Teeth

There’s an important difference between less and fewer. Of course, when I say “important”, I mean “important to me”, but it’s one of those little things that I like to get right. “Less” is used when there aren’t any numbers involved, “fewer” when there are. So, for instance, there are fewer days left in 2008 than there were last week, but less time.

This distinction is important, because I’m reflecting on the fact that I have less teeth in my mouth than I did a week ago, and I wouldn’t want anyone to think that I had fewer teeth. I still have just as many teeth as I had earlier in December, but one of them in particular is a lot smaller than it used to be because first the outside bit of tooth came away from the ancient filling, and then on Saturday the filling, complete with small protruding screw, came out as well, leaving me with a little jagged bit of tooth sticking down from my gum. Hence me being in a situation where I have the same amount of teeth, but less total tooth.

Unfortunately this is not the only bit of tooth to have parted company with my jaws; I’ve had several come detached since the summer. And what’s more, I was warned that this very thing would happen. A couple of years ago, when I last went to the dentist, he told me that unless I had work done, then my back teeth would fall apart. He then told me that I would have to pay £1500 for the initial work, with the result that (a) I didn’t even try to find out how much it would cost in total and (b) I didn’t go back again. Well, he was right, but on the other hand we all had a very nice holiday last year. We’ve since discovered that as dentists go, he was a very expensive one, but nonetheless there’s no way that I can go to any dentist now without needing to take out a loan.

So far, the small remaining fragment of tooth doesn’t hurt (unlike the broken bit on the other side of my mouth, but that only hurts sometimes when I bite down hard with it and so doesn’t really constitute a problem), which means that I can put off doing anything about it for a while. I assume that it (or the other broken teeth) will probably cause problems at some point, and that I’ll have to have it pulled out – assuming that that’s the cheapest option – but until then, I’ll just have to content myself with knowing that while having less money than I’d like means fewer options for personal healthcare, at least it’s grammatically correct.

Today, I hate my job

Came into the office this morning. Thought vaguely about saying a general “Good morning” to the other people who were already there, but was too discouraged by the fact that nobody even looked up when I walked in. Sat and waited while my laptop took forever to boot, listening to other people being greeted when they came in and laughing and swapping stories about their weekends and a party that they’d all been to. Checked my emails, to find a circular for everyone saying that the leaving party for a guy I worked with for several years has been postponed. Since I hadn’t known about the party, checked the original list of recipients further down the email to confirm that my name hadn’t, in fact, been on the (rather long) list. Thought about phoning people who have more important things to do than talk to me to find out what they are doing about childhood obesity, but put it off. Which was easy, as I couldn’t give a damn what they’re doing. Read through a draft of a document which is being circulated for comments, but was so bored by the same old facile platitudes and aspirational targets that I couldn’t bear to read more than a couple of pages. My boss asked if I was busy, so I said I could manage to fit something in if it was urgent, and she explained that there are some projects that need to be put into a standard reporting framework, and since I’m apparently freakishly talented for being able to understand the reporting framework in the first place, could I put someone else’s information into boxes so that people who think it’s important will be able to see at a glance what’s happening.

Will have to get on with the stupid obesity stuff soon, as have been putting it off for ages, and apart from putting information in forms, need to have some way of filling up the rest of today and tomorrow. And then Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday next week. And then there’s going to be a whole new year of roughly similar nonsense. Hooray.

Synchronise me, baby!

I've given up on using 30Boxes, lovely though it is, and have gone back to Google Calendar, and all because of the wonderfulness of GooSync. My online calendar, synchronised with my N95 calendar. Ooh yes.

Legalism

For a while now I’ve been working through “Celebration of Discipline” with a friend, and I have to say that it’s extremely challenging as well as helpful. The premise of the book is that, for all our efforts to change ourselves, there are some things that we just can’t do by our own efforts, and that living a Christian life (in the fullest sense of being like Jesus) is one of those things. So instead we need to ask God to change us, and we engage with this through the practice of the Disciplines. There’s a lot more than that, including ideas like Bonhoeffer’s “cheap grace”, but basically the idea is that the disciplines help to put us in a place where God can work in and through us.

One of the other themes of the book is the temptation to legalism, and it's that I've been thinking about recently. Richard Foster describes a narrow path with a precipice each side. On one side of the path is the temptation to believe that there's nothing we can do to change ourselves, and just have to sit back and wait for God to do things to us. On the other is the belief that we can earn salvation by keeping lots of rules. It's this legalism to which I am tempted to stray at the moment: I'm discovering what a delicate balance it is between wanting to do more of something positive and using my failure to do those things as a stick with which to beat myself.

I wonder how many things there are that change from "should" to "ought". I should lose some weight - I'd be healthier and likely to live longer if I did - but the guilt after eating pizza and ice cream definitely comes from the (slightly, but vitally) different "I ought to lose weight". I think there's something here about our willingness to do what's right: if the things we should do are in fact going to be good for us, whether that's getting enough sleep, being honest or recycling plastic bottles, then surely we should want to do them. Of course, we don't; we do things that are bad for us and those around us. So we surround ourselves with rules and laws to keep us in line, which we then break. I remember reading about Foucault's use of the panopticon as part of an argument of how we internalise control and keep ourselves under surveillance, and I think that there's some truth in that, but more than that I think that there's a human tendency to keep moving between two ideas: that I am rational and given freedom to make choices I will make the right choices for me and society, or that I am flawed and likely to make poor choices, and therefore need guidance, correction and discipline from others. Oversimplifying massively, I think the first leads to free market economics, laissez-faire, humanism, religion that emphasises grace, equality and education-as-improvement; the second leads to education-as-instruction, protectionism, an increased role for the State and religion that emphasises guilt.

So here's my question for myself today: what am I doing that is a choice based on knowing what will be best, that I can feel satisfied with after doing it, or can freely choose not to do if I so wish, and what am I doing that is based on feeling that I really ought to be doing it whether I want to or not, that I might feel miserable about having to do or will feel guilty about not doing?

Tesco denies prices hit by inflation

Night time carousel

This happens very rarely: I see something and imagine what a photograph of it would look like. I take the photograph, and then the finished picture looks almost exactly how I originally imagined it.

This carousel is by the Bargate in Southampton. I walked past it on my way home from work on Friday and was struck by the contrast between the bright lights and the darkness behind it.

Things to do

Things I need to do: finish the bathroom, mend the hole in the hall ceiling, sort out the heating and hot water, sleep more, get some exercise, eat properly, help look after children, help get the house ready for Christmas, move Rachel's room around.

Things I want to do: finish the bathroom, mend the hole in the hall ceiling, sort out the heating and hot water, sleep more, get some exercise, eat properly, help look after children, help get the house ready for Christmas, move Rachel's room around.

Facebook friends

I quite often click through to the page on Facebook that shows "People you may know", and then delete any people I've never actually heard of until I'm left with a page of people who I do know but wouldn't ask to be a Facebook friend.

Is this odd?

Greed

I really must rid myself of the belief that if one of something is good, then two will be better. I went over to Tesco for something to eat mid-afternoon, and they were reducing the price of some sandwiches. I picked up a Healthy Choices prawn mayonnaise sandwich for 49p, and then thought "That's less than half price - I could get two and still spend less." So I ended up with two packs of sandwiches, when one would have been fine; 250 extra calories when I really need to lose weight; 49p less in my pocket than I would have had.

Sometimes, more than enough is too much.

Reuben's Confirmation

I'm really looking forward to Reuben being confirmed tonight, partly because it's a good thing in itself, partly because it's a (biological and church) family celebration - I don't have enough parties - and partly because it's a parenting thing.

A while ago when I was looking at the atheist bus stuff I browsed to the justgiving page for Alpha Course bus ads. Someone there had written "£2 to encourage you to target your indoctrination at consenting adults instead of undiscriminating children. It's good to talk." Having grown up with a faith that worked really well until I started asking questions in my late teens, then given up on faith entirely and gone away from God, and having had to think hard about what I believe and why, and needing a faith of which I can ask searching questions, I sincerely hope that we've been able to bring up our children to know about God, but also to have a faith that is flexible enough to grow with them. I think that the fact that Daniel has rejected Christianity altogether is at least encouraging that we've not just "indoctrinated" our children. Unless, of course, we're really not very good at indoctrination.

I probably feel just as frustrated with non-Christians who reject Christianity because it's "organized religion" or "just a myth" as I do with Christians who have a "simple faith", by which they mean they never ask questions. I know that I'm guilty of deciding that I'm not going to be a Muslim or a Buddhist without fully investigating the claims that Islam or Buddhism make, but at least I make that decision because I've made a thought-through decision for Christ, and it would be hypocritical to then consider other religions. (This doesn't mean that I shouldn't try to learn about other religions and belief systems, so that I can understand and respect those who practice them.) I also know that there are a lot of Christians who put people off Christianity through bigotry and intolerance or answering every honest question with a quotation from the (King James) Bible. But I remain convinced that Jesus is who he says he is and that an adult Christian faith, which Reuben will be confirming he has tonight, should be both flexible and robust enough to stand up to whatever questions and doubts and objections are thrown at it.

So I'll be very proud of Reuben tonight, not only because he has chosen to confirm publicly that he is a Christian, but also because he is a young man who knows how to think, and and has made an individual and thoughtful choice.

Which is pretty much all you could ask in a son.

Atheist bus advert

I shared this the other day, and I was going to write something about it at the time, but you know how it is, busy, busy, busy, lazy, etc; anyway I've still been thinking about it and wondering what it is about this that particularly made me pause. I suspect that it's because although I'm a Christian, I absolutely sympathize with Ariane Sherine: I think that bus adverts that threaten eternal damnation are bad news, not Good News. I was initially all for starting a campaign to have bus adverts saying "There is a God: he wants you to stop worrying and enjoy your life (Luke 12:22, John 16:24) - actually I still think that this might be a good idea - but more importantly I think that we Christians need to think carefully about the way that we present Jesus to the world. Despite Richard Dawkins - whose work I used to quite like - saying idiotic things like "thinking is anathema to religion" (ah yes, Professor Dawkins, the complete lack of Christian and other religious writers and academics for the last 1000 years is convincing evidence for this statement), I'm sure that there is a good case for engaging people with the Good News that Jesus makes a positive difference, here and now in this life, rather than suggesting that he's waiting around until the end of time to get you back for every little thing you ever did wrong. The British Humanist Association wants people to ask questions, to think for themselves and to enjoy life. If the Church doesn't want the same things, we're all in trouble.

Conversation

I have kind of mixed feelings about last night's Conversation. On the one hand, having Celia provide a focus for it - and giving notices about this - meant we had a lot more people come than have attended recently. On the other hand, those who attended were also quite a bit older than our usual demographic, which meant that we had to lose the background music, which I guess I always saw as part of the "cafe-style" atmosphere we were trying for.

But... people were very willing to move around, there was a lot of very animated conversation going on, including (from what I observed) some really thoughtful stuff about how we as a church may appear to others who are different in some way from us. I suppose we'll have to see what kind of feedback we get over the next week or so. I can't even really pin down what I imagined Conversation would look like if it really took off, but I know last night was different from whatever that mental picture might be.

The other interesting thing, from my point of view, was that I invited in a couple of lads who were playing football outside when I arrived. They didn't last long in the main room with everyone else - though it did make me wonder if that might have been different with the usual smaller and younger crowd - but did stay and chat for a bit with me and James in the Welcome Area. It made me realise that I've missed that kind of conversation, where you can be talking about the Atonement and someone else just talks over you with some violent/gross anecdote, so you stop and then backtrack again. It also reminded me that actually I'm quite happy to talk to people about Jesus/Christianity/the Bible (why doesn't it have a blurb on the back, wondered one of the girls who came in), and I feel quite happy talking about that and answering questions like "Are you a Jew? You been circumcised?", "Why do good things happen to bad people?" or "When God wanted to kill everyone, why didn't he just snap his fingers and kill them straightaway instead of sending a flood so that they died slowly and horribly?" Hmmm. Slightly sad that I can't do talking to young people about Jesus for a job, but glad that I had a chance to do it last night.

So, remind me what this 'blogging' thing is...

I haven't posted anything here for ages, I know; I've been so short of inspiration that it's taken me weeks to think of an excuse for not posting. However, my lovely Zude home page has disappeared, to be replaced with a piece of ugliness that wants me to sign up to Google Sites - which I tried, and it took me less than ten minutes to be severely unimpressed. So I shall now use this as my home page, and see if I can do a bit of tweaking with the template.

Supermarkets

For your delight and delectation, another piece published via Triond.

Please take a moment to go to the page and, if you would, another moment to tell others about it.

Thank you kindly

Writing for pennies (2)

Suddenly, it's all worthwhile: screenshot from my Triond page

Writing for pennies

I've thought for a long time about trying to earn some extra money by writing: I'm fairly confident that I can string a sentence together, and I occasionally have what seems to me to be an original idea. The problem has been that writing novels takes a lot of time, non-commissioned TV scripts rarely get accepted and sending short stories to magazines is an excellent way of building up an impressive collection of rejection slips (which all writers get, I know).

I had a look at freelance writing online, which looks possible - there are a lot of sites offering work writing short articles - but it helps a lot to have a body of previous work at which prospective employers can look. I've therefore decided to try Triond, who will accept articles, pictures, etc. on any subject, and then publish it on one of their syndicated websites. Using a formula involving page views and ad clicks, they then pay a few cents into my Paypal account.

The first such piece of mine is here. I know it's not exactly literature, but I'd be extraordinarily grateful if either or both of my readers could go have a look at it, and if possible mark it with their favourite social bookmarking site (Digg, StumbleUpon, etc.) and email their friends to say "Hey, read this." Doing so may make the difference between Hovis and Tesco Value bread for me come the end of the month...

Ideas that are more personal will still appear from time to time on this blog, but those times when I get a thought in my head and think "I could maybe blog about that sometime" will hopefully turn into articles for general consumption.

Saturday Night Live

Verse of the day

I have no idea how Bible Gateway generate their 'verse of the day', which I get as an RSS feed, and I am cautious of taking single out-of-context verses and saying "That is just meant for me", in the same way as any random newspaper horoscope can seem meaningful, but I was both amused and moved to find that yesterday's verse was Titus 2:2 and then today's is Isaiah 46:4.

Because I need reminding

I was feeling a bit rubbish earlier so I walked over to the Central Library in my lunchbreak, wandered around the novels and then went upstairs and picked up a copy of Angels on the Walls, which I'd read several years before. I sat down in the nearest seat and started reading. After a while I wanted to move to a seat with a table to rest the book on so I wandered across and picked one on the grounds that it was as far as possible from other people. I'd been sitting concentrating on the book, until a point where the author was talking about Jesus loving everyone, and my mind drifted off into thinking about John 3:16 and explaining that God so loved the world - not just the nice people or the people who are going to follow him - when I looked away from the book to the graffiti on the bit of wall in front of me. This is the first thing that I saw:

Harder, better, faster, stronger

I've downloaded Nokia Sports Tracker for my N95, and it reckons that my usual circuit of the Green is in fact just over 1km, which means I have been running slightly further than I thought. In fact, I am now running further anyway, because I have decided, since it's September, to increase my daily run to three circuits of the Green: 3.28km this morning, according to Nokia. The Sports Tracker has all sorts of nifty features, including exporting my route to Google Earth; here's what I did yesterday:

Having looked at the map from this morning's run, the margin of error for position and altitude are pretty narrow, so I'm (a) impressed and (b) likely to trust the results.

It also calculates calories burned, so I can eat cream cakes and think "I already ran this much this morning."

Reflections

I was just looking at Cumberland House on Google Earth, and I noticed that Grosvenor Square is full of reflected sunlight from the windows of the old Barclays building. Which is quite pretty, if you like that sort of thing.

Early morning runs

I've just checked my route I run in the morning on the "Distance Measurement Tool" on Google Maps and reckon that it's more or less 950 metres going around the Green, so my current run, going round twice, works out at about 1.2 miles. The plan is to build this up each month - ideally by the New Year I'd like to be doing 5 laps (just under 3 miles) but I'll have to get a balance between wanting to build up fitness and having to get up ever earlier to make time for running!

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On top of the tower, Alcaudete castle

We went to the castle today for the guided tour. Which was in Spanish. Despite lots of people, guide books and websites saying that everyone in Andalucia speaks English, in fact practically nobody here does. This is probably because this really isn't a tourist destination - which is great. I managed to gather from the woman from the tourist office who showed us round the castle that they simply don't get English visitors. Anyway, we are managing just fine, and causing much amusement in shops with our pointing and mangled phrasebook vocabulary.

France

Sitting in MacDonald.s in Le Mans, free wifi but got to go now. All good so far

Health Secretary recognises the benefits of exercise

DSC00041.JPG

Hmm. As you can see, I'm trying out ShoZu, which seems to more or less do what it says on the tin on my W200i, though with a few not-very-clear menu commands (hence the picture above getting uploaded with its original title, not the one that I thought I'd given it, and without a description. But, it does seem a nifty little Java app for sending stuff from my phone to Facebook, Twitpic, Blogger - or lots of other places - so I guess I'll persevere with it.

Just for clarity, the picture above was sent from my phone, without going into a browser, just by using the ShoZu app. All this text I added later on my laptop.

Slogan

Today: better than yesterday, not as good as tomorrow

Sunshine superprophet

I had Donovan's Sunshine Superman stuck in my head, and I actually thought about this, but then I thought "No, God's not speaking through a Donovan song. The lyrics are just hippy nonsense."

Then I realised (after two days of having the tune coming back into my head, even when I've been listening to other stuff), that in fact I only had one line that was going through my head, over and over again.

The line?

"When you've made your mind up forever to be mine"

Schadenfreude

There's something curiously satisfying about seeing a Rolls Royce Bentley with a parking ticket.

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What I did today

Pictures from this afternoon's party for the cast and crew of "Once Upon A Fairy Tale" are here.

I had a lovely afternoon.

Reasons to be cheerful, one, two, er...

As I crossed the busy road in front of our office at lunchtime without waiting for the traffic lights to change, I started thinking about the negative consequences of being hit by a car and killed, and then realised that they were all about other people being upset or inconvenienced. It didn't occur to me to think of things that I want to do with my life. So then I thought I'd try compiling a mental list of "Things I really want to do before I die", and I couldn't actually think of anything. There's lots of things I'd like to do, some of which I will do and some I'm pretty sure I won't, but I couldn't think of anything that would make me think "I really really want to do that", other than "Have my family grow up to a point where it's not going to be a complete disaster when I die".

I wonder if it's selfish to live in such a way that people are very upset when you die (as you must), or if there's some kind of balance between bringing good things into the lives of others and their inevitable grief when you're gone. Me, I hate upsetting people; better stay alive.

Brave noob world

Preaching School

Image via Wikipedia Reflecting on last night's preaching school, I have to say that although James has put a fantastic amount of work into it, and Jon, Karen and Matt are great and very supportive, I feel less sure that I would want to carry on to the point where I was preaching in front of the church. This is partly because of my generic laziness - the positively-phrased feedback last night included the word "underprepared" - but, more seriously, because I can see two major problems. Firstly, I am too busy to be able to do this properly and take it as seriously as it should be. I can't even manage to do basic housework, let alone put in the amount of time and effort that preaching in public needs. I wouldn't put myself forward to lead a small group or do children's work, precisely because I know I couldn't give the commitment, and even allowing for preaching not being very frequent, I'm not sure I should say I'll do it if I don't think I'll be able to do it properly. Secondly, I am chronically depressed, with acute phases of misery and despair. This means that when I preach from the heart, I will not actually be giving a very good impression of giving Good News. Last night I really thought I'd given a sober but balanced exposition of the passage, and it wasn't until it was pointed out to me that I realised that I had missed out on the positive element of it and basically said "Life is shit, and that's the way it is". Now, I may think that about my life, but I cannot generalise from my point of view, and I certainly can't do it in front of church, where people will give more weight to what I say precisely because I am at the front of church, and I dare not risk generalising from my experience of life and doing it in a way that has a major impact on someone else if I don't even realise I'm doing it. I don't have anyone (other preaching school members aside) who I would go to for feedback and support, and I know that if I was asked to preach and was feeling down and miserable, I'd say "Yes, of course, that will be fine."

The only thing in favour of me carrying on is the feeling that this is something God wants me to do. On the other hand, I have previously thought that God wanted me to go into ordained ministry ("Thanks but no thanks" said the Church of England) or that God had called me to do youth work (managed to mess that one up myself), so a vague feeling that this may be how I'm supposed to use my ability to stand up and talk in public might not in itself be a good enough reason; certainly not good enough to risk doing something very important very badly.

Isaiah 6

Image via WikipediaI was a bit despondent during and after last night's Celebration, so rather than going to the quiz, I went home to have a bit of a read of my Bible and try and think and pray a bit. As usual, the plan got a bit derailed, but I did eventually go upstairs and opened up the Bible here. The thing that really struck me from this was that Isaiah didn't hear God asking who He should send until after he'd had the coal touched to his lips. Often I think that I want to do whatever God wants me to do, but I'm just too sinful/lazy/messed up. What struck me was that Isaiah didn't hear a request from God, and then say "Oh no, I'm too sinful." His cry of "Woe is me! I am ruined!" is just from being in the presence of God, and at that point the angel basically says "It's OK, don't worry, we've got that sorted" (note that Isaiah didn't have to DO anything - apart from possibly saying "Don't put that glowing coal in my face"), and it's then that Isaiah hears God saying "Whom shall I send?" and he can volunteer.

Maybe it's obvious, but rather than moaning "I just wish I knew what God wanted me to do", I could (a) acknowledge that I'm not worthy even to come into His presence and (b) accept - really accept - that all my sinfulness and guilt has been taken away, then maybe I'd be able to hear more clearly what He wants me to do.

Wordle

This is the Wordle of this blog.




Thanks to James for the link.

Flock 2

Image via WikipediaJust upgraded to the Flock 2 beta and immediately lost all my favourites. I know that this is a good argument for using del.icio.us, but I very rarely use other computers, so I always kept my favourites locally. Not a disaster, but definitely a pain.

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Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible

Apologies for the lack of anything much here recently. I've been thinking about some stuff that I want to write but it doesn't quite feel right to do so at the moment.

Many teenagers

Well, it's Friday night and I am at home with only fifteen teenagers for company. It's Peter's birthday party, so he invited Josh, Ansley, Dan, Callum, Elliot, David and someone whose name I don't know round for pizza and a DVD. This was a good night to do so, because the others would be out - Rachel dancing, Benjamin and Reuben at NRG and Daniel almost certainly out somewhere or other. Unfortunately JK had gone away (to a stag night apparently) so the usual group of young people who gather at our house before NRG each week gathered anyway, but ended up with nowhere to go. After a certain amount of confusion and to-and-fro-ing, we said they might as well come round here. So now we also have Benjamin, Reuben, Ben, Shelby, Sam, Lucy and Zoe. A few are still watching Stardust, but there are also groups shouting at each other over Halo or playing outside on the trampoline. Katrina has gone to Tesco and to fetch Rachel, so I'm left here with many many youths. It's not that bad actually.

A lesson from driving

Coasting along uses less energy, but only takes you downhill.

And while we're doing aphorisms, I was quite pleased with this.

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This is Steve

Two thoughts from the last 24 hours that are knocking up against each other in my head. The first is something that came from Preaching School last night, about dealing with feedback, and how it's useful to have a small group of people who you can trust to give you honest feedback about a sermon. My reaction was that that sounded like a good idea, but I would struggle to find such a group of people. Outside of family, I have some people whose comments I would certainly take seriously, but (outside family) I can't think of anyone who I would include in a "feedback group".

The second thought is that I've recently started several blog posts about how I feel, and have then abandoned or deleted them. It's certainly the case that I'm finding it hard not to be depressed at the moment, and that I'm alternating between wanting to overcome it, get myself motivated, etc, etc, and giving in to it, being self-destructive and really despising myself. I'm not sure, however, why I'm finding it hard to publish blog posts about that. A look through the archives of this blog will find any number of posts about feeling down, or dealing with it.

There is an element, I think, of not wanting to keep on going endlessly on and on about how rubbish everything is: I don't want to write it and I assume most people don't want to read it. But somewhere there's a link to that first idea, about with whom I have honest relationships, and to whom I can say "I'm feeling down" without making a joke about it, or adding "...yet again, sorry".

Not sure there's an answer to this, and I have run out of blogging time, but if I have any further thoughts about this, I'll put them here (probably!)

Men and women

Found via Twitpic

How to fail

As a follow-up to a previous post, a list of suggestions for what not to do.

1. Consistently think of life as a to-do list; never let go of the feeling that you've got stuff hanging over you.
2. Always use food, alcohol or drugs to deal with emotional issues.
3. Every time you mess up, remind yourself that this is because you are stupid and will never succeed.
4. Don't take emotional risks in relationships; nobody would like you if they really knew you.
5. Procrastinate.
6. Nobody will thank you for going the extra mile: look after number one first.
7. Be prepared to defend your point of view at all times; assume you know best.
8. Long-term planning rarely comes to fruition; concentrate on short-term gains.
9. Never try to do serious work until you have eliminated distractions.
10. If you think you know the solution, you haven't grasped the size and complexity of the problem

Hey... who turned the lights out?

Being Dad

Rachel was getting very fed up with me giving her suggestions on the way to the festival this morning; I was only trying to give her reminders about putting lots of energy into her performance etc, but she had clearly had enough of me going on at her. I had a sudden moment of insight, and explained to her that because I'm her Dad I really want to do the best I can for her, but since I can't sing and I can't dance all I can do is try to give advice, even though she may not want it and almost certainly doesn't need it.

I guess that's the fate of Dads: we watch our children getting more and more capable and talented, and suddenly realise that they've gone past the point where we can do anything useful to help. Watching and supporting is great, but Dads long to feel useful... and sometimes it's hard to let go of that.

Question

Why is it that despite practically everyone naturally doing things left to right, like reading, photocopiers almost all go right to left (paper goes in at the right and comes out at the left)? Why that way round? Why?

Switchfoot's 'This Is Home'

From the soundtrack to Prince Caspian

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Sacre Coeur, Paris...

Sacre Coeur, Paris...

I'm just playing around with Flock and found that looking at "interestingness" for the Flickr feed in the media bar gave me options when I clicked on photos to blog them. So I clicked on this picture and lo and behold, it appears as a blog post. I think that I like Flock.

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St Leonards

Found this on Flickr
Just in case you don't know what it's supposed to look like, there are proper pictures here and here.

Lost generation

Very clever. Keep watching past the halfway mark.

How big would you like it?

Well, it amused me...

Faryl Smith

I usually dislike everything to do with Britain's Got Talent, just because it's the worst kind of car crash TV. But this 12 year old came on last Saturday and I reacted exactly the same way as the audience - just sat still and stared. Amazing.

"That is the war on terror" by Roy Zimmerman

A short manifesto

In the spirit of the previous post, here's an attempt at a list of reminders for myself.

1. Life is what you get to do, not what you've got to do.
2. That thing you're looking for... it's not in the fridge. No, it's not in the cupboard either.
3. Just because you feel stupid doesn't mean you are stupid.
4. The only way to be able to love is to be able to be loved.
5. Your ability or willingness to do a task will not magically increase if you leave it until tomorrow.
6. Work is rarely its own reward; laziness usually is.
7. You don't have a right to be right.
8. The shorter-term your thinking, the more time you will lose in the long term.
9. You will never have no distractions.
10. If you think you've got problems, you should try finding solutions.
    

My life as a to-do list

Image via WikipediaA week or so ago I was talking about all the things I had to do for the rest of that day (I think it was last time we had lunch at church) and I finished up with "and then I've got to go to the quiz", which was met with a general sarcastic response along the lines of "Oh gosh, that must be awful, fancy having to do that." Of course, that was the right thing to say to my rather silly remark - there are probably few things more tiresome than someone telling you how much they have to do, especially when the things they "have" to do are in fact pleasure and leisure - but I have been thinking since about the extent to which (a) I bore people by repeatedly telling them how much I have to do and (b) I actually think of my life as a long list of things I have to get done. To anybody who reads this who has had (a) inflicted on them: sorry, I will try and be more mindful of this in future; (b), on the other hand, is altogether more serious and scary. Am I really going through life looking at the wrong end of a never-ending list of stuff that has to get done? Do I really think of time with my family as just another thing that has to be done, so that I can then get on with something else? The answer to this one is, no, I don't - but I do often spend time doing stuff I enjoy while simultaneously thnking of the other things that I have to do that need doing. What's scary is that if my life is a list, I will never ever get to the end, will never tick everything off and feel pleased with myself for a job well done. Not today or tomorrow or next week, not when I retire or on my deathbed; I will never get to the end of the list, because the list isn't real, it's just a way of looking at life that actually robs me of opportunities for joy and leaves me overwhelmed with the crushing weight of twenty or thirty or forty years of endless bloody stuff to do.

Geoff and Tom on April

The other day I posted a tweet that was perhaps a little opaque.
Basically I was thinking of this:

WHAN that Aprille with his shoures soote

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding

The droghte of Marche hath perced to the roote,

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

And bathed every veyne in swich licour,

Memory and desire, stirring

Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

Dull roots with spring rain.

Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth

Winter kept us warm, covering

Inspired hath in every holt and heeth

Earth in forgetful snow, feeding

The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne

A little life with dried tubers.

Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,

Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee

And smale fowles maken melodye,

With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,

That slepen al the night with open ye,

And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,

(So priketh hem nature in hir corages):

And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.

Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages

Zemanta (part 2)

Image by Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten via FlickrStrangely, having said that Zemanta wasn't doing anything at all, the little orange rectangle on the side of this page has now turned into a panel of suggested pictures and articles, with some suggested links down near the bottom of this page. It looks as though I have to type 300 characters (don't know if that includes html for links etc) before it comes up with suggestions, but lo and behold I now have some suggested things to add to my blog post, so I'm going to click on them and see what happens.

Related articles

• Zemanta - A content suggestion engine for blogging [via Zemanta]
• Zemanta - Content Suggestion for Bloggers [via Zemanta]

Creme that egg!

OK, I know that it's slightly late for Easter, but it's good to see this kind of ingenuity at any time of year.

A Monday lunchtime thought

I have always mocked and talked disparagingly about people who win the lottery jackpot and say things like "I'll still go to work" or "It won't really change me", until I had a bit of an insight during counselling this morning. People who win a large amount and immediately give up work and move house are making a statement about their level of connection and commitment to their work and their community; the chances are that they have bought a lottery ticket because they are dissatisfied with their life and think that winning a large sum of money will make their life better. People who win a large amount but stay put (with some changes: more expensive holidays, buying houses for their children, etc) are also making a statement about their level of commitment to their work and community; it's likely that, along with the rest of the human race, they have had things they don't like about their life; the difference is that they have invested time and effort into finding a productive and satisfying job and/or a group of friends and becoming part of a community.

From this point of view, people who have invested in and engaged with their life are winners whether they have a lucky lottery ticket or not; people who are looking to the lottery to provide them with a whole new life may be losers even if they win.

Heroes series 1 in 210 seconds

Guns N' Roses

The last.fm blog has a post on their efforts to clean up metadata, especially where there are areas of contention - asking, for instance, how many ways there are to spell "Guns N' Roses - Knockin' on heaven's door" (they have a list of the top 100 ways!). They also have a list of the various tags for band name on Guns N' Roses mp3s here: familiar reading for anyone who's ever downloaded music less-than-legally (I'm told), but worth reading down to the bottom of the list!

Prophecy?

It has occurred to me a couple of times to think more closely about the tunes that get stuck in my head, especially when it's not a tune I've heard recently, or if it's something that keeps on for days, even if I listen to other stuff. What's interesting is that if I've stopped to think "What is this about? What is this saying to me?" then often the tune drops out of my head. Now I don't know if it matters if I think that this is a message from God or from my subconscious (or even if those have to be two separate things*), but maybe I should think more about stuff that just pops up in my head.

As an example, I've been reading N T Wright's "Following Jesus" and have been really struck by lots of passages (too many to quote here), especially ideas on fear and temptation, and how God's love provides the security we need in order to be able to follow Jesus. And the bit of tune that I've had stuck in my head these last few days?

"Every day, it's getting closer, moving faster than a rollercoaster
Love like yours will surely come my way".

My God is so cool, he uses Buddy Holly songs to speak prophetic words.

*Umm... I don't mean that my subconscious is God, or anything wild and scary like that, just that there is no reason why God can't use the stuff I'm already carrying around in my head to attract my attention

Zemanta

I've downloaded a Firefox plug-in from Zemanta. Apparently it makes adding pictures and links to blog posts simple, intuitive and fun. So far it's not done anything - but on the other hand I'm typing this at work, and the network is currently very slow, so maybe I'll just save this to draft and give it another go later.

Update: now at home, two days later, and all I've got is a pale orange rectangle next to the Blogger composition area. I am officially underwhelmed.

Blood, Sweat and T-Shirts

Go here. Watch the video clips. Watch the TV programmes (starts 9pm 22nd April, BBC3).

Nothing else to say about this.

Self-Improvement

I have discovered a great way to put off addressing personal issues: read about how to deal with personal issues. Your local library or bookshop will have dozens, if not hundreds of titles on improving your relationships, your emotional intelligence, your productivity; if you start looking online you'll never get to the end of all the web pages and blog posts about self-improvement, from the stirring and inspiring to the wacky and plagiarised. You can find quotations, exhortations, bullet points and diagrams, podcasts, animations and fifteen-step guides, all pointing you towards the new, improved and all-around better you. And if you think it's not for you, think again: everybody can benefit! And if you're not sure you deserve all these riches: you are a beautiful, unique and worthwhile person. And if it's all a bit too scary: hey, just feel the fear and do it anyway!

There is no alternative to the idea that I must want my life to improve. Why wouldn't I? I can overcome (with help) my fear and low self-esteem, improve my energy levels and de-clutter my life, until I no longer have any reason or excuse not to make my life better and better.

Don't get me wrong. Lots of this stuff is useful, and most of the time I'd like to feel better and happier. Some of the time I'd even be prepared to work for that goal. But sitting and thinking about how great my life could be, or how great it ought to be, is as unproductive and unhelpful as thinking how miserable my life is; sitting looking at cookery books when you're hungry doesn't fill your stomach.

Because all the major problems of the world have been sorted

This just makes me sad.

Theodore Roosevelt

Another pointed Roosevelt quotation: “If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn’t sit for a month.”

I've been reading a couple of Art of Manliness articles (here and here) about Roosevelt, and I have to say I do like his style. I'd heard the story before of him being shot in the chest, reassuring himself that it wasn't going to be fatal and going on to give a 90 minute speech, but although I agree with the commenter on one of the articles that it "makes me tired just reading about him", he's a pretty darn inspirational guy.

The Procrastinator's Creed

1. I believe that if anything is worth doing, it would have been done already.
2. I shall never move quickly, except to avoid more work or find excuses.
3. I will never rush into a job without a lifetime of consideration.
4. I shall meet all of my deadlines directly in proportion to the amount of bodily injury I could expect to receive from missing them.
5. I firmly believe that tomorrow holds the possibility for new technologies, astounding discoveries, and a reprieve from my obligations.
6. I truly believe that all deadlines are unreasonable regardless of the amount of time given.
7. I shall never forget that the probability of a miracle, though infinitesmally small, is not exactly zero.
8. If at first I don't succeed, there is always next year.
9. I shall always decide not to decide, unless of course I decide to change my mind.
10. I shall always begin, start, initiate, take the first step, and/or write the first word, when I get around to it.
11. I obey the law of inverse excuses which demands that the greater the task to be done, the more insignificant the work that must be done prior to beginning the greater task.
12. I know that the work cycle is not plan/start/finish, but is wait/plan/plan.
13. I will never put off until tomorrow, what I can forget about forever.
14. I will become a member of the ancient Order of Two-Headed Turtles (the Procrastinator's Society) if they ever get it organized.

Discovered on Wisdomquotes.com

Cheap GPS

From XKCD

++ Out Of Brain Error ++

Went over to the library to borrow some CDs. Thought, "It's a lovely day, I'll leave my coat in the office." Walked over to the library. It was, indeed, lovely weather. Got to the library. Returned last week's CDs. Browsed round the shelves. Thought "It's a lovely day, so I left my coat in the office... with my library card in the pocket."

The sooner we all get microchips implanted in our heads the better.

Work, necessity of

I saw a card yesterday that said "So you hate your job? Did you know there's a support group for that? It's called 'Everyone'. We meet at the bar." It quite amused me, and reminded me that not enjoying work is not a sign of underlying pathology (if everybody has the same pathology, that's referred to as 'being human'.) Along with my recent thoughts on procrastination I've also been thinking about how I feel about work in general. Now I have to admit that I've never been convinced by statements about the nobility of work; generally I tend to see the advantages of not doing anything much. But, to get all dialectical for a moment, it is possible that I've learned my attitude to inactivity by growing up in a society where work is the norm and time off is to be prized, and by living in a small house with many children, where there is never a shortage of things that need doing. So sitting around not doing much isn't necessarily good in itself, but seems an attractive proposition when contrasted with doing lots and lots all the time. Somewhere along the line I think I slipped over into doing-nothing-much-is-a-good-thing-in-itself land, where leisure, rest and downright indolence are an alternative to work, rather than a complement to work.

This seems important in a way that's hard to pin down.

In Bridge to Terabithia there's a quote that's attributed to Teddy Roosevelt: "Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing." Work worth doing? Gosh, define that. Worth doing by whose standards? If mine, then does anyone else have to agree with me? If not mine, then is that really the "best prize"? And I've not even got started on "working hard". So I would love to dismiss statements like this as the kind of propaganda that keeps the proletariat enslaved, but there is something that it stirs in me, something that suggests maybe I was created to work, that happiness is not sitting by a stream all day, not even sitting there until I feel completely ready to go and get on with the working week, but is maybe closer to sitting by a stream on one day, after enough of the work for the week has been done.

Procrastination

I'm becoming increasingly fed up with myself for not getting things done. There are lots of reasons behind this, which is one of the things I've been talking about in counselling sessions recently (which may be why I'm getting more frustrated about it), but more often than not it comes down to a simple choice not to do something. There may be all kinds of payoffs for inaction (or alternative, displacement action) and there may be complex and longstanding learned behaviours at work; it may well be the case that I choose not to do something that will be boring or unpleasant; still when the moment comes when I could do something, I make the choice not to do it.

Maybe I should use this blog (or now that I'm into microblogging, use Twitter) to record some successes - things I actually get done - and give myself some positive reinforcement.

Twitter

You may noticed from the sidebar that I've started using Twitter. I'd put off using it because I really didn't see the point; I still don't see any point to it, but it both fun and incredibly addictive.

Agree with God

In a Scriptorium essay, Fred Sanders defines confession of sins as "agreeing with God". I have to say I quite like this idea: God already knows our sins, and has made the once-for-all sacrifice on the cross for their forgiveness. Confessing (like prayer, or spiritual discipline) is not primarily about "making up" after falling out with God, or beating ourselves up about how bad we are. It's about seeing ourselves and the world in a way that's closer to the way God sees us, which is what the Kingdom is about.

Zude

Since I read and watched Robert Scoble talking about Zude, I've been trying it out. I'm sure that if I knew more about how bits of the web work, I could do more with it, but I'm happy enough with what I've been able to do to take the step of setting up a new home page that I will now use in my hotmail signature file (does anyone ever click on that?) and my website address when commenting on blogs.

UPDATE: What I really want is to be able to import my Google Reader feeds into a "work" page on Zude, so that I can have one site for work and home, but that doesn't seem to be very easy (at least not for me).

Charity makes you feel good

...according to this item from the BBC

Joy and service

I'm sure that there is a deep and profound joy to be found in serving others, but it's hard to find it in the act of unblocking toilets, particularly when you can't seem to rid your hands of the smell of other people's faeces.

Ambivalence

From Google Reader, an ambivalent use of the word "they":

In case you can't read it on the picture above, it says: "Many hospitals across England report having to turn away women in labour last year because they were full".

Happy genes

An article by Reuters reports on a study that finds that half of the traits influencing our happiness are genetically determined. It goes on to say that

"People who are sociable, active, stable, hardworking and conscientious tend to be happier"

Hey, at least I'm stable. Well, fairly stable. Sometimes.

Damn.

Priorities

Compare the number of people who have a picture of their home, family or pets on their desk or computer at work, with the number of people who have a picture of their workplace or work colleagues on the wall at home.

Test post

This is just a test, playing around with humyo.com

You can't give away what you haven't got

I've been doing a lot of thinking recently but not a lot of writing, so this is me wanting to get at least a couple of thoughts down before I lose them.
I've been thinking about who owns my life; that is, who is in charge of it. Now I know that there are a lot of Christians (myself included) who would say, with a variable ratio of truth and hopefulness, "God is." Part of the problem is that it's often quite hard to put God in control of my life, even when I want to. I know that there's always a temptation to believe that I can make a better job of running my life than the omnipotent Creator Of The Universe could, but that's just pride and foolishness; I know that I resist letting God be truly in charge of some aspects of my life, like looking at the spreadsheet for the monthly finances and tweaking our giving so that the graph for the balance doesn't go south quite so fast, but that's just fear that God won't look after us (and some selfishness - shall I order pizza or give more to church?) What I've been thinking about are the areas that I really do want to give over to God, the things that well-meaning Christian friends tell me to "lay at the foot of the Cross." (As an aside, I've never yet asked "Erm... how do I do that, exactly", which may be the reason that nobody has ever told me exactly what laying something at the foot of the cross entails.) Anyway, there's a load of stuff that I would love to hand over to God, to give up, to put under his control, etc, but I don't seem to be able to do it, and I think that part of the reason that I can't give it to God is that it's not mine to give.
This is stuff that I'm still trying to think through, so this might not make a lot of sense, but it's based on ides about the areas of our life where we (through habit or upbringing or apathy) hand over control of ourselves to other people. As an example, consider a (completely fictional!) person who has low self-esteem. He doesn't think much of himself, and depends on what other people think of him - or, more accurately, what he thinks other people think of him. He puts a lot of time and effort into trying to create the right impression, and trying to work out what impression other people have received. If he goes to a Christian friend and talks about his chronic low self-esteem, that friend might advise him to give this issue over to God. And here's where I think the problem happens: my guess is that our fictional miserable man might come back to his Christian friend a week or a month later and say he's still finding life just as hard, and doesn't feel any better about himself. And my next guess is that this is because he has handed responsibility for his feelings to other people. How can he give something to God unless he owns it first? On the surface this is pretty basic: you can't give away something that doesn't belong to you, but the more I think about this, the more it seems applicable across a range of issues. How can you give your finances over to God if the bank/the balliffs/the people who decide prices at Tesco have more control over your finances than you do? How can you hand over your relationships if you still think that everything that happens in them is the other person's fault? Remember, making it all his/her fault is giving him/her all the power and responsibility; how can you hand over something you've already given away to someone else?
Now I'm sure that there are many people who genuinely have no control over the terrible things that happen to them, and I'm certain that God really is on the side of the oppressed, but I'm sure that for many of us middle-class, relatively wealthy and healthy Christians, there are a whole load of places where God has given us abilities and responsibilities that we have handed over to others and to the World, and then wonder why it's so hard to give them back to God.
Umm... I'm not sure how this goes from here. I know there's something about God giving us things so that we can give them back to him. Maybe the best example is the parable of the talents. The guy who hides his talent in the ground does so because he is "afraid"; he feels he has no control and so just buries his talent in the ground. I've heard this explained as a parable of how we must all use what God has given us, but perhaps there's also something about taking responsibility for what God has given us; being afraid and not taking responsibility means that we have nothing much to give back, and we lose what little we have. There's also something about the whole prosperity gospel thing, about the fact that God gives us stuff purely so that we can give them back to him, not so that we can hand ourselves over to the World's standards of wealth and comfort, but I think that that's enough for this post!

What the world eats

This is a photo essay showing what families around the world eat in a week. Apparently families recorded what they ate during the week, and then posed for a photo with the total week's food. Below each picture is the weekly food expenditure in dollars. Go compare.

The 12 days of training

I'd like to apologise publicly for my singing on this; I'm sorry, I couldn't help joining in.

Thursday lunchtime (thinking about heaven)

Using my lunch break to do a bit of blogging; been doing a lot of thinking recently, much of which is related to therapy, so will not be in the public domain, but has brought me back to ideas about control and frustration, and what happens when the "real" world (the world-as-experienced) is different from SteveWorld™, where everything happens the way I want it to and everyone feels the way I think they should. Apart from my personal stuff, it did make me think about the way in which everyone, to some extent or another, has their own version of [Insert Name Here]World. We wouldn't feel disappointed or angry or frustrated or outraged unless the world-as-experienced was different from the world-as-we-think-it-ought-to-be. This isn't really news when we're thinking about this life; however, I think that there's a temptation to carry on doing it when we're thinking about heaven. Once we get beyond ideas about people in dresses sitting around on clouds, I think that there's a tendency to think about heaven as a place (/situation/experience) where we are happy and have our needs met and there's no more mourning or crying or pain; a place where life-as-experienced is exactly the same as life-as-we-think-it-should-be. Heaven gets sold as always doing the things you love best and feeling happy and never being bored. But I'm not too sure about this now. Jesus pretty much says that eternal life is exactly not all the best bits from this life, and there's lots of stuff in the gospels about treating other people in ways that might not make us happy, or about being prepared to give up everything. Maybe the joy of heaven is the joy of being with God, reunited in the one relationship that eternally tells us the uplifting truth of who we really are, recreated and renewed as we were intended to be made by the One who doesn't make mistakes; but maybe this means that the joy of heaven is joy for those who feel a reflection of that joy here in this life; heaven isn't eternal golf for fanatical golfers and eternal dancing for clubbers and eternal Sunday morning lie-ins for parents: heaven is being with God, and if being with God isn't your highest and greatest and best happiness here and now, then maybe heaven won't be for you.

OK, obviously need to do a lot more thinking about this, but I'm trying very hard to do work stuff during work time, and I've already exceeded my allotted lunch break so I'll have to stop.

Shrove Tuesday (2)

Because our children are scattered all over the place doing various activities on Tuesday evenings, I got up at 6.15am so that everyone could have pancakes for breakfast. Do I like being a dad? Absolutely. Do I wish it didn't involve being quite so tired? Oooh yes.

Shrove Tuesday

It occurs to me that Shrove Tuesday is the best day for procrastination: I will be self-disciplined, I will undertake all manner of improvements both spiritual and physical, I will mark each day with acts of self-denial, but best of all I will not start these things until tomorrow. It's not clear from the Gospels how long it was between Jesus' baptism and his forty days in the desert: Mark (of course) says that it was "at once", Matthew has "then", while Luke chooses to put his genealogy in at this point and has Jesus returning from the Jordan and then being led into the desert. It is quite nice to imagine Jesus saying to himself "I've got forty days of fasting and temptation coming up - I think I'll have a nice bath."

Slightly more seriously, reading these accounts reminds me that the forty days comes immediately after the affirmation of Jesus as loved by God. We can't know how different Jesus' relationship with his Father was when he was on earth from when he was/is the second person of the trinity; maybe he was in exactly the same relationship of eternal unequivocal love throughout all of his life and the affirmation was for the benefit of those listening, but maybe, being human, it was important to hear that he was loved, even if he knew it anyway. However, one important point that I need to bear in mind is that acts of self-discipline come out of the security of being loved, not the other way round. I don't get my relationship right with God (and therefore my relationships with myself and with others) through self-discipline: I undertake self-discipline becasue the desire to do so arises from the sure and secure knowledge that I am loved. There is a world of difference between buying chocolates and flowers for someone to make them love you and buying chocolates and flowers for someone because you love them.

Hema

If I ever go to Holland, I am going to shop in Hema, purely on the strength of this advert. Wait for a while after the page loads.

Oh dear oh dear oh dear

I managed to have a genuinely psychotic experiene the other day: I was driving along when I saw a silver Espace pulling out of a junction ahead. Often when I see this I forget that we only have one car, and I think "Oh, there's Katrina" (usually followed by looking to see if it actually is her, then remembering that in fact I'm in the Espace). On this occasion though I clearly remembered that we only have one car, because I saw the other vehicle and my first thought was "Oh, there's me."

I offer no excuse for this (though I was tired, distracted, etc, etc).

And the winner is...

Bursledon Players have decided that they will submit my short play, And the winner is..., to Totton Drama Festival. I'll be directing it. We had a casting session last Thursday which was markedly under-attended, leaving me needing to phone people and appeal for them to please take on a part. I've also said that I will direct that play and one or two other short plays for the April Bursledon Players production.

openSUSE

I finally have the openSUSE install program running on the Compaq Armada 1750 that I bought before Christmas. It turned out that it was nothing to do with the BIOS, nothing that needed any of the hoops that I've been jumping through. It just needed me to read this, and in particular the bit that says

"Microsoft Windows users
Windows XP can't burn ISO images without third party software."

Maybe this could be a little bit more obvious for first time users? Because lo and behold, as soon as I used the recommended software to burn the image (rather than simply copying it to a disk), it ran the install from the CD with no problem at all.

Family lives in haystack for four years

I saw the headline for this story in the "most popular" sidebar on Reuters and I just loved it, especially the detail about keeping a child off school so he didn't have to draw his house. The world is full of fantastically wacky people.

Therapy

Went for an introductory session with a guy called John Baker at the GP surgery this morning. Unsurprisingly, talked about addressing my needs rather than just trying to placate them with chocolate, hopefully it will be useful for looking at some of my recurrent Romans 7:15 moments.

"Searching For God Knows What" by Donald Miller

After enthusing over "Blue Like Jazz" and getting everyone I could to read it, I thought I'd put a bit on here about "Searching For God Knows What". Quite often I'll read a book I really like through once quickly and then again more slowly, but I have to admit that I had to read "Searching..." again from the beginning before I understood some bits of it. This has a lot to to with Donald Miller's style: he offers lots of fragmentary episodes and thoughts and it's only after picking up quite a lot of the pieces and looking at them that I was able to get an idea of the whole picture. Then again, one of the clear aims of the book is to talk about why Christian self-help books, or a theology of three easy steps, are missing the point, so there's an (I guess) conscious avoidance of that kind of formula. Basically he expands on some of the ideas in "Blue..." and looks in more depth at what it means to have a relationship with God as a person, rather than as some kind of heavenly vending machine, giving out miracles and tickets for heaven in return for the appropriate amounts of faith and prayers. There's an assumption that, as an unregenerate social constructionist, I was happy to go along with, that we are created so that someone or something else tells us who we are. So we're intended to find our identity through the first and only perfect relationship: with God, in Eden. But then sin spoils this, and from then on we're spending all our time looking for someone or something else to tell us who we are. Miller uses a couple of different analogies to talk about the effect of sin: Chernobyl and Mount St Helens. Both are examples of a one-off catastrophe that has ongoing effects, and Miller says that this is like the effect that sin has on the human heart: we're conscious that we've become imperfect, and so we get into one of the main themes of the book: the lifeboat game. This is the game that still often gets played with small children and at team-building events - you have to imagine that there are certain people in a lifeboat, and one of them must die if the others are to live. How to make the decision about who is to die; in other words, how do we make decisions about other people's (and our own) worth? Miller goes into a lot of depth about the different ways that this game gets played out, and in how many areas of life we compare ourselves and others; how putting others down, establishing who is "in" or "out", distinguishing between one kind of person and another, are all part of the lifeboat game. We may know we're doing it, but we still do it as long as we're aware that sin has somehow ruined us, has separated us from the one perfect relationship that lets us know who we are. We still try to find our place in a pecking order, desperate not to be down at the bottom and having our worst fears about ourselves confirmed by a jury of our peers. The message of Jesus, in this context is this: Stop playing the lifeboat game. Give up trying to be rich - give away your goods to the poor. Give up trying to be in with the right crowd - go and spend time with the people nobody else wants. Be small, be last, be as unimportant as a little child in a grown-up world. And do this, not because it's a step in a four-step programme, or because it's a spiritual discipline, but because Jesus through the cross has taken away the sin that scarred and disfigured you, and through the resurrection has opened up the way to a relationship with the Father that can truly let you know who you are, and through the Spirit is transforming you more and more into the likeness of the One in whose image you are made.

Now this (especially the last bit) is my understanding of "Searching..." rather than an accurate precis, and is more a statement of how it is fitting in with my thinking at the moment anyway. As Miller points out, in this book and elsewhere, relationships with real people are much scarier than interacting with a vending machine, and I suspect that a lot of the time I still think of God as some kind of unpredictable/benificent/powerful vending machine, rather than as a person whom I would like to get to know better. I'm encouraged, however, by this book and others, to keep taking steps towards finding out more about who God is, and finding myself more in him.

100

This is the 100th post on this blog, and to mark this occasion I've just sat and read all of the previous 99 in order. Gosh, don't I go on and on and on about the same old stuff! There are a couple of pieces in there that I think are worth reading, that make me think I'm glad I wrote that thought down. Sadly these are the minority of posts, and I feel quite ambivalent about the fact that I am not very different from how I was 15 months ago. I'm pleased that I don't feel quite the same way, that I have moved on; on the other hand it's sobering to see that I haven't really changed very much, and that a lot of the things that I think are "progress" are simply reworking the same old ground. Maybe one good thing is that I'm more hopeful, that joy is still a transient experience (which I think is one of the characteristics of joy anyway, but that's a subject for one of the next 100 posts), but a slightly more common one. Now to see if I can manage to get to post number 200 before April 2009!