You are currently browsing the monthly archive for September, 2007.
We’ve been traveling recently. I found this prayer/poem/blessing which sort of makes sense of why we wonder about wandering, and why we welcome home coming.
Please bring strange things.
Please come bringing new things.
Let very old things come into your hands.
Let what you do not know come into your eyes.
Let desert sand harden your feet.
Let the arch of your feet be the mountains.
Let the paths of your fingerprints be your maps
and the ways you go be the lines on your palms.
Let there be deep snow in your inbreathing
and your outbreath be the shining of ice.
May your mouth contain the shapes of strange words.
May you smell food cooking you have not eaten.
May the spring of a foreign river be your navel.
May your soul be at home where there are no houses.
Walk carefully, well loved one,
Walk mindfully, well loved one,
Walk fearlessly, well loved one.
Return with us, return to us,
Be always coming home
Ursula K. Le Guin
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Now playing: Carlos Gardel – Por Una Cabeza
via FoxyTunes
Go to the people
live with them
learn from them
love them
Start with what
they know,
build with what they have…
But with the best leaders
when the work is done, the task accomplished
the people will say….
‘We have done this ourselves.’
Lao Tsu 700BC
Put up at the end of a community development event today.
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Now playing: Peter Gabriel – Book of Love
via FoxyTunes
Rule No 1: Don’t sweat the small stuff
Rule No 2: All stuff is small stuff
I once worked for BBC Children in Need mostly assessing applications for funding but also persuading my children I was moonlighting as Pudsey. I semi-convinced them on the grounds that you never saw me and Pudsey together in the same room. The youngest child once offered to poke me in the eye to prove my identity.
Now Pudsey’s being re-branded and re-launched which is painful for any animal, including The Yella Fella. He goes from this:
to this:
He’ll be able to move as well. Design Week quoted the firm responsible for the new look: ‘Pudsey is a fantastic icon but needed to be refreshed to work in all spaces. It was important to give him a new energy, while maintaining the heritage of BBC Children in Need’.
A heavy load for one bear to carry, especially for one who takes the eye out of Icon.
All the best to BBC Children in Need for the 2007 appeal. They give some great grants and genuinely work hard to make sure the money gets spent well. They’re less prone to projectitis than other funders and are often prepared to keep faith with causes and organisations that might get overlooked or trampled in the pursuit of the latest thing.
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Now playing: The Velvet Underground – Who Loves The Sun
via FoxyTunes
lɯʇɥ˙dılɟ\ɯoɔ˙pɐɟʌǝɹ˙ʍʍʍ\\:dʇʇɥ
0 ǝɔuɐʇsqns 1 ǝlʎʇs
˙uɐɔ ı ǝsnɐɔǝq ’sıɥʇ ƃuıop ʎluo ɯ,ı
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Now playing: Bryan Ferry – It’ s All Over Now, Baby Blue
via FoxyTunes
Our two churches welcomed a new rector last night.
Last year the following poem on being a priest was kindly passed on to me by the much missed Hopeful Amphibian who used to blog. I’d half remembered it, and something he posted brought it to mind. Although it’s dedicated to an ordained priest, it’s really about those they get to be a priest to.
Priestly Duties – written for E.D. – 23.5.96
What should a priest be?
All things to all -
male, female and genderless.
What should a priest be?
reverent and relaxed
vibrant in youth
assured through the middle years
divine sage when ageing
What should a priest be?
accessible and incorruptible
abstemious, yet full of celebration,
informed, but not threateningly so,
and far above
the passing soufflé of fashion
What should a priest be?
an authority on singleness
Solomon-like on the labyrinth
of human sexuality
excellent with young marrieds,
old marrieds, were marrieds, never
marrieds, shouldn’t have marrieds,
those who live together, those who live
apart, and those
who don’t live anywhere
respectfully mindful of senior
citizens and war veterans,
familiar with the ravages of arthritis
osteoporosis, post-natal depression,
anorexia, whooping-cough and nits.
What should a priest be?
all-round family person
counsellor, but not officially because
of the recent changes in legislation,
teacher, expositor, confessor,
entertainer, juggler,
good with children, and
possibly sea-lions,
empathetic towards pressure groups
What should a priest be?
on nodding terms with
Freud, Jung, St John of the Cross,
The Scott Report, The Rave Culture,
The Internet, the Lottery, BSE, and
Anthea Turner,
pre-modern, fairly modern,
post-modern, and, ideally,
secondary-modern -
if called to the inner city
What should a priest be?
charismatic, if needs must,
but quietly so,
evangelical, and thoroughly
meditative, mystical, but not
New Age.
Liberal, and so open to other voices,
traditionalist, reformer and
revolutionary
and hopefully, not on medication
unless for an old sporting injury.
Note to congregations:
If your priest actually fulfills all of the above, and then enters the pulpit one Sunday morning wearing nothing but a shower-cap, a fez, and declares: ‘I’m the King and Queen of Venus, and we shall now sing the next hymn in Latvian, take your partners, please’, -
Let it pass.
Like you and I,
they too sew the thin thread of humanity.
Remember Jesus in the Garden -
beside himself?
So what does a priest do?
mostly stays awake
at Deanery synods
tries not to annoy the Bishop
too much
visits hospices, administers comfort,
conducts weddings, christenings, -
not necessarily in that order,
takes funerals
consecrates the elderly to the grave
buries children, and babies,
feels completely helpless beside
the swaying family of a suicide.
What does a priest do?
tries to colour in God
uses words to explain miracles
which is like teaching
a millipede to sing, but
even more difficult.
What does a priest do?
answers the ‘phone
when sometimes they’d rather not
occasionally errs and strays
into tabloid titillation
prays for Her Majesty’s Government
What does a priest do?
tends the flock through time,
oil and incense,
would secretly like each PCC
to commence
with a mud-pie making contest
sometimes falls asleep when praying
yearns, like us, for
heart-rushing deliverance
What does a priest do?
has rows with their family
wants to inhale Heaven
stares at bluebells
attempts to convey the mad love of God
would like to ice-skate with crocodiles
and hear the roses when they pray
How should a priest live?
How should we live?
As priests,
transformed by The Priest
that death prised open
so that he could be our priest
martyred, diaphanous and
matchless priest.
What should a priest be?
What should a priest do?
How should a priest live?
Stewart Henderson
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Now playing: Dixie Chicks – Landslide
via FoxyTunes
Greenbelt was great. Even the sun shone. Billy Bragg commented from mainstage on Friday night: ‘Trust you lot to get the good weather.’ The friends I went with had mixed feelings about camping again next year – although once we got home, we all wanted to go back. We’re just not sure about the camping. So my solution is this:
To hire from Seven degrees west It’s a nice looking site too.
I’d quite like one of these as well:
My wish list of 1950s Airstream trailers here
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Now playing: Razorlight – Before I Fall To Pieces
via FoxyTunes
