New Chewns

Go to the Audio Gallery on the Website. Enjoy. Donate.

Great tips on evangalism. (?!)

This really has to be seen to be believed.
I watched up to the bit with the banana and then I died.
You'll need broadband...oh, and a narrow mind!

Half Empty

A very brief one. You'll no doubt think this is completely obvious, but it inspired me. Optimism and pessimism both have positives and negatives. Optimism can instigate the setting up of new projects, hope for the future and so-on. Pessimism is often rooted in perfectionism - "this can be perfect if..." Optimism is capable of charging ahead without thought of consequence. Pessimism will have a tendency not to bother, unless its perfect - "better is the enemy of the best".

A good relationship or team will have a healthy balance of the two - optimism and pessimism. The key is communication. Can optimism effectively communicate, and therefore sympathize and synchronize, with pessimism and vice-versa?

Green Oasis

Stoke Lodge, Bristol is now an adult training centre, but its expansive grounds, including a moderate arboretum, are accessible to the public. It also serves as additional grounds for the nearby Coombe Dingle sports centre. (Click the picture for a closer view - courtesy of google earth, which you have to get!) In this age of increasing in-fill housing development, these green oases are becoming rarer. Whilst taking a leisurely walk with my leisurely dog around the perimeter, I was frozen with sudden terror as childhood memories came flooding back...they'd marked out the athletics track! I wanted to be somewhere else! Give me a concrete jungle and smog and traffic congestion - anything but the sports track! I've always hated sports day. Even now when it’s the mums and dads race at my kids' primary school, I am gripped with phobia as my 8-year-old says "come on dad, have a go - Emily's dads doing it!” I made the mistake at child #1's first sports day of 'having a go - just for her sake (she really wanted me to!). I came last - by a considerable margin (apart from one sensible chap who, after the first 3 yards saw he had no chance, slipped back into the crowd un-noticed!) There was no 'fun', this was war! What my 8yr-old fails to appreciate is that for most of these folks school sports day is the one chance they get to prove they've still got it. Many of these ageing athletes, those who were always in the top 5 on the cross country run back in school days, still use the event to chart personal best times - the culmination of a whole year's training! Unbloodybelievable!
Anyway, I decided to face my fear and found huge relief in strolling gently round the track with my dog, with no-one watching, and no-one in front!!!

Freedom

I’d heard somebody talking about fasting being a “test of ones freedom”. Those of you who know me also know I have a tendency to enjoy a pint of beer. In the weeks prior to Shrove Tuesday I was enjoying beer quite a lot, in fact, more often than not. I decided to give up for lent, in a way just to see if I could live without it. I was apprehensive, to say the least. In fact this was to have been the longest I had gone without beer since I was 16 – that was in 1988! There was going to be less to look forward too after a hard day’s work, or after the ‘little service’ at Foundation.

I’m not great at the whole temptation thing: is weakness a opportunity, or is opportunity a weakness? Heard that somewhere too! OK, I’ll admit, I did have 1, one, only one, very slight pint of Kronenberg, whilst waiting for a curry about half way through lent. There was a (SERIOUSLY DODGY) pub across the road from the curry house. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a ‘bad pint’, which I can usually spot after the first swig, but I guess I was caught up in a whirlwind of rebellion and greed and thirst and curry-expectant adrenaline, and just got on with it. I spent the next 8 days never more than three meters away from a bog. Depending on your theology, this could be punishment! Mine would say it’s a divine sense of humour!

Anyway – its now Easter morning. I’m going to stop waffling to you lot, and get on and celebrate new life in Christ – over a pint of cold, lovely, thirst-not-quite-quenching, lager, in a glass which glistens as the drops of condensation follow the path of least resistance, in parallel to the brew at the back of my throat. How’s that for freedom?

Happy Easter.

Unfulfilled Expectations

The meditation from the "little service" hosted by foundation on Palm Sunday

Unfulfilled Expectations

Triumphant arrival…on a donkey
A crown…of thorns
A purple robe…and a slap in the face

A child born…with a bone disorder
A marriage…a divorce
Salvation…and confusion
A new prime minister…higher taxes

A safe home…a burglary
Sunshine…drought and famine
Peace on earth…a war on terror
A prophecy…misinterpreted

Parents…imperfections
A night out…a fight
A prodigal son…who does not return
Dreams…shattered

Triumphant arrival…on a donkey
A crown…of thorns
A purple robe…and a slap in the face

An execution…a resurrection
Death…new life
A cross, nails and a sword,…grace

Information

Having been a reader of blogs for some time, I thought I'd have a go at starting my own. It seems like a really good way of sharing thoughts and useful/less information. I guess information is either useful (to one degree or another) or useless depending on to whom it is imparted. My father once told me that he knew the sizes of the driving wheels of all BR western region steam engnes in service since the beginning of that period of nationalisation. The guitarist in the first band I joined could recite, in order, every song on every Led Zep album. (That may be more than Jimmy Page could ever do.) It may be that some information we have seems to have absolutley no real use, and then somebody finds a use for it. As an errant teenager, one of my favourite books was 'The Observers Book of Motorcycles'. I fastideously absorbed the facts and figures for all the makes and models of bikes. Some time later I was in the pub with my uncle - a copper in the City Police - and we ended up on the subject of bikes and the fact that his department were investigating bike theft in the city. The facts and figures i'd remembered about marques and specifications were suddenly of great import to the investigations!

I grew up in a vicarage and learnt a fair bit about God, the Bible, hospitality and so on. I've found that on my spiritual journey, a great deal of what I thought was going to be of little use is actually coming into play more and more. I'll no doubt give examples of this in future blogs...

It looks as though we are about to move into a vicarage of our own (actually a Curate's house), so it may be that knowledge which throughout my teens and early twenties I'd regarded as largely irrelevant, may yet be of use!!
However, if you need to know the size of the driving wheels of a Stanier 9f, ask my dad.