Seven-book-cover challenge

Quite a number of weeks ago there were different challenges flying around social media, when some people had a lot of time to spare and time to reflect. One of them was seven-day book covers, and alas I got "tagged". However, typically, I wasn't keen on doing it the same way as everyone else, "no explanation" is really very boring. It's easy for the person posting, but not that interesting for those who see it, who (if they are like me) want to know why the person has picked those books. 

The challenge was to post the covers of seven books I love. Quite a challenge for someone who reads as much as I do. I'm reading about two books a week at the moment, and most of those are books that have more than 300 pages. 

So, here are eight! With short explanations of why I love/loved them. I can't say categorically that these are the books I love the most, but they are loved. For some of them they represent a genre or a series of books that I love. You'll get the picture. This is largely a chronological list.

Both this and the next "Billabong" were favourites of my childhood that I've read to my kids. They are also parts of a series of books.

The Muddle Headed Wombat is a fabulous book, probably if it was published today it would be called a "Chapter book". There are three main characters: Wombat, Mouse, and Tabby. Together they have fabulous, hilarious adventures. I love the language. All three characters have interesting character flaws and Wombat in particular has a fun way of speaking.

The Billabong series is an enduring favourite of my childhood. Quite possibly the books that I've read most number of times. My maternal grandparents bought the most of the series and gave them to me bit by bit over several years: birthdays and Christmases. I looked forward to the next instalment each time and also re-read the whole series from the beginning each time. My grandparents have now long passed away and I treasure these books as many of them have the spidery writing of my grandmother on the first page.

It's a story of the Linton family, who live on a property in Victoria the early 1900s. The main characters are teenagers at the start, Jim and Norah, their dad (mum had died), and Wally, Jim's friend from boarding school in Melbourne. The books follow the family through the first World War (when they go to England). I love historical fiction and this really gives you a sense of what it might have been like to live in rural Australia back then. I grew to love the characters and the books still make me cry because not only do I love the characters, in most of the books at least one of them is on the point of dying, but there is plenty of hilarity also. Wally is a lighthearted chap, and the three have a lot of fun. There are very few fiction books that I will re-read, but these I will.

As a 20 year old I went on my first overseas trip. A mission trip to Indonesia. It was a study tour, actually, we weren't there to do anything except learn. It was a lot of hard work, but we did learn a lot: both book learning and practical learning. We learnt about some of the practical challenges of missionary work (eg. sickness, diet, language). We saw different religions and talked to missionaries about what they did. We saw various churches and ministries. We also had to read and do presentations. We were given responsibilities for the team. All of these were important parts of the tour and I learnt so much about myself, about mission work, and about God.

Second-Mile People was the book I was assigned to read and do a report on. It was very challenging. I'm short on details (that was more than 25 years ago). But the book challenged my thinking about living a comfortable life, about what I would do for God if he called me to mission. Reading that at a time when I wasn't particularly comfortable was very challenging. That trip and this book were key steps on my journey to becoming a missionary. Isobel Kuhn is not a modern writer, but she's worth seeking out.

This book is also one of a series. I discovered this Australian author when I heard her interviewed on the radio on one of my long car journeys in my early 20s. I've loved her ever since. This series is historical fiction of the Roman Emperor, around Julius Caesar's time, an era I enjoyed in my yr 11 and 12 years studying Ancient History. The series is challenging because it is stuffed full with details and many characters, but thoroughly interesting. 

The author is amazing, although sometimes a bit too crude for my taste. I've got a lot of her books. They aren't all historical fiction, though I do love her Morgan's Run, which is historical fiction, a saga about a man who was transported to Australia for a very small crime. 

So this book represents that genre, one that I love. Not all authors do it well, but when they do, I find it a fascinating way to learn about history. At present David and I are watching The Crown, a TV series about Queen Elizabeth II and really enjoying it.

Now for something very different. I got married at 24, became a mother, then left for Japan before I turned 28. Our second child was born before I turned 30, while I was still supposed to be studying Japanese full-time. It was a crazy time of life. While I kept reading—unless I'm especially exhausted I find it very difficult to shut my brain off long enough to fall asleep, reading is my secret weapon—I can't remember much of what I read in that period. 

However, parenting our challenging boys on our own in Japan drove me eventually to this book (after we had made two more international moves, had a third boy, and moved to Tokyo where I knew almost no one). It helped me with things like relabelling "stubbornness" as "determination" and many other things. There are very few parenting books that I've found helpful (to the point where I stopped reading them at all) but this was a book I kept going back to over the years when my boys were young.

This book is another Australian author. It's in the missionary autobiographical category. I read it early in my writing journey and found it such an encouragement to find another Aussie woman/missionary with a similar background to me (allied health), who also had three boys and was a writer! I love biographies, honest autobiographies by female missionaries is a particular soft spot.

This book is one that I've read in the last few years. I keep coming back to it. The author writes well and honestly about the key problem that underlies all our perceived problems: that we don't have an adequate sense of awe for our Creator. It's a profound book written in a very digestible format. Definitely worth getting your hands on!

And I couldn't end this journey of books I love without including one from another of my favourite categories. In fact I'd say in fiction it would be my most favourite: mystery/thriller/crime. I live in a family of fantasy/sci fi lovers, but not me. I read books like Memory Man as often as I can! And David Baldacci is one of my favourite authors in the genre.

I also read a lot in my job as an editor. So I'm find it increasingly difficult to read poorly edited or written books. I simply don't have the patience for that. There are so many good books out there that the half-baked ones, the less-than-honest, or ones that beat around the bush are ones are not worth my time. Also, because I read a lot for work, my recreational reading veers strongly towards books I can relax with. I struggle with reading challenging non-fiction books that aren't story-based, though I know there is still much to learn from many of them!

July 2020 camping trip

Last week we went camping for three nights, four days. Our usual camping trips are only two nights, but three nights gives you a whole extra day for your efforts. We were tired, so it was a good choice.

We went back to the same campsite we used in March. Back then the river we camped next to was inviting, the water was flowing strongly, but clear and sparkling. You could see the rocks under the surface. If the weather had been warmer, we'd have waded in to enjoy it. In July, the middle of the rainy season, even though the weather was warmer, the river did not invite us to wade in. It was an unattractive grey, very similar to the rocks it was barrelling past. I wouldn't call it "enraged" but it certainly was in a great hurry and would not be forgiving if you accidentally fell in. The rocks covered by its swirling, insistent pace were completely invisible.

However, it was still a compelling presence. We spent quite a lot of time down there. The boys threw a lot of rocks into the swirling waters. I sat and looked at it, contemplating the strength of the huge rocks that sat strongly in place while the waters persistently pushed over and around them. At various times, members of our party scrambled across rocks as far as we could down the river. On Tuesday morning we took a path a bit above the river that was easier than rock scrambling and we found a couple of waterfalls and caves downstream.

The campsite itself was also different, testifying to the season change that had gone on in our absence. We spent much of March to June inside our own houses, trying to complete the work we were responsible for and trying not to long to get out and see Tokyo’s burgeoning spring. Despite the fact that we kept busy, there was a lot of same-ness. There were no special events, no need to dress up or pack a bag. 

Outside, the seasons charged through early spring to late spring and early summer. We're now in mid-summer and the campsite proved that conclusively. The campsite that had been full of leaf-less trees was now alive with trees densely populated with vibrant green leaves. It was good last week to be reminded of how much time had passed. And also be grounded in the knowledge that though our lives have been a bit topsy-turvy of late, the earth has continued along it's usual course of seasons.

The make-up of our camping group was different also. We had three extra teenage friends along for the trip. The combination of personalities made it a fun camp. The kids made a lot of their own fun. They had pretty much the whole campsite to do it in too, as we were almost the only campers there. There’s change in the air in our family. In the past we’ve done “family camping”, but we’re in a period of change into “camping with friends”. The last time we camped with our eldest son was summer 2017, that was also the last time we camped with just the five of us. The makeup of our camping trips is changing, just like our daily lives today look different to what they did, even five years ago. For the first time we experienced having our own tent, with no kids in with us! Very nice indeed.

I was apprehensive last weekend as I looked at the weather forecast. This time last year we hit a very wet weekend while attempting to camp. Thankfully, that weekend, we were based next to a cabin we had access to and the weather was so bad we spent most of the weekend inside. This time we didn't have that cabin as a backup, so I was desperately hoping that the weather wouldn't be as bad as they were suggesting. Thankfully the forecast proved to be too pessimistic and we had quite a lot of dry patches at convenient times. Thankfully we had camping companions who weren’t nervous nellies and were up for the challenge of four days of varying weather conditions.

We packed the car in rain on Monday morning and welcomed two missionary kids who came across the city to join us in the hopes of having some fun. Their parents are with our mission and our kids had met up with them only a handful of times in the past at conferences. So not really friends, more like potential friends. But they hit it off well with everyone, so I’m glad we invited them. Then we headed off into the mountains west of Tokyo, unsure of what we were getting into.

We’ve got experience in putting up tents in the rain. It’s tricky, because most modern tents have netting roofs and then that is covered by the fly. So we put up the large tarp we call the “annex” a.k.a. Mess tent and then used that as shelter to get the tents erected, then carried them to their final destination. It worked well. We got a bit wet, but inside the tents remained dry.

The rain eased up then and before dinner we then trekked down to the river to check it out. The rest of the evening was pretty standard. We ate. The kids washed and dried! The kids ran around getting rid of more energy. We all went to bed. Camping is great for getting your circadian rhythm into a better place, if you’ve been becoming nocturnal, like some teenagers tend to do during holiday times.

It rained a bit overnight, but by the morning was just overcast. So, after a rather large breakfast of campfire-cooked pancakes, we decided to make hay while the sun (sort of) shone. We went on a short hike down the river where there were a couple of caves, and waterfalls. It wasn’t long on distance, but my phone said I walked up 41 flights of steps! Japanese mountains aren’t gently sloped. The scenery was amazing. So much green, so much moss, and round every bend, gorgeous views of the river, waterfalls, and more green!

In the afternoon some of our group drove to a local dam. They brought back some amazing photos and tales of shaky foot bridges and innumerable “rock throwing contests”. We made Japanese stir fried pork and noodles followed by our traditional chocolate and marshmallow banana boats.

Wednesday morning dawned wet, we thought it might rain all day, and had begun to make alterations to our setup to give us extra, dry living area, when the rain dried up. I’m so thankful for so many non-rainy hours. David took our two MK friends to the train as they had another engagement to get to, and while he was in town he put our wet towels through a dryer. It wasn’t necessarily bucketing down on us, but things weren’t drying out. I stayed home and read a book. 

After lunch five people went to a second local dam. I stayed “home” and took the rest of the mini retreat down to the river to ponder. After an hour of sitting next to the rushing river on hard rocks, I needed to take a break. I never have done well sitting still for long periods on my own (without a book to read). But it was a good hour!

For dinner we had campfire pizzas (like a pizza pocket: made on damper dough, a bit like scone or US biscuit and folded over the top) followed by a US “dump cake”, which was tinned cherries covered by cake mix and lemonade and cooked over the fire. It was yummy! We even got some pretty decent discussion going around the fire about books people were reading. My suggestion of a game of “talk for 60 seconds about a designated topic without pausing or using filler words” never really took off, though a couple of the young people had a good go at it.

Thursday morning we woke up to rain again, but not too bad and it cleared up during our packing up, so though the tents and tarps were fairly wet, they weren’t dripping. We headed back to Tokyo before lunch, stopping at a convenience store part-way home for sustenance.  

Three nights felt about right. I asked David this morning if he was feeling more relaxed and he said yes. Camping was a great way to kick off a “holiday month”. As I’ve noted before, you get so focused on the “now” of shelter and food, that camping has the effect of blocking out the daily worries that you find hard to cast off from your job.

It wasn’t easy to get back to work the next day, but not impossible. I’m working this coming week, but have two weeks off from next weekend to look forward to. After the challenge of having almost all our plans in March, April, May, and June cancelled, actually having plans that we can look forward to is an even greater delight.

Song writing on a retreat

It's time...I've been wanting to write this blog post for over a week now. First it needed to percolate, but then I needed the right kind of free time to write it (e.g. not just before I was about to have a meeting, or at a time when a teenager was talking compulsively about his latest online discovery...)

Last week I was able to take part of the morning to ride to my favourite park. Instead of lolling around relaxing this time, though, I was there with a purpose: to do a portion of a spiritual retreat. I mentioned it last time I wrote, it's basically a series of three devotionals and reflections based on Isaiah 40 that two colleagues wrote and OMF Japan strongly suggested we take the time to use for a one-day retreat in the next month.

The focus was on God's greatness. There was some content to read, along with the Bible passage, but I guess what made it "retreat-like" was the list of possible activities to help with the reflection. More than just an intellectual or theological Bible study, it was a time to "sit with" the truths of Scripture, on my own.

I don't know when retreats really came onto the mainstream religious scene. They certainly weren't a part of my growing up years in the church. We had "quiet times" and "camps" (church, youth group, Scripture Union, women's gatherings, and missions weekends). But not retreats. And then I left Australia for 20 years! Maybe the closest I came to a retreat as a younger person was during a quiet time at a camp or, interestingly, a writer's workshop I attended as a school student, when we were let loose in the bush to write whatever came to mind. The latter was not a Christian event at all. So let’s just say it's taken me a while to get up to speed on these.

Last year in May I went to a spiritual retreat for missionaries over four days. It was both amazing and overwhelming. I've just taken a peak at some of the things I wrote down at the end of that retreat and am a bit surprised that it was the origin of some of the changes I've made in the last 12 months!

In any case, I wasn't sure how I wanted to work this idea of taking a retreat into the next month. As an extrovert, it hasn't been easy to be cooped up with the same three guys for the last few months. But I am actually an ambivert, meaning I need solitude as well as other people, in good balance. So, stuck at home with the rest of my family, I was really getting neither solitude nor recharging with others (not that my family aren't "people" but I have way too many words in me for them to cope with, so fresh people were needed). I don't think I realised it was so bad at the time, but recently, after spending time with other women, I've come home so energised that I realised how much I have missed being recharged by spending time with people. 

So the idea of spending another day on my own doing a retreat wasn't so attractive. But last week when some spare time appeared on my workday schedule (yep, it sometimes happens!) I decided to give it a go. Not just skiving off from work, but doing something that my organisation had asked me to do.

I was pleasantly surprised. Though I only had about an hour and a half, it was sufficient time to reflect on God's greatness. Actually, I find it really overwhelming to focus too much longer on that. I should probably practice it more often  and perhaps I’d get better at it! Maybe it's my tendency towards ADHD or a need to interact with others, or maybe it's just that God is too overwhelming to think about for too long!

Some of the activities that were suggested were:

• go to a park and walk around, considering what God must be like if he'd made all this.
• get out and see stars, if you can
• some questions to answer, like "What are the answers to the questions in verses 13 and 14 of Isaiah 40?"
• create a confession of faith based on Isaiah 40

That first one I often do as part of life, seeking out nature and enjoying God’s creation, though again, maybe not dwelling there as long as I could? I was also hoping that the camping trip we have planned from Monday would provide the “stars” option, but it’s looking like it could be a wet week, so there might not be so many stars.

But the one that intrigued me the most was the idea of writing a new verse to the modern hymn: "How Great is our God" by Chris Tomlin. I've never written lyrics and rarely write poetry. But I decided to give this a go. And it was an interesting experience. Turning thoughts from Isaiah 40 into verses that fit with music that I knew was an intriguing exercise for a writer of non-fiction prose. 

It was a different way to actively reflect on Scripture. I wrote down various ideas that came out of the passage and fooled around with ideas and sounds. I was particularly struck by the idea that God holds us close to his heart, like mothers hold their babies—an amazing idea when you’re considering God’s greatness and all he’s done. Isaiah 40 really is an amazing chapter to read and ponder.

I was pretty chuffed when I managed to come up with 2 ½ verses before I had to return home, but I’ve finished that third verse just now. 

Here’s what I wrote:

His strength, it has no end

Never needs to sleep.

Let’s worship at his feet,

Worship at his feet.

He holds us closely in,

We quiver in his arms,

And listen to his heart,

Listen to his heart.

He calls the stars by name,

And keeps them in his sight.

Let’s lift our eyes to him,

Lift our eyes to him.

How can we compare?

He has no equal here.

Let’s put our hope in him,

Put our hope in him.

The Word of God still stands,

Never ever ends.

He rules with mighty arm,

Rules with mighty arm.

But gently does he lead

Leads the weak and tired

Let us call on him

Let’s call his mighty name

(For reference, the original lyrics are here)

I don’t think I’ll be leaving my day job any time soon, but even if there isn’t much merit in my song writing, it was good for my heart to do this exercise. I’m planning on taking the other two parts of the retreat material camping this week and hopefully I’ll get a chance to sit on my own and reflect on them too. Their topics are Needy People, and a Sufficient Shepherd. We’ll see what surprising things come out of that time!