Thinking

Yey

Today I sold my first photo (not to a friend). I would show you but someone bought it! It's sad, but I'm very excited.

Internal mission

There's a fantastic discussion on Pete Rollins blog here. Pete's blog is hard going for the beginner, but worth the many references to the Dictionary of Philosophy!

I particularly identify with this from the comments:

I am big into re-discovering the gospel as evangelising me as much as other people, inviting me into a transformed mode of being. By giving up the desire to reach the ‘other’ with what ‘I’ possess I want to explore metanoia as something for us all. Instead of trying to ‘reach’ others one simply creates spaces for the Event of faith to be born in all of us. Giving up mission can become the most effect space for mission to take place.

[Metanoia is repentance or changing one's mind]

Uncertainty

A friend of ours recently said that the real 'cost' of her following Jesus was that she had to live with uncertainty.

As time passes, I reckon that uncertainty is not only unavoidable if you are to follow Christ, but also it's often the strongest position to take.

Sorry

I confess I have been a most awful blogger recently. Slowly getting geared up...

Green stuff

So we live in the midst of green - the village is a little island of buildings in an expanse of intensive, industrial, agricultural production. In every direction are fields, large and flat with tyre lines accross them where the sprayer travels. It's an agricultural desert. It's mostly quiet - apart from the noise of the cars from the roads, roads so straight it's hard not to let your speed drift up to 70 or 80mph. By way of contrast, the village which, has a lot of trees and gardens is a cacophony of bird-song most of the time. Since the 0% set-aside rate introduced by the EU this year and the tripling of the wheat price, there are not even field edges or fallow areas for the birds to enjoy. I recently went to a new woodland being created by the Woodland Trust. They bought a farm about 20 miles away last year and this winter have planted much of it with native trees and shrubs. The trees are just little and as yet don't offer much to improving the biodiversity, but as we stood and talked we had to raise our voices over the skylarks hovering above their nests. Just releasing the area from the regime of fertilisers, herbicides, fungicides and insecticides has already brought change. I have lots of problems with this, but one of the main ones is that despite the expanse of farming in which we live, you are not allowed on any of it. Even in the rural life, most of us have lost our link with the land.

In the village, people complain that the 'youth' hang about on the streets in the evenings. Lincolnshire has one of the worst obesity problems in the UK, despite being an overwhelmingly rural area. Though surrounded by green fields (nitrogen green) you can't walk or play in them. You can't play or build dens, there is nowhere to be 'wild'.

Monsoon

It's raining again. On Metcheck - my favorite weather stop - they talk about the European monsoon. This seems to fit reality better than my rather outdated idea of having a summer. For the last few years the autumn seems to have been hotter and calmer than June. Still lets hope it's not as bad as the last one.

The land

Been thinking much about the land; our connexion with it and with God. I love how the Original Bible Project TEB translation refers to man in Genesis as 'soil-man'. We come from the land and in one sense return to it.

More later ;)

It's the things we don't blog...

...that are really interesting!

What's been going on?

I love this post from Josh Brown and I often feel a bit like this blogging - a complete hypocrite, and perhaps this is one reason why I am not more vocal! It's better to live it than to say it, but I am such a failure at living it that the message is lost. Yet it is better to do a little that nothing, better to try than to give in or give up.

sometimes I need to hide away
bury my head and pretend it's all not there
bury my face and pretend it doesn't hurt
hide away, sometimes I need..

Half term

Half term, originally uploaded by DavidBole.

Sorry for not posting for so long. I think I'm back.

This is Lawrie in the back of the car as we stopped on Crowcombe Hill in the pouring rain because Jacob was travel sick, poor lad. It was an amazing moment because for the first time in ages I was able to appreciate the amazingness of God all around me despite the frustrating situation. The leaves dripped with water, a small stream gushed down the road, the woods smelt fresh with garlic and the structure of the ferns kept pulling my eye back to search them again. I heard a guy (sorry cant remember who) at the Hay festival talking about how religion was in its death throws. I'm guessing he was an atheist. Despite terrible, terrible things like earthquakes and tornadoes there is still this pull to worship, this thing called beauty and this inbuilt desire to believe and then even when I don't, I still belong.

Congratulations

To Pootle on the birth of Lauren May! Well done, we'll be praying for you, for sleep...