The Holidays

Have come to an end. But it sure was a good one.

I don't feel as if I need more holidays, which is a good thing. But I sure do feel as if I want more. Which is also a good thing. Because it means I have not had a boring time.

The holidays started off with a church camp. The first one I've been to in my life. It was held in a camp out at the Mornington Peninsula, somewhere close to the beach though I never saw either sand nor ocean. It was a nice place out there covered by rather rolling brush landscape. At night it would be particularly dark. A sort of pitch blackness I have never known in my life. I mean a room can be pitch dark, but the sheer vastness of the empty blackness at night was alien to me. Anyway, it was an interesting time. I have not spent that much time with a bunch of Christians before. The social groups there function so... differently. I don't know about better, but differently. Often I could see the worldly traits as though straining to come out. When I say worldly I mean the things that I am used to quantifying when observing a particular group, such as sexual attraction, popularity, leadership, attention etc etc. It was there to degrees... but there were different values and stuff working too. How much of it was facade and how much of it was real well I have absolutely no idea. I had rather interesting conversations with several people there. Stories that made me want to cry or inspired me. They weren't your typical 'Christian' stories. Oh my life was booze, drugs and sex till I met the Lord Jesus and then the world was wonderful again. They were real stories. Not that lives of booze, sex and drugs turned around by God aren't real. But there were real true blue first hand stories of hard lives with resolutions that did not happen overnight. For myself odd things began to play in my mind though.

True, I had heard a lot of the stuff lectured on or variants of it. And again like it happens once so often, or actually hasn't happened in a long time actually, everything talked about seemed so pertinent to me I began wondering if it was just that everyone faces these same problems or was there some divine force at work. Difficult to tell really. And there was worship as well, but it didn't strike me like it used to. It used to be easy for worship to get to me and get me emotional. But despite many of the hymns being the type I used to like and know well, nothing happened. A song was a song and if I decided to verbalise then let's hope God was listening cos it wasn't doing much else. Things clicking in my head began to fall into place and I can't seem to explain them to anyone cos one aspect needs a strong Christian background to understand whereas the second aspect requires a rather unattached secular background to get.

Thus I was thrown into religious confusion after camp for many days. Put down to basics I didn't (and still to a good degree don't) know whether I can keep living this Christian life. Well, it's not as though the next day I'm just going to take alcohol, smoke pot, have random sex, listen to Slipknot, wear goth clothes and go do some funky spiritual stuff. But it starts in the heart anyway. I don't have to do any of that. All I have to do is not believe anymore and I'm free. Free to do what I will and whatever I want to do. No law except the law of normal earthly physics to rule my actions. Everything stood at a crux.

After much thinking and talking to many friends I realised it's not possible that I can turn away so easily and that my problems were rooted in very simple things. Like not having a girlfriend and being a healthy twenty year old who wants sex. I also learnt that many many many many people do not understand what God is about or how he works. Or maybe I just got it all wrong and everyone else is right. But I stand here now not knowing which foot to put forward. I haven't been to church for a long time but I feel as though if I did some sort of patience or something would just snap within me. So I am just waiting and learning and watching for now. Spiritually I feel to frail to move anything and I'm scared.

This holiday was spent with many friends. I do love my friends. I realise now that I am actually part of a small clique now. It has been ages since I actually was properly in a clique, not since Junior College and I have forgotten how nice it was to actually have one. I also have realised that this whole Christian thing not being part of the world... Well it's bloody true. Life is so much more comfortable, so much easier even... happier? if I was one of them.

I spent the holidays doing some work (which was good that I have sorted out the things I need to be studying over the next month before the exams) working on my magazine (with 20 pages made I'm feeling pretty confident if I keep at it strong I can be nearly done within a fortnight, at least I hope so) and my comic!

Wow, I've had such a headrush for my comic these two weeks it's fantastic. First there was a reasonable amount of art practice and I started dragging up the old writings from as far back as two years ago (man I've been working on this story for a long time). And all the characters are beginning to really mould and take shape and well... character. Obviously my comic will be a lot about God, life, death and all that mishmash. But growing with that is my fascination for wordplay, riddles and of course the pure art of it itself. It's far from finished though and it's a sheer joy to actually work on it.

But it's back to uni tomorrow. Life will change again :( I don't know. I was really rather happy this holiday period. In fact I don't really remember being this... contented for a long while. Oh well, take what you can get eh?

I hope this year will have a happy ending. I'm tired of sad endings. I know everyone out there says they hate happy la dee da stories cos they're not real and nothing is ever like that. But I say nope, give me a happy ending, I've seen too many sad ones already.

Well that's enough blathering for a night. Adios