Quick answers

Let me tell you a story. (I know good writing for the web doesn't advocate storytelling - or words like advocate - but this is a good one.)

James and I rode the train home together yesterday. So I'm still reading The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne (see it on Amazon). After reading all about how following Jesus means living with the outcasts and loving when it hurts, I was thinking about how I couldn't ignore the truth of this.

As James and I got off the train and headed out the gate, I was explaining how I felt, saying: "If that's what I believe - and it is - then what am I going to do about it?" At that precise moment, as we were walking, we looked up to see a homeless man who said, "Hello!". We smiled and 'hello'ed back as we continued walking.

So not such a rhetorical question after all.

In search of community

I've been reading a great book written by one of the guys from the simple way. It really relates to something James and I have been working towards this year; to build community.

The author guy Shane calls for (and lives) within a diverse community. They eat with the poor. They sleep with the homeless. They play with the children. They live in community; a glowing example to our (or should that be my) individualistic and suburban mindset.

I want to be community. But I can't do it by myself. It will mean putting others first. It will be painful. But it will be a step towards Jesus's radical redefinition of society. I can't wait.

So it's been a while...

I'm having a fairly faltering start to this blogging malarky... maybe I'll get there in the end!

Looking at jobs and The Future at the moment; always an unsettling experience. It turns out I get bored real quick, want to do a million and one things and want to choose what I do each day. So all I have to do is find a job a bit like that...

It's been a long and pretty painful process working out what my skills and personality and soul are suited to and I'm not done yet. But God is patient and gracious.

We'll get there.

A little more action

I love to think about the future. I mean, I really love it. I imagine jobs, more jobs, hobbies that turn into jobs, countries, the friends we might make in the countries, babies, the family issues that might arise because of the babies... And I do that when I'm thinking about my life in the context of serving God; the things I'll be involved in, the gifts I'll use, the way James and I will be able to work together, the hospitality we'll show, the people who'll come to know Jesus, the changes the will happen in our church... All good things, really.

But God's been teaching me that these things come from small, faithful, prayerful and loving actions. So I'm trying to give the thinking a rest and do little more doing. Feel free to keep me to it.

Butterfly tendencies II

When I was in a sixth-form English lesson with the teacher that I most respected, we were discussing what we were going to go as to a fancy dress party that evening. When asked what I was going dressed as, I replied that I would be going as a butterfly. She immediately burst out laughing; a deep, knowing laugh that was interspersed with giggles and which carried on shaking her shoulder-pads for a good minute. I sat there bemused.

It was the same laugh she used when we were reading Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia and we had come across an innuendo that was lost on us at first but that I was encouraged to find through the direction of her laugh. What was the hidden meaning here? Why was it so funny that I would be going as a butterfly? Was the wire, canvas and paint I had still to assemble into a pair of giant wings and antennae in some way a symbol of who I was? Do I have butterfly tendencies?

Butterfly tendencies

Apparently butterflies symbolise some stuff.