scattered and more able to be happy.

I have always struggled with the Jesus/Trinity thing. I can cope with God and Spirit, but I have never really got into the Jesus stuff.

That does not mean that I think Jesus was not real, or the resurrection stuff. I just mean I dont know where that leaves us now. 2000 years on, people talk about having Jesus in their lives and ‘What would Jesus do?”
Thats where I get confused. Im happy with having God in my life, and I guess that I see the way I experience God through the Spirit. So where is Jesus?

I think that there will be heaps more thinking to do about this, but for now Im going with Jesus is a way that people talk about God so that they can feel like they have some understanding. Talking about Jesus talks about God in person form and we are all much more comfortable talking about it like that. We can digest it.

My question is, is this personification of God still helpful for todays society? Or are we pushing people away by using terminology like “Experience God through Jesus” or any of those type of words?

Im reading a book at the moment by Peter Rollins, its called “How (not) to speak of God”

Its amazing, I really encourage people to have a look at it.

I started writing down sentences that struck me, or that I wanted to think about more. I stopped doing that because it was slowing down my reading too much as every second sentence is brilliant.

Anyway, here are some bits from it. (please keep in mind that I have pulled these completely out of context)

“The argument is made that naming God is never really naming God but only our understanding of God.” – page 2

“Hence revelation ought not to be thought of either as that which makes God known or as that which leaves God unknown, but rather as the overpowering light that renders God as unknown.” – page 17

“…prays, ‘God rid me of God’, a prayer that acknowledges how the God we are in relationship with is bigger, better and different than our understanding of that God” – page 19

“…the relationship we have with God cannot be reduced to our understanding of that relationship.” – page 20

“Through our words and actions we seek to be the site of revelation through which people encounter the life-giving Word of God.” – P21

There are so many more good bits.