The Blurb: July 2008

A graduate on a unicycle

Wednesday 23 July 2008  10.14 am

I've mentioned my brother Sam before on this blog.  The brother who competed in an international 800 km unicycle relay race in Nova Scotia, Canada in June.  The same who unicycled from Luxembourg to Leichtenstein earlier this month just because they were small countries with long names beginning with L.  The one who today is off to Unicon - the World Unicycling Championships & Convention in Denmark.

He graduated in Aberystwyth on Friday with a first class BSc in Computer Science, and here is a photo we took on the glorious (if rather wet) day.

(On an unrelated note, Sam will arrive in Denmark shortly after the departure of this rather bizarre summer parade of Santas.)
 
Comment on this entry

The end of Scargill as we 'know' it

Wednesday 16 July 2008  6.50 pm

With today's 'Service of Celebration' at 3pm, Scargill House has gratefully remembered before God nearly 50 years of ministry between guests and community members in the Yorkshire Dales.  I'm away the rest of this week; by the time I return home on Sunday, Scargill will have closed.

I had written more in this entry, which readers who visited between 6.50 and 10.05 pm this evening will have seen.  But I have since changed my mind about this.  There's a raging debate at present, with much hurt involved and varying degrees of both accuracy and sensitivity, and I've previously held off from giving my opinion at all.

But through reading much online and talking to people in person, I've become quite interested in, involved in and even moved to tears by the whole story.  So when I feel I have something sensitive, accurate, meaningful and prayerful to contribute to the discussion, I will express it here.
 
Comment on this entry

Now in panoramic widescreen

Monday 14 July 2008  3.17 pm

According to the NetApplications Market Share website, as of June 2008, fewer than 6% of all Internet surfers are still using screens 800 pixels wide.  So I've decided to widen this website to take full advantage of the lovely large screens of the majority.  Enjoy.

In other news, you can now comment on cartoons in the Cartoon Gallery.  This should tell me if my scribblings have crossed the line into greatness ... or into the gutter.
 
2 comments

Scargill is beautiful

Wednesday 9 July 2008  8.10 pm

Even in the pouring rain, I found the valley in the Yorkshire Dales between Grassington and Kettlewell (currently above in the Timble header graphic) literally breathtaking when I saw it this week.  Scargill, the Christian Conference, Retreat and Holiday Centre which is to close in 10 days' time, could not have picked a better location.

I felt privileged to be shown around the centre on Tuesday with a group of ex-community members, meeting current community, seeing the buildings and imagining the life of a place that was once full of guests.  We shared a meaningful few moments of silence in the Chapel and prayed together.  (The picture is me by the cross in the Chapel.)

There has been much discussion on this Church Times blog post about whether Scargill strayed from God, whether the vision should have changed as it did, and how the downturn and eventual closure should have been handled.  It's tempting to comment but I really have no right to.  God knows the story, and what the next chapter is.

There's a service of celebration next Wednesday 16 July at 3pm.  But many will find it too painful (or be at work on a Wednesday afternoon).

Will a new Scargill rise up?  Who knows ... but if it does, it will be without much of its art and several of its fixtures.  A number of these are on sale in the Keepsake Auction, so put in a bid by 16 July if you want something and are prepared to go there to pick it up.
 
Comment on this entry

Problems

Saturday 5 July 2008  9.18 am

Windows Vista has a wonderful way of fixing itself.  If a program crashes, Windows will record the error, and a few days or weeks later, the "Problem Reports and Solutions" tool might pop up and tell you that there is now a patch or something that will make your woes go away.

The problem is that on my computer, Problem Reports and Solutions is the problem!  It keeps crashing and trying to report itself to Microsoft.  Good luck with that.

Is this a parable of Christian life?  When I or my friend or the world has a problem, I report it to God and see if he comes back with a solution.  But what happens when my own problem reporting system fails?  My prayer life crashes and there's nothing for it but to reinstall everything from scratch.  And only God can do that.
 
2 comments

Street Poetry

Wednesday 2 July 2008  9.38 am

A few weeks ago I was at the launch event for Street Pastors in Bath.  Street Pastors are teams of 4 Christians, backed up by two praying people at base and a radio to the police, who walk the streets between 10pm and 4am on Friday and Saturday nights.

They wear visible uniforms so people know who they are, and they simply help people who went out for a good time and found themselves in trouble - whether comforting someone emotionally, giving them flipflops when their ridiculous footwear gives up, or helping them to a taxi when they're so drunk they can hardly see, let alone walk.

They are, quite simply, God in human form, in the streets at night.  One guy commented to them, "When I see you, I see God." With many things, we pray and agonise over whether they are God's will.  This ministry requires no such deliberation.  It's blindingly obviously the answer to the question, "What would Jesus do?".  If I were in Bath for longer, I'd have signed up already for the start in September.  As it is, I'll have to look for a similar scheme in the place where I end up.  But I'll do it.

As if to reinforce the message, I walked out of the launch event that evening and down the road, and I saw the graffiti in this picture.  God is at work - no doubt about it.
 
Comment on this entry