TheGeoffRe(y)port

There are few things more tiresome than the blogger who apologises for a lack of posts, so I will refrain from falling into that trap.

In some ways I am sure that the decrease in blogging is just a symptom of trying to keep my head above water in a new profession, and in a new part of the city. But at the same time, I do feel that in some ways my theological musings have not made it quite to the www due to the fact that my theology is starting to become more practical. It’s hard to get all worked up about theological distinctions when you’re desperately wondering what it is you can do to improve the lot of a bunch of kids who in many cases seem to have limited themselves to exactly what they can see around them. So in many ways, while a lot of my “inputs” are theoretical: I’m still reading plenty, still listening to the occasional podcast and still thinking critically about the sermons I hear; my “output” has tended to be focused on “what does that change about what I’m doing?”. Which is a very rose-coloured way of looking at the world, but the glass has to be half full sometimes doesn’t it?

In other aspects of life – Soul Survivor has come and been. This was the first year I’ve been involved at the “steering group” level, which has been both an exciting thing and an exhausting one. The festival takes a lot of hands to put on – and just keeping track of who’s doing what is a huge job. But in the midst of that, I guess a big part of the struggle can be working out exactly how and when (and why) to allow yourself to participate and be “fed” (bah – what a horrible term) at the same time as being on top of as much as you can.

Teaching has been one of the best decisions I’ve made in life. It frustrates me, it wears me out, and it has me desperately wanting to get better – and I wouldn’t give it up for anything. That sense that deep down I’m genuinely participating in something I believe in, and (hopefully) making a difference in the lives of young people is not a difficult choice to believe in. And it fits with me, it fits with who I am. We had the school athletics day yesterday, and I think the best part for me was just kicking the footy for a little bit with some of my year 10s. There are days, but it’s an amazing thing to be contributing to a “big picture” that I really believe in.

And “church life” is starting to feel settled too now. We’re slowly but surely becoming a part of the Missio Dei community in Hurstbridge, and that’s quickly feeling like home (though I must hasten to mention that we don’t “go” there ). The missio crew are an amazing bunch of people – everyone I speak to knows it as “Steve Said’s church” but that moniker is deeply underselling the contribution of a super group of comrades. Fun times.

I promise the next post will be about something other than the inside of my navel – but til then I hope this justifies the blog’s presence on the interweb tubes.

So I realised that despite still getting regular visits, this blog has been remarkably dead for the last however long (last post on Jan 14 is a joke!). Must admit that at the moment life has been taking precedence, and with a tonne of my head-space being taken up with ruminations about teaching and a heap of my time being taken up with actually teaching: the report has been on the backburner. No apologies really, just some reality.

With that in mind, I figured I at least owed a bit of an update with respect to where life is at. We’ve just been away at a Soul Survivor team retreat (tarnished only by the website going down while we were unable to do anything) which was a great time to get to know a heap of the new team members, as well as to refresh spiritually. We really are blessed in Soul Survivor to have such an amazingly talented and committed crew on team.

Teaching is going well – though it has been a roller-coaster. Any available blogging effort has gone to my teacher blog: Son of a Teacher Man. Does certainly feel like I’ve found the place I am meant to be – the classroom must be it for the moment. Ran into some students at the shopping centre on Sunday, which was a weird experience.

The biggest struggle in the past few months has been that it’s crappy for Bec to be looking for work. Nobody likes looking for work, and it’s made the isolation of having moved house a lot tougher for her particularly. But there’s light – Bec’s got a trial doing some web stuff for a stationery crew starting tomorrow so lets hope it all goes well (both for her liking it and them liking her) and maybe that might be the end of the dramas. Who knows.

Regardless – there’s the update.