“True worship then is worship from the inside out. In reaction to dull, routine, lifeless, boring worship services, many who yearn for a more meaningful, gratifying religious experience, are crying out that we need more emotion, more feeling in our worship to God. I do not necessarily disagree with that assessment, but there is a real danger in trying to produce with external techniques that which must emanate from the heart. Robert Turner was correct when he said: “Often our efforts to “improve” the worship are only efforts to regulate the form, and have little or nothing to do with improving the hearts out of which true worship must come. Some react to the “cold formality” of worship by proposing bizarre emotion-stirring props. What is more “artificial” than lighting effects, “mood” music, or tricky little antiphonal songs that force participation upon some person who could not be moved by the love of God. How is the “hypocrisy of traditional services” helped by providing a better mask — an emotional screen — that can not take the place of genuine worship….Improving the worship is part and parcel of the whole job of turning people to God, getting them to partake of the divine nature. It is not the “service” that needs changing, it is the people that must be changed — to new creatures, truly converted. These will worship God acceptably” (“?You Know What?,” Plain Talk, 9:1:7). To solve the problem of habitual, routine, formalistic, ritualistic, worship with external techniques (gadgets, gimmicks, and games) is to use a Band-Aid when what we really need is open-heart surgery.”t http://www.bible.ca/ef/topical-what-the-bible-says-about-worship.htm

Wow this really sums up how i have been feeling the last few years.

The general message of this chapter was…Is more money worth it when you lose time? How much is your time worth? How much do you need to live on? Is earning more than that going to bring more alue to your life or is the time more valuable – to explore life and self.

If you have say 58 years left in life, which is 508080 hours, do i want to spend that time earning more money than i neeed? To buy more stuff than i need?

Options have been developed as a marketing technique to try and dodge the fact that we have everything already – offering us more options creates in us more wants.

Options give us the idea that there is a perfect choice – with so many options there must be one that suits us exactly, so we lump together all the best possible options. And that renders whatever we do buy, less satisfactory.

It creates a cycle – once we attain the option that we’ve been chasing, we realise we’re still not happy. We become disappointed, we elevate our expectations, and pursue better choices…

We are control freaks. We believe the options we choose are vital to determining the way our lives turn out. The author suggests to embrace futility. Accept that life is pretty much as good as it’s going to get, and it’s worth appreciating. Which i think has some truth in it, obviously considering that he is writing to richer western countries. I think he is suggesting we stop using consumerism as a means to distract or buffer us from the futility of life.

As human we desire to aquire. We want to relate to others and feel part of a community. We like to immitate, especially celebrities. And the author suggests that we believe having the latest whatever, will attract a mate.

Buy sustainable possesssions, look after them so they last longer.
Special offers make you buy more than you need.
Don’t use credit cards, they don’t make you feel the sting of payment.
Plasma TV’s can use four times the energy than regular TVs. Hence why we still have a fat box of a TV! May also have something to do with money…lol.

Dear Prime Minister,

I am writing to express my horror at the sexual slavery, imprisonment, degradation and heinous crimes committed against innocent young Asian women in our country in brothels both in Melbourne and Sydney, as reported by Four Corners Monday October 10 on the ABC.

I am appalled that the Madam of one of these brothels has been issued a licence and has opened yet another brothel despite her activities being known to both federal and state police.

I am deeply shocked that the man behind this horrendous crime, “Kevin”, is still walking free and destroying the lives of innocent young women.

I ask what has happened to our “just” nation, what have we become that we have stooped to this low place, where we fail to impose penalty for these criminal actions – shame on this our so called free country!

Why does our government and police force have no system in place to stop these abominable behaviours. Shame on our so called kept system!!

Why has this great evil been allowed to take root and flourish in our nation?

I am deeply shamed to be called the lucky country. I call on you Julia Gillard as a woman, to make this a top priority, put and end immediately to this great injustice and lead the way internationally making our nation a safe place for all women.

 Awaiting your early response.

 Yours sincerely,

 Courtney.

More stories, research experiments and even hamlet are quoted in this chapter. A similar theme exsists, that our brains are so wired to survive against famine that we must eat all we can, and then some more just in case there’s not enough later. He offered some ways to help eat enough.

Savouring. Being distracted duing a meal makes us more likely to overeat, and we miss out on the full spectrum of tastes.
Dine in smaller places. A busy atmosphere doesn’t help the above, and noise can make us eat quicker.
Routine mealtimes train our brain out of thinking about food all day.
Get more daylight. Especially if you get seasonal affective disorder. During winter our hunger increases and our activity decreases.
The sight and smell of food stimulates our desire to eat, clear up the ktichen.
Try using smaller cutlery, you get smaller protions but your brain is tricked into thinking you’ve eaten more than you have.

Some mannequins in the making

Umbrella found at a vintage shop…
Found the plastic mannequin in the paper! The lady selling them used to be a visual display artist for department stores, what a job!

Some paper flowers i found at the op shop

Gorgeous umbrella from China.

Enough information.
We are being drowned in our own data, we are info-hoarders. John Naish loves numbers… “We are bombarded with 3,500 sales shots a day… 6 trillion business emails were sent in ’06… More new information has been produced in the last 30 years than in the previous 5,000.”
He suggests evolutionary psychology as a cause of our insatiable drive for more information, not to mention food, work and possessions too. Our brains are wired to survive in dire times where there was never enough information, food, etc, so we instinctually gather and stock up more.
That ‘click’ feeling of comprehension, is rewarded by a release of heroin like opioid chemicals in the brain.
As other priorities like food and safety are easier to achieve now, infomania can run wild.
The problem is that too much information causes stress, confusion, addled brains, short attention spans, and a great deal of wasted time. We are so wired to gather information, that we no longer do anything useful with it. Instead of filtering for relevance and quality, we digest a heap of things but only vaguely comprehend them. Then rush to try to make sense of it all…by geting more information. His remedy?

Take a data diet.
What’s the optimum level of information you need to thrive? Anything more can create mindfug. Treat infotainment warily, as habit-forming substances to be consumed only when they offer potential to enhance life.  Treat ads and marketing as toxic, they intend to make you dissatisfied with the life you already have.
I am going to stop channel surfing, buy less books, download less articles and go online only twice a day.

Rediscover Space.
Find new enjoyable productive things to fill in your spare time. Your personal downtime is so precious that marketing companies and multinationals spend billions of pounds every year trying to take it away from you.
Use my time to read more books and draw!

Go for local news.
Our thirst for knowledge can keep us glued to 24 hour global news channels…which is really about our ancient human need to know all about the people immediately around us. Watching constant news has become a replacement for gossiping with our neighbours. Seeing catastrophe makes us fearful of the world outside. Knowing the locals extends our sense of security beyond our front door.

E-tiquette.
Human contact fosters warmth and trust, try to aim for face to face contact rather than email, and email rather than mobile, mobile rather than text. “Delete any email with a red exclamation mark – if the sender is so devoid of social skills that they think they can barge into the queue for your head space just by wielding brightly coloured punctuation, then they have nothing useful to communicate.”
lol

Limit interruption.
It takes about four minutes to recover from an electronic interruption and regain your train of thought. So if you have 30 emails throughout the day…you get the point. By age 75, most of us will have spent 12 solid years watching t.v.

I learned a new word today,
ennui: Listlessness and dissatisfaction resulting from lack of interest; boredom.
That is often what i feel, which i think has led to my infobesity. Checking my emails, facebook, ebay, sufing the web, gathering up interesting sites and blogs i come across. I have folders and subfolders of research articles that will take half my life to read! Yet i still collect them! I do feel overwhelmed by all the information that exists. So now i will try to filter , and to use it more wisely.

I sit here in my comfortable home, feeling bound by insecurities, sometimes wishing for another life. She is bound by chains, unable to leave her room because she birthed a daughter. And daughters are sub-human.

I have freedom. Self expression. Opinion. She is oppressed. She is trodden upon. She is abused.
Because she is a woman.
She bears injustice. She takes the blame. She is the scapegoat, the innocent suffers the punishment….because she is a woman. Because she is a woman she is sub-human.

Where is the humanity? The love? Moral conscience?
How can you let this happen God?
How can I.
Jesus died to set the oppressed free, why are they still suffering, two thousand years later.

Hear their cry, their pain, their torture, have mercy Lord. Reach out to them in their desperation. Be their saviour, bring them justice and freedom. Give to them what is rightfully theirs, that which has been stripped from them. Cry over them with mercy and compassion, help them. Rise up the church in india and make their presence known. Grow the church, pastors, the compassion reps the volunteers, protect them, to allow your work to be done. Allow them to speak for those who are silenced. Reach out through their hands. Fulfill your promise in the cross, bring justice bring freedom. Let love win, let love take over. Take these women and turn them around, unite them, rise them up as equals, as worthy, and give them a place in India. Rebuke this force of evil oppression and reverse it, strengthen the women. Heal them. Teach them and their daughters of their true worth. Show them they belong to the kingdom. Let the voices of the women be heard. No longer squashed. No longer sparrows. No longer unclean. Transform the women of India.