Church life

What with Christmas and everything I never got around to blogging about the fact that before Christmas I went and met with Peter V to talk about how the church can mark the anniversary of the abolition of slavery (which was very positive - the theme for Lent will be "setting captives free" with a focus on modern slavery on 25th March) and he asked me not only if I would be willing to do a couple of the talks on the forthcoming Alpha Course, but also if I would lead on setting up something for the fourth Sunday in each month that he wants to call Conversation. I feel really excited about this - I think (hope) it is a chance collaboratively as a church to work out ways of applying the Gospel in the "real world"; I'd love to develop something peer-driven that discusses issues that people bring and creates space for people to allow God to speak to them. I need to get a couple of people together, so that it is (a) clearly not my project, which is really important for me, and (b) to help make sure that the ethos stays collaborative and peer-driven rather than directive or hierarchical. I'd really like to start this at the end of January but we'll see - probably better to start with something thought-through in March than rely on enthusiasm alone and then struggle.

Christmas pictures

A couple of quick pics:

The Lone Barn done out with thousands of tiny silver streamers

The Civic Centre in Southampton with the clock tower lit in red and green. And finally...

our house on Christmas Eve (the little socks are the gerbils' stockings).

Simplification of wishes

Earlier on today I was in WHSmith looking at a Linux magazine and wondering whether to spend £6.50 to get the new Ubuntu distro that was included with it, and thinking to myself that I really would like to learn how to be proficient in using Linux, when it occured to me that I have a full time job, a wife and five children, an Open University module starting soon and I want to brush up on my Italian before our summer holiday, plus I bought a video camera for Christmas that I don't really know how to use properly and I want to work out what to do with the editing software. I don't really have enough time for all the things I want to do, let alone anything else. So I didn't buy the magazine. And our computers will continue to run on Windows. For the time being...

Youthful armpits

I may be old but I have...

Last Saturday

Finally got a chance to post some pictures from the surprise trip to London that Katrina organised last Saturday to celebrate my birthday.

This is the Turbine Hall in Tate Modern, with the tube slides that Katrina thought would be a good way to celebrate my youth! We got tickets to go down the tallest (five storeys high) which was such good fun - especially discovering that if you sing a note the joints in the tube make it come out of the bottom as a strange ululation that gets nearer and nearer...

Life begins at 6.30am

I had a nice day yesterday, played on the computer for a bit (Benjamin bought me Might and Magic IX, but I want to complete the last level of M&M VIII first, so I have a few more monsters to kill and some odd levers and locked doors to try and sort out), had a haircut, had an excellent bacon and brie baguette at the the bakery in Park Gate, did a little light shopping and then came home for birthday tea. Once the younger children had gone to bed we started watching Munich but by about 10.30 we were too tired and turned it off. The only disappointment of the day was that Daniel's laptop came back from Medion with the screen working but with no wireless connection and with a return of the old problem that the battery won't charge from the mains. (I never did get a reply to my complaint.) I went out and bought a new Netgear wireless card which also failed to work. There seems to be a conflict between the Netgear software and the standard Windows wireless networking setup (huge thanks to Alex, who came for birthday cake and then spent ages trying to sort this for me), despite not having a problem with a Netgear wireless PC card elsewhere on my network. In the end I gave up, and we may resort to Daniel checking there's nothing on there he wouldn't want to lose, and then we'll try restoring the factory settings. If that makes the software work, we'll look at the prices of new batteries; if not, we'll have an expensive paperweight.

Anyway, I'm trying to get into the habit of treating each day as a gift from God, a fresh start and chance to do things well. I doubt I'll succeed fully every day, but it's worth a try. And I have my first session with the hypnotherapist today, so it seems like a good time to embrace the possibility of change.

It's my birthday

Which is, of course, a good thing. Why does it take a day that's all about me to remind me that a life that's happy, a life that's fulfulling, a life that's well-lived is not a life that's all about me?

I just opened my first e-card of the day, from Katrina, which made me laugh till I cried. The reason to celebrate is not that I'm a particular age, but that I'm alive at all.

Work shoes are not very comfortable

I want a job where I can wear slippers

Civil liberties in an information society (2)

E-health insider reports on the story I blogged about a while back. The Department of Health has written to all the people who sent in The Guardian's opt-out coupon, explaining that they don't have the right not to have their information added to the NHS Care Records Service (full text of the DH letter here). As is pointed out in the comments on the E-health insider page, the Data Protection Act doesn't stop organisations holding the information about you that they need to conduct their business, it only gives you the right of access to that information in order to ascertain that it is accurate and up to date, and places a duty on organisations to prevent unauthorised access to your information (i.e. to protect your data). Scaremongering? No thanks. Campaigns for better information security? Ooh yes please!

Thirtysomething

Today is my last day of being thirtyanything; I don't feel quite as bad as I did but I'm still feeling kind of hopeless and what's-the-pointish. I'm at work today, having had two days off with stomach cramps and diarrhoea, and I'm looking at all the various stuff I've got to do and thinking how little I care about it. I'm sure that I can talk myself into seeing that doing these things will be useful for someone; it's just that my main (or only) motivation is to not get sacked because we need the money. I'm not sure how long it's possible to sustain working in a job that (a) I don't care about and (b) makes me feel physically sick with anxiety when I come into the building. I had a plan to try and earn money from creative writing, and once I had found someone who would pay me, to give up some hours in this job to have more time to write, etc; unfortunately I'm too busy/tired/miserable to get on with the writing, meaning that that plan may be a non-starter.

I'm going to see a hypnotherapist on Friday, who was recommended by my chiropractor; we'll see if his optimism is justified - he reckons he can have me feeling more positive in 5 or 6 sessions. Maybe just getting past the 40 barrier tomorrow will help; I've got a list of things I'd like to achieve, though I'm struggling to believe that I'll ever turn them from "things I'd like to do" to "things I've done".

From "The Drum Major Instinct"

If you want to be important—wonderful.
If you want to be recognized—wonderful.
If you want to be great—wonderful.
But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. That's a new definition of greatness.

And this morning, the thing that I like about it: by giving that definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great, because everybody can serve.

You don't have to have a college degree to serve.
You don't have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve.
You don't have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve.
You don't have to know Einstein's theory of relativity to serve.
You don't have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve.

You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love. And you can be that servant.

- Martin Luther King

Hear it here