Emmanuel Centre
A SELF HELP CENTRE
For People with Disabilities
25 Windsor St Perth WA 6000
Tel: (08) 9328 8113 (Voice)
(08) 9328 9571 (TTY)
SMS 0401 016 399 Fax: (08) 9227 9720
Email:
Facebook (Deaf): www.facebook.com/auslan.live
EMMANUEL NEWS – JULY 2017
COMING EVENTS AS WE GO TO PRESS (Check before coming. Things may change,
SUNDAY / MONDAY / TUESDAY / WED / THU / FRI / SAT /15 Jul
Auslan Chd
16 Jul
9.30am: Mass at St Francis Xavier Church (Interpreter & PowerPoint)
10.30am-12pm: Auslan Café / 17 Jul
9.45-10.45am: Healthy living—Food and Exercise (Challenger)
11-12.30pm: Cooking (Les)
Spinning with Judy / 18 Jul
9.30-10.30am: Painting (Geoff)
11am-12.30pm: Frame decorating (Les)
1-2pm: Bible Study / 19 Ju
Cath Mental Health
Network
9.30-11.30l / 20 Jul / 21 Jul / 22 Jul
Cath Mental Health
Network
9.30-11.30l
23 Jul
9.30am: Mass at St Francis Xavier Church (Interpreter & PowerPoint) / 24 Jul
9.45-10.45am: Healthy living—Food and Exercise (Challenger)
11-12.30pm: Cooking (Les Spinning with Judy / 25 Jul
9.30-10.30am: Painting (Geoff)
11am-12.30pm: Mosaic (Les)
1-2pm: Bible Study / 26 Jul / 27 Jul / 28 Jul / 29 Jul
30 Jul
9.30am: Mass at St Francis Xavier Church (Interpreter & PowerPoint) / 31 Jul
9.45-10.45am: Healthy living—Food and Exercise (Challenger)
11-12.30pm: Cooking (Les
Spinning with Judy) / 1 Aug
9.30-10.30am: Painting (Geoff)
11am-12.30pm: Scrapbooking
1-2pm: Bible Study / 2 Aug / 3 Aug / 4 Aug / 5 Aug
6 Aug
9.30am: Mass at St Francis Xavier Church (Interpreter & PowerPoint) followed by morning tea / 7 Aug
9.45-10.45am: Bead Craft (Challenger)
11am-12.30pm: Cooking (Les
Spinning with Judy) / 8 Aug
9.30-10.30am: Painting (Geoff)
11am-12.30pm: Cork boards (Les)
1-2pm: Bible Study / 9 Aug / 10 Aug / 11 Aug / 12 Aug
13 Aug
9.30am: Mass at St Francis Xavier Church (Interpreter & PowerPoint) / 14 Aug
9.45-10.45am: Noongar Culture (Challenger)
11-12.30pm: Cooking (Les Spinning with Judy) / 15 Aug
9.30-10.30am: Painting (Geoff)
11am-12.30pm: Mosaic (Les)
1-2pm: Bible Study / 16 Aug / 17 Aug / 18 Aug / 19 Aug
20 Aug
9.30am: Mass at St Francis Xavier Church (Interpreter & PowerPoint) / 21 Aug
9.45-10.45am: Multicultural activities (Challenger)
11am-12.30pm: Cooking (Lesley)
Spinning with Judy / 22 Aug
9.30-10.30am: Painting (Geoff)
11am-12.30pm: Father’s Day cards (Les)
1-2pm: Bible Study / 23 Aug / 24 Aug / 25 Aug / 26 Aug
MENTAL HEALTH
FIRST
AID
27 Aug
9.30am: Mass at St Francis Xavier Church (Interpreter & PowerPoint) / 28 Aug
9.45-10.45am: Multicultural activities (Challenger)
11-12.30pm: Cooking (Les)
Spinning with Judy / 29 Aug
9.30-10.30am: Painting (Geoff)
11am-12.30pm: Scrapbooking
1-2pm: Bible Study / 30 Aug / 31 Aug / 1 Sep / 2 Sep
3 Sep
9.30am: Mass at St Francis Xavier Church (Interpreter & PowerPoint) followed by morning tea / 4 Sep
9.45-10.45am: Multicultural activities (Challenger)
11am-12.30pm: Cooking (Les)
Spinning with Judy) / 5 Sep
9.30-10.30am: Painting (Geoff)
11am-12.30pm: Wool crafts (Les)
1-2pm: Bible Study / 6 Sep / 7 Sep / 8 Sep / 9 Sep
10 Sep
9.30am: Mass at St Francis Xavier Church (Interpreter & PowerPoint) / 11 Sep
9.45-10.45: Multicultural activities (Challenger)
11-12.30pm: Cooking (Les
Spinning with Judy) / 12 Sep
9.30-10.30am: Painting (Geoff)
11-12.30pm: Queens Birthday craft
1-2pm: Bible Study / 13 Sep / 14 Sep / 15 Sep / 16 Sep
Auslan for Children
17 Sep
9.30am: Mass at St Francis Xavier Church (Interpreter & PowerPoint)
10.30am-12pm: Auslan Café / 18 Sep
9.45-10.45am: Craft (Challenger)
11am-12.30pm: Cooking (Les
Spinning with Judy) / 19 Sep
9.30-10.30am: Painting (Geoff)
11am-12.30pm: Games (Les)
1-2pm: Bible Study / 20 Sep / 21 Sep / 22 Sep / 23 Sep
NO PROGRAMMES DURING THE 2 WEEK TERM HOLIDAY.
ACTIVITIES WILL START AGAIN ON MONDAY 9 OCT 2017.
The other day I misplaced my wristwatch. I cannot begin to count the number of times that I looked at my empty wrist in search for a moment of time. It made me think. How addicted am I to time? How do I handle time? Do I have favourite time slots?
At the same time, I realized that checking the time on my mobile phone is not the same as a simple quick glance at my wristwatch. Maybe it is the format of the time. When I look at my mobile phone, I see digital numbers in isolation. There is no before or after. My wristwatch however shows me time before this moment in time after this moment. This helps me to put the present moment into a context.
Maybe I can learn something from using my mobile phone to know the time. Maybe I need to be more aware of the present moment and not worry about what had happened before hand or be overly concerned about what may happen after.
Historians do not know who or when time was invented. They "invented," a time-keeping device or "clock" probably thousands of years ago when someone stuck a stick in the ground and saw the shadow of the sun move across the ground, known as aSundial.
A vertical stick, gnomon, or obelisk that casts a shadow is a Sundial. and they were used as early as 3500 BC. In 1500 BC Egyptians had portable sundials. There is an Egyptian sundial from the 8th century BC that is still in existence.
I understand that in some languages there is no equivalent to the word “hurry”. It is surprising that such countries are not inundated with migrants wishing to live in a place where “hurry” is not on the agenda. It is ironic when I look at the traffic on the major road that I travel in the mornings and afternoons that most of the drivers would say that they were in “hurry” and yet most of the time they are sitting in a parked vehicle.
Why is Time so important to us, to me? On the other hand, maybe it is not time itself, but rather the marking of time that is important. I wonder if that’s in some sense, related to a sense of power insofar as I cannot stop time moving on, but maybe, by being able to identify segments of the time, I can feel that somehow I am in control.
Reflecting about time, I was aware of how the spider weaves its web. While I do not notice any sense of “hurry” about it all, I do notice that the process is relentless until the task is accomplished.
I began to reflect about God and time. God seems to have a different way of looking at time. I know that God is patient with me as I change and grow in mind, body, spirit, and sometimes in time slipping back into my old ways and I asked myself, “as a follower of Jesus,” is there an opportunity to do things differently when it comes to time?
I often hear that as a follower of Jesus I am called to live differently. I am called to behave differently. I am called to approach family, friendships and careers differently. I am called to engage with money, and power differently. Is God giving me the opportunity to reflect about how I use or how time affects what I do or how I manage the power that time has over me.
God is timeless. “For a thousand years in God’s sight is like a day that has just gone by”. God does not count time as I do. God is above and outside the sphere of time. God sees all of eternity’s past and eternity’s future. The time that passes on earth is of no consequence from God’s timeless perspective. A second is no different from an eon; a billion years pass like seconds to the eternal God.
In spite of how many watches I have, or how I use “time”, I can never recover what I have done with my life.
God’s timing is never too early and never too late.
“O LORD, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue, you know it completely, O LORD. For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be”.'
God is faithful, trust in Him and His perfect timing.
WHAT SOCIAL MEDIA IS DOING
TO YOUR BRAIN
(edited from an article by Tianna Nadalin)
There’s something about that little bubble that pops up whenever you have a new notification on social media. Before you have time to think, your thumbs are keying in your phone’s pin code and you’re refreshing your screen to find out how many people have liked that oh-so-witty status update you made. This obsession with monitoring social media, even despite the fact that it brings no joy and, in many cases, even produce negative emotion, has given rise to a new dependency.
AN ADDICTION?
Dopamine, often referred to as the ‘motivation molecule’, is the neurotransmitter in charge of the brain’s reward centre. It allows us to have feelings of joy, and is responsible for that rush we get when we achieve a goal. Also often associated with addiction, it’s the chemical the brain releases when people take drugs, eat chocolate, shop, gamble or, in the digital age, log on to Facebook or Twitter.
“When you use social media, your brain releases dopamine, which is like a fountain in the brain that puts the brain into a state of pleasure,” Susan Greenfield, neuroscientist and author of ‘A Day in the Life of the Brain’, says. “Many people appear to be, by definition, addicted to social media; they need constant stimulation.”
It’s this constant need for stimulation, coupled with decreasing attention spans, Greenfield explains, that’s changing the way we communicate and behave in the real world. And it’s the younger people, she warns, that are most at risk.
IDENTITY CRISIS
Over the last decade, Greenfield says social media has started to affect interpersonal communication and identity. “On social media you don’t have body language or voice tone or eye contact—all those things are really important for establishing empathy with people,” Greenfield says. “If you’re talking to someone and they’re averting their eyes and folding their arms, that will stop you from confiding in them, but online you don’t see the effects your words are having. You’re missing out on a fundamental foundation of communications that human have had for centuries.”
Greenfield says many of the behaviours people exhibit on social media—such as a lack of empathy, constant need for feedback and, ironically, a decrease in social skills—have some parallels with “autistic-like” behaviours.
The bigger issue, Greenfield says, is the way social media is impacting identity—or construction of the ‘self’. She adds that construction of the self begins in childhood and believes early exposure to social media is, at least in part, why we’re seeing increasing numbers of children suffering from serious issues such as depression and anxiety.
“As a child, the box didn’t ask you to climb into it,” she says. “It was just a little bit of cardboard that you made up a story around. You were in control; using your imagination to make a story. Nowadays, people are just subjected to images from someone else. They’re no longer making up the story.”
By encouraging children to do creative activities away from the cyber realm, they can express themselves beyond just ‘liking’ the posts of others—or worrying if they measure up. In so doing, they begin to develop a sense of self that’s more grounded. “The best we can do for our children is give them resilience and confidence and that’s difficult to achieve without an identity,” Greenfield says.
KEEPING IT REAL
“For people who have a solid background of real friends in real life, social media can be hugely beneficial, as long as it’s used as an adjunct to your real life,” Greenfield says. “The mistake is when it replaces real communication.”
FOUR WAYS TO BREAK THE HABIT
1. Have detox times: Allocate days or time when you go offline. This gives your brain a chance to “reboot” without constant distraction.
2. Family meals: Eating together will remind you of how it feels to communicate with words rather than keystrokes.
3. Get outside: Burning up kilojoules is good for your health and being in nature will help you reconnect to the real world.
4. Read stories: This will divert attention span and imagination in a way that the screen never will.
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Email: Website:www.emmanuelcentre.com.au
Facebook: www.facebook.com/auslan.live SMS: 0401 016 399 TTY: 08 9328 9571
FAX: 08 9227 9720 VOICE: 08 9328 8113
L E A R N I N G
Emmanuel Centre has been hosting regular free Auslan lessons monthly on the 3rd Sunday of the month. The lessons are conducted at the Emmanuel Centre premises on 25 Windsor St, Perth (nearest train station East Perth) from 10:30am to 12:00noon. The dates for Auslan Cafe for this term are Sundays the 16th July and 17th September 2016 (None in August as the teacher will be away). This free event is open to everyone. A light lunch is provided after the lessons but you are requested to RSVP if staying for lunch ().
Auslan for Children are conducted every 3rd Saturday of the month (the 15th July and 16th September, none in August as the teacher will be away); and we invite any children wanting to learn the sign language in a fun and friendly environment. The location is different, so if you’re interested, please contact us via .