I wonder what response that title produces in you? Does it strike a chord, sound familiar, reasonable?
What if I told you I was leaving Heyford Park Chapel because I couldn't take any more and was upset and disappointed about the changes in leadership above me and the things they wanted to do? Would you be surprised: and would some of you would probably be quite pleased, if you were honest with yourselves? And would you then expect me to wander off, losing direction, gradually drifting away from the church and then my relationship with God, as so many seem to have done? It's certainly happened to apparently better, stronger Christians than me, as well as weak, un-discipled and immature ones.
It's a scenario that has been playing out in my mind quite a bit over the last few weeks.
There has been an almost unbearable desire to step down, to walk away completely from the Chapel and church in general, to 'be free' to do what I want to do, please myself, to decide that holy-living was really repression of good and natural desires. Buried in there was a desire to "let people see that things would fall apart if I weren't there" and to let them struggle to fill in the gaps we would leave. This is real - I'm not making it up for effect - and the pressure from feelings, worries and frustrations has almost consumed me a lot of the time. There have been little gaps - like a day spent fasting and an hour or so praying over 'lunch' where it felt like I'd heard God, before a return to almost un-relenting pressure. There was a warning about where this was going too, through someone quite unwittingly making a comment about the fate of another ex-leader, and I could hear God's voice quite clearly behind that one.
Lets just say I've had a lot more fun at other times than this.
What am I going to do?
It's a good question, and much more difficult to answer with honesty than I would like. Writing this helps, because it creates a public line in the sand, and it's also helpful in the way that trying to write forces one to put order on the chaos of emotional thought. It also makes one step back and ask whether this is God's voice causing the confusion, feelings of hurt, upset and frustration..... and if it isn't then who else have I been listening to? You can work that one through for yourselves.
Friday, 21 March 2014
Thursday, 20 March 2014
My computer is making happy sounds again.
There's a 'donk!' noise that sounds like software hitting a barrier, signifying entourage had failed to connect to a mail server account, that I had started to dread ever since the Mavericks upgrade fiasco. Since last night, after returning to Mountain Lion I've not heard a single notification like that.
Good times. :-)
Good times. :-)
Wednesday, 19 March 2014
Let's lighten up a little.
My lovely wife in a lovely place - the coarse garden of Upper Heyford.
One thing I do notice about this image is that, for files >1Mb, Photobucket compression REALLY hurts image quality. Fuzzier than a big muff.
One thing I do notice about this image is that, for files >1Mb, Photobucket compression REALLY hurts image quality. Fuzzier than a big muff.
So, we have a far from ideal situation.
Right now I'm restoring the new drive back to Jan 2014, the time before last that it backed up before upgrading to Mavericks. Hopefully that will work acceptably. I can recover nearly all my data from the repositories I created before migrating, the exceptions being latest info from Firefox and the emails received in the last 2 months.
I'm not sure yet how to tackle the emails - really don't want to lose some of them - but I'll probably try the archiving again. I may also see if there's a more rudimentary, yet simpler way to save them.
And I'm becoming increasingly sympathetic toward replacing this computer. Presently typing from the little Philips Freevents I bought last year. In the end Mint Debian was removed, because it's relatively slow and clunky compared to Linux Lite, and I've returned to that.
I'm not sure yet how to tackle the emails - really don't want to lose some of them - but I'll probably try the archiving again. I may also see if there's a more rudimentary, yet simpler way to save them.
And I'm becoming increasingly sympathetic toward replacing this computer. Presently typing from the little Philips Freevents I bought last year. In the end Mint Debian was removed, because it's relatively slow and clunky compared to Linux Lite, and I've returned to that.
And........
Back to the old drive.
Looks like Microsoft Entourage is broken in Mavericks, and very worryingly, doesn't want to allow me to archive all my emails, only saving stuff up to about 3 years ago - will have to try again. The issues of poor performance seemed to still be present, even in a fresh install, even when Spotlight had finished archiving. I'm about to create a Mountain Lion install flash drive in the hope that will help fix things. Failing that I'm not sure where we go from here, other than I'm going to be flogging some recently used kit.
The idea of leaving the world of Apple is looking attractive again.
Looks like Microsoft Entourage is broken in Mavericks, and very worryingly, doesn't want to allow me to archive all my emails, only saving stuff up to about 3 years ago - will have to try again. The issues of poor performance seemed to still be present, even in a fresh install, even when Spotlight had finished archiving. I'm about to create a Mountain Lion install flash drive in the hope that will help fix things. Failing that I'm not sure where we go from here, other than I'm going to be flogging some recently used kit.
The idea of leaving the world of Apple is looking attractive again.
Enjoying a big helping of......
Apple - please wait. And rapidly coming to the conclusion that choosing Mavericks was a bad idea. Looking like what should have been quick and clean is becoming slow and dirty. Very shortly going to have to put the archive drive back in.
10.8 is looking like it was the right choice after all.
Bereft of PC power.
On a temporary basis, of course.
I have a gap in the lab work today, so I'm doing the rebuild on the Mac book, including installing a crucial M500 240Gb SSD. After reading around a little more I decided to install mavericks after all, and created a memory stick with the install files last night. It's been going OK, but Apple lie even more about install times than Microsoft, and if I weren't so cynical I would have thought something wrong when 'about a second' took more than 10 min.
The old Sammy ssd is being archived for now as a safety net. I'm also loading all software in fresh, because things that should have been quick were really slow and getting slower. Worst of all, entourage would frequently fail to collect mail, and it had been fine pre-mavericks. So all my files (except the light room database - nuts) are saved on my backup discs.
So I'm posting from my phone, the one mobile computing device I have available.
*typos corrected
Monday, 17 March 2014
And so it begins.
Moving the business computer across from XP to W8.1.
The business machine has already decided it's time, giving repeated 'recovered from a fatal error' messages.
Matters of observation:
The new Seagate SSHD is about 3/4 the thickness and 1/2 the weight of the Samsung 750Gb drive it will replace. I hope it's genuinely faster too, especially after a few uses.
Windows OEM packaging is 'basic' to say the least, the stickers with the product key now have tiny, fine writing that I now struggle to read.
The heatsink below the fan for the CPU was literally solid with dust. I can't remember how old this machine is now, but I'm sure I never cleaned it out. Not that it seemed hot when I shut it down, so I don't think that was the reason for the fatal errors.
Right, 8.1 installed, Start menu tidied up, graphics driver updated, now we start loading software and data files.
*edit*
Microsoft have certainly done something right with this, performance-wise. The hardware this is running on is around 3-4 years old, AMD 245 processor, dual cores at 2.9GHz, but stuff opens really quickly and the whole lot has a 'new windows install' snappiness to it in a way that I've never seen with W7(and I've installed it a few times). Once the SSHD starts making a difference then I expect it will be quite a nimble little beastie. Hopefully good for Chris to use.
*edit 2*
I'd not realised quite how tired I was yesterday evening when I posted that - at least, that is my excuse for the lousy writing.
Seems I build that computer in Nov 2009, at very low cost (about £90 for the mobo and processor, tenner for the case, £20ish for the memory, hard drive was already laying around and it uses the onboard graphics and audio). On that basis it's darned amazing how well it all works: and to think I had pretty much written off AMD as producing sluggish chipsets. Makes me also wonder whether it IS time to update the livingroom computer for something less pedestrian, since that came free (broken) 2 years ago, and was hardly state of the art then, even though it was a lot snappier than my older machine (which is STILL hiding upstairs).
Money: who wants to keep it?
The business machine has already decided it's time, giving repeated 'recovered from a fatal error' messages.
Matters of observation:
The new Seagate SSHD is about 3/4 the thickness and 1/2 the weight of the Samsung 750Gb drive it will replace. I hope it's genuinely faster too, especially after a few uses.
Windows OEM packaging is 'basic' to say the least, the stickers with the product key now have tiny, fine writing that I now struggle to read.
The heatsink below the fan for the CPU was literally solid with dust. I can't remember how old this machine is now, but I'm sure I never cleaned it out. Not that it seemed hot when I shut it down, so I don't think that was the reason for the fatal errors.
Right, 8.1 installed, Start menu tidied up, graphics driver updated, now we start loading software and data files.
*edit*
Microsoft have certainly done something right with this, performance-wise. The hardware this is running on is around 3-4 years old, AMD 245 processor, dual cores at 2.9GHz, but stuff opens really quickly and the whole lot has a 'new windows install' snappiness to it in a way that I've never seen with W7(and I've installed it a few times). Once the SSHD starts making a difference then I expect it will be quite a nimble little beastie. Hopefully good for Chris to use.
*edit 2*
I'd not realised quite how tired I was yesterday evening when I posted that - at least, that is my excuse for the lousy writing.
Seems I build that computer in Nov 2009, at very low cost (about £90 for the mobo and processor, tenner for the case, £20ish for the memory, hard drive was already laying around and it uses the onboard graphics and audio). On that basis it's darned amazing how well it all works: and to think I had pretty much written off AMD as producing sluggish chipsets. Makes me also wonder whether it IS time to update the livingroom computer for something less pedestrian, since that came free (broken) 2 years ago, and was hardly state of the art then, even though it was a lot snappier than my older machine (which is STILL hiding upstairs).
Money: who wants to keep it?
Today was my first occaision of cycling to work in 2014
Makes me remember why I stopped in 2013. Meh.
The previous description of being vigorously shaken in a cold, giant hand still works, with the addendum of having all the breath knocked out of your body. Cue much prolonged, uncontrollable and spontaneous coughing in the office - and PLEASE don't make me laugh. :p (wheeze, cough as I wrote that!)
My legs have gone all skinny these days, though the compensation is that it's much easier to get jeans that fit OK. I restarted circuit training a while back, and some of the muscle that was lost over 2013 is returning: last year I was able to wear some suits bought in '97 thanks to a skinnier frame that owed nothing to dieting. I also notice that I don't throw away clothes that are still 'good'. ;-)
In a way I'd love to take 6 weeks out, train up and recover fitness. It would make me dumb for a while - harsh exercise has always done that, and if I'd realised when I was a kid then my 'o' levels might have looked quite different. I also wonder if those of the 'strong in the arm, thick in the head' persuasion might actually have the potential to be bright and sharp if they stayed in & read instead of running around: not because of the reading but because of the running? The irony is that there's something about really pushing oneself to the absolute limit that is quite attractive, and there's almost a competition between bright laziness and happy, sweaty stupidity.
Bodies are curious things.
So anyway, the box of computer bits appears to have arrived ready for the updates to the business computers, and now that I've stopped sweating I need to get dressed and into the lab, having been doing 'admin etc' stuff thus far.
The previous description of being vigorously shaken in a cold, giant hand still works, with the addendum of having all the breath knocked out of your body. Cue much prolonged, uncontrollable and spontaneous coughing in the office - and PLEASE don't make me laugh. :p (wheeze, cough as I wrote that!)
My legs have gone all skinny these days, though the compensation is that it's much easier to get jeans that fit OK. I restarted circuit training a while back, and some of the muscle that was lost over 2013 is returning: last year I was able to wear some suits bought in '97 thanks to a skinnier frame that owed nothing to dieting. I also notice that I don't throw away clothes that are still 'good'. ;-)
In a way I'd love to take 6 weeks out, train up and recover fitness. It would make me dumb for a while - harsh exercise has always done that, and if I'd realised when I was a kid then my 'o' levels might have looked quite different. I also wonder if those of the 'strong in the arm, thick in the head' persuasion might actually have the potential to be bright and sharp if they stayed in & read instead of running around: not because of the reading but because of the running? The irony is that there's something about really pushing oneself to the absolute limit that is quite attractive, and there's almost a competition between bright laziness and happy, sweaty stupidity.
Bodies are curious things.
So anyway, the box of computer bits appears to have arrived ready for the updates to the business computers, and now that I've stopped sweating I need to get dressed and into the lab, having been doing 'admin etc' stuff thus far.
Sunday, 16 March 2014
Saturday, 15 March 2014
How long can you last?
There's a sort of game I play with my phone, where I see how long it can last between charges. Although I have a moderately powerful Motorola that's more a mobile computing device than telephone, texting, telephony and occasionally looking up the weather forecast are the most demanding things it does - most of the time.
So it's normally run with 3G only, no wireless, and GPS off permanently too. I found leaving each of those on, even when not being used would drain the battery about a day sooner than otherwise. Battery life can be a lottery anyway, depending on where I go and whether the phone comes too, plus the local network (O2) is in and out like a fiddlers elbow, and having the phone hunt for a signal kills it faster than anything except route navigation using full GPS and wireless.
So I play the game.
A few minutes ago the phone just bleated at me - 4% charge remaining after 5 days, 4 hours and a few minutes. I've done some texting, made a few calls, taken a picture and checked the weather a couple of times a day - not heavy use by any means, but not bad at all, and pretty much as good as the best I had from my HTC desire.
So it's normally run with 3G only, no wireless, and GPS off permanently too. I found leaving each of those on, even when not being used would drain the battery about a day sooner than otherwise. Battery life can be a lottery anyway, depending on where I go and whether the phone comes too, plus the local network (O2) is in and out like a fiddlers elbow, and having the phone hunt for a signal kills it faster than anything except route navigation using full GPS and wireless.
So I play the game.
A few minutes ago the phone just bleated at me - 4% charge remaining after 5 days, 4 hours and a few minutes. I've done some texting, made a few calls, taken a picture and checked the weather a couple of times a day - not heavy use by any means, but not bad at all, and pretty much as good as the best I had from my HTC desire.
Blowing warm and cool?
It's like a moderate version of blowing hot and cold, rather than one of the various meanings that might be used, and it's how I feel about Linux mint for the most part. Blog readers are probably bored to death with my flirtations and temporary marriages to various forms of Linux: sorry about it, but this is another dalliance.
Mint has been 'number two' in the Linux world after Ubuntu (and number 4 across all traditional OSs) despite the latter tending toward being slightly rough at the edges, possibly because for a long time Mint was a 'Buntu rework. I've tried it on and off over the years and it's always been a bit boring, dull, grey, stodgy. They never really got over Gnome desktop environment's fatal attraction to the idea of being a tablet interface, producing their not 1 but 2 replacement desktop environments, both of which looked like gnome 2. Their version of KDE was really a tail-end-charley to keep everyone onboard and was also grey in appearance and vanilla in execution - dull dull dull.
But a couple of years back they started producing a Mint Debian edition: Mint based on the Debian stable edition and available with either of the slightly dull but solid Gnome-alikes, it was lightweight, quick & a bit fresher feeling than typical Mint. I tried it a couple of times, and while I liked the low system overhead it was a bit short on the kinds of tools I've come to demand from KDE. Never the less it's been interesting to watch it progress, and I've tried new downloads on and off.
Last week I downloaded the latest version (2014.03 IIRC) and burned a disc to run live last night on the old Philips Freevents system. Ran like a charm considering it's 'live' off the drive, so I've bunged it on a 'spare' 250Gb HDD that was laying around, literally while typing this.
The installation manager was completely straight forward, as most Linux managers are these days, right up until it came to partitioning. Where's the automatic partition button? Ich habe keine. Not a problem: it offered gparted to erase the windows partition, create 4Gb swap file, then allocate the rest to EXT4 - is that it? Nope - had to go back & resize the main EXT4 partition to create a /root partition, and then, out of gparted, assign /mount point and home partitions.
Installation seemed to take forever compared to what I've become used to, probably thanks to the ancient DVD drive in the Philips, however the screen fonts are crisp enough (on a 12" 1200:800 display) and the usual dull grey wallpaper with Debian red spiral symbol looks subtle and interesting instead of dull. Irritiatingly tap to click isn't activated by default on the trackpad, just like an Apple, even though scrolling using the right and bottom edges is, and without an *obvious* setting to change.
It feels snappy, though not quite as much as Linuxlite. Have to see how we get on.
Mint has been 'number two' in the Linux world after Ubuntu (and number 4 across all traditional OSs) despite the latter tending toward being slightly rough at the edges, possibly because for a long time Mint was a 'Buntu rework. I've tried it on and off over the years and it's always been a bit boring, dull, grey, stodgy. They never really got over Gnome desktop environment's fatal attraction to the idea of being a tablet interface, producing their not 1 but 2 replacement desktop environments, both of which looked like gnome 2. Their version of KDE was really a tail-end-charley to keep everyone onboard and was also grey in appearance and vanilla in execution - dull dull dull.
But a couple of years back they started producing a Mint Debian edition: Mint based on the Debian stable edition and available with either of the slightly dull but solid Gnome-alikes, it was lightweight, quick & a bit fresher feeling than typical Mint. I tried it a couple of times, and while I liked the low system overhead it was a bit short on the kinds of tools I've come to demand from KDE. Never the less it's been interesting to watch it progress, and I've tried new downloads on and off.
Last week I downloaded the latest version (2014.03 IIRC) and burned a disc to run live last night on the old Philips Freevents system. Ran like a charm considering it's 'live' off the drive, so I've bunged it on a 'spare' 250Gb HDD that was laying around, literally while typing this.
The installation manager was completely straight forward, as most Linux managers are these days, right up until it came to partitioning. Where's the automatic partition button? Ich habe keine. Not a problem: it offered gparted to erase the windows partition, create 4Gb swap file, then allocate the rest to EXT4 - is that it? Nope - had to go back & resize the main EXT4 partition to create a /root partition, and then, out of gparted, assign /mount point and home partitions.
Installation seemed to take forever compared to what I've become used to, probably thanks to the ancient DVD drive in the Philips, however the screen fonts are crisp enough (on a 12" 1200:800 display) and the usual dull grey wallpaper with Debian red spiral symbol looks subtle and interesting instead of dull. Irritiatingly tap to click isn't activated by default on the trackpad, just like an Apple, even though scrolling using the right and bottom edges is, and without an *obvious* setting to change.
It feels snappy, though not quite as much as Linuxlite. Have to see how we get on.
Thursday, 13 March 2014
Being a missionary in your own country. And sadness.
This morning I have 2 thoughts inside me, neither of which I feel able to express for a variety of reasons, and both of which are connected. One is about being a missionary in your own country and sent out to accomplish something there. The other is an almost unbearable sadness connected to asking a question to which I already probably knew the answer and the sense of loss attached to that. Once asked, like anything else we say, a question can't be un-asked, and I wonder how things will work out in connection with that.
My sense of melancholy may not be helped by the heavy mist this morning, in which I'd love a chance to go take more photos.
Work now calls.
My sense of melancholy may not be helped by the heavy mist this morning, in which I'd love a chance to go take more photos.
Work now calls.
Wednesday, 12 March 2014
A box full of bits should arrive Friday.
With the impending death of Windows XP updates and therefore increased vulnerability* I ordered a bunch of stuff to update the accounts PC to W8.1: the OS itself plus a hybrid hard drive to speed things up a little. But this isn't about that.
I also ordered a Crucial 240Gb SSD to upgrade the Macbook. Since running Mavericks things have been MUCH slower than they should be. Starting up is taking about twice as long as before to get a usable machine (the desktop image comes up, but nothing works at first) which isn't a big deal, but apps take much longer to both start and stop, and the whole system seems laggier than before with frequent appearances of the beachball. The memory upgrade might have made things a touch smoother, but no more than that.
So I'm undecided what to do. Revert to Mountain Lion with a fresh install: true 64 bit computing, apparently lower overhead. Install Mavericks from scratch: comes with extra cruft like maps, apparently sluggish and heavier memory use, but longer shelf life.
Actually shelf life doesn't really matter. This is a 5 YO computer, worth probably £300-£350 used with the various upgrades, and it only needs to last 1 more year before moving it on. Right now ML looks like an easy winner (there's nothing I've seen in mavericks that gives it any kind of extra functionality I would use) and it's the obvious candidate for the lower overhead it brings. When it comes time to sell then I can bung on Apple's latest & greatest OS (which everyone seems to run toward like lemmings) and let them deal with degraded performance issues.
The one thing I hope is that I can recover data and settings from Time Machine while stepping back. The present SSD will be 'archived' for a while just in case, but I don't want to move all applications over, and will be re-installing from scratch to try to get best performance.
*Chris, for the first time in years, opened a virus-loaded email the other day. It had been done really well, had all the bona fides, correct images, email addresses etc, and was relevant to some work she'd done. The give away was the attachment in the form of a '.zip' file and that didn't ring the same warning bells as it does in my head.
Avira free edition caught and appears to have stopped it.
For the first time ever I'm thinking about paying for anti-virus software as a 'thank you'.
I also ordered a Crucial 240Gb SSD to upgrade the Macbook. Since running Mavericks things have been MUCH slower than they should be. Starting up is taking about twice as long as before to get a usable machine (the desktop image comes up, but nothing works at first) which isn't a big deal, but apps take much longer to both start and stop, and the whole system seems laggier than before with frequent appearances of the beachball. The memory upgrade might have made things a touch smoother, but no more than that.
So I'm undecided what to do. Revert to Mountain Lion with a fresh install: true 64 bit computing, apparently lower overhead. Install Mavericks from scratch: comes with extra cruft like maps, apparently sluggish and heavier memory use, but longer shelf life.
Actually shelf life doesn't really matter. This is a 5 YO computer, worth probably £300-£350 used with the various upgrades, and it only needs to last 1 more year before moving it on. Right now ML looks like an easy winner (there's nothing I've seen in mavericks that gives it any kind of extra functionality I would use) and it's the obvious candidate for the lower overhead it brings. When it comes time to sell then I can bung on Apple's latest & greatest OS (which everyone seems to run toward like lemmings) and let them deal with degraded performance issues.
The one thing I hope is that I can recover data and settings from Time Machine while stepping back. The present SSD will be 'archived' for a while just in case, but I don't want to move all applications over, and will be re-installing from scratch to try to get best performance.
*Chris, for the first time in years, opened a virus-loaded email the other day. It had been done really well, had all the bona fides, correct images, email addresses etc, and was relevant to some work she'd done. The give away was the attachment in the form of a '.zip' file and that didn't ring the same warning bells as it does in my head.
Avira free edition caught and appears to have stopped it.
For the first time ever I'm thinking about paying for anti-virus software as a 'thank you'.
Mini review "Le Weekend"
The 'Somerton film club' likes to show titles that are a little off the beaten track sometimes, and we watched Le Weekend in the village hall last Friday week.
The opening line on IMDB is "A British couple return to Paris many years after their honeymoon there in an attempt to rejuvenate their marriage.". All I can say is that this is an approximation of the reality, which appears to be a gentle slide toward hell for Nick (Jim Broadbent) and the self-defeating domination and withering of their relationship for Meg (Lindsay Duncan).
It's an interesting, saddening insight into the results of aging on both the relationship between them and their political and moral ideals. Nick is basically a 'nice bloke' who is gently losing control, finding life increasingly challenging as he nears retirement age. You get to see the little insecurities that are part of that process, with him worrying where his keys, money, passport etc are, and being unable to settle without be reassured. He has tried to arrange the weekend away for them to re-live the things they did when they were young and in love, which involves typical French 'budget' hotels, thereby provoking Meg's anger.
Meg, on the other hand, is becoming entirely the centre of her universe, is only really happy when she is in control and by Nick's distress at his insecurity, being at her mercy. There is an early scene in a taxi where she angrily demands 'the money' and then keeps passing cash to the driver to keep taking them around, with Nick showing increasing anguish at each payment while her pleasure is heightened. Eventually they end up at a very expensive hotel, where she passes over the credit card, knowing they can't afford it and simply not caring how things work out.
Of course that's not how it starts out.
With a film of this nature you know that the director is going to feed clues and hints in order to gradually unpack the characters and their history, almost as predictably as pretty girls will fall into bed with James Bond. So initially Nick appears a doddery old git and understandably Meg a tolerant but frazzled wife, struggling to cope with his weaknesses. Information is gradually fed in: you find out about their absence of sex life, that his career as a Philosophy prof at a red-brick is over because he explained reality in words of one syllable to a student, his affair 15 years before that gave Meg the power she now wields in their relationship and that there was a likely affair in her past that she never quite denies while abusing him for accusing her.
Then there are the little insights into their physical relationship.
It becomes clear that Meg is in almost total control, and that any kind of sexual favour (as if Nick should ever be so lucky) has a price attached. So when she accidentally cuts him and he demands to see her breasts, the stage is set for the doggie scene, and it's only seeing the latter in the context of the former that it makes any sense. It's all done very discretely, but there comes a point when you almost have to shake your head in disbelief - I actually said "You WHAT?" out loud at that point of the film.
There is an attempt to redeem Meg to the viewer, portraying Nick as someone who 'married his feminine side' and lost his masculinity, while what she wants is a real man. I can't decide if this a serious effort, a bit of smokescreen or an attempt to show just how unpleasant the natural conclusion of feminist socialism really is. I am SO grateful I did not marry a woman of the character that I seemed to see all around me at one time: Nick's situation was literally the stuff of my nightmares, and I've seen a few men that have fallen victim to women like that. We talked afterward about how Meg repeatedly called Nick a f***ing idiot, as if that was completely acceptable and his feelings could not possibly be of any consequence.
Why watch it at all?
There's a light and redeeming side to the darkness of it all in the unlikely form of Jeff Goldblum as Morgan, an American intellectual bum and kind of money-grabbing idiot-savant. He was a protege of Nick's from their much younger days, and is quite in awe of him, yet he's completely sold himself to corporate life and money-making. He appears by 'chance', having got divorced, moved to Paris and started a new life with his pretty French wife who is heavily pregnant at this point. When he has a chance to talk with Nick alone he 'comes clean', admits he's a fraud and is terrified of when his wife will see through his facade and dump him. Meanwhile Morgan's wife is talking with Meg and expresses how completely in awe and in love she is with her husband and how happy she is just to be with him. Of course Meg cannot tolerate someone else's happiness and finds just a few words to, if possible, demolish her - unsuccessfully it appears.
There are some laugh-out-loud moments too, though I simply can't recall any of them right now.
The final scene has Nick, Meg and Morgan in a bar, dancing together. Some might try to interpret that as a way of saying 'everything will be OK in the end', but I rather suspect if this were real life then it would be the last memory of happiness in Nick's life before returning home to the dole queue, early senility and regular lashings with an acid tongue.
Would I recommend it?
It's certainly a stimulating film, and left me thinking about it for several days afterward. I'd not watch it for pleasure or 'light entertainment' but it could be a useful talking point if one wanted to provoke discussion either among seniors about life and expectation, or among younger people on a marriage course.
The opening line on IMDB is "A British couple return to Paris many years after their honeymoon there in an attempt to rejuvenate their marriage.". All I can say is that this is an approximation of the reality, which appears to be a gentle slide toward hell for Nick (Jim Broadbent) and the self-defeating domination and withering of their relationship for Meg (Lindsay Duncan).
It's an interesting, saddening insight into the results of aging on both the relationship between them and their political and moral ideals. Nick is basically a 'nice bloke' who is gently losing control, finding life increasingly challenging as he nears retirement age. You get to see the little insecurities that are part of that process, with him worrying where his keys, money, passport etc are, and being unable to settle without be reassured. He has tried to arrange the weekend away for them to re-live the things they did when they were young and in love, which involves typical French 'budget' hotels, thereby provoking Meg's anger.
Meg, on the other hand, is becoming entirely the centre of her universe, is only really happy when she is in control and by Nick's distress at his insecurity, being at her mercy. There is an early scene in a taxi where she angrily demands 'the money' and then keeps passing cash to the driver to keep taking them around, with Nick showing increasing anguish at each payment while her pleasure is heightened. Eventually they end up at a very expensive hotel, where she passes over the credit card, knowing they can't afford it and simply not caring how things work out.
Of course that's not how it starts out.
With a film of this nature you know that the director is going to feed clues and hints in order to gradually unpack the characters and their history, almost as predictably as pretty girls will fall into bed with James Bond. So initially Nick appears a doddery old git and understandably Meg a tolerant but frazzled wife, struggling to cope with his weaknesses. Information is gradually fed in: you find out about their absence of sex life, that his career as a Philosophy prof at a red-brick is over because he explained reality in words of one syllable to a student, his affair 15 years before that gave Meg the power she now wields in their relationship and that there was a likely affair in her past that she never quite denies while abusing him for accusing her.
Then there are the little insights into their physical relationship.
It becomes clear that Meg is in almost total control, and that any kind of sexual favour (as if Nick should ever be so lucky) has a price attached. So when she accidentally cuts him and he demands to see her breasts, the stage is set for the doggie scene, and it's only seeing the latter in the context of the former that it makes any sense. It's all done very discretely, but there comes a point when you almost have to shake your head in disbelief - I actually said "You WHAT?" out loud at that point of the film.
There is an attempt to redeem Meg to the viewer, portraying Nick as someone who 'married his feminine side' and lost his masculinity, while what she wants is a real man. I can't decide if this a serious effort, a bit of smokescreen or an attempt to show just how unpleasant the natural conclusion of feminist socialism really is. I am SO grateful I did not marry a woman of the character that I seemed to see all around me at one time: Nick's situation was literally the stuff of my nightmares, and I've seen a few men that have fallen victim to women like that. We talked afterward about how Meg repeatedly called Nick a f***ing idiot, as if that was completely acceptable and his feelings could not possibly be of any consequence.
Why watch it at all?
There's a light and redeeming side to the darkness of it all in the unlikely form of Jeff Goldblum as Morgan, an American intellectual bum and kind of money-grabbing idiot-savant. He was a protege of Nick's from their much younger days, and is quite in awe of him, yet he's completely sold himself to corporate life and money-making. He appears by 'chance', having got divorced, moved to Paris and started a new life with his pretty French wife who is heavily pregnant at this point. When he has a chance to talk with Nick alone he 'comes clean', admits he's a fraud and is terrified of when his wife will see through his facade and dump him. Meanwhile Morgan's wife is talking with Meg and expresses how completely in awe and in love she is with her husband and how happy she is just to be with him. Of course Meg cannot tolerate someone else's happiness and finds just a few words to, if possible, demolish her - unsuccessfully it appears.
There are some laugh-out-loud moments too, though I simply can't recall any of them right now.
The final scene has Nick, Meg and Morgan in a bar, dancing together. Some might try to interpret that as a way of saying 'everything will be OK in the end', but I rather suspect if this were real life then it would be the last memory of happiness in Nick's life before returning home to the dole queue, early senility and regular lashings with an acid tongue.
Would I recommend it?
It's certainly a stimulating film, and left me thinking about it for several days afterward. I'd not watch it for pleasure or 'light entertainment' but it could be a useful talking point if one wanted to provoke discussion either among seniors about life and expectation, or among younger people on a marriage course.
Tuesday, 11 March 2014
There's safety in age.
I understand that there's a scam going round on facebook using the idea of seeing your friends naked as inducement. There is safety in age, because at 50ish no-one wants to see ones friends naked!
So you think you can heal?
Interesting article on the BBC website about evangelicals and healing clearly intended to be an uncovering the wild and the wacky, rather than supportive.
One of the features of Jesus ministry was that he'd send those he healed to the local priest. While this would be have been in order that they might offer the appropriate sacrifices for being cleansed (in the case of leprosy) it would also provide confirmation that the healing was real from an un-biased source that was probably the closest thing to a doctor in those days.
Does God still heal?
I think so, but before I am happy to just 'take it by faith' I want to know that it has been confirmed by someone with appropriate medical training and without bias. In other words, please ensure it is real, rather than a fiction made up to encourage the gullible. There's been enough of that stuff in church history, and I'm not interested in religious myths or stories to 'illustrate a point'.
One of the features of Jesus ministry was that he'd send those he healed to the local priest. While this would be have been in order that they might offer the appropriate sacrifices for being cleansed (in the case of leprosy) it would also provide confirmation that the healing was real from an un-biased source that was probably the closest thing to a doctor in those days.
Does God still heal?
I think so, but before I am happy to just 'take it by faith' I want to know that it has been confirmed by someone with appropriate medical training and without bias. In other words, please ensure it is real, rather than a fiction made up to encourage the gullible. There's been enough of that stuff in church history, and I'm not interested in religious myths or stories to 'illustrate a point'.
Monday, 10 March 2014
So how would you like to lose all your energy and enthusiasm today?
I've just read the following line on Backyard Believer:
"It also gives me some sense of focus when it comes to who I seek to work with. I don’t think time spent with the resistant and difficult is ever time well invested."
You should probably read the rest of the article that it came from too.
I keep asking myself "how should we be doing church together in a way that is meaningful, builds people up, helps them draw near to God, helps them want to submit their lives to Jesus?". My frustration partly comes from being a charismatic in an un-charismatic church, not that I'm desperately wanting people to be singing in tongues all the time, but that I want to see the power of God at work overtly and indisputably in the church, and instead it's always just the 'small' things, almost tucked out of sight.
Where is God at work among us? Good, and complex, question.
"It also gives me some sense of focus when it comes to who I seek to work with. I don’t think time spent with the resistant and difficult is ever time well invested."
You should probably read the rest of the article that it came from too.
I keep asking myself "how should we be doing church together in a way that is meaningful, builds people up, helps them draw near to God, helps them want to submit their lives to Jesus?". My frustration partly comes from being a charismatic in an un-charismatic church, not that I'm desperately wanting people to be singing in tongues all the time, but that I want to see the power of God at work overtly and indisputably in the church, and instead it's always just the 'small' things, almost tucked out of sight.
Where is God at work among us? Good, and complex, question.
Never try to dissuade someone who wants to resign.
It's a piece of advice given by a friend, and one that I think is generally sound.
So I was going through the 'blogs I check sometimes' list, culling those that have stopped functioning as blogs, those I stopped clicking to read pretty much. I was in two minds over Hamo's blog, decided to go visit and found his last post - Just not for me - really reflected some of how I feel at the moment. I know this gets Chris down a lot too - the way some just walk away from church, often walking away from active faith eventually. I've seen that in a lot of people, those who used to be leaders as well as those who were just passively filled seats. Some I almost breathe a sigh of relief over, because they are up & down, in and out, trying to walk along the top of the fence and teetering on the brink. Others I want to give a good slapping - they shipwreck their lives and the poo all over the lives of those coupled to them through marriage or birth.
And yes, I feel guilty/failure/miserable over it.
Back to Francis Chan again. Were they real Christians, or just plants that sprouted for a few moments, then got choked or dried up and died? Am I to blame because they died despite me doing my best to provide an environment in which they could thrive, it was not good enough. Or is it a case of them never really being Christians at all, just going through the motions on the outside with un-redeemed hearts on the inside, following the herd?
I can't take the hard-nosed view on this, though it would make life easier to do so. I have to believe that they had a choice, and that I need to do all that I am called to do in order to help them to make the best choices for their futures.
But I have to say too, that if you decide to walk away from God, however incrementally, then that is your fault and responsibility too and not mine.
So I was going through the 'blogs I check sometimes' list, culling those that have stopped functioning as blogs, those I stopped clicking to read pretty much. I was in two minds over Hamo's blog, decided to go visit and found his last post - Just not for me - really reflected some of how I feel at the moment. I know this gets Chris down a lot too - the way some just walk away from church, often walking away from active faith eventually. I've seen that in a lot of people, those who used to be leaders as well as those who were just passively filled seats. Some I almost breathe a sigh of relief over, because they are up & down, in and out, trying to walk along the top of the fence and teetering on the brink. Others I want to give a good slapping - they shipwreck their lives and the poo all over the lives of those coupled to them through marriage or birth.
And yes, I feel guilty/failure/miserable over it.
Back to Francis Chan again. Were they real Christians, or just plants that sprouted for a few moments, then got choked or dried up and died? Am I to blame because they died despite me doing my best to provide an environment in which they could thrive, it was not good enough. Or is it a case of them never really being Christians at all, just going through the motions on the outside with un-redeemed hearts on the inside, following the herd?
I can't take the hard-nosed view on this, though it would make life easier to do so. I have to believe that they had a choice, and that I need to do all that I am called to do in order to help them to make the best choices for their futures.
But I have to say too, that if you decide to walk away from God, however incrementally, then that is your fault and responsibility too and not mine.
Friday, 7 March 2014
Grit your teeth and bite the bullet - buying stuff that doesn't change anything.
It's not like servicing a car!
What?
In about a month windows XP will no longer be supported by Microsoft. No more updates, increasingly vulnerable to malware and internet attack, in order to keep doing the business accounts etc we are going to need to update (NOT upgrade) Chris's computer to a new version of windows. I'm debating right now whether to try to persuade her to try to learn W8 or just going down the easy route and accepting 7, even though it's got a more limited life and is distinctly less efficient. Along with that will go a new hard drive (SSHD to make things a bit more fluid and so I can archive her old drive 'in case').
Presently also debating over whether to do an Office update as well, though £180 for home business seems a huge whack for something to update Office 2003.
The annoying thing is that the tasks we're doing haven't changed that they need new software, nor will updated software improve the way the tasks are performed and will likely provide a very distinct downgrade to performance while they are learned.
I feel mild pangs of conscience over Office 2003. The disc and license was given me by the guys that ran the IT dept. 2 companies ago. License(s) were no doubt paid for at some stage by the parent corp, and undoubtedly no-one (or very few) are using the software bought under the original licenses now, yet at the same time because I didn't buy it I feel a little piratical.
Anyway, time to get Chris to try W8.
*edit*
I showed her W8, set up the way I have it with direct links to the applications one actually uses on the start menu, rather than all the useless social-networking, weather, news and un-intuitive & confusing junk that's there by default. Clicked through to the desktop, it looked just like a windows desktop.
She asked the question "so what's the difference between this and what I already use?". Smart woman, my wife.
And this is why I don't get why so many get their knickers in a knot over W8. It's just like every other version of windows under the hood for the typical user. A few things are in different places from W7, and although you get presented with a confusing screen full of garbage the first time it starts up, that's easy enough to clear away - I figured out that all the tiles could be changed the very first time I used it - and replace with helpful things.
I really don't get it. Some IT 'professionals' declared it unusable from the off, and that makes no sense to me at all. The 8.1 service pack didn't substantially change how it worked, so much as make it run more efficiently (less like W7, which is slow and bloated) and more like a modern Linux build (which can often be quite heavy, but still reasonably quick).
Looks like I'm going to have to change my order with ebuyer.com. And hope that the old corporate version of Office 2003 professional will actually work.
What?
In about a month windows XP will no longer be supported by Microsoft. No more updates, increasingly vulnerable to malware and internet attack, in order to keep doing the business accounts etc we are going to need to update (NOT upgrade) Chris's computer to a new version of windows. I'm debating right now whether to try to persuade her to try to learn W8 or just going down the easy route and accepting 7, even though it's got a more limited life and is distinctly less efficient. Along with that will go a new hard drive (SSHD to make things a bit more fluid and so I can archive her old drive 'in case').
Presently also debating over whether to do an Office update as well, though £180 for home business seems a huge whack for something to update Office 2003.
The annoying thing is that the tasks we're doing haven't changed that they need new software, nor will updated software improve the way the tasks are performed and will likely provide a very distinct downgrade to performance while they are learned.
I feel mild pangs of conscience over Office 2003. The disc and license was given me by the guys that ran the IT dept. 2 companies ago. License(s) were no doubt paid for at some stage by the parent corp, and undoubtedly no-one (or very few) are using the software bought under the original licenses now, yet at the same time because I didn't buy it I feel a little piratical.
Anyway, time to get Chris to try W8.
*edit*
I showed her W8, set up the way I have it with direct links to the applications one actually uses on the start menu, rather than all the useless social-networking, weather, news and un-intuitive & confusing junk that's there by default. Clicked through to the desktop, it looked just like a windows desktop.
She asked the question "so what's the difference between this and what I already use?". Smart woman, my wife.
And this is why I don't get why so many get their knickers in a knot over W8. It's just like every other version of windows under the hood for the typical user. A few things are in different places from W7, and although you get presented with a confusing screen full of garbage the first time it starts up, that's easy enough to clear away - I figured out that all the tiles could be changed the very first time I used it - and replace with helpful things.
I really don't get it. Some IT 'professionals' declared it unusable from the off, and that makes no sense to me at all. The 8.1 service pack didn't substantially change how it worked, so much as make it run more efficiently (less like W7, which is slow and bloated) and more like a modern Linux build (which can often be quite heavy, but still reasonably quick).
Looks like I'm going to have to change my order with ebuyer.com. And hope that the old corporate version of Office 2003 professional will actually work.
Thursday, 6 March 2014
All at 6s and 7s.
It's a family phrase meaning to be out of kilter or off balance. We had a power cut around 4am, which meant no lights, no heating, no phones and no coffee with breakfast. It's a mild day out there and we still had a tank full of hot water, so showers were possible even if the bathroom was chilly afterward.
The we found out my mum was in hospital, having gone in around 1.30am with her heart racing, and my brother having to deal with it from a distance. Seems she's probably OK, but that threw everything up in the air. Chris has gone to see if she can be collected, since she'd be waiting several hours for an ambulance to bring her home again.
So here I am at work, a full day ahead and unsettled. Bleh.
The we found out my mum was in hospital, having gone in around 1.30am with her heart racing, and my brother having to deal with it from a distance. Seems she's probably OK, but that threw everything up in the air. Chris has gone to see if she can be collected, since she'd be waiting several hours for an ambulance to bring her home again.
So here I am at work, a full day ahead and unsettled. Bleh.
Wednesday, 5 March 2014
What do you do when your heros crumble?
I've never been one for idolising people, hero-worship nor as an adult (and this is key) pedestalling people too highly. However in the last couple of weeks I've been greatly saddened to hear of the 'fall' of 2 men I'd looked up to in my early formative years as a Christian.
First off 'Paul' Yonggi Cho, founder of the worlds first mega-church and someone who made the concept of 24/7 prayer through prayer mountain. It wasn't these that impressed me, but the way in which a man of such humble beginnings learned to walk with God and saw Him move and honour what He'd spoken. Of all the things I'd read, the one that stuck with me the most was his way of approaching a time without food, and using it to fast & pray. It is so sad to hear that he and his son were found guilty of embezzling $12million from his church.
The second is a lot more subtle than that, but shook me far more.
As a teen who had been baptised in the Holy Spirit in the late 70s, I was strongly influenced by what might be called the Harvestime movement: Bryn and Kerry Jones, Dave Mansell, Arthur Wallace and Dave Tomlinson were the key players. As an adult I'd not kept up with what had happened with these guys (other than hearing of Arthur Wallace's death) and being aware that there were some heavy-shepherding issues in some churches, mostly (as I understood it from some involved in those churches) down to local leadership being afraid to stand up themselves & relying on every word from other leaders.
Reading in last months Christianity magazine about Dave Tomlinson, and his walking away from all the good things that had been going on and ending up a robe-wearing Anglican priest was such a disappointment. I'm not going to reproduce the article here, and it certainly isn't as simple as I've expressed above, but it seems to me he's exchanged one stream with personality-dependence for another (there's pride in the continuance of the Petrine ministry in an unbroken chain through the bishops, even though I doubt Peter would recognise any Bishop from the third century onwards as being connected to him).
Is he still a Christian, still serving?
Yes, but I wonder how different things might have been if he'd stayed where he was, sought to answer his questions and lead the churches he was responsible for through the difficult times instead of walking away. Easy for me to say, with a small life of mediocrity, I guess. But somehow I find this far more disappointing that Yonggi Cho's fall - not a big, hot sin, but increasingly inward circles of questioning and luke-warmness.
First off 'Paul' Yonggi Cho, founder of the worlds first mega-church and someone who made the concept of 24/7 prayer through prayer mountain. It wasn't these that impressed me, but the way in which a man of such humble beginnings learned to walk with God and saw Him move and honour what He'd spoken. Of all the things I'd read, the one that stuck with me the most was his way of approaching a time without food, and using it to fast & pray. It is so sad to hear that he and his son were found guilty of embezzling $12million from his church.
The second is a lot more subtle than that, but shook me far more.
As a teen who had been baptised in the Holy Spirit in the late 70s, I was strongly influenced by what might be called the Harvestime movement: Bryn and Kerry Jones, Dave Mansell, Arthur Wallace and Dave Tomlinson were the key players. As an adult I'd not kept up with what had happened with these guys (other than hearing of Arthur Wallace's death) and being aware that there were some heavy-shepherding issues in some churches, mostly (as I understood it from some involved in those churches) down to local leadership being afraid to stand up themselves & relying on every word from other leaders.
Reading in last months Christianity magazine about Dave Tomlinson, and his walking away from all the good things that had been going on and ending up a robe-wearing Anglican priest was such a disappointment. I'm not going to reproduce the article here, and it certainly isn't as simple as I've expressed above, but it seems to me he's exchanged one stream with personality-dependence for another (there's pride in the continuance of the Petrine ministry in an unbroken chain through the bishops, even though I doubt Peter would recognise any Bishop from the third century onwards as being connected to him).
Is he still a Christian, still serving?
Yes, but I wonder how different things might have been if he'd stayed where he was, sought to answer his questions and lead the churches he was responsible for through the difficult times instead of walking away. Easy for me to say, with a small life of mediocrity, I guess. But somehow I find this far more disappointing that Yonggi Cho's fall - not a big, hot sin, but increasingly inward circles of questioning and luke-warmness.
Monday, 24 February 2014
One more catch up post - powermacs
Last week there was an auction through an industrial auction site that I've used for lab kit in the past. they have all kinds of things, including some stuff being sold off by ITV - the UK television company. Included in the sale were a bunch of Powermac G5 ali base units starting at £10 each (=£20+ when you've paid fees, VAT, delivery etc). I'd always wanted one of those cases, because they look lovely, but with a view to gutting and putting some worthwhile hardware in there instead of the PowerPC based stuff that's too old now.
I had to walk away from it, but it was hard.
I had to walk away from it, but it was hard.
Francis Chan - Crazy love. Marc - this is for you. ;-)
I'd heard a little about Francis Chan, about how he was radically on fire for God, and like I mentioned in an earlier post, wanted to read this book.
It's a real roller-coaster of a ride. Not in the traditional sense of a story, but in the way it alternates law and grace, compulsion and love, condemnation and delight. Chan is clearly battling both the enthusiasm/determination that 'us radicals' have for doing things *right* and also his background of fear of authority and punishment by a father figure that he refers to through the book. I align myself with him as a radical in the way he handles some things because I very much recognise that I have been like that too (you must, you WILL live under grace etc) although my line is much much gentler than it was, say, 20 years ago.
The basic premise is that we who are nothing but a fleeting moment, less than a footnote at the bottom of the page of history are yet precious to and part of the plans of the creator of the universe. How can we not therefore give up what we cannot keep in order to gain what we cannot lose: wealth, possessions, relationships, personal security, in order to be like Jesus. He's bang on about this, but there's a near-brutality about it too (understandable in a way, because how can the things you want to hold onto be of any real value compared to the things you stand to gain by losing them?) as he discusses western living by comparison with what it means to be a Christian who has given themselves to God.
There are funny moments - like the person who spoke to a friend of his about going out to be a missionary except that he would only be doing it out of obedience. And there are moments of 'depression' going through the list of 'the few, real Christians' and other parts.
To me, it's intense in a 'do this or die' kind of way, not encouraging or aspirational - I am sure this isn't how Chan wanted it to be, and it may well suit a North American readership much better. It wasn't unusual to find myself having to go back and find examples of the real things that God has done in my life, to be sure that I wasn't some fake Christian, pretending to be a follower of Jesus while lying to all around me.
Would I recommend it?
Tricky. Yes, for someone who was a new Christian, who wanted something to set their sights on and who could look back at their old life & see the worthlessness of it all, provided I were around to answer their questions and walk beside them as they picked up the pieces. Yes, for a mature Christian who wanted a radical look at what it meant to be a Christian, and who was secure enough in their walk with God to hear God's voice among the others that would come while reading it. Yes for someone who was just meandering through their Christian life, seeking to get radicalised for Jesus, and who could discuss their thoughts and directions with others to bring balance and a detached set of ears to help them hear God with.
But I could also imagine that someone who was not stable could get their knickers seriously knotted over this one, begin to have doubts about their faith or end up sleeping rough to avoid owning worldly possessions.
It's a challenging book, and that's good, but like I said, I found it a real roller coaster. It's almost finished - if the last few pages substantially affect my feelings then I'll add at the end of this post.
*Addition*
As predicted, the last few pages did affect my feelings, or rather, the followup section 'A conversation with Francis Chan'. In there is a bit more heart instead of simply hard-faced bible study.
One of the more controversial bits if theology is his assertion that lukewarm Christians aren't Christians at all - it's something I've batted back & forth in my head from time to time too. I'm, not thinking of those who come to church for a bit, apparently make some sort of commitment, then drift away, but rather those who, as he puts it, swear a little less and drink a little less than those around them, but are otherwise indistinguishable. Parable of the sower 101 suggests to some that those who are Christians are the fruitful ones. Some people would say that it was all of the 'wheat plants' in the parable, but I'm not sure I could be happy to endorse that viewpoint, at least from a biblical point of view.
I do wholeheartedly want to see a return to simple church practice and new-testament style theology, which seems to be where he's headed. Maybe that shears away a lot of the excuses for being fruitless that we so often allow ourselves, letting us do religious service instead so we feel righteous, and is why he came across as a bit brutal?
It's a real roller-coaster of a ride. Not in the traditional sense of a story, but in the way it alternates law and grace, compulsion and love, condemnation and delight. Chan is clearly battling both the enthusiasm/determination that 'us radicals' have for doing things *right* and also his background of fear of authority and punishment by a father figure that he refers to through the book. I align myself with him as a radical in the way he handles some things because I very much recognise that I have been like that too (you must, you WILL live under grace etc) although my line is much much gentler than it was, say, 20 years ago.
The basic premise is that we who are nothing but a fleeting moment, less than a footnote at the bottom of the page of history are yet precious to and part of the plans of the creator of the universe. How can we not therefore give up what we cannot keep in order to gain what we cannot lose: wealth, possessions, relationships, personal security, in order to be like Jesus. He's bang on about this, but there's a near-brutality about it too (understandable in a way, because how can the things you want to hold onto be of any real value compared to the things you stand to gain by losing them?) as he discusses western living by comparison with what it means to be a Christian who has given themselves to God.
There are funny moments - like the person who spoke to a friend of his about going out to be a missionary except that he would only be doing it out of obedience. And there are moments of 'depression' going through the list of 'the few, real Christians' and other parts.
To me, it's intense in a 'do this or die' kind of way, not encouraging or aspirational - I am sure this isn't how Chan wanted it to be, and it may well suit a North American readership much better. It wasn't unusual to find myself having to go back and find examples of the real things that God has done in my life, to be sure that I wasn't some fake Christian, pretending to be a follower of Jesus while lying to all around me.
Would I recommend it?
Tricky. Yes, for someone who was a new Christian, who wanted something to set their sights on and who could look back at their old life & see the worthlessness of it all, provided I were around to answer their questions and walk beside them as they picked up the pieces. Yes, for a mature Christian who wanted a radical look at what it meant to be a Christian, and who was secure enough in their walk with God to hear God's voice among the others that would come while reading it. Yes for someone who was just meandering through their Christian life, seeking to get radicalised for Jesus, and who could discuss their thoughts and directions with others to bring balance and a detached set of ears to help them hear God with.
But I could also imagine that someone who was not stable could get their knickers seriously knotted over this one, begin to have doubts about their faith or end up sleeping rough to avoid owning worldly possessions.
It's a challenging book, and that's good, but like I said, I found it a real roller coaster. It's almost finished - if the last few pages substantially affect my feelings then I'll add at the end of this post.
*Addition*
As predicted, the last few pages did affect my feelings, or rather, the followup section 'A conversation with Francis Chan'. In there is a bit more heart instead of simply hard-faced bible study.
One of the more controversial bits if theology is his assertion that lukewarm Christians aren't Christians at all - it's something I've batted back & forth in my head from time to time too. I'm, not thinking of those who come to church for a bit, apparently make some sort of commitment, then drift away, but rather those who, as he puts it, swear a little less and drink a little less than those around them, but are otherwise indistinguishable. Parable of the sower 101 suggests to some that those who are Christians are the fruitful ones. Some people would say that it was all of the 'wheat plants' in the parable, but I'm not sure I could be happy to endorse that viewpoint, at least from a biblical point of view.
I do wholeheartedly want to see a return to simple church practice and new-testament style theology, which seems to be where he's headed. Maybe that shears away a lot of the excuses for being fruitless that we so often allow ourselves, letting us do religious service instead so we feel righteous, and is why he came across as a bit brutal?
That was a rather longer gap than expected.
One of the more curious things about having your own business is that it can become a bit of a world in itself, with all the dangers that come from living in a relatively socially enclosed space.
Work has been very slow too, from October and our disappointing holiday through to this month when things started up again, and that has caused a certain amount of introspection and thinking about the future. We had begun to ask if the business had a future and what the next steps needed to be. I was also not entirely keen to go back to doing some of the things I'd done: the pressures could become huge at times, and there had been points when it really had become too much. I don't seem to have the gene for continually working at maximum capacity 60+ hours per week with no end in sight other than a wooden box.
It's not all been idle though, and I'm wondering now about starting the photography side of things back up. Not to do weddings & portraits especially, but producing images for people to print & hang, or for web/magazine publication.
This was prompted, as much as anything, by someone here who also runs a business asking if he could have a couple of my pictures printed for his office: he'd 'take care of me for my time' plus the cost of the print. That's not exactly how things work in photography unless you're doing a wedding/commercial shoot, but it was really nice of him to ask. He picked out a couple of shots from the 50 or so I had that were suitable and chose the sizes. I arranged for them to be canvas-printed and the deal was done. They came back a week later and looked really nice, to the point where people then started suggesting I should get more printed to hang up around here as advertising.
Like I say, the 'proper' work side is picking up, but I now plan to create a proper web site for commercial sales. It's all taking time as I'm learning to get the best from the software tools I have for image processing, and because what I'm doing for some images is partly a creative process (rather than just the equivalent of D&P) then it takes even longer. Plus none of the computers I own or am likely to for a while are up to spec for this kind of work, and it all takes AGES while images import, export, render etc. Patience isn't just a virtue but a necessity.
Anyway, I've no plans to abandon the blog just yet!
Work has been very slow too, from October and our disappointing holiday through to this month when things started up again, and that has caused a certain amount of introspection and thinking about the future. We had begun to ask if the business had a future and what the next steps needed to be. I was also not entirely keen to go back to doing some of the things I'd done: the pressures could become huge at times, and there had been points when it really had become too much. I don't seem to have the gene for continually working at maximum capacity 60+ hours per week with no end in sight other than a wooden box.
It's not all been idle though, and I'm wondering now about starting the photography side of things back up. Not to do weddings & portraits especially, but producing images for people to print & hang, or for web/magazine publication.
This was prompted, as much as anything, by someone here who also runs a business asking if he could have a couple of my pictures printed for his office: he'd 'take care of me for my time' plus the cost of the print. That's not exactly how things work in photography unless you're doing a wedding/commercial shoot, but it was really nice of him to ask. He picked out a couple of shots from the 50 or so I had that were suitable and chose the sizes. I arranged for them to be canvas-printed and the deal was done. They came back a week later and looked really nice, to the point where people then started suggesting I should get more printed to hang up around here as advertising.
Like I say, the 'proper' work side is picking up, but I now plan to create a proper web site for commercial sales. It's all taking time as I'm learning to get the best from the software tools I have for image processing, and because what I'm doing for some images is partly a creative process (rather than just the equivalent of D&P) then it takes even longer. Plus none of the computers I own or am likely to for a while are up to spec for this kind of work, and it all takes AGES while images import, export, render etc. Patience isn't just a virtue but a necessity.
Anyway, I've no plans to abandon the blog just yet!
Wednesday, 5 February 2014
Life without transport.
So here we are in London for Chris's birthday. Who could have predicted a tube strike and rain at the same time?
Bums.
Tuesday, 4 February 2014
Just looked up an address on google maps
There's a landmark/house nearby that shows up as "sort out my visa".
Curious.
Curious.
Overwhelmed?
I've been wanting to read Francis Chan's Crazy Love for a while, and recently noticed it in the chapel library. At the bottom right of the cover is the legend 'Overwhelmed by a relentless God'.
Words have different meanings to different people across the world, but for both Chris & mean that sounded like getting steamrollered by someone so intense that there is no rest or peace. I'm sure that's not what he meant, but curious none the less.
Words have different meanings to different people across the world, but for both Chris & mean that sounded like getting steamrollered by someone so intense that there is no rest or peace. I'm sure that's not what he meant, but curious none the less.
Saturday, 1 February 2014
Inheritance and rubber boots
The dunnocks have begun their mating displays here now: 1 ball of fluff & feathers bouncing around behind another small bird that appears to be playing half-speed kiss chase.
I noticed this as I was tidying away my Wellington boots, or it would be more accurate to say the Wellingtons I have been using since I was about 12 or 14. They had been my fathers, and have been in existence as long as I can remember, even having his initials - AE - written in with red pen. Ben has used them too, so they really have been in use by 3 generations of our family.
I wonder if he will acquire & keep them when he moves out, like some of the tools I took and have been passed on to him too?
I wonder what else we pass on to our children.
My mother asked for a years subscription to Christianity magazine for Christmas and, true to her nature, has been passing them on to us with the commendation "they aren't stuffy at all", which is true.
There's something very striking about them - they conform to the spirit of this age in that they carefully avoid teaching anything solid, reliable, sound. Instead they examine issues with a view to provoking questions in the reader, and where there is a question of doctrine they very carefully present a range of views from middle of the road evangelical to liberal (in the couple I've read there was no conservative or moderate orthodox view expressed from the 3 carefully selected commentators).
Sure it's great to ask questions, but this is like the carefully philosophically blind trying to help other blind people explore their blindness. Makes me see why there are so many, many christian books published these days. I keep having come to mind the scripture where Jesus described that generation like children in the marketplace, with each one calling out their preference, but the others not taking any notice (I appreciate that's not the classical understanding of this passage, yet it seems to fit).
There was a review of 2 books on a similar topic, one of which was described as bombastic in the manner it provided answers for living, while the other was described in glowing terms as intelligent and nuanced for the way it asked questions. Interestingly, while the reviewer felt able to approve the book without strong answers, it was that one with the answers that was apparently going to be used to work with a mens group.
What kind of inheritance do we want to pass to our children?
While it's always good to ask questions and to be able to speculate, there needs to be answers, guidelines by which people can live by, rather than only a further series of questions with the underlying suggestion that as long as it seems OK to you at the time then it's good and right. Someone said to me in church last week that we had changed from hearing "this is how you should be living" to "this is how you can live like you should". I don't want to pretend to either have all the answers or that we even can know them all, but a nuanced ability to ask deep and meaningful questions is never going to help you to live well if you do not discover solid answers that result in action.
We as parents have a responsibility to live out the answers and to teach them to our children so that they have an inheritance that brings life and peace.
I noticed this as I was tidying away my Wellington boots, or it would be more accurate to say the Wellingtons I have been using since I was about 12 or 14. They had been my fathers, and have been in existence as long as I can remember, even having his initials - AE - written in with red pen. Ben has used them too, so they really have been in use by 3 generations of our family.
I wonder if he will acquire & keep them when he moves out, like some of the tools I took and have been passed on to him too?
I wonder what else we pass on to our children.
My mother asked for a years subscription to Christianity magazine for Christmas and, true to her nature, has been passing them on to us with the commendation "they aren't stuffy at all", which is true.
There's something very striking about them - they conform to the spirit of this age in that they carefully avoid teaching anything solid, reliable, sound. Instead they examine issues with a view to provoking questions in the reader, and where there is a question of doctrine they very carefully present a range of views from middle of the road evangelical to liberal (in the couple I've read there was no conservative or moderate orthodox view expressed from the 3 carefully selected commentators).
Sure it's great to ask questions, but this is like the carefully philosophically blind trying to help other blind people explore their blindness. Makes me see why there are so many, many christian books published these days. I keep having come to mind the scripture where Jesus described that generation like children in the marketplace, with each one calling out their preference, but the others not taking any notice (I appreciate that's not the classical understanding of this passage, yet it seems to fit).
There was a review of 2 books on a similar topic, one of which was described as bombastic in the manner it provided answers for living, while the other was described in glowing terms as intelligent and nuanced for the way it asked questions. Interestingly, while the reviewer felt able to approve the book without strong answers, it was that one with the answers that was apparently going to be used to work with a mens group.
What kind of inheritance do we want to pass to our children?
While it's always good to ask questions and to be able to speculate, there needs to be answers, guidelines by which people can live by, rather than only a further series of questions with the underlying suggestion that as long as it seems OK to you at the time then it's good and right. Someone said to me in church last week that we had changed from hearing "this is how you should be living" to "this is how you can live like you should". I don't want to pretend to either have all the answers or that we even can know them all, but a nuanced ability to ask deep and meaningful questions is never going to help you to live well if you do not discover solid answers that result in action.
We as parents have a responsibility to live out the answers and to teach them to our children so that they have an inheritance that brings life and peace.
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