372 Days Later

Where has the time gone? Since I last posted here, a lot has changed. I think I have changed and hope that those around me can see and verify that I'm different to the person I was on 9th December 2008.

Since that post I've turned 30, lost my grandad, been to France, worked some ridiculous shifts at my call centre job, ran another 10km race, been to Uganda, quit my job, started training as a teacher, given-up-on-the-youth-work-we-do-only-to-get-excited-and-envisioned-about-it-again (x2), been front row at a U2 gig, seen Delirious for the last time, passed my driving test and a bunch of other stuff that is not at the front of my head at the moment.

I started out the year with 3 goals. To pass my driving test, go to Africa and start teacher training. For the first time in many years I've set and gone some way to hitting those goals.

But my point isn't to say how good I've been. What amazes me is that what marks the year isn't really about keeping your goals and being able to tick things off that you have wanted to do. Very little of the list above is connected to my goals and yet they have marked my year.Some of them have been based around how I responded to situations, not about the goals I set.

Looking back across the first decade of this 21st century, I see an equally long list of things that have happened. Some of which I never anticipated and would never wish to see again. Some brought joy. Some taught hard and painful lessons. Again, not all the dreams I had at the start of the century have happened. But I'd like to think that in responding to the disappointments, joys and change that I've encountered, I've changed for good.

I'm out of practice with this blog thing clearly, as this is a rambling post. But as we start a new year and a new decade, don't just look to set goals that you want to achieve at all costs. Be mindful of how you respond to the challenges and triumphs of the season that is now starting to emerge.

Highly Favoured?

I always try to read back through the gospel accounts of the birth of Jesus during advent. It's my antidote to the gradual drip influence of consumerism that encourages me to panic about the quality of gifts I get for others and how I can keep everyone happy at Christmas.

I've got as far as the angel visiting Mary. I often overlook his opening where he greats Mary and calls her highly favoured.

Highly Favoured. An interesting turn of phrase don't you think? According to human standards, being told that you are pregnant by the Holy Spirit, the relationship strain that would create with your fiance and public disgrace likely to be associated with the news when it got out is not what most people would equate with being favoured.

But this story is not worked out according to those standards that most people would consider. If anything, we see right at the very outset that this birth is going to change the way we see everything.

The unlikely will now be considered highly favoured.

The last will be first.

The weak are the strong, the poor are the rich.

I'm still trying to get to grips with this whole new covenant thing, that someone like me could even be considered part of God's people, let alone someone that God is pleased to have as part of the family.

So I guess that is something for me to keep pondering over the days of advent. I hope that you discover in a new way this Christmas the revolution that says even people like us can be considered highly favoured.

Fallen Leaves

The hill that leads into the park near our flat was yesterday filled with fallen leaves, blurring the lines between the concrete of the pathway and the muddy sides if the hill.

The morning frost had crisped and curled the leaves, ensuring that as I walked on them, a satisfying crunch accompanied each step. My mind raced back to thoughts of childhood, kicking around the leaves in the park and I briefly tried to recall what I would have thought then. Although I was reminded of childhood in this moment, I couldn't escape from the experiences that I carry with me now, and mourned that days of carefree kicking of the casualties of autumn are long since behind me.

I walked through the same park today, hoping once again to be able to crunch and remember those childhood days again but found the overnight rain had dramatically altered the terrain. The leaves still lay in their abstract way, but today posed an altogether different challenge as they blurred the boundary between path and park. The rain stored on each leaf meant that the joy and crunch of each step from the previous today was not to be found. Instead, the conditions meant that each step was a challenge and a risk of slipping down the hill became a real possibility with each further step I embarked on.

After successfully navigating the path and getting into the park, I realised it was a desire for nostalgia that had taken me that route again. And, in trying to think about the old days, I risked injury that could have ruined the present day.

Coming across things that suddenly remind you of old times is a fun experience,and in that moment maybe it is right to think about days past. But going looking for them is a dangerous thing to do, potentially at the expense of the present.

Big Sky Mind

Looking at this photo, I don't recall the sky seeming as big as this. Nor the sea quite so vast and so still. Such massive and amazing things, clearly laid out before my eyes.

And I was more worried about getting my jeans wet.

Talk about focusing on the wrong things.

Observations on Observation

I've spent much of day working on my laptop and have just noticed the darkness creeping in. The eerie glow from the computer screen is the only illumination in the room, until I get up to do something about it.

But I'm temporarily transfixed by realising just how dirty my glasses have become today. Not so much that they have stopped me from seeing; but now the laptop light is right before them, I am suddenly aware of just how impaired my vision has become, even though I am still working away, at an ever diminishing rate of sight. Just in re-reading this post, there are spelling errors and typing mistakes that given 100% clarity, I'd see as I go and correct immediately. (Hopefully these have all been removed now the glasses are clean)

I wonder if there is a correlation between my physical sight and spiritual sight. I frequently complain about not having vision or inspiration spiritually, feeling distant and flat.

Is that simply down to the fact that the glasses I need to wear to have that vision have gotten dirty? Am I now actually missing what is right ahead of me because of the smears, dust and dirt that I've allowed myself to accept and carry around with me?

Time for a good clean up.

Recommendations

Just to prove I've not been just wasting my time recently, here's some books, music and general bits and pieces that have been challenging me, entertaining me (sometimes both) that may or may not interest you...

The Books
Everything Must Change- Brian McLaren
Jesus Wants To Save Christians- Rob Bell and Don Golden
Africa- Richard Dowden

The Music
Duke Special- I Never Thought This Day Would Come
Keane- Perfect Symmetry


This has been making me laugh a lot:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbbxA8a_M_s

This song is has somehow been recommended to me today, but I love the line 'I've spent 10 years trying to sing these doubts away'. I've only ever been a casual Switchfoot fan, but Jon Foreman's solo stuff could get some more of my attention. Apparantly it was in the finale of Grey's Anatomy, but I don't watch that show, so managed to hear the song without any association, which is rare these days. Anyway, have a listen and decide for yourself.

Growing Up Fast..Eventually

The first one of my immediate friends turned 30 this past week. I joked in his card that I was using him as a test case of what turning 30 does to you, before it happens to me in January. It wasn't that funny a joke I guess, but filled space in the card.

We've managed to still be in touch since we left school, navigating the seas of busyness, the steps on the career ladder, relocation to different parts of the country and differing world views.

13 years on, and it sees like suddenly, we are all becoming adults. The news coming through about other friends we have not seen is about who is having babies, who owns houses, who has a high paying job, who has broken up, who has got married. The suggestions made weren't about going to a nightclub, but about having a house party where conversations could be held without shouting, and not wasting the food that had been prepared earlier.

For so long, we've lived as though the future is something that will come later, and we have plenty of time to settle on a career, to do something significant with our lives. Very few of us are living out the aspirations that we held about our future life in 1995, and this has led me to panic slightly about my life.

I have so many good things, but have no clear path out before me that I can see, a job that requires me to work odd shifts and even dreams about my ideal job and clouded by the worldly concerns about how we could afford for me to change direction and pick up a new career.

For the first time, I'm excited about being 30, not daunted by it. I'm looking forward to growing up and maybe answering some of the questions about what comes next for me and what I can use my life for to be of benefit to others.

What's Next?

It's a different world since I last blogged on here.

The American election captured my attention for a significant portion of the last couple of months, as we waited and pondered whether it could really happen.

Whether it was really possible to witness the turn of a new page of history in a nation. It surprised me how many people last Wednesday waited through the night to see the results come in. Lots of us, keeping each other company awake via Facebook and trading knowledgable sounding gambits regarding electoral college votes and waiting for Ohio to make sure the change was really coming and that President Obama would be part of our lives for at least the next four years and maybe even longer.

Then the dust had a day to settle.

Our friend Claire says the States is a strange place to be for a Christian at the moment, seeing as this election was perhaps the first to split the Christian vote. From some of the blogs I follow, I was shocked and saddened to see disappointed Republicans using language about how America is now heading for judgement for not electing McCain. I was disappointed to see some big names spouting judgement and despair and berating Americans for not doing the right thing and how abortion will now be rife, carefully overlooking the statistics that abortions have actually increased during the last two terms of Republican administration.

Now, I try not to wade into these things too often, but I feel I should on this one. Didn't God raise up kings and rulers in the Old Testament, some of whom didn't even acknowledge Him, to accomplish His will? The answer is yes, and although I don't agree with Obama's views on everything, does that mean he cannot do anything good? Of course not.

Surely the simple answer is that if the person in charge has a policy you don't agree with, that you engage with that person, graciously explain why you think your way would be a better course and try to bring change.

Maybe in four years it will all go horribly wrong and people will have earned the right to say I told you so. Those of us in this country who lived through the change from Conservative to New Labour government may well recall the heady days of 1997 when anything seemed possible, and realise they are a far cry from today's troubled political and economic landscape.

But maybe it will work. And no matter what your political affiliation or perspective on the President-elect, surely everyone must agree that a new day, a new year, a new anything, is always filled with the possibility that the new will bring forth something brighter than what came before. It'll be exciting to see what the future holds for America beyond January 20th.

Apologies for getting a bit political. Let's end with some music, unconnected with the post except for the hopeful sentiment, and the fact that it will bring my wife much joy.

This Is One For The Good Days

My experience of serving God over the years has taught me one significant lesson. That when significant things are witnessed or accomplished during that act of service, the euphoria, reinforced faith and sense of excitement at seeing God in action in people's lives is too often short lived.

This is mainly because reality often hits and I end up like a partially inflated balloon released in a room, spiralling and flying without clear direction before landing some distance from where I was a few seconds earlier.

But having returned from serving 200+ young people and their leaders alongside an amazingly talented and dedicated team of people this weekend, I want to make sure that I put down a marker so that the story of the weekend is not reduced to an insignificant time in my head, simply because of the looming shadow of real life creeping back in.

It was truly amazing to see salvation arriving into young lives, and great to have so many people come to a workshop I was involved with trying to get to grips with how we can be better ambassadors for our faith in the situations in which we live.

There's always hope. And God is at work. On the ground and in our communities, in real life situations, He is at work.

And that is worth remembering and looking out for. I don't just want to be someone who hears the stories of what God is doing, I want to be a part of it.

I hope I still feel this way tomorrow, and don't revert to feeling cynical and hopeless about the state of things.

My Nominee for Young Theologian Of The Year

Those of you who have read this blog for sometime will now that working with young people has been a feature of my life for a considerable chunk of my life.

It's a great privilege that I take very seriously, although my default role in any youth team appears to have something to do with being the group clown and setting up and taking part in various silly games.

One of the best things is when I come across a comment of such profound truth out of the mouth of a young person, that I'm reminded that children and young people often have a far clearer grasp on issues of faith and theology that I do. Jesus even said as much.

All of this has been by way of build up to my favourite piece of youth related theology that I've heard this year.

Rachel was recently teaching a lesson in a school in Bristol, and I went along on my day off to support by being assigned to work with the most unruly child in the class.

The previous lesson had seen Rachel exploring the teaching point that we are made in the image of God. When asking if they could remember what this teaching point was from the last lesson, a hand shot up and the following gem was spoken:

'God's got a picture of us in his imagination'.

I like that. I get excited at the prospect of being someone who is made in the image of God, and that God has a picture of me in his imagination. That He sees and imagines the crazy and amazing things that we could be and do.

It's great to work with young people. I often think that I am working with some of the most profound theologians and they don't even realise it.