ben.atwood.com.au

New things going down include:

• Visiting a Christian dude in an infamous detention centre, and wrestling with how to be effective in ministry with him.
• Pronouncing my second-hand espresso machine dead recently, seeing as it has turned into a squealing, slavering coffee zombie.
• As per the above, a return to plunger coffee.
• Finishing Scripture for a second term. My Kindy kids enjoyed their lesson on Jesus’ attitude towards children, and my Year 3s still show a ravenous curiosity about other countries (though, when I try to tell them about Christians in third-world nations, they seem more interested in why the left hand is considered dirty than in the hardships endured by Christian nationals for the gospel).
• Four newcomers to the house. We have inherited goldfish from friends Dan and Priscilla, who are emigrating south of the border and don’t want their aquatic friends anymore. We are now proud owners of these handsome fish. Any ideas on names? I had goldfish when I was in uni and named them after philosophers and then Roman mythical heroes, but that seems a bit tired now.

I won’t be around for a little while – though, if you are out and about north of the border, you might find me here, running around with a bunch of kids in Townsville. But, f’real, I’m pretty stoked that MTS gives me the opportunity to get involved in these kinds of conferences. I went to the LiT camp when I was in Year 12, not long after it first began, and it was great for building practical skills as well as introducing me to Christians outside of my home church. I really hope and pray that this inaugural Launch conference does the same for the kids who attend.

The word is that I have bruxism.

This saddens me, for lo, I used to have very good teeth. Yet I had been wondering why a lone front tooth had, like a glacier, been inexorably working backwards. A four-years-late trip to the dentist revealed why. “You’re probably grinding your teeth when you sleep,” he says, shortly after telling me that I will need root canal surgery ‘one day’ on an old filling. Having that contrast in my head makes bruxism seem like good news. Still, the tooth doctor also says that if I don’t do anything about it, my glacial front tooth will eventually move so far that it will start interfering with my tongue, which means braces will be required, so he tells me to try a mouthguard when I sleep.

The medical community doesn’t seem to know why some people grind their teeth while most people don’t. I tried to diagnose myself using Wikipedia’s associated factors list and the only match was ‘relatively high levels of consumption of caffeinated drinks and foods’. Does two cups of coffee a day count as relatively high consumption? Anyway, so much for modern medicine, because not only do they not know why it happens, but they can’t cure it – the best they could offer me was the exercise in damage control that is the acrylic mouthguard, which the bruxist must wear at night, every night, for the rest of their lives.

The idea appealed, in some ways. It’s cooler than dentures, but you still get to mess around with something that looks like your teeth, and the opportunities for practical jokes are there. But it’s not as comfortable as it might look to sleep with a mouthguard in – try stuffing the space next to your gums with erasers and you’ll understand why.

And, my brain seems to understand this, even while sleeping, because for three out of four nights, I have managed to remove the mouthguard in my sleep and hidden it in the blankets. This causes some consternation upon waking: the first time it happened, I thought I had swallowed the entire thing without knowing. It’s a miracle that I haven’t choked.

Any fellow teeth-grinders out there?

Loving:

• The school holidays (now sadly over).
• Stardust. Unexpectedly good!
• Cooler weather.
• Working for TAC.
• Ian Irvine’s The Well of Echoes quartet (oddly).
• The Guggenheim Grotto, Jimmy Eat World, and Clare Bowditch.

Not loving:

• Our car.
• The constant state of fear and not-knowing in ministry.
• The state of the Anglican communion right now.

Thinking:

• Crap, where did all this wind come from?

Resigned to:

• There always being more washing.
• Some things not changing.

Wanting:

• A French horn.
• More time.

Anticipating:

• Another great term of SRE and other activities.
• Writing more…one day.
• A new neighbour (though we love our old neighbour).
• A new car (when we’ve sold the old one).
• Townsville and beyond in 2008-9.