Exciting Weekend November 17, 2009

I loved this past weekend, for a number of reasons. Firstly it started with another Tat for Tat party on Friday eve… this was the third party of its kind we’ve had here, and it was great. Think lots of women in a room all bringing unwanted presents/clothes we no longer wear/random tat and all swapping it. I got a cool floppy black ‘grunge hat’ like one I used to have in the ’90s, a funky bag, some scarfs and jewellery, plus a lovely top and some other bits and bobs. It was a little high octane, just due to the sheer volume of tat that had to be got through, but I think fun was had by all.

Then on Saturday I hotfooted it into town to meet up with a friend. We had one of *those* conversations, you know, the kind that challenge and encourage you and make you feel really excited about what God is up to. I love those moments when you start chatting and there is a real connection. God is definitely doing some great things at the moment, definitely in this city but in my heart as well, and somehow the two merge together and we can celebrate those things and look forward to the future and just generally feel excited about that stuff.

In the evening I met another friend and again just really felt challenged but in a good way. Sometimes I think you don’t realise the stuff thats staring you in the face and you need brave, kind people to gently point it out.

On Sunday I went to church and just again loved it. I don’t feel like the new girl there which is strange, I could have been there for months it feels. Conversations and relationships feel really natural, I love the people there already, and the talk was great too – all about kindness. I was challenged and inspired. Plus I had an ‘I’m down with the yoof’ moment when one of them liked my jeggings… I can’t even believe that I own jeggings…

After church we drove to the coast, music blaring. It was one of those amazing moments… Looking out to an inky black sea, feeling like you’re at the very door to the country, singing along to amazing lyrics: “Love will not betray you, dismay or enslave you, it will set you free, make you more like the man you were made to be” etc, just feeling full of life and hope and anticipation. Happy times.

A song I’m loving at the mo November 15, 2009

Is ‘One Bright Hour’, by Bebo Norman. The lyrics are amazing:

 

Wading throught the aftermath
Yesterday’s a photograph
Rummaging through faith to find hope
That there will be a reckoning
Of the beauty and the beckoning
Calling me to stand on what I know

One bright hour you will come for me
One bright hour you’ll set the captive free
One bright hour you will wipe the tears away
From eyes that now can see
One bright hour

He’ll chase away the fleeting dark
From broken earth and broken heart
The holy line where joy and sorrow meet
And you will sing redemptions songs
Making new what we made wrong
On the day the story is complete

One bright hour you will come for me
One bright hour you’ll set the captive free
One bright hour you will wipre the tears away
From eyes that now can see
One bright hour
One bright hour

I will sing Hallelujah
I will sing Hallelujah
All will sing Hallelujah
All will sing Hallelujah

On Dreaming November 12, 2009

So, I’m doing a digital art project for uni on my digital life… I’m meant to produce some sort of ‘footprint’ to show where I’ve been and what I’ve been doing/thinking.

This means I have to blog more – “daily if possible”, what on earth am I going to find to say?

Today, anyway, I thought I’d begin by talking a bit about some of the things that made me think yesterday.

One of the biggest problems I have with designing stuff is that my ideas – what I want the final outcome to look like, so often outweigh my technical skill. I want the post-it notes to flutter as if ruffled by a gentle breeze, yet I barely know how to copy and paste them into the template even as a flat object… hmm.

This made me think about often this happens – how often the things I can create with my imagination, the things I dream, I simply cannot achieve. Some of it is down to technical skill, but with wider stuff so often it is down to other things – the actions of others, circumstances of life etc. I guess if I could make happen everything I dreamed that would be vaguely deistic, and thats getting into the realms of blasphemy

Anyway, it did make me think that, in the (often frustrating) gap between dreams and reality, that’s where prayer comes in. It is true that I want to make post-it notes virtually ruffle, but more than that I want to see my friends come to healing, I want God to rescue people I know are in difficult situations, I want to know more of his fullness myself, and there’s no way I can ‘make’ those dreams a reality. I can do stuff that perhaps contributes, but at the end of the day there’s still that gap, and that’s where I’ve got to trust that God has it in hand, rather than trying to fix stuff (hmm, bad habit that).

One of my other friends said, in response, that our dreams would be limited if we only dreamed what we could achieve. Another commented that it is better to have dreamed and not achieved the end result than to have not dreamed at all. I think I agree with both of those things. It strikes me too that dreaming is a risk. If I let myself consider how I’d like something to be, how I’d like a situation to change, I’m kind of nailing my colours to the mast about it… I’m being vulnerable, because if it then doesn’t happen, or things seem to go the opposite way, then I’m opening myself up to be disappointed.

I should stop musing now and get ready for uni, but… yeah, I am encouraged to keep dreaming.

(ps. As an aside, this conversation generated a couple of the best compliments I have received in a long time. My marvellous friend Dave said that my imagination makes Twin Peaks seem understandable. And the lovely Mandy said it was a good job I couldn’t make all my dreams happen because goodness knows what would be the result. I love it that I am renown for my quirkiness!)

Autumn in the village November 11, 2009

Today I went on a wander to try out some of the settings on my camera and the software I bought to accompany it. Not bad for a first attempt I thought!

The photos are a little big for the viewer but you can see them here.

 

Yule-Thai’d & Red Cup Revels November 6, 2009

As I write, we are celebrating pseudo-Christmas here in our lovely house. Let me set the scene for you…. We are listening to Carols from Oxford on CD, we have winter green scented oil in the burner, we have ordered thai food (which I’ve never had before.) Later there will be crackers and homemade mince pies, and it’s all being washed down with Starbucks Christmas blend and some yummy mulled wine… happy times!! (pictures to follow).

Oh, and at the mo I am eating chocolate orange with popping candy… which is the most bizarre thing ever.

Tonight could be a metaphor for the whole week really. I have done a bit of work but a lot of revelling. This week has marked Red Cup day, which is when Starbucks launch their Christmas drinks range…

On Wednesday evening I went to a firework party with the guys from cell. Top marks for entertainment and ingenuity, for company and for nibbles

I have been playing with the new software I bought for my mac. It means I can do all the graphic design and website creation stuff I need to for my course.

Oh and I have been getting to know Sirius, who is the new kitten living at our house. He is very lovely!