PC gone mad

What follows is a joke, but it really does seem to be the way things are headed sometimes... And if you can follow this at first glance, you must be a genius!

Politically Correct 23rd Psalm

The Lord and I are in a shepherd-sheep relationship, and I am in a position of negative need.

He prostrates me in a green-belt grazing area, and conducts me into lateral proximity with a non-torrential aqueous accumulation.

He restores to original satisfaction levels my psychological makeup.

Notwithstanding the fact that I make ambulatory progress through the non-illuminated geological interstice of mortality, terror sensations shall not be manifest within me due to the proximity of omnipotence.

Your pastoral walking aid and quadruped-restraint module induce in me a pleasurific mood state.

You design and produce a nutrient-bearing support structure in the context of non-cooperative elements.

You enact a head-related folk ritual utilizing vegetable extracts, and my beverage container exhibits inadequate volumetric parameters.

Surely it must be an intrinsic non-deductible factor that your inter-relational, emphatic, and non-vengeful attributes will pursue me as their target focus for the duration of the current non-death period.

And I will possess tenant rights in the residential facility of the Lord on a permanently open-ended time basis.

Progress of a kind - curtains

The house is moving forward. I finished painting the bedroom last night. Now I need to tidy up and get my curtain rails back up, make the curtains and hang them (hopefully shouldn't take too long because it's just sewing a couple of squares...) and then measure the room and get carpet and underlay. Oh yeah, and I need to get a couple of replacement floorbords as well because the gas man cut them up when he was checking the pipes hunting for a leak.

Downstairs things are looking ok as well. I need to put a couple of ribbons on the curtains to keep them hanging where they should be, and I'd like to get up a curtain pole over the doorway between the kitchen and the lounge. There used to be a door there, but it was a nasty sliding thing that filled half the gap even when it was closed, didn't fit properly and made a lot of noise. It didn't hang all the way to the floor either, so no good for keeping out draughts. (Was that the right spelling or should it be drafts? I think I was right the first time...)

Completed!

Just a quickie - I have completed on my house! I now own a house - I have keys, and a garden, and rooms, and carpets... but no curtains or curtain rails, a serious lack of furniture and a broken Yale lock...

More to follow on the progress of doing up the house :-)

And breathe.......

The last week has been crazy busy, moving out of my flat at the start of last week, only really finishing on Thursday, and then from Wednesday night I was involved in a really good show with songs from the musicals performed by an amateur group.

The show was proof that everyone knows everyone in a small town, as my estate agent was in the group and when one of the performers' brother showed up with his girlfriend I knew her as well!

After the final night on Saturday we did kareoke with the live band and I got up and sang 'I Will Survive' - that's another thing crossed off my list of things to do before I'm 30 :-)

No fixed abode

Well, the flat is completely clean and tidy, very empty, vacuumed, swept, and steam cleaned. Most of my worldly goods (I like that term - I've always wanted to find an excuse to use it!) are in boxes in storage either in my parents' garage, my pastor's shed, and in the back of church. Some boxes and some bits of furniture are in the back of a transit van waiting for me to find somewhere to put them, and I'm staying with Steve and Brenda, and Gertie the dog - friends from church.

It's a bit strange not having a home address at the moment. I just got a call from my Mom to tell me my mortgage has been approved, so it shouldn't last too long, but it's surprisingly relaxing. It was a lovely drive into work today through the countryside, and it was nice to have a bed to collapse in knowing that I wouldn't have to worry about doing any more cleaning or clearing for a while!

The only down at the moment is that I dropped my phone down the toilet on Friday (I can give you details but you might not want to know!) and my new phone isn't working yet. It wouldn't be so bad, but it's the only way for people to get hold of me at the moment, so although my mortgage was approved yesterday Mom couldn't get hold of me to tell me before today!

Boxes everywhere

If I've seemed a bit quiet recently it's because I'm moving house. My flat is full of boxes (17 at the last count), every room has got things turned out of drawers, piles of things to pack, and things to take to charity shops and recycling bins...

Finished tasks

Well I've now finished reading Pride and Prejudice and played my flute in church - 2 tasks down and 28 to go!

Unfortunately number 1 is taking a loooooooong time to sort out. My mortgage has hit problems, I have to move out of my house by bank holiday, and I'm not sure what I'm going to do in between....

Depression

A couple of years ago I was diagnosed with depression. I thought I'd got it under control, and I seemed to be doing okay with it until last week. I got a really bad cold, which made me feel down anyway, and then I hit big problems with a house I'm buying. I took Friday off sick but then I was working on Saturday, and my Sundays are always busy so I didn't feel like I got any rest. By Sunday evening I was crying for no reason, and that feeling stayed with me today, so much so that I had to leave work at lunchtime and go home and sleep.

It's difficult to describe what depression is like to someone who hasn't experienced it. For me, it's like being in a bubble - I can see the world going past but I feel disconnected from it. Little things worry me much more, especially when it's about personal relationships, and while I really want company I know I'm not much fun to be around, so I worry about that as well.

I'll be back at work tomorrow, because I don't want to take too much time off having already had four months' sick leave in the last year. I really hope it lifts when I've got rid of the cold.

I'd like to hear from anyone else who's struggling with depression - a problem shared and all that...

Day off

I have a day off today so I'm watching Gone With The Wind. I'm enjoying it I think, although it's not quite what I expected, and it's certainly longer than I expected!

Quick update on the flute - I played it in church on Sunday so I'm happy I've completed that thing to do before I'm 30 :-)

Milk and coffee

I don't have anything interesting to write today. My fridge is broken and I've got people coming round for food tonight so I've been a bit preoccupied wondering how to cater for people and keep my milk cold while pretending I'm civilised... I did find a mini-fridge in Woolworths at lunchtime that I'm hoping will solve my immediate problem!

In the meantime, enjoy this thought from the Good, Clean Funnies List :-)

A group of alumni, all highly established in their respective careers, got together for a visit with their old university professor.

The conversation soon turned to complaints about the endless stress of work and life in general...

Offering his guests coffee, the professor went into the kitchen and soon returned with a large pot of coffee and an eclectic assortment of cups: porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal - some plain, some expensive, some quite exquisite.

Quietly he told them to help themselves to some fresh coffee.

When each of his former students had a cup of coffee in hand, the old professor quietly cleared his throat and began to patiently address the small gathering... ''You may have noticed that all of the nicer looking cups were taken up first, leaving behind the plainer and cheaper ones.

"While it is only natural for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is actually the source of much of your stress-related problems."

He continued...''Be assured that the cup itself adds no quality to the coffee. In fact, the cup merely disguises or dresses up what we drink.

"What each of you really wanted was coffee, not a cup, but you instinctively went for the best cups... Then you began eyeing each other's cups....

''Now consider this: Life is coffee. Jobs, money, and position in society are merely cups. They are just tools to shape and contain Life, and the type of cup we have does not truly define nor change the quality of the Life we live.

"Often, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee that God has provided us... God brews the coffee, but he does not supply the cups. Enjoy your coffee!''

The happiest people don't have the best of everything, they just make the best of everything they have. So please remember: Live simply. Love generously. Care Deeply. Speak Kindly. Leave the Rest to God.

And remember - the richest person is not the one who has the most, but the one who needs the least.

Item 21 - Learn to play the flute

One down, 29 to go!

I bought a flute on ebay last week and spent Friday night learning to play it. By 'play it' I mean I can make a pretty good sound and know the fingerings for all the notes, and can play songs from music and without, and know what notes I'm playing.

That might seem a bit excessive for what is in effect 2 days of playing the flute, but I'm a musical person so I could already read music and understand the theory behind playing before I picked it up. I played the recorder when I was younger as well, and the fingering isn't too different, so the only thing I really had to learn from scratch was how to hold it and blow it.

My goal now is to be able to play it in public (probably at church) in the next month.

Item 16 - Read Pride and Prejudice

I found an interesting copy of Pride and Prejudice in the local Christian bookshop. The text is unchanged but it has interesting snippets interspersed about British customs and traditions at the time P&P is set, tips about love ("don't act like Mr Collins!"), comments about how religion is portayed in the text, by the characters, and in Jane Austen's life, tidbits of information about P&P on TV and film, and little comments from the people who wrote the comments on bits they particularly enjoyed.

I'm about half-way through at the moment - Mr Darcy is about to propose to Lizzy at Hunsford! Fun fun fun :-) I reckon I'm going to finish the book in a couple of weeks :-)

The worst sin

I was thinking about things that I do that I shouldn't this week, and I've come to the conclusion that the greatest sin we struggle with is lying. I know all sins are the same in God's eyes, but I bet we
lie more than commit any other sin, and I think it's probably the one thing that no-one could manage to give up completely.

It's also a secret sin in some respects because people don't know when you're lying or not, and it's something that can be joked about very easily ("Did you eat the cookie?" "No... " *shifty eyes*). It's difficult to have accountability for it - can you remember every time you told a lie or stretched the truth a bit yesterday?

There are blurry lines with lying as well. Where do you cross the line from playing make-believe to lying? Or telling a story to making out that it's true? What about exaggeration? Or lies of omission?

Any thoughts?

30 things to do before I'm 30

I had my 29th birthday a couple of weeks ago and it made me think. 30 is traditionally the age when women start to panic about not having a man, or not having children, or not having done this or that, so I've decided to make a list of things I want to do before my 30th birthday, on March 18 2009.

I'll cross them off when I've done them, and if they're interesting enough I'll tell you about them ;-)

1. Go horse riding on a beach
2. Buy my own house
3. Learn to not dip into my overdraft at all
4. Try at least 10 recipes from every cookbook I own
5. Take a holiday in Britain
6. Get my full motorbike licence
7. Finish reading the Old Testament
8. Write a book
9. Do kareoke
10. Learn to paint
11. Learn to dance
12. After doing item 2 have a posh dinner party
13. Write letters to my parents telling them how amazing they are
14. Walk up the Wrekin
15. Walk along the Frontescyllte aqueduct
16. Read Pride & Prejudice
17. Record a CD
18. Spend a day exploring the local area
19. Take part in a sponsored event
20. Go to Africa
21. Learn to play the flute
22. Take part in a 26-mile walk (marathon or something else!)
23. Visit the British Museum
24. Go to work in my pyjamas
25. Spend a morning at the piano playing through books and enjoying myself
26. Live on £1.35 per day for a week
27. Remind myself how to hoola hoop
28. Finish a one-year course I started last year(!)
29. Watch Gone With The Wind
30. Plan a party for my 30th birthday :-)

Are sermons really that boring?

Sister Margaret had spent weeks preparing the first grade children for their first Communion, stressing the solemnity and importance of this sacrament.

Much to her chagrin, during Mass on the big day, one boy in the front row was talking and giggling nonstop. Finally, unable to put up with it any longer, she whispered to the lad seated next to her, "Please go up there and tell that one he's done enough talking and had better stop, right now!"

Without question, the boy rose and walked to the front... and delivered Sister Margaret's message to the surprised priest in the middle of his sermon!

That joke (from the Good Clean Funnies List - highly recommended) may be a bit unrealistic, but honesly, haven't you ever wanted to tell the preacher he's said enough and should finish?

Sometimes you get the guy who has no presence. What he's saying might be very good, but he's just not got the personality to deliver it well.

Other times you get the cliched vicar who drones on using big words and with no relevance to real life. It might be useful to a theology student, but for practical every day application, it's pretty much useless.

Sometimes you've got some who really knows his stuff, and one-on-one or in Bible study he's very good, he's just not good at delivering his knowledge in sermon format.

But sometimes you find someone who you can really connect with. It's someone who speaks in a way that you understand and about issues you want to know more about. Their theology is spot on but they don't express it with long words, they just talk as if they're having a conversation with you. They talk to God in just the same way, as if he's in the room next to you. And when they talk about the Bible they really make it come alive for you so you can really understand what was going on.

If you have problems finding good preachers and you're the same sort of age as me (20s-30s) then you might want to check out Pastor Mark Driscoll's sermons from Mars Hill Church in Seattle. They're on www.marshillchurch.org and cover all sorts of subjects, books of the Bible, and are well worth listening to.

Bad days

Isn't it weird how some days just start badly and carry on badly all day?

This morning I woke up and my heating wasn't working. It was freezing, and I had to wash my hair with a fan heater going to make it even tolerably warm.

As a result of trying to sort that out I was late to work, and when I got there I discovered I hadn't done something I should have done yesterday, so was scrambling to catch up.

After that I went to a meeting and discovered half way there that I didn't know exactly where I should be going, then the meeting went on longer than it was supposed to, so I eventually got back to the office and my lunch well after 2pm.

What went wrong?

I do know one thing that effected my state of mind was that I hadn't done my devotions in the morning. I do try to, and it does tend to settle my mind and calm me down before I start the day. For the last couple of weeks my devotion times have been scatty, to say the least. On one hand I feel like I should do them at the same time every day so I get into a good routine, but on the other hand I don't want it to be just a routine thing in case it loses its special-ness.

I need to work on this more...

The Christianity Club

Have you ever noticed how sometimes being Christian is like being a member of a super secret club? I've noticed it a few times recently. I started a new job a few weeks ago and on my first day as I was chatting to the people in the office I discovered that one of the other guys was Christian. Immediately we had a connection, and the conversation because more relaxed and animated.

Maybe it's because once you've established someone as a Christian you know what mind-set and attitude they're going to have about certain subjects and so you know more areas of conversation that will be 'safe'. If you live in a small town, like myself and the other guy in the office do, you usually find you have friends or aquaintances in common as well.

I wonder if it's something the first Christians found, when they drew the fish on the floor and suddenly conversations sprung up about their beliefs, their churches, and their friends?

Although it is good in some ways that Christians feel comfortable enough to be able to strike up conversation so readily with other believers, I'm not sure it's a good thing that it takes knowing someone is a Christian before you do open up. In some circumstances obviously it's good - if you're thinking about talking to someone about God you might approach the subject slowly, whereas if you know they're Christian you don't have to worry about scaring them off by being too religious.

Any thoughts, anyone?