The Lord's Prayer in Tok Pisin

As a kid, I lived in Papua New Guinea for a while.

There I went to Church, and, obviously also attended Sunday school. Although I went to an international school where we spoke English, Church was always in Tok Pisin.

My inability to speak the language didn't matter: kids just play and chase each other around and don't need to communicate their feelings eloquently. I picked up the language eventually, but thanks to sunday school, the first thing I learnt to speak properly was the Lords Prayer.

Once I moved back to New Zealand I haven't spoken extensively in Tok Pisin for years, but I find it oddly comforting to pray in. 

Anyway, I wrote it below if you're interested.


Papa bilong mipela, yu stap long heven. 

Mekim nem bilong yu i kamap bikpela. 

Mekim kingdom bilong yu i kam. 

Strongim mipela long bihainim laik bilong yu long graun, olsem ol i bihainim long heven. 

Givem mipela kaikai inap long tude. 

Pogivim rong bilong mipela olsem mipela i pogivim ol arapela i mekim rong long mipela. 

Sambai long mipela long taim bilong traim.

Na rausim olgeta samting nogut long mipela.

Tru.

It’s okay to not like things, but don’t be a dick about it: Gay Marriage.

Among other things, I am a child of the early nineties. Therefore I am a girl who has grown up immersed in popular culture. I grew up watching an hour or two of television per day. I read until my Mum banned books and kicked me outside. I’m a self-professed audiophile who listens to a ton of music.

What I’m trying to say, is that I’ve grown up in an age where LGBT culture is celebrated. Because I’ve dedicated my life to Christ, I do my best to love everyone. I believe every human should be treated with dignity and respect.

There were also two big influences on my life which determined how I chose to react to LGBT culture:

Influence 1:

I was raised in a Christian home. In the middle of my teenage years I explored other religions and atheism, however Christianity as defined in the New Testament is now the core of my life. My parents never specifically spoke about homosexuality, but when I did enquire they explained that while they believed homosexuality to be wrong, Jesus calls us to love everyone and therefore I was to “hate the sin, and love the sinner.” My Mum is a firm believer that it is not for us to judge people for what they do, but instead offer friendship and care to all who seek it. 

Influence 2:

 I am currently 19 years old. Since I was 14, I have spent a LOT of time on the internet. For a phase in my life I was closer to my internet friends then the ones I connected with in daily life. They understood me. They related. They had the same interests. They taught me to not judge, because everyone is dealing with their own history. They believed that homosexuality was fine, and that homosexual marriage naturally leads on from that.

So, I went along with this, never giving homosexual marriage any thought. Not until recently, when Louisa Wall bought to New Zealand parliament the proposal to change the Marriage law to include same-sex couples.

On the surface, this seems fine. However a lot of consideration and thought has left me with the opinion that instead of just concerning those in the marriage, marriages have a profound effect on others, also. There are two main reasons I believe this:

1.       I believe that gender matters and gender roles are important. Two men might individually be fantastic fathers, but neither can be a mother. In the same strain, two woman might be great mothers, but neither can be a father. “Plenty of children are raised by single parents and are fine”, you might say. This is true, but I believe that society should never intentionally create fatherless or motherless families. Same-sex marriages would mean a birth certificate would be reworded from “mother” and father” to “Progenitor A” and “Progenitor B”. To me, deliberately depriving a child of a parental influence from both genders seems fundamentally wrong. 

2.       Equality is not sameness, and difference is not inequality. Marriage rightly discriminates: a 14 year old cannot get married. Three or four people can’t get married to each other. A person who is currently married cannot marry another person. A father cannot marry his adult daughter. A mother cannot marry her adult son. Even those wanting ‘equality’ believe there should be restrictions: which shows they do not believe marriage is an absolute right for everybody or every type of romantic relationship.

In New Zealand, homosexual couples are free to be joined in a civil union. In 2004, then-Prime Minister Helen Clark said: “Marriage is only for heterosexuals. The Government is not – underline – not, changing the Marriage Act. That will remain as an option only for heterosexual couples.”

This culture which promotes “equality and fairness” doesn’t seem to be doing that at all if you dare disagree with the masses. The loudest voices are those saying that Homosexual Marriage is natural and spitting bile onto anybody who says it undermines marriage as one of the core foundational values of society.

The internet’s theme song is basically this:

“It’s okay to not like things, but don’t be a dick about it.”

I guess that could commonly be interpreted as “You can disagree with Gay Marriage, but you may only do so quietly.”

I’m sorry to be a dick about it. But I quote Gay Senator Dean Smith from the Parliament of Australia in Sep 2012:

“I reject the suggestion of marriage equality. Marriage equality has been a slogan: it has been a campaign. The claim to equality ignores the widely accepted act that marriage is an institution that has a long and well-accepted definition – a definition that is heavily laden with cultural meaning and values crafted by custom and by law over the years.”

I hope I’ve given you some food for thought.

Charlie :)

Notes:

-A lot of the information I have included here was sourced from protectmarriage.org.nz

-Also, click if you’re interested in "It's okay to not like things"

How to achieve ALL THE THINGS (how to get things done)

11.       Plan

22.       Be realistic with your plan

33.      Stick to your plan

44.      Seriously, actually stick to the plan. 

I wrote this super-useful list to tack on my wall as I have just resumed University. It is a valuable lesson which I learnt last year through my first year of tertiary education, and I thought I should extend this knowledge to those desperate enough to trawl through google for answers.

Good luck achieving your things!

it's photo saturday!

I own a beautiful ten-year-old black Labrador named Kua.

I thought I'd show you a picture I took of him.

I hope you're all having a lovely day!
Charlie x

a photograph of a beautiful girl

So, about this time last year I quit practicing photography and took up art instead. I wanted to give myself more of a challenge: however today I found myself trawling through some undeveloped photographs and came across this shot: 

 

(click on the photograph to see it in better quality!)

Upon developing it I realised it's a very expressive shot, so I decided to share it with you all. 

Hope your day is fantastic, whatever you are doing!

Charlie xxx

I simply HATE this class!

You can relate to this. If you have been involved in ANY type of formal education, than I know you can relate. You know the class, the one that seems so pointless that there's no good reason for it to exist. The one with the ghastly and wholly unappealing people whom you are forced to do group work with.

It's currently 9:46 PM, and I'm sitting here, going, God, in ten hours I have two hours of class that I literally detest. Granted, it's only two hours out of the one hundred and sixty eight hours I have each week, but it seems to be two too many.

During the Prize Giving ceremony at my High School last year, I sat there with a hallelujah chorus playing triumphant in my mind, rejoicing in the fact that I would never, ever have to again attend a class that I hated, a class that was an absolute waste of my time. I won't say  'Oh boy, was I wrong' because I've enjoyed six of the seven papers I'm taking at University this year. But paper number seven literally sucks. There is nothing enjoyable about it. "Hahaha", says life. "Shame on you for choosing that paper. That's why I invented Performance Communication, and made it look useful. I wanted to give you two hours of misery per week. Lol."

Life, you are so rude sometimes. So very, very rude.

Because life is rude, it forces us to go to school for 13 years and take a bunch of classes that we literally do not enjoy. I haven't enjoyed class right from day one: on my very first day at school as a bright and  cute 5-year-old. This is my school photo from the ragin' year of 1999:

 I guess school and I have never been on the best of terms, because I vividly recollect being bored out of my skull as Mrs. Van de Molen taught us to count to one hundred. In an attempt to make things more fun, I played teacher and began teaching the girl beside me a more efficient way of counting to one hundred. I got put in the naughty chair for being disruptive.  Great start to school; punish a kid for knowing how to count. Fantastic.

My next memory of hating a class was being split into groups to complete a science project in year 5. My group consisted of a charming girl named Heather who couldn't spell her own name and liked to spit, and a boy called Zion who would read the dictionary during silent reading because he thought it made him look smart. They made fun of my short hair, creatively called me a boy, and in my uncreative retaliation I ran away crying. Mrs Hollinshead came and found me. Later that day I actually tried my hand at a creative response,  chasing Heather with a dead mouse, and then punching her. I don't recall if I tried to deal to Zion, but even if I did Mrs Hollinshead put a end to it by acquainting me with the 'naughty chair' again.

My other strongest memory of hating a class was year 11 science. Mr. Crosby would spend half the class standing at the front saying 'boys and girls, boys and girls' on loop while the 'boys and girls' screamed and threw paper and grafittied the desks, and the other half playing braniac on the projector to shut us up. I gave up on attempting to learn anything after about a month and instead acquainted myself with the girl next to me. We then spent the duration of the year having strawberry bubblegum-blowing competitions and gossiping about boys in an attempt to make the class vaguely enjoyable.

Now I think about it, that's probably why my knowledge of science dries up around the year 11 mark.

In the long run, what these classes have taught me is that they only go for a little while, and then they are in your past. And although I have Performance Comm in some ten hours and I'm going to find it mostly ghastly, I might as well make the best of it and pull the best grade that I can.

If you're still in High School you will probably roll your eyes in horror if I tell you that the teachers of your least-favorite class are fantastic. But they actually are. Since you're already in the class, treat your teachers like proper human beings, learn all that you can and leave with the best mark you can manage.  While the class seems to stretch out before you in an endless line of suck, before you know it it's in your past and like me you'll be thinking "I should have persisted with year 11 science instead of simply giving up."

That's the attitude I'm taking to Performance Comm tomorrow morning, anyhow. And I hope you take it to your classes, too.

Charlie x

Lyrics: The Silly Song by Carrie Hope Fletcher

So there's this little darling who is blowing up youtube with her beauty and cute quirkiness. Carrie Hope Fletcher writes gorgeous songs and blows the best of us out of the water with her powerful voice.

A couple of months ago she put up this adorable little original, 'The Silly Song'. It strikes a beautiful balance between a lullaby and a love song, and is probably one of my favorite songs at the moment.

Several weeks ago she finished the song and performed it at Summer in the City. The final version of 'The Silly Song' begins at 3:44.

I posted the lyrics on tumblr a couple of weeks ago as I couldn't find them anywhere on the internet, and thought I will also add them on here, if you are searching :)

Enjoy, and have a fantastic day!
Charlie xxx

The birds and the bees

Singing in trees

Making me feel like I’m a butterfly

Flying so very high

Holding my breath as I’m looking down at the world

And the ocean blue

Waves at you

Hoping you’re holding a lover’s hand

Writing your names in sand

Building a castle where you can live with your girl

Because I can see

That I may be

Falling so swiftly for you

So if I’m a butterfly, will you be a butterfly too?

And I can’t believe

Among the trees

There’s a place that’s invisible, maybe even liveable

Would it be forgivable if I said we should go?

This candyfloss rain tastes like champagne

And I’ve heard the sunsets are beautiful, oh so very colourful

And when the moon is full, there is a fireworks show

And now I can see that I may be

Falling so swiftly for you

So if I’m a butterfly will you be a butterfly too?

And suddenly it’s very clear

I’m madly deeply so in love with you.