Mad props to Joseph

Hello. This blog post will be surprising for three reasons;

1. It is a blog post that I am writing. That's very August 2009.
2. It doesn't massively involve me. That's very March 1986 (I don't think I was as self analytic then).
3. It is a little bit Christmassy. That's very December 25th (on a rolling basis).

So. To kind of immediately counter statement number two, I feel like I should give you some context. The context is I am not very good at reading the Bible in a structured way. I have tried many different strategies (as an unstructured person would) but in recent days I have committed to a new approach. I am going to attempt one of those guides which gives you a couple of chapters each day and hopefully you should make your way through the WHOLE THING in one or two or seventeen years. This genuinely excites me a bit right now. It also overwhelms me too, but I'll save that for another day.

Anyway...

Hence being at the beginning of four different stories currently, one of which is the birth of Christ. Really brilliant stuff, you've probably heard a bit about it before. Anyway this morning I was reading chapter two of Matthew which is the bit where the wise men are following the star and King Herod catches drift of some new king in town and isn't best pleased. So annoyed in fact is he that he decides to go on a mad bout of infanticide. Not cool.

So the wise men/royal astrologers continue with their star tracking until they find it above this 'ere stable and the Bible says they "fell down and worshipped him". I think I love the idea that they are deeply exhausted and slightly emotional and probably more than slightly overwhelmed by being guided by a star in the sky to the Messiah. And just all their dignity is completely stripped of them in that moment when they realise they have been taken by God to God; albeit God with skin and hair and tiny finger nails. Anyway, that isn't even why I wanted to write but it is a pretty amazing thing in itself.

So yeah, Joseph. To be honest he's not my best Joseph; the one with the colourful coat I think takes first place in my head. But today I have just been completely impressed by the one with sandpaper and spirit level.

Right. His missus-to-be is chosen by God to bear the saviour of the world. To begin with he doesn't realise this and it's all a bit awkward for a bit where he thinks he's gonna have to quietly give her the elbow and find a wife with slightly more sexual integrity. This however was cleared up when an angel of the Lord appeared to him and gave him the lowdown on not ditching Mary, it all coming about by the spirit, the fact that he should call him Jesus for he will save his people from their sins etc. etc. The Bible then says that when Jospeh wakes up he did what the angel commanded. So going against all logic and rationale Joseph takes God at his word and obeys him.

But that's not even all....

Chapter two is what I was reading today and I just thought what a man. By this point the wise men have gone on their way and Jospeh has another message from an angel in his dream. This time he said "Get up and flee to Egypt with the child and his mother...stay there until I tell you to return because Herod is going to try to kill the child." And then, and I'll paraphrase what happens now, we're told that Jospeh took them both to Egypt that night. So, firstly, Joseph was properly listening to God, secondly, he was entirely obedient and thirdly he just got on and did it. I struggle with all three of these but even if I managed the first two, having the conviction and the trust to go and do it just like that is pretty amazing. And then, finally...

"When Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and told him, "Get up and take the child and his mother back to the land of Israel, because those who are trying to kill the child are dead." So Joseph returned immediately to Israel with Jesus and his mother". (Matt 2:19-22)

This is 2009 years ago roughly. There's no mass media. Joseph can't have this truth verified by another source. He's in flipping Egypt. But he heard God and trusted God and obeyed God. End of.

Thanks for reading. Joseph has challenged me this morning. Yet also he encourages me too. He was a carpenter who kind of assumed the worst on hearing Mary's news first off. And yet that didn't count against him and God placed him at the centre of the Jesus' immediate sphere of impact. I think I might sometimes sideline Joseph as being a supporting cast member rather than one of the main players but it's a relief to know God didn't do the same.

Much Ablog About Nuffing

Ooh, the 28th of August. Where has the time gone, eh? I can't be entirely sure (without standing up and checking our journal) but I think this time a year ago I was on a plane travelling home from Delhi. My memory of this is based purely on the fact that I think that we read a Saturday paper on the train travelling back to my Mum's house. A year ago. Mental. That was a busy time. If my memory serves me correctly then we landed on the Saturday, went back to mine, slept, woke up on the Sunday and washed clothes and ate and stuff and then moved into Parklife on the Monday and started Contact on the Tuesday. (On the Wednesday we went kayaking and on the Thursday we did a First Aid course. I can't work out what I did on the Friday but as it's 356 days ago maybe you will forgive me.) This is possibly why I am finding these few weeks off so stange, the last time when my day to day wasn't prescribed by a contract or diary or travel guide kind of belongs to a part of my life which I don't remember so well. It's only been a year since I was a student but the separation I feel from the time Before is quite amazing. It's funny that I share the same city as Student Fran, the same church and a lot of the same friends, but everything is very different. Student Fran was a visitor to this fair corner of the world. She was falling in love with it at quite a rate, but she was a temporal part of it nonetheless. Real Fran has her home here. She might not know which night it's cool to go to Arena or what the owner of Mega Kebab is called, but this town is her town. (Well there's probably a few members of Day for Retired who are seventeenth generation Devonian who might disagree, but for the fact that I pay my Council Tax to Exeter City Council I think I count!).

I think this is only going to be a brief post partly because a) I want to carry on reading Red Moon Rising and b) I have to pack to go to my friend Cat's hen party in Birmingham this weekend. But also maybe it will be brief because I'm in quite a thinkative mood at the moment and want my thoughts to be a little bit more collected before I spread them too ill-advisedly over t'internet. I wish I journalled better. I am very aware that quite a significant twelve months of my life has just passed and I think an equally significant twelve months are about to begin. I feel like this is a good time to look back on what God might have been/still be teaching me and work out what I should be taking forward with me, and possibly what I might need to let go of. I think this is a good thing to, however I'm also aware of the difference between reflection and dwelling. The latter isn't always terribly positive for me! We'll see though.

Right, much more banter promised for next time. I'm going out in public in a tutu for goodness sake. Watch out West Midlands.

Communiloving

I am just coming to the end of three days home alone. It's been strange.

When I arrived back from the Lake District on Thursday (lovely, thank you very much) I was a little bit excited about having the house to myself. Now I should say, as one of my readership of two is my housemate, that I wasn't excited because I don't like my housemates. They're wonderful. And when you're alone, no matter how long you wait, spaghetti bolognese never magically appears in front of you. But the concept of some alone time seemed quite attractive. A good chance to sit and be and think and reflect and go to the loo with the door open seemed too good an opportunity to pass up. I think I thought I would come out of the experience a bigger person. Maybe even a better one.

To be fair I enjoyed it for a bit. Not having to queue to use the laptop/toilet/shower/washing machine/straightners/mirror/stairs/hoover (I joke on the last one) was good novelty value. Choosing to live in mess is quite liberating, tidying things away and them staying away is nothing short of brilliant. And coming and going and not telling anyone where you are makes you feel a little bit Destiny's Child (without being black or having sold 40 million records worldwide). But...it's also a little bit dull.

It's quite a nice thing to appreciate afresh that you really enjoy living with the people that you are contractually obliged to live with. Whilst I have an irrational annoyance towards anyone who might dares turn on the bathroom extractor fan before I'm awake, and I can see anyone who tries to make conversation with me in the morning as setting out to ruin my day/life, and generally no one else will ever match up to the golden standards I set in all other areas of my life, it turns out that for Party Cat to live up to her partying* reputation she needs other people to bounce off of, have jokes, occassionally irritate and generally share life with.

So I'm a little bit scared that this is just the impact of Orange's advertising campaign that I'm just realising I am who I am because of everyone else. I would prefer to think I am much deeper than this. I tried to engage Esther in a conversation earlier which likened my experience of living alone to the age old A Level Philosophy dilemma of whether a tree makes a sound if it falls in an empty forest. She didn't give it much time of day, and, to be fair, even apart from my three contemporaries I probably am still real and do exist, but I think I have realised the life part of Parklife is in the community that exists between these walls. Parkexistance is probably a more appropriate description of this weekend. Anyway, everyone (plus an extra) is coming home this evening and I imagine at 7.55 in the morning I will be mentally cursing whichever of them has the weakest bladder, but, right now, I praise God for having placed us all here.

Community is something I could (and do) bang on about for ages, but I think it's how we were created to exist. Not necesarily in the shape that this one does (humanity would die out fairly quickly!), but in various forms of interdependent existance. It just works. I might never be able to wire a plug, drive a car, play a piano or speak Russian, but I'm glad I know people who can.

*Drinking tea and playing Scrabble.

(Marlborough) and (chain letters).

Ooh, hello, anyone at home? Don't mind me, just dropping in for anicecupofteaandasitdown.

So, blogging didn't really happen in June. Mybad. To catch up, in short, life is really quite good. Nuff said :)

I went away to a quaint, little town called Marlborough this weekend and stayed with my friend Emma and our other friend Jon (and Emma's family and dog and her Mum's friend). We were all drawn to this particular corner of the south west because there was a jazz festival in her town. I thought I was being slightly ambitious in comparing it to the Edinburgh Festival, in that all of the town's pubs and restaurants host live music all weekend and you wander from venue to venue supping pretty cider and having your ears entertained. However, upon reading the Festival's brochure, it seems they compare themselves to SXSW in Texas. I would agree if SXSW's key demographic was John McCririck. I don't think it is.

Anyway it was really good fun. It was nice to go away and be with people who are really good friends and not have the pressure to, like, chat and stuff. We saw loads of music, bumped into Bradley from Eastenders, befriended the dog of a former member of Fairport Convention, ate and drank, was merry, slept in a giant bed (singularly), and just generally switched off a bit. Was wonderful. Don't get me wrong, we went for free I did feel free to judge the cash paying punters, but it was cool anyway.

You know what Jo just reminded me of? Chain letters!! That is retro cool. Jo was saying they made her very upset and she remembers crying to her Mum under the pressure, whereas I think my Mum was particularly anti the chain letter movement, so mine were always a covert thing. But, yeah, brilliant! And the ones with the chocolate bars! Like an early form of those pyramid schemes that GMTV always warn you against. Anyway, I have nothing left to add to this, just something I had forgotten about.

These people were so good we saw them twice. See you soon. x

Half term high jinks

It's half term!! Woooooo!! Now, that's not to mean that I don't love regular life and stuff, but I'm not sure I will ever grow out of that half term feeling. And, as I see it, if full grown teachers are allowed to be as excited as the yoofs in Radi8 then I'm pretty sure I must be allowed to join in the fun too. Someone almost tried to throw a spanner in my works (metaphorically speaking) the other day by asking what I was doing over half term. Uh-oh, I don't like wasting time and apparently everyone else is going on trips and visiting people...does the fact that I am not booked on lots of advanced single trips around Britain mean that in fact this time is meaningless and wasted and won't have any significant impact on this transitional decade of my life?!

No, it doesn't.

I rather impressed myself by being able to say I was actually just staying around Exeter because, get this, it means I get to be in Devon. In Devon! Imagine having a life where you get to live in Devon?! Well, maybe you don't have to imagine, or maybe you're quite happy just where you are thank you very much, but I, for one, today, am very, very happy and grateful for abiding somewhere quite this wonderful. Even if it is raining...

I was excited by my afternoon off today and all the possibilities of working through my Half Term To Do List Special, but it's not been terribly successful thus far. Lunch, tick. Book hair cut, no one is picking up the phone. Book dentist appointment, call disconnected (x3). Order wedding present for Hannah and Chris, mygiftregistry.com is cretinous. Tidy bedroom, have better idea of throwing away "half my clothes"..so far this has involved making a pile of them in the middle of my bedroom floor, getting slightly overwhelmed and retreating to the living room.

And so I blog. Whilst this didn't make the official list I was inspired to write a little when I whiled away a good 20 minutes at work this morning on Lauren's new blog. I really like it. If you're wondering what other blogs I quite like then take a gander on the side of this page somewhere. All top quality stuff.

As I should really get back to the list I am just going to leave you with a clutch of really quite good things that I have appreciated recently....

A clutch of really quite good things that I have appreciated recently

* Walking and the sun and Topsham and cake. All of these things individually are fairly up there (where?) on my list of examples of good things in life but when combined into one that's quite a dangerously exciting combination.

* Tunnock's bars. I have a circular relationship with these chocolate bars that I ADORE them and then manage to forget they exist and then stumble across them again and am convinced that they are even more brilliant than the last time I ate them. Possibly I just have a poor memory. Possibly.

* Finding out that only two men in the world know the speical recipe for Irn Bru and that so top secret is this classified information that they are unable to both travel in a plane together at the same time. Brilliant.

* Ben Folds. I have been enjoying a BF renaissance in the past week, both home and away, and he has made me happy. Like remembering an old friend. Listen.

I am going to tackle the clothing issue. I hope to win but please don't hold me to account on the 50% statement. Always a visionary, not always a realist.

Salutations.

Cor and blimey. It's been a very long time since I've writ anything here. Not that I suspect anyone cares, but a tad lazy on my part. That said, I think I've commented before that I tend to write more when I have some kind of emotional knot that needs some kind of release. That hasn't happened recently. The good ship is sailing quite happily on the Ally Ally O.

Since my last splurge I have been offered a place to do a PGCE in further education at Exeter College in September. This is ace. A year of learning how to work with grown ups to teach them how to make the most of reading and writing. It a little bit seems to be the best possible thing that I could be given the opportunity to do with my time and it reminds me that in all things God is there working for the good. Sometimes I find myself thinking that I have had my fair share of good living and that I should expect imminent rubbishness, but I've been realising in the past months that just isn't true. I'm not promised that life will be a constant picnic but actually all this blessing stuff isn't a conincidence, and I'm not using up my magic wishes, He just is good. So, yeah, Amen to that.

Right, teatime. Esther is bringing home panini tonight. Did you know there's no such thing as 'paninis'? Nope. Panini is in fact the plural and a single item should be referred to as a panino. Every day's a school day.

Finally, Squeeze have been important today. Lend them your ears.

Merry Easter

Shalom! It's funny, this year is the only ever year of my life thus far where I have worked for a church, and yet this year I feel like Easter crept up on me more than any other. You would think, being in the resurrection business and all that, I would have been more prepared. But no. Maybe I'm just out of the loop but I just feel like more than other recent years it's been less of a hype. I was trying to work out today whether a) this is true or false, b) whether it's just because I'm not 4 and my parents don't feel the need to dress up as large chocolate bearing animals or c) whether it just reflects people generally being a bit distracted with life. I didn't conclude upon any of these points (well, apart from b, which I think is definitly true) but it did make me realise that it's pretty cool that however much I might be an eventist and not having an egg hunt round my garden and a bonnet making contest and a stations of the cross and 15 gamillion creme eggs might make me slightly dissappointed it's also pretty cool that every day is kind of Easter Day. Not just because Esther brings home hot cross buns on a daily basis, but because Jesus is the reason for the season. And He is risen. Not just today, but tomorrow and tomorrow's tomorrow and tomorrow's tomorrow's tomorrow. And, despite the whole Good Friday thing, even yesterday and yesterday's yesterday. Yesterday, today, forevermore. That's pretty cool. Even if they don't give you chocolate on Cathedral Green every day to remember it by.

So..what else. We had fun in France visiting Ross. There's a fairly select(elite?) group in the UK that recognise his coolness, but I feel like the whole of France is Ross keen. This obviously makes me want to start the official backlash, but we had a good time eating and drinking Frenchstyle, pottering around, having balloon animals made etc etc. It was a good break in the way that I felt in the middle of it refreshed and like I was having a good time, but also like I would quite like to go home and get on with that life too. Generally made me feel excited by things again.

The Simple Life is offically done as of this morning and the ending of Lent. I'm not quite what I would conclude from it. I think I thought it would be easier than it was. Not that I found myself having to be pulled off of H and M window fronts or owt, but just I really wanted stuff. And not in the, "Oh dear my flip flops are falling apart" type way (which they are), but in the most ugly, covetous, "Ooh my life would be so much better if I just had more....stuff" type way. Doing the charidee shop thing quite a lot I think I thought that maybe I might be above all that material greed thing, but, I realised, I'm not at all. I'm not sure what that means now though. I definately learned I don't need to buy packaged sandwiches, and that's a good thing I can continue not doing, but I do want to continue to muse upon the needing stuff thing.

Right, I was supposed to be getting down with the parents and watching Lewis but I have failed miserably by writing this instead, so I should drop in for the last few minutes. Merry Easter everyone...