Blotto, bombed, hammered, intoxicated, inebriated, juiced, lagered up, legless, lubricated, pickled, pissed, plastered, on the sauce, sloshed, smashed, sozzled, tanked, three sheets to the wind, tipsy, too many beersies, under the influence, under the table, wasted… Continue reading
If you know me, you will probably know I tried to spend 2014 without a drop of alcohol. For the most part I stuck to it. Apart from being encouraged profusely by my parents to drink on my 21st birthday, having communion, and sharing some Sassy Reds with my best friend before we both jetted off to different countries, I made it through the year without a beer or a whisky. I’m pretty proud of that, knowing me.
So, seeing as this blog is intended to provide a space for young Anglican adults to share their stories, and given that the next Grace Collective event is about alcohol, I figured, “Hey, I have a story about that. Let’s write something.” Continue reading
It was a casual Sunday afternoon. I went to the supermarket – I needed to buy sugar.
I got to the plethora of sugar options on the shelf and stared.
And stared.
I picked one up. I put it back. I couldn’t bring myself to buy one.
Why? Not because of all the options before me. It’s because I know that all this sugar in front of me isn’t produced in ways I agree with. I’ve known that for a while, but that day it made me unable to purchase sugar. But I needed sugar. What to do? Driving across Auckland to the TradeAid store to purchase sugar doesn’t seem a great ‘sustainable choice’ either. So I went home with no sugar. But I knew that soon I’d need sugar and be faced with the same dilemma. (Let’s not get into the ‘do you really need sugar’ debate in this one, we’ll save that for another day – and luckily I found out that a different supermarket close-by stocks Fairtrade sugar.)
More than anything what surprised me about this sugar-debacle was myself. I’ve always ‘cared’ about ethical and sustainable consumer choices, but often it becomes idealist with an I’ll-buy-fair-trade-coffee-if-it’s-in-front-of-me thrown in on the side (though this is still a great place to start).
So what’s changed? I’m not exactly sure.
Hey guys, Charlie here. You might have already seen this interview with Brandt Russo we shared on Facebook a while back. If you haven’t watched it yet, it’s totally worth it, as it touches on so many of the things we talked about at Authenticity and some of the issues that were so courageously addressed by our speakers.
Brandt talks about how he wanted to be open about his struggles, but couldn’t bring himself to go through it. However once everything was exposed, he said “I realised I had put myself in a horrible situation and God still is who He promised He is and He can redeem this… I could finally get free because everybody knows.”
It takes a lot of openness and support to get through our struggles. Brandt questions whether churches are ready for that: “We haven’t prepped ourselves to be that open.” I wonder if he’s on to something here. Continue reading
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