Category Archives: Zzzz … Old Stuff

I believe in Santa !

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Not posted anything for ages – but just came across the following from G. K. Chesterton.

What has happened to me has been the very reverse of what appears to be the experience of most of my friends. Instead of dwindling to a point, Santa Claus has grown larger and larger in my life until he fills almost the whole of it.
It happened in this way. As a child I was faced with a phenomenon requiring explanation. I hung up at the end of my bed an empty stocking, which in the morning became a full stocking. I had done nothing to produce the things that filled it. I had not worked for them, or made them or helped to make them. I had not even been good — far from it. And the explanation was that a certain being whom people called Santa Claus was benevolently disposed toward me.
What we believed was that a certain benevolent agency did give us those toys for nothing. And, as I say, I believe it still. I have merely extended the idea. Then I only wondered who put the toys in the stocking; now I wonder who put the stocking by the bed, and the bed in the room, and the room in the house, and the house on the planet, and the great planet in the void. Once I only thanked Santa Claus for a few dolls and crackers, now, I thank him for stars and street faces and wine and the great sea. Once I thought it delightful and astonishing to find a present so big that it only went halfway into the stocking. Now I am delighted and astonished every morning to find a present so big that it takes two stockings to hold it, and then leaves a great deal outside; it is the large and preposterous present of myself, as to the origin of which I can offer no suggestion except that Santa Claus gave it to me in a fit of peculiarly fantastic goodwill.
— G. K. Chesterton in The Tablet 2

I wish you all a happy Christmas –

Keep believing in Santa…

Babe: Pig in the City divx

Chasing Amy movie

Spawn divxA Prairie Home Companion movies

Ambiguity, Communication, and practice

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ASBO Jesus put up a great image the other day and by the time I got to look there were over 100 comments. My comment was on the nature of ambiguity in communication, something that we severely miss in the church. Jesus rarely explained the parables, and left room for discussion and interpretation. Often when I leave a service I have been speaking at it takes me ages to get out the door, people want to know the answers to the questions I have raised, they want to know where I stand, what i really believe. This dialogue is really important, but people still want to pin things down. On the one hand this is part of human nature and natural, the difference comes from the level of relationship you have with those with whom you dialogue. People who have travelled with me can cope with the ambiguity and lack of answers as they understand the journey. My initial conclusion about this is because people want us communicate orthodoxy but people who have been on the journey can live with the ambiguity because they have seen something of the orthopraxis along the way.marriageTightrope movies

Targeted Christmas Marketing Encounters (of the mission kind)

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First Richard’s news if you missed it. Now…

A bunch of us were Christmas shopping last night after which bro-in-law told me that he had had his presents wrapped for free by people outside a church in the high street. I said I couldn’t bring myself to do that as it was cheating – I was a Christian already!
OK, I’m making a few assumptions which are really about myself and not about the people doing the wrapping:

  • I’m assuming that they are trying to reach out to people who don’t know about God’s love by wrapping the presents and
  • I’m assuming that they aren’t particularly intending to wrap everyone from their own church’s presents.
  • So therefore I’m thinking that they don’t want to wrap other church people’s presents.

The questions that now go through my head are:

  • Should mission activity be a simple extension of what we do for ourselves (the group), just extended out to others? (because otherwise we are saying we aren’t willing to do things for our closest friends what we are willing to do for others) or
  • Can mission be doing something that when ‘they’ become ‘us’ we won’t do for those people anymore?

I don’t know – I think that there is more to this than meets my eye.

Anyway, I’m going to give bro-in-law the benefit of the doubt: He is single and perhaps he was trying to meet some generous Christian females from our nearest big town!

Help I’m melting.

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Yesterday I woke up no sense of taste (some would say I never had any anyway) then today started dribbling, and cant close one eye, I am slightly paralyzed on one side of my face, been to the docs and it is Bells Palsy although I like the name Idiopathic peripheral facial palsy (its the idiopathic bit I like – it kind of sums up how I feel when I am drinking anything), so am on a range of tablets and eye drops to treat the symptoms. (cost a fortune in scripts) . Josiah and Bethany helpfully commented that I was melting down one side! The docs know the cause in neurological but no cure however most (70%) recover in about 5 weeks.

Youth sport, leisure and anti-social behaviour

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The Audit Commission has begun a piece of research here

into the use of local positive activities to discourage young people from getting involved in anti-social behaviour. Through fieldwork the study will assess the ways in which local authorities and their partners co-ordinate, deliver and commission positive activities to reduce anti-social behaviour, and will also talk to the young people involved in those activities about their experiences.

Ethicallytainted

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This morning I had some time off so we went to Axminster just up the road and called on the River Cottage shop there. It was very nice, stuff in boxes, little plastic around, lots of local river cottage produce, and some local veg. However the longer I was there the more uneasy I became, the place was clearly branded, and seemed to be building on the river cottage brand using this to hike prices on other products. Most of their veg was supplied a well known food box scheme but the prices seemed over the top compared to the door to door supply. I wonder if they pass these prices onto the farmers. Then there was the more subtle things like all the apples were labelled grown in Somerset, reinforcing the brand ethos which is great, but bananas were simply labelled organic. Which is okay and a step in the right direction BUT why not say where these are from? Does acknowledging that they travelled lessen or negatively impact the brand power of river cottage, were they trying to protect the brand identity. The whole enterprise had subtlety moved away from the original self sufficient ethic of the original River Cottage experiment that I watched so enthusiastically. Okay Hugh Fernly -whitingstall needs to make some money but wasn’t he trying to get away form the big business approaches, isn’t this current river cottage enterprise a mask for a consumer identity and development mentality that seems to lurking beneath this supposedly local/ethical brand . I openly acknowledge I use a mix of local shops and supermarkets and I always feel uneasy coming out with a trolley load of stuff, but on leaving the River Cottage shop today I felt far more tainted.

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