Sunday, August 20, 2006

Spring has sprung...

... or so it feels. Today, for the first time in quite a while I ventured forth from home wearing a pair of cropped jeans and a polo shirt with only a cardigan over the top (yes ma... no coat!!) A beautiful sunny day, and a perfect day for the Melbourne Uni open day (which was probably called something else officially, but that's effectively what it was).

After being very virtuous, by doing the World Vision 40 Hour Famine this weekend (and suffering a crashing headache last night- I suspect as a result of caffeine withdrawal) I ventured out to 'wave the flag' for the good old MCD (Melbourne College of Divinity) to help out for a while on the MCD's display at the Melbourne Uni open day. In the brief time I was there, I had the chance to chat with a number of potential students about the values of studying theology, especially in a fantastically ecumenical place like the United Faculty of Theology (which is one of the affiliated teaching institutes of the MCD).

One conversation was with a girl who asked if it was ok for atheists to study theology. I pointed out to her that one of my fellow students in a class last semester would have called himself a 'secular communist', and whilst that may or may not equate to 'atheist', it meant that you certainly could study theology without necessarily identifying as 'Christian'. She said that she often gets into debates about religion with her friends, and we both agreed that on such occasions, it can be a good thing to argue from a position of knowledge rather than ignorance. Because of the relationship between Melbourne Uni and the MCD,it means that students doing an Arts degree can select up to 4 theology subjects from the MCD as part of their Arts degree, so I suggested that she might want to think about doing a theology subject just to dip her toe in the water and see what she thought.

After my time there, I ran up the campus (after getting slightly lost amongst the ditherati... do you ever have that experience, when you exit a building from a different door, and then wonder where on earth you are? and of course, with my world famous geographical challengedness, it took me a little while to figure out which way was 'up'- ie towards Queen's college- from the back door of the Old Arts building), and eventually got to Queen's chapel in time for choir practice.

This was my second week singing with the Queen's choir, and I am enjoying the style of music, and no-nonsense preparation... and I may even start to get used to reading the harmony line in the hymn book, where the music is so far away from the words of the verses (if you've ever tried to sight-read the music of a hymn and sing the words at the same time, you'll understand what I mean when I talk about going cross-eyed in the process!)

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