Murray Ceff's Blog

I think I might preface my remarks about Cliff today by briefly relating what has transpired over the last few months. Some of you might have heard Cliff refer to me as Muzz, and we did a lot of things together. Late June we got bad backs together. We both had MRI’s we both had cortisone shots, and physio treatment, and I started to get better, but Cliff seemed to be taking longer to get better. In fact, he seemed to be getting worse. He was really struggling with the pain. It didn’t matter what he did, he was in pain. He was around our place one day and he sat down trying the special back support I had bought which I thought was fantastic. It didn’t ease his pain. I had also been given an inversion table, and that was really helping me. Cliff wanted to try that too. He got on it and laid back a little bit and it seemed to increase his pain. He wanted to lay back further thinking he might help, but I talked him out of that. Margot and I went out to visit Cliff and Sandy one day and S

The title of this post is just a little play on words. The Best Two Years is a 2003 film, popular among the Latter-day Saint audience, portraying the lives of a few young missionaries, serving  in the Church's not quite obligatory 2 year mission program. For the last 2 years, Margot and I have been trying to go on a mission for the Church ourselves. We've been called, but we've not quite made it in to the mission field yet. About 2 years ago, following Stake Conference, Margot and I were invited in to the Stake Presidents office to meet with the Stake President and the visiting Area Authority Seventy, whose name slips my mind. I'm fairly sure he is Tongan and he served as a Mission President somewhere in Africa. I had been keen to serve a Senior Couple mission for a few years. The time was never quite right, and it's fair to say that I was much keener than Margot. Our daughter Miriam served in the Sydney North Mission and I was keen to serve at the same time, but no

Miriam and Taylor were finally able to get married in the Melbourne Temple on Saturday 31st August 2021 after two previously cancelled dates, due to Covid 19 related lockdowns. Orginally they had planned to have about 88 people at the wedding but under the restrictions they were only allowed to have 50 there. We only had nine days between lockdowns in which they could get married! So, what comes below is fairly close to my Father of the Bride Speech - On behalf of the entire Ceff family (all 7 of us!), I'd like to welcome you all here today and thank you for coming. Being in the "top 50" you can feel pretty good about yourselves! You're in Mim and Taylors top 50 most important people in their lives. I'd like to thank Morry and Joelle and family for the preparation of the venue today and also like very much to thank the venue owners here for getting ready for us all on such short notice. Apparently it's the shortest time they've ever had to get ready for a

 The Death of Murray Alexander Ceff I've been inspired to write this piece after reading the Tolstoy novella, The Death of Ivan Ilyich. (This 12 chapter novella would be a great start for anyone wanting to start reading Tolstoy, to become familiar with his style of writing, before you tackle War and Peace or Anna Karenina.) I felt inspired to read this at 3am this morning after my regular bathroom visit and having a difficult time getting back to sleep. I had absolutely no idea what to expect in the story, but have grown familiar with Tolstoy having read Childhood, Boyhood, and part of Youth. So I knew what to expect in terms of writing style at least, and his usual setting of 19th century Russia. When I saw that it was only 12 chapters I didn't expect to finish it all within a few hours though. In a nutshell, Ivan Ilyich lives and dies in late 19th Century Russia and struggles to accept the life he leads and searches for meaning in his life, particularly as he suffers from a t

My Dad was my hero when I was a boy! I have taken some of what I will write from Sr Reyna Aburto of the General Relief Society Presidency, and I have also borrowed some themes and paraphrased some ideas from a book title the Crucible of Doubt, by Fiona and Terryl Givens. I will also quote some paragraphs from The Living Christ - The Testimony of the Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, published some 21 years ago. Most cultures around the world have developed some form of hero worship. This possibly started when the biggest and strongest man helped his tribe win territory over competing tribes. Or perhaps he was the best hunter. Perhaps that hero worship became so pervasive that the hero became the king. And the Kings eldest son became the next king and so forth. We see this pattern in the Holy Scriptures. And, as was the case in the Japanese culture, the king or emperor can become a god. It wasn’t until after WWII, with the American influence, that the Japane