Some Of My Story.

It's been...a while. I really haven't been good at writing anything on here for some time now. But over the past little bit I've realised that I've got a fair few new people in my life now who don't really know my story. So I thought I might have a go at summing it up here. 

Obviously, this won't cover everything. I'm not really talking about most of my life really before COVID except as background. Also a lot of this I did as a Fringe show, with my own songs! So if you'd prefer that format (though it will be a bit different, it's a few years old now) here's the link.

I grew up in a Christian family. Both parents Christian and from Christian families as well. Went to church every week, went to a Christian high school, had some jobs in prominent Australian Christian organisations. Even went to Bible college for a year (it was this sort of young adults leadership/spiritual growth/Bible college course with just a small group), and ended up working leading the music at a church (as it happened, just down the road from the high school I'd been at). I was down the rabbit hole pretty deep, in many respects. 

At the same time, though, I was still quite left-leaning. I'd grown up in a church that had women leading up the front, I was pro-choice, rather anti-capitalist, thought that guns and war were terrible ideas, and tended to follow science and history a fair bit. But also - I still thought that I was straight, monogamous, and a cisgender man. Though I didn't know the word cisgender at the time 😂 That was all about to change, though. 

Perhaps strangely, the way that it changed was getting married. Yes, for those of you that didn't know, once upon a time I was married. You see, I knew I wanted romantic relationship, I was very much a romantic. And the system and context that I grew up in said that the only okay way to do that was with heterosexual monogamous marriage; so that's what I pursued. With a fair few bumps and wrong turns along the way (thanks autism), but we eventually got there in the end. I ended up getting married early in the year of 2020. 

Something else happened that year! 😅 We managed to get our honeymoon in before lockdown happened, but then all of a sudden we had a lot of time to ourselves. I don't know about you, but for me, that led to a lot of introspection. And I'm already a fairly introspective person by nature.

You see, at some point a while before this, I'd had this thought of, "if I'd grown up in a different family that wasn't Christian, I'd probably be a trans woman at this point." And this was quite a common thought I had, that I didn't really think much about - I kinda just accepted it as a fact, thought there's nothing much I can do with that, and put it on the shelf for another time. (To provide a little context, part of the reason that was a thought I was having was because I really didn't associate with a lot of things considered traditionally masculine, and often tried to actively move away from those.) But then, come lockdown, and all that introspective time - my brain thought it was a great time to bring that thought off the shelf again and have a closer look at it. And that was the start of rather a lot happening. 

Because you see, that was kinda like opening the lid to Pandora's box. As soon as I started looking at my sexuality and gender more closely, all my preconceived notions basically fell apart. And after a bit of Googling, I relatively quickly figured out that I was non-binary, pansexual, and polyamorous. ....as you can imagine, that was a lot for me to take in all at once. It also wasn't as surprising as perhaps it should have been. (Of course there were signs. I was just blinkered.)

But this then posed rather a few problems. The first one was just theological - everything I'd believed up to this point said that this wasn't really okay. And so I did some more digging, and some more research. After a bit of time, I'd basically resolved those qualms - though also more of my preconceived notions around religion and spirituality were being rocked, and deconstruction was kinda happening all at once now. 

The next problems were, I was still married. And working at a church. So this is where I had a choice. I could try to ignore what I'd learned, and just keep living life how I was. I was in a good relationship, I had a job I enjoyed - and even though the church I was at had a lot of people with different views to me, there were still a lot of people there that I cared about and enjoyed spending time with. And I tried to make that work for a little while. I told my wife at the time about the things that I'd learned about myself, talked through it all. She accepted me for who I was, but also affirmed that we'd committed to a monogamous relationship, and that's not something she was comfortable with sacrificing (which was understandable).

So I tried to accept that, for a time, and live mostly how I had been. I'd started connecting with some queer communities online and talking with people there, but I wasn't talking about it with other people I knew personally. After a couple of months like this - I knew I couldn't keep going this way. It felt like living a lie. It felt like I wasn't able to be truly myself. But I also knew that if I did take that step, it would mean losing a lot - my marriage, my job at the church (thankfully I did have another job, but still), many friends, and possibly family as well. Was that worth it?

To me, it was. And so started a rollercoaster of my life for the next few months.

First, was another conversation with my wife at the time. Understandably, she was rather upset, and didn't want to separate. But also wasn't willing to compromise on her own beliefs (and I wasn't asking her to). So I gave her some time. It ended up being a few more months before we separated. Before it happened, I started slowly talking to each of my immediate family about what was happening, and then to my pastor at the time. The conversations were difficult, though not all as hard as they might have been. And then I moved out, and away.

It wasn't too long after that when I came out online, publicly. While there were certainly plenty that were shocked or concerned, there were also many that were encouraging, or that were really happy that I'd come out. I started to have people come out of the weeds that I hadn't talked to in ages, and it turned out they were queer as well! I just hadn't known. And in the years since it's been wild how many friends I've seen come out or transition, often people that I'd been very close to before. What do they say about birds of a feather? 

I started living more authentically as myself, but a lot of things took me some time to figure out. I found an affirming church fairly quickly, and then another one not too long after that which felt more at home to me. I started wearing more skirts and dresses, and after a time growing out my hair. I started trying they/them pronouns, and more recently both they/them and she/her. I tried using a gender-neutral version of my old name for a while, before finding my first name, and then the full name I use now. I found a lot more queer friends and communities to connect with, both online and in person. I felt more....me.

That doesn't mean there hasn't been issues. The road with my family has been bumpy, but they're learning, and trying to be better. I ended up finishing up with that church I was at, partly because of my own deconstruction journey, but partly because of how the church changed as well. I've dealt with more depression and burnout over the past few years than I think I have in the rest of my life. And being a transfemme person that still has a flat chest and stubble a lot of the time, I get misgendered a lot. But has it been worth it? Hell yes. And I will take living authentically every time, even when the cost is high. 

This isn't the end of my story, and neither is it all of my story. But hopefully, having this part of it here like this can be helpful for people to understand me better. And also just as a reminder to myself now and then, of how far I've come. It's been quite the journey. And if you've been a part of helping me get here - thank you. You're part of the reason that I stick around.

Building Games With Story.

As I've written about before once or twice, I'm working on a board game called Septimus. I've now actually done all of the printing, and have all the parts - though I could probably use some more dice. I can get dice easily enough, though. That's not too hard.

I just spent way too long looking up 100 packs of d6s. *sighs* Actually can't seem to find an easy way to get them in bulk, at least not in different colours. I'll keep hunting around, though.

Anyway. That's not what I wanted to talk about. What I wanted to talk about was the difficulty of building games with the story at the centre, which is what I'm trying to do with Septimus. And also, solving multiple problems with one solution.

What I mean is this. A lot of games have some sort of story to them. But most of the time, it's somewhat tenuously linked to how it works mechanically. Choices are always made in favour of making the game work, rather than making the story work. Because the game is more important!

And it is, in a sense. But with this game, I wanted to develop it in such a way that all of the mechanics, as much as possible, made sense from the perspective of story. They should also have a purpose mechanically, of course. But they should make sense within the world that I'm building.

I'll give you the example that I've just been struggling with. So this whole game happens within a giant underground maze/dungeon type thing. With lots of rooms that you go through, and each room has an encounter that you have to face, to both get closer to the middle of the maze, but also to get skill boosts and items. Now, this is all set within the Middle Ages - at about the time when black powder was happening, because that's what one septimus (clan/faction) is focussed around (they were pretty much going to be the wall removers, but then I've taken out walls from the game, because they weren't working; so they're now much more along the actual flavour of Red in MTG). There's no magic. And so the idea was, that when an encounter is revealed, it stays there for the rest of the game. Which makes sense, story-wise. Rooms don't really shift around and move too much, particularly not without magic, or some serious modern-day tech, and especially not underground.

And I created these Encounter Markers to help that - to show which space on the board an Encounter was tied to. They're rather fidgety to sort through, but they're helpful.

The thing is, though, the way that the game plays out, even if you have less players, you're revealing most of the encounters on the board. There are seventy spaces. So probably around sixty cards, let's say, each 8.89cm x 8.89cm. That adds up really quickly, and your playing area grows and grows. If you're playing on a table, that doesn't really work too well. If you're playing on the floor, it doesn't matter so much, but it's still awkward. But I can't really make the cards any smaller - I need that room for all the rules text, the numbers, title, and it's nice to have some flavour text and art as well. (I don't have art at the moment - just a space for it.)

But I realised that this was a problem, and going to be more of a problem the more players you had. It's supposed to work with up to seven players, being optimal at probably four or five. So yeah, there wasn't going to be enough room.

As such, I introduced a new mechanic. The shuffle.

"At any time during a turn — except when an Encounter is being drawn or faced — any player may declare a Shuffle. When this is done, all visible Encounters are shuffled back into their respective decks, and the Encounter Markers put back, except for ones that Heroes are standing on. All other spaces now revert to being Unknown, and are drawn again as normal. If you draw an Encounter that you have already defeated, follow the rules further down. A Shuffle may occur a maximum of once per round; also, the same player may not declare a Shuffle twice in a row."

Unknown spaces, fairly obviously, are spaces where you don't know what's there. If you draw an Encounter that you've defeated, you get a free movement to another space, or can just end your turn if you so choose. A round is when all players have had one turn. I decided to leave in the Encounters that players are on at the time - because that makes sense from a story perspective. All these rooms are shifting and changing around you, but your room doesn't change. It might move to a new location, or something - but that would be complicated to do. I also could have done it that rather than being shuffled back into the deck, they were just shuffled into themselves, and then immediately drawn again until they are redistributed around the board. But that both takes up too much time, and completely misses the point of what I'm trying to achieve with this mechanic.

The idea is that with this, you will have less cards out at any one time. If the encounters that are out at the moment seem too difficult for you, you could declare a shuffle, hoping to get some easier ones. If you think that someone else is just having a super-easy run of it, you could declare a shuffle, hoping to make it trickier for them. But it's going to affect everyone, of course.

Now, there are a couple of things that don't really make sense here, story-wise. I've already mentioned that in that time, rooms really aren't going to be able to move. But hey - the Ennius are master builders, love mechanical things, and I've already got lots of other rooms that I can't explain from a Middle Ages standpoint - particularly not in just a 10m by 10m space or so! So I'm sliding over that a little, so that it will work better as you play.

It also doesn't make sense that one Hero would be able to know what's happening with another one. They can't really have tracking devices or anything, monitoring cameras. A map with little coloured dots showing the other Heroes. Now, again, I might be able to come up with a way for each player to mark their route in secret, perhaps only revealing it when they go to a Junction Space, or something similar. But that's really, really annoying to make work for multiple people at the same time. One person, that's okay. Multiple people? Yeah, no. So I accept that as something that I really can't do anything about.

I mentioned at the beginning that I would be solving two problems with one solution. What were the two? Well, the first, as I mentioned, was the game taking up too much space. The second is that, on opponent's turns, players don't have much to do. I mean, you can watch, and hopefully it's an interesting enough game that that's enough. And some of the players do have Abilities that they can use on an opponent's turn; and there are some Items that work that way too; but not all do. So this gives players another opportunity to be able to do something on an opponent's turn.

Hope you've enjoyed that little look at mechanics, story, and board game design!

The Last Night.

I got home quite late last night, and realised that this would've been about the time that Jesus was on trial with the Sanhedrin. It got me thinking about the events of that evening. Below are three little snippets, of a similar space in time, but each from a different point of view.
NB: these are completely fictionalised, and not meant to be an accurate representation of what happened, nor will they necessarily perfectly align with what is written in the gospels. Give me a little creative license. They're meant to provoke thought and to see this in a different light.

-------------------------------------------------------

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

I knew that I needed to do something. Jesus was - out of control. Driving people out of the temple? Saying that it would be destroyed? Even coming back to Jerusalem - when the people here had tried to stone him before. Something had to be done.
So I talked to the priests, and they said they could help me. I didn't want them to hurt him....I didn't want them to hurt him....
I told them not to send soldiers with me. I said it was pointless, we never had any weapons. But they insisted. I should have left then. But instead, I led them to him, a wolf in amongst the sheep....
And a kiss. Betraying him - with a kiss. I can't forget how he looked at me. Like he knew. He knew. But how? How?
It all went so wrong from there. They took him and beat him, imprisoned him - this isn't what I wanted. This isn't what I meant to happen! But then, what did I expect?
I threw their dirty money back at them. It felt like a dead weight in my hands. Each footstep felt like a struggle. I wept openly. What had I done?
I couldn't bear it. I couldn't look at him. He....he saw right through me. I had to escape. To escape this anguish and misery. To give myself what I deserved for this. I knew where they would take him now. To his death. It will be mine as well.

-------------------------------------------------------

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

We had just marched victoriously into Jerusalem, triumphant, secret no more, people finally seeing Jesus for who he was. They finally got it. We had been hiding and running from town to town for so long - but now, we were here, in Jerusalem, announcing our arrival! We felt like kings. We did feel a little scared at first, because we knew that the people hadn't received Jesus so well there before - but we didn't need to be. They were laying down their cloaks, waving palm branches, shouting praises to Jesus.
And then we celebrated the Passover with him - and he said it was going to be our last meal together. We didn't understand - where was he going? And then he said that one of us would betray him - and that we would all leave him. I told him emphatically, that I never would. That I would stand by him until the end. How could I have known what was going to happen?
Later that evening, everything changed. Men came in with swords and clubs, led by that dog Judas, and arrested Jesus. We ran. All of us. We feared for our lives. But I tried to follow them at a distance, to see what would happen to Jesus. They took him into the house of the high priest, and a few others started a fire outside to keep themselves warm. It seemed it would be a long night. It was quite cold, and so I drew a little closer to the fire. One of the serving girls spotted me, and declared, "You were with that man Jesus!" They had just arrested him. I still feared for my life. The response was instinctual. "I don't know him." I tried to hide myself. A little while later, someone else accused me, but I was again too scared. I denied it. A third time, just as Jesus was coming out, another spoke to me, saying, "Certainly, you were with him. You are from Galilee." I exclaimed in panic, "I don't know what you are talking about!" The rooster crowed. Jesus turned and looked at me. Or rather, looked through me. How could he have known?
I ran, and I wept. I had abandoned my closest friend. How could I look on his face? How could I stand his gaze?

-------------------------------------------------------

It happened just as my Father said.

I drew my brothers together for a final meal. They still did not understand, but they could sense the importance of the occasion. I shared the bread and wine with them for the last time. I sent Judas, whom I loved, to do what he must. Then I told them what I had known since I first saw them - that they would leave me, at the end. Peter, of course, headstrong as he is, said that he would always stand with me, even if everyone left. I looked at him sadly, for I knew the truth. "You will deny me three times, Peter."
We went to Gethsemane. I have always loved the place, and I needed some time to be with my Father. I knew what I must do - but I needed his strength, that night. They were many long hours. I was glad of the company of the three beside me, even if they could barely keep their eyes open. I prayed fervently, for my flesh was weak. I knew what lay before me, and part of me was scared. But my Father gave me strength.
Then he came, with the crowd. So much noise. I think they expected a fight, with all the weapons they brought. Everyone else ran when I went with them.
They took me to the high priest, who questioned me, and insulted me. I stayed silent. Everything was already decided. I knew that, even as he was speaking, Peter was just outside, denying me; Judas, running away. My heart ached for them.
They led me back outside, and I saw Peter for the last time. It broke him. Forgive him, Father. He does not yet understand. But soon, he will.

It is only Friday. And the sun has not yet risen.

My Flat Cap.

So. I have a few hats that I have accumulated over the years. But the one that I probably use the most - particularly in the last year or so - has been my flat cap. Picture below!

And my flat cap has a bit of a history, so I thought I might share that.

A few years back, when I was in my second year of uni, I got a job doing catalogue distribution. It had it's high points and low points. High - when it was a nice day, and you didn't have too much to deliver, it could actually be quite nice. Also, since my family was helping me collate it all, that was our unofficial 'family time' together each week. :P Low points: ...most of the rest of it. Low pay, took a long time to do (particularly for someone slow like me), and was not fun on days with bad weather. (Particularly rain, wind, or a combination of the two. Wind in particular would grab your catalogues out of your hands if it could, while rain would absolutely ruin them. Not fun.)
So, I had some weeks I really didn't like it. The other annoying thing was that sometimes we had quite thick bundles.

This was one such week. We had a sample that was included in the bundle, and because of that, it really didn't fit in letterbox slots for the most part. Circles were okay, slots were not. I was tired. And so I had started dropping them on the ground.

Someone noticed, and came up to me. Asked who I worked for. Said he'd be giving them a call, and I should clean up the mess I made. I was a bit startled, but I started to do that. I remember there was a kid playing in the streets there, and he asked me why I was doing it. "Because people don't like it like that," I said. "Oh," he said. I think he found it confusing why people would worry about something like that.
Shortly thereafter, I got a call from my boss. "Someone said you've been throwing catalogues." "Dropping them, not throwing them. They won't really fit in the letterbox slots." "Well...do what you can to fit them in. You can't just have them lying around in the streets." "Yep." "Bye." "Bye."

Not long after that, I got the peak cap. And I wore it on every delivery run I did afterwards. To remind me that, even if I don't like the work I do, I should still do it professionally. I still take it to work with me now, though I don't wear it. But it's a good reminder of that for me. And I'm also told it suits me quite nicely :)

So that's the story of my peak cap! Hope you enjoyed that.

Episode 1 - Another John

So, I have this space of time that I'm trying to use up. I didn't get any suggestions, so I'm thinking of doing some creative writing. Specifically, at the moment, I'm thinking of doing a series of linked short stories. How exactly that's going to work, I'm not sure - whether they'll be like chapters of a book, or like completely different stories but within the same time/place, I don't know. And I don't know if I'll even be able to keep it going. I'm notoriously bad with this.

***

Episode 1 - Another John

Everyone seemed to be called John. He wasn't everyone, but he was still called John. That's logic for you.

John looked around. There wasn't much of interest here; he was on a dirt road going through a fairly open grassy area of the countryside, and he couldn't really see anyone else at all.

John kept walking.

John looked around again. He had travelled a bit further, but there wasn't much that had changed; he thought he could vaguely see something near the horizon in the direction he was travelling, so that was probably something.

John kept walking in the same direction.

John was a bit closer to the something now. Close enough to tell that it was something reasonably sizeable; bigger than just a person, or a person riding on a horse, or indeed a horse riding on a person. He thought it also seemed to be somewhat stable; it wasn't moving towards him. Or if it was, it was doing it incredibly slowly.

John continued to walk in a similar direction.

John could now tell that this something was, in fact, a town of some description. That is, it was some collection of living residences in a fairly contained area. It could have been a city, or maybe just a hamlet; but a town seemed most likely, so that was the word that he stuck with.

John maintained his journeying direction for a while longer.

John, at this point, came upon a sign, which was very nice, considering that he had barely seen anything the last few times he had looked except a town that still seemed to be quite far away. The sign, in fact, confirmed this, reading: "Town - Quite Far Away". As such, he resigned himself to quite a long distance of travelling left before he reached the town.

John decided to check his supplies. He looked in his bag, and found that he only had one bottle of water and two apples left. This might be enough to get him a bit further, but he would need to find more to get him to the town in any decent state. Of course, there wasn't anything particular in the town that he was going to, so it didn't really matter if he looked somewhat dishevelled, but he would appreciate not being starved and thirsty as he stumbled in fatigued through the town doors.

John began to dig for water. Or, rather, he started to scrape at the ground with his hands, before realising that without a shovel or digging tool of some sort, he would dehydrate long before hitting water. Besides which, the digging would probably make the water muddy and undrinkable.

John decided to look around again. He once again saw the sign, but the sign didn't look particularly appetising. There were trees around, but it didn't look like there were any that had fruit on them. And in terms of game, there was nothing bigger than a mouse out there. And they were finicky to catch at the best of times - besides which, he had no way to cook the meat, even if he had procured some.

John ran flat out to the town like there was no tomorrow, because he could totally make it there without even breaking a sweat.

John lay flat on the ground about a hundred metres from the town, collapsed from exhaustion. His throat was so dry, but he didn't have the energy to reach into his pack and get his water out. And even if he did, he had thrown away the pack when he had started running, because he could run faster without it. He had come so close, but now he was going to die in the dirt, and it didn't even matter anymore.

John's eyes closed.

John's eyes opened, but he couldn't see anything. Where was he?

***

As you may or may not have realised, I've gone with almost a text game-like pattern; where you have these regular points at which you choose what it is you do, and the game tells you what happens next. Each new paragraph is an instance of that.

So, where is John now? If I get any good suggestions between now and the next time I write, I'll try and use them - otherwise, you'll have to wait and see. Though, who knows, I might end up using someone different...

Real Stories, Real Faith - My Testimony, 5/1/14

This is audio of the testimony that I gave at the PM service of Campbelltown Church of Christ (my church!) for their January series of 2014, "Real Stories, Real Faith" yesterday. It was received really well, and I was very fortunate to have this opportunity. 

Don't take this as a word-for-word of what I said; there's a couple of moments where I'd add a note here or there, but this is basically what I said.

Tonight, I've been given the opportunity to talk about a great subject - myself. But I think you'll find that when I take you over the aspects of my life that I'll be talking about, you'll discover that there's actually not that much of stuff I've done - it's more what other people have done, and mainly, what God has done. 

I'm going to be taking you through some ups and downs of my life, of my journey with God. I can't really point to one spot where I became a Christian; but I think as we go through these points in my life, you might see how God has been shaping and changing me to become the person he wants me to be.  But that's something that we'll get to in a little while. First, let's pray.  

*insert prayer here* 

Now, it's possible that some of you don't know me, or don't know me very well. So I'll give you a quick introduction into who I am, before we get into the meat of it. My name is Brendan James Raymond, and I was born on the 27th of November 1992, which makes me 21 years, five weeks and four days old. My parents are Samantha and Peter Raymond, both Christian, and raised in Christian families, which has been a real blessing.  

I was the first child my parents had, but certainly not the last. One year, six months and three weeks later, Rosie was born; another three years, five months and two weeks and it was Kieran's turn; then Bethany came along one year, two months and three weeks later. We had a pretty busy house sometimes.  

As for me; I've got a bit of a variety of hobbies, skills and interests. I'm into a lot of creative things - drama, writing, composing, making clever things on the computer; I'm quite into music, which is what most of you probably know me for, seeing me up here playing the keyboard and singing. I did also do a Bachelor of Music that I finished the year before last. And then promptly followed it up by getting a job this past year in outdoor education.  

One thing my friends learn about me quite quickly is that I'm pretty unpredictable. When I was in high school, people would have called me more the science guy than the music guy. A lot of people were very surprised when I did the Bachelor of Music, and others even more so when I got the job I've been doing this past year. But I guess that's part of who I am.  

I'd like to start our journey tonight by taking you back a fair way, to when I was quite young. As I mentioned before, I came from a Christian family - I can't remember a time that I didn't know about God. For that, I have my Mum and Dad to thank. And even back then, I probably would have called myself a Christian. I believed that God was real, that Jesus lived and died and lived again - that's what being a Christian meant, didn't it? 

But there was one thing I knew that I didn't have. And that was a passion for God. I saw it in other people - I saw people that were on fire for God, that were passionate about him, and I wanted that fire; I wanted that passion. I had a will, a desire for that passion. So the first thing I thought of was praying the prayer, where you ask Jesus to come into your life, and I thought everything would change then. It didn't. I must have prayed a dozen different versions of that prayer, hundreds of times, but I never got anywhere. I read the Bible, I went to Oasis - here, and at school - I tried devotion books; there was one in particular I remember, where there was a section each day for you to come back and write down how you heard God answering your prayers. Those sections were always empty. I never heard God.  

Eventually, I pretty much gave up. I still had a will for that passion, but I realised that that must just not be something God had planned for me. So I kept living out my life, as best as I could - all the way up through high school.  

But even then, when I thought I had nothing more than a knowledge of God (and not much of one, at that); God had actually given me much more. He had given me the desire, a will, to know more about him, to have a passion for him. And even if all you have is that will, that can still take you incredible places.  

We'll come back to that story in a little while, but before that, I want to tell you about something that happened to me near the end of high school. 

At first, there was Oasis and Pulse. Then Oasis diversified a bit more, and Pulse eventually became Dynamite. At that point, Wendy was leading the group. Eventually, though, the McMenamins left, and Michael took over the group. And things changed a little bit; the group gradually became SWORD - the Spiritual Warfare Organised Response Division - and Michael's style of leading the group was a little different to Wendy's.  

Now, I had thought beforehand that I knew Bible stuff pretty well. I was a smart kid; I'd read a fair bit of the Bible, and I'd heard most of the stories - or at least enough that I was already feeling like people were repeating the same thing most of the time, and I knew pretty much all of it.  

Now, I probably knew more than some of the other guys in the group. But, needless to say, Michael did a pretty good job of making me question pretty much everything I knew. He was really good at asking the questions that made you suddenly realise that you really had no idea what you were talking about - in a good way! He helped us to not just believe in God, and Jesus, and the Bible because that's what other people had said, but because we'd actually taken the time to look at it for ourselves. To really question why we thought the way we did; why we believed what we did, and challenging that if we couldn't find a good reason.  

Like 2 Corinthians 13:5 says, "Test yourselves to make sure you are solid in the faith. Don't drift along taking everything for granted. Give yourselves regular check-ups. You need first-hand evidence, not mere hearsay, that Jesus Christ is in you. Test it out. If you fail the test, do something about it." 

It was a great experience, and one that I still look back to, and still try to emulate - I still do my best to look at why I believe what I do, and challenge those beliefs. Because the thing is, if we don't challenge our own beliefs - then we won't be ready when our friends do; when the world does; if our family does - and that's what this series is about, "Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have," - when the devil does; or when God does. And if you think that God can't or won't challenge your ideas or beliefs - maybe you need to be more open to God changing you, changing your ideas and preconceptions. Because he can, and he probably will. 

That time of challenging my faith, testing my belief - that really strengthened both my faith, and my knowledge of God and who he was. For that, I have a lot to thank Michael and the whole SWORD group for. And a lot to thank God for. 

Now, I'll take you back over to what I was talking about before; trying to find that passion and fire for God. At this stage, I was at uni. It was one of the better times of my life - I felt like I was in the right place for me, doing what I loved to do. And at some point during my first year of uni, I realised that I had started talking with God, rather than just to him - I wasn't so much hearing direct words and messages from him, but there was a definite interaction there, that wasn't before. They were good times. But I still didn't have that fire, that passion that I longed for.  

It was a bit strange when it happened. I still don't really understand it. It was a pretty regular day. I can't remember exactly what was on that day; it was a week day, but I was driving to Campbelltown for some reason. I'm not quite sure why. But I was driving, and I even remember that I was right near the turnoff to the Hume Highway. I was in my old metallic green Volvo - the Tank, as we used to call it - and that's when it happened. 

I suddenly realised that I had that passion; I had that fire that I had been longing for. Not through anything that I had done, but through what God had done. And as well as that, I had a desire for leading others in Christ, and helping them to learn more about God, and a desire to get baptised. And I had this strange feeling - that I don't think I'd ever had before - that I can only describe as the peace of God. I've only really felt that again once since then, at my baptism - which was a couple of months later - but that passion, and those desires, haven't left me since. 

But here's where it gets a bit more complex. Because that's not all there was to that - that's just what I understood at the time. Recently, I've had a few instances where God has only fully revealed to me the true implication and meaning of things some time later. 

Now, one thing that may have struck you as weird was how suddenly it happened. And it was quite sudden - but the thing that was sudden was the realisation, not the transformation. God had been working on me for quite a while now.  

Just under two years ago, God threw me a bit of a curveball. It was suggested to me that I might have something called Asperger's Syndrome. Before the end of that year, it was confirmed that I either did have or had had some form of Asperger's.  

Now, chances are, the majority of you have never heard of Asperger's before. It's sometimes called high-functioning autism, and is what is called an Autism Spectrum Disorder. Now, chances are you already have an image of what autism is. I want you to throw that image out the window for now, because it's not going to help you here. Your image is most likely of low-functioning autism, which is quite different to high-functioning autism.  

Now, Asperger's is quite complex, and I don't have time to give everyone a psychology lesson. I also don't really understand it quite well enough to truly explain it properly. If you do want to know more about it afterwards, you can come talk to me, or probably better, talk to my mum. She knows a fair bit more about it than I do, because she's actually done the research.  

But the crux of it is this; imagine that you're in a game, and you're creating your character. When you get up to the stats that the character has (like strength, speed, stamina and so on), there's generally a set range that each point can lie between, and then each one is randomly chosen somewhere in that range. In better games, you'll have different percentage chances as you get lower or higher, and so on. It's generally a bell curve.  

Now, imagine that you have the stats for intellectual intelligence and emotional intelligence. Typically, you have a bell curve for both. In Asperger's, however, you're much more likely to get a reasonably high IQ, while quite a low EQ. Again, there are other things it affects - everything from social ability to physical ability - but that's the core of it.  

When I was wanting that passion - that was Asperger's (at least to some degree) that was being a wall to that. And it's taken me a long time to realise, but God has been helping me to overcome that for quite a while now. Slowly, surely, he put me near people and around people that helped to teach me just what being a good friend was. What caring for someone meant. What being passionate about something looked like. And they helped me to find that for myself, whether they realised it or not.  

So when we go back to that point when I had that sudden realisation as I was driving - the path to that point, the transformative process, actually took quite a while. Years, in fact. Maybe most of my life, for all I know.  

We can often complain that God doesn't answer prayer; or that he doesn't work fast enough. There's a verse in the Bible that I found, Isaiah 60:22, recently that I quite like, that addresses this. It says: "I am the Lord; in its time I will do this swiftly." I can't think of a better verse to sum up my experience there. It may have seemed like a long time to me at first - but when it did happen, it was so sudden! 

God often works on a much bigger scale than we ever realise. 

There's a lot more that I could talk about, particularly on things that have happened in this past year. But I don't think enough time has elapsed since then for me to truly understand the significance of what God was doing with me in that time; and I think that that would almost be a whole speech in itself. Besides which, I only have so much time with you.  

My journey with God, however, doesn't stop there. Indeed, our journeys never stop until we die. Our testimony is never truly complete until then.  

This coming year, I already know, is posing many new challenges for me. At present, my income is basically an unknown - I have only one casual job, and I don't know how frequently or regularly I will be getting work there. I do potentially have opportunities to earn some money through busking or gigging, but I have no idea how reliable that will be. I get the feeling that God will be teaching me a lot about trusting in him to provide, and trusting that he knows what's happening, even when I don't. I'm sure that if I did this series again next year, I'd have some very different things to talk about, and some very different lessons to share.  

But for now, I'll stick to three.  

Even if you have nothing else, a will and desire to be closer to God and learn more about him can take you so far. Hold on to that.  

Question and challenge your faith, your ideas, your beliefs. Because if you don't, other people will. "Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have." 

And God doesn't always work on the time frame that we want, expect, or would like. But he is working, and in it's time, it will happen.  

Now, some of you, after all of this, may be asking why. Why it is that I believe in God, or follow Jesus, or think that the Bible has some truth in it.  

Well, it's because of these things. It's because of these experiences that I have had, because of how God has effected my life. Because of these experiences, I feel that he is true; I know that he is true; and I believe that he is true.  

And I know that that isn't something concrete; it isn't something you can measure, or test, or prove. It's a very personal and unique reason. 

But what I encourage you to do, if you're searching for answers, is to talk to people here. Troy and Edwina, I'm sure, will be available after the service; there's lots of other people here that you can talk to; or just talk to God. I know he wants to talk to you. 

If you're interested, the actual audio from the talk is available here: https://soundcloud.com/bjraymond/real-stories-real-faith-my; and the video is available here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9Q-0GEfFds. The audio is available for download; if you want a copy of the video, please get in touch with me.
Edit: I've recently learned a bit more, and gotten (what I think) is a more complete picture. Look here to read about it: http://modnarama.blogspot.com.au/2014/05/the-emergence-of-self.html

Empty 2.

I've written a bit more of that story I started mid-late last year. Here's the link to the earlier bit: http://modnarama.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/empty.html Sorry it's taken me so long to post up some more. Only actually gone back to it twice; so I've got two sections here, one from today and one from a bit before.

And you feel it. If people don't know me, when they try to come and share with me, as soon as they touch they recoil - as if I've got some sort of disease that they could catch. And the thing is, it's kind of a big thing in society if you avoid contact with people. Because it means you don't want to share with them, don't want to be with them, you want to keep everything to yourself. You get a couple like that, but they don't get very far. 

But everyone stays away from me. They don't even try to hide it any more. I have no family. No friends. I'm a hermit by force rather than choice. I don't want to live like this. This isn't . . . life. It's not really living. It's just a half-life, a shadow of one. A shadow of a life is barely a life at all. A footprint on a beach, an echo in a seashell.
  

Perhaps you don't quite get it. Try this image. Have you ever played with water droplets before? They're quite incredible, actually. The surface tension holding each droplet together gives it some interesting properties. For example, if they get to just within touching distance.... shloop! They clump together. Clump is a bad word, because it's a liquid, but you know. Water droplets love each other, that's the point. But you put an oil droplet in.... the water droplets don't want to know. They leave that little oil droplet all by itself. 

OK, so maybe you didn't play with water and oil when you were a kid, but you get the point. Water and oil don't mix, and I'm the little oil droplet. Or maybe think of it this way: it's like being mute. And deaf. Nothing comes in, nothing comes out. But you get to see everyone else communicating perfectly fine, and being happy, and loving each other, and... yeah, you get it. 

It's not that I can't communicate. Obviously I can. But it's a thing. Think of it like shouting all the time, instead of just talking. Now it's talking instead of touching. You still talk, but only when you need to communicate far away or to lots of people at once. It's considered somewhat rude to use if the situation doesn't actually need it. Some people, if they really concentrate, can actually almost completely eliminate the need to talk at all - they can project their thoughts, when they really focus. It's a pretty rare talent, but those who have it really don't talk at all. Of course, it is then difficult to tell then if they're actually able to speak or are just mute. I've considered stepping on a couple of toes to ascertain just that, now and then. 

It wouldn't be so bad if people tried to make it easier for me. Actually talked to me now and then. But they don't. By and large, I live in a silent world. And since nobody talks to me, I tend not to talk very much either. Just a word or two now and then, to make sure I haven't gone mute as well.

Empty

 This is the start of a story. Thinking of maybe doing it as an audio-story-type-thing, because it's sounding like that sort of thing. Yeah. This is all I've got so far. Note: this is an alternate reality, not a possible future. These people are born this way, not because of technology.

People say that you can do anything if you try. Except, of course, that's never quite true, is it? A blind person can't see. A deaf person can't hear. A person without legs can't walk. If they can, then they're not blind, or deaf, or whatever. And it's the same with me. I can't think. I mean, I can think, but - OK, I'm going to need to explain this a bit.

You know how everyone communicates thoughts, just by touching? I mean, if they don't want to it doesn't happen, it's not like they instantly have access to all your secrets or anything - but, yeah, you know what I mean. You just have to touch someone, and you can communicate any sort of thought to them. It could be a word, a sound, a feeling, a picture, you name it. Some people with crazy memories make a business out of sharing entire movies and songs with people.

Well - I can't do that. I can't communicate thoughts to other people, and they can't get anything to me. And I've tried. Trust me, I've tried. And I've been to a dozen different specialists, doctors, psychologists, everything. But nothing. I can tell when other people are trying to get through - but it just doesn't work. It's like there's a wall around my brain, and no-one can get in or out. And I hate it.

I mean, sure, it means I don't get the overload headaches from ETP (oh, Excessive Thought Pile-up), as well as a couple of other things everyone else has to deal with - but that's a pretty massive price to pay. And, as far as I know, it's just me. I'm alone.