I got my marks back today. I am going to blog about them because they are great.

Popular Literature – Distinction

Philosophy, Theories of Human Nature – Distinction

Jewish Society 200BCE- 200CE – HIGH DISTINCTION.

Yay, what a way to finish my degree. I didn’t really like the philosophy subject but I like the mark and I am really happy to have got a HD for the Jewish society subject because I worked real hard on that last assignment and I found it really interesting (it was the Hebrew palaeography one). I am glad the teacher found it interesting too.

I have just spent the last hour or so scrolling through your blogs. I hadn’t been on for awhile so it was nice to catch up. 

I have just finished one of the craziest/busiest weeks of my life and I don’t really feel like typing it all out. It has been difficult, but good. I got to see fruit for some of the work we do. Often we don’t get fruit around here. The tree is beautiful, a resting place with a lot of love but that generally doesn’t mean apples. This week however I got to taste the wonderfulness of someone making a clear break, making a change.  She needed me because I really knew what she was going through, and could sit in that, as we pushed and pushed to find a place for her. My messed up story becomes tangibly useful. I am praying really hard the fruit doesn’t end up compost before it gets its time back in the sun.  Can you all pray for me? I am really tired and this journey is not over yet. And I am crying tears of joy but it is in the midst of pain. Most people don’t get a fairytale. Instead they get what looks like violent video game and there is a way out but it requires fighting the big monster at the end of the level and often the monster is too big. I think I have been hanging around the streets too long, it is warping my perspective. But I love it down here. It makes the gospel look real.

I had the privilege of attending a 3 day interfaith conference this week. It is kind of hard to explain but the Centre for Dialogue at La Trobe University is running a leadership program for young Muslims and as part of that they put on a 3 day conference entitled ”Prospects for Peace in the Middle East” (right up my alley). They got a whole pile of people together from the 3 Abrahamic faith backgrounds to discuss the issues. It was really nice for me to be in a room where the dominant religious group was not my own. A lot of the women were wearing hijab and they all looked so beautiful. My dreads looked more crazy than there hijabs by far. They asked me lots of questions about how to make dreads.

We looked in detail at the Israeli Palestine conflict and Lebanon and Iran and Iraq. (Iran benefitted from America’s war in Iraq as much as America benefitted from WWII). It was a really fascinating 3 days. The lecturers and facilitators were really clever, articulate,  passionate and caring people. I felt smart just listening to them. I guess on a less positive note the issues in the Middle East are so complex especially relating to Israel and at the present time things are as bad there as they have ever been. (It amazes me we are talking about an area with a land mass a quarter of the size of Victoria). However I hold out a lot of hope for the area. There are people on both sides committed to the process of peace and dialogue. I feel honoured to have got to do my own dialoguing about the issues here in Aus with people much more affected by the issues than me. However it was certainly raised, it is one thing to discuss it here in Australia, it is a whole other thing to have to live it.