FYT have posted a collection of creative and at times wacky ideas for a service based on the Widows mite. If you are interested please visit HERE for a download of a heap of creative ideas.
Please text ‘mite’ to 82540 to enable FYT to launch 36 StreetSpace projects working with young people on the streets over the next 3 years. Your text will cost £1.50 plus one standard message and FYT will receive at least £1 of this. Thank you!
This year we have decided to support a new youth project instead of paying for a holiday (that and having the outlay on the cars). However we would still like to try and get away for a week or two and wondered if anyone fancied doing a house swap at Easter or in the summer. We are about 20 mins from the devon/dorset coast in chard, and would need a two/three bed house. Anyone interested let me know.
Anti-social behaviour
The Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) has published a survey conducted by the Youth Taskforce focusing on anti-social behaviour (here). The survey reveals that 80 per cent of people surveyed would like more positive activities for young people. The survey also shows that over two thirds of people in the 69 priority areas targeted think anti-social behaviour has stayed the same or got better over the last two years, while over a quarter say anti-social behaviour has got worse.
College is closed for Today and tomorrow. so i am about to venture out in the snow.
HAppy new year? The last day of leave before i go back to work after an interesting break. Good times with family but needed to spend a grand on the cars servicing, tyres, tax etc and then mine has just gone wrong (not sure what maybe just a dirty fuel filter hopefully not the turbo) and needs an mot. Indie has chicken pox and very spotty, and got a message to say college has been flooded and my desk in particular (which included my lecture prep) but still I have enjoyed the break. Happy new year
This is my final advent reflection for 2009…
What sort of body are you?
A busy-body
A lazy-body
A beautiful – body
You see my body, not my mind, not my soul, not my heart, not my feelings
Does any-body care?
Every- body wants to be a some-body
No-body wants to be a no-body
I am body – therefore I am
“The soul does not war with the body; the soul loves the body” – Meister Eckhart
“Our sensuality is a gift from God; in fact, “God is our sensuality” – Julian of Norwich
“You need four hugs a day for survival, eight for maintenance, and twelve for growth”
Virginia Satir
And so finally we are left with body. A body theology majors in touch, in feelings, in the senses, in sensuality (the English word for Incarnation) in what touches us and moves us. Body theology grounds us in the now, in the present, in the moment and demands a rediscovery of the reverence of flesh and a reawakening of the body, the resurrection of the bodily.
I wish you all a SENSUAL, embodied, Christmas.
I hope not to open the computer between now and Jan.
At the first Christmas God didn’t send a book, or a message via a body-less ‘audible’ voice, no text, no website, no thunderbolt but a baby, a vulnerable body. This was the most vulnerable act where this god-child could have been exposed to emotional, physical, sexual and spiritual abuse.
‘The incarnation had nothing to do with theology. It was rather about vulnerability, about letting go, about emptiness, about surrender and none of that is in the head’ Richard Rohr
The two big events celebrated in the Christian calendar in remembrance of Jesus are united by the centrality of body. The commonalties include, nakedness, vulnerability, letting go and emptiness. At Christmas, the tenderness of new born soft flesh and at Easter, the torn, whipped stripped, beaten and wounded flesh and finally killed body.
Even though body is central to Church celebrations it remains uncomfortable with body and often is intent on rejecting and punishing the body. Society is full of people who are unhappy with body and feel the need to cover it, decorate it, change it, build it, enhance it and wound it. The Church often appears to be in constant conflict with body and continues to struggle to unite sensuality, sexuality and spirituality with sexuality and gender issues still hotly debated often causing disintegration.
However, when Jesus asked us to re-member him he didn’t ask us to read a book, obey certain laws, recall and repeat special words or perform a ritual. Instead he asked his followers to re-member his body, to embrace body, to eat body, to reconnect with body, to be embodied.
So this incarnation Christ invites us to hold his small vulnerable body and also his whipped, naked, beaten and wounded body. Christ invites us to love body, listen to body, and welcome body and to be tender with body; mine, yours and the body of Christ.
This is the body of Christ,
We are the body of Christ
We are body
Body!
Marys simple acceptance of the unbelievable is a simple message of faithfulness to us. Her willingness to move to a new way of being and thinking, challenges us to faithfully follow God into the new place.