Go on then – been tagged by watchandweigh who I once shared an office with.. Here goes for my first ever meme…
One book that changed your life?
The Marriage Book by Nicky and Sila Lee. The affianced and I worked through Nicky and Sila’s course for our marriage prep, and it made us discuss with and deal with a whole lot of issues that would probably have otherwise caused all sorts of marital strife in the early years. It really is scary how much you assume about yourself and the person you’re about to marry!
One book you have read more than once?
Lots of choice here – I usually read books more than once. Lets go for
This Present Darkness, by Frank Peretti. I just love his handling of spiritual warfare, with angels and demons being real/corporal beings that we just can’t see.
One book you would want on a desert island?
No real choice here – got to be the Bible! Although I did like
watchandweigh’s suggestion of “1,001 edible topical plants.”
One book that made you laugh?
Again plenty to choose from, but I’ll plump for Inconceivable by Ben Elton, as I only read it last week.
One book that made you cry?
Lord of the Rings. Oh – you didn’t mean tears of boredom and frustration?
Ok, so it’s not that bad.. but there’s just pages and pages of battles and poems and arrrggg!
One book you wish you had written?
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. And not just cos of the money (honest).
One book you wish had never been written?
The training manual for al-Qaeda terrorists. Not that I believe it really exists as an “it”, or would make much difference if it did or not. But you know what I mean.
One book you are currently reading?
The Mysterious Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Not as good as it sounds.
One book you’ve been meaning to read?
His Dark Materials trilogy, by Philip Pullman. Oops, that’s three books. Mind you, LotR and the Bible are also many books combined into a single book, so I’ll count it as one. I happened to have got Northern Lights out of the library this weekend (along with Sherlock Holmes and “VBA for dummies”, which turned out to be no help whatsoever it what I was trying to do), so that’s a good start…
So there you are. I don’t have any friends who blog (except watchandweigh and imnotasaint, who’s already been tagged), so I can’t pass it on. How sad is that?
Well, surprise surprise, the accuracy of (native) GPS is not really enough to be useful in a maze, at least not the sort of maze where it’s relatively easy to keep your bearings. The screen resolution also becomes a factor.. if you keep the scale large enough to be able to see paths, then not enough of the maze fits on the screen to actually be useful. Still, it was fun.
I had hoped that at the end I’d at least have a GPS version of the maze – but of course the receiver only stores the track of where you’ve actually been! So if you see a dead-end and don’t go down it, it doesn’t appear on the track. This year the maze itself was based on a Star Trek theme, with the Enterprise and Picard and Spock all featuring in the design, so it would have appropriate, somehow, to have a GPS track of it. In the event by about a quarter of the way round I realised it wasn’t working, so gave up and just enjoyed the maze instead.
I remember wanting to make a grass maze in our garden in Norfolk when I was growing up – only mow the paths and let the rest grow up – but for some reason I never got around to it. Probably wasn’t allowed to. These days I’d be more likely to build a labyrinth than a maze. Perhaps this should be my next Lego project with Ben…
Just watched the Miracles of Jesus (part 1), a BBC documentary on, well, the miracles of Jesus. Rageh Omaar presents this overview that’s principally concerned with what the miracles meant, rather than if they happened or not.
I have to say I actually enjoyed it, although the programme was about twice the length it needed to be – I got the distinct impression they spent a lot of money filming Rageh smooching around Israel (and environs) looking reflective, and even more generating the clips of Jesus doing the miracles, so they were going to give them both as much air-time as possible. Not that the clips weren’t impressive, quite the opposite, it’s just by the tenth viewing they wear a little thin…
The BBC’s version of the miracles certainly looks quite different from my own – and I quite enjoyed trying to decide what was artistic license, what was speculation, and what’s actually there in the gospels. The thing that really struck me though was just how charismatic Jesus must have been. Even if you think the miracles themselves are bunkem, the people at the time believed them – and more than that Jesus was able to march in with Dr Who like authority and order people around (I know this is getting the mythological types back to front!). Christopher Ecclestone in particular never had his authority questioned, and everyone (on earth) meekly submitted to him, and the portrayal of Jesus was a little like that – for instance striding into a funeral procession, and pulling the death shroud back from the body…
Anyway, it’s on BBC 1 at about 18.30 for the next two Sundays. Worth a watch.
It shows how exciting life has been recently that I’ve made no mention of my new GPS. The Garmin lost out to a Magellan at the last minute… the eXplorist 210 to be exact. The extra memory nailed it for me (22Mb vs 8), and easy USB connectivity.
After all the comments from friends about how rubbish built-in basemaps are, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how good/useful it seems to be. It seems to have most A-roads, train stations, and bus stations, rivers, railway lines, and so on. We’re going to the
York Maize Maze this week, so I’m going to put it through it’s paces there. It claims 5-10m accuracy, which is probably enough to be useful in a maze
On a completely different note, I’ve just finished a complete overhaul of these webpages. Not that you can tell from the front, but they are now entirely object oriented! Previously the PHP was built using a Perl template package – but now there is a PHP class which handles all the rendering and menus, and to create a page you write a subclass that overloads any given rendering function, principally renderCentre and renderRight, although if I ever wanted to replace the banner or left menu that’s easy too.
This approach just seems much cleaner – the PHP now only exists in one place, and it’s very easy to follow the rendering. I haven’t comprehensively tested it all yet, so there may still be one or two scoping errors to track down, so be patient if you see PHP errors!
As silly as it sounds, it has never occurred to me before to consider Psalm 84 from ‘outside’. I’ll quote Psalm in full at the end – but key phrases are things like
My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord, and Blessed are those who dwell in your house, my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God., Hear my prayer, O Lord God Almighty; listen to me, O God of Jacob.
I’ve always understood this psalm to be an explosion of praise – Sort of blessed are we who dwell in your house. But actually there’s a kind of sense of deep longing – blessed are those who dwell in your house, and if I could only be there too. Perhaps it’s just where I’m at right now, feeling a very long way away from the courts of God…
Anyway, here’s the Psalm, from the NIV – make up your own mind!
1 How lovely is your dwelling place,
O Lord Almighty!
2 My soul yearns, even faints,
for the courts of the Lord,
my heart and my flesh cry out
for the living God.
3 Even the sparrow has found a home,
and the swallow a nest for herself,
where she may have her youngâ€â€Â
a place near your altar,
O Lord Almighty, my King and my God.
4 Blessed are those who dwell in your house;
they are ever praising you.
5 Blessed are those whose strength is in you,
who have set their hearts on pilgrimage.
6 As they pass through the Valley of Baca,
they make it a place of springs;
the autumn rains also cover it with pools.
7 They go from strength to strength,
till each appears before God in Zion.
8 Hear my prayer, O Lord God Almighty;
listen to me, O God of Jacob.
9 Look upon our shield, O God;
look with favor on your anointed one.
10 Better is one day in your courts
than a thousand elsewhere;
I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God
Been pondering the life of St. Paul recently – and particularly his apparent forsaking of his entire former life once he started following Jesus.
It occurs to me that this is a nonsense… much of his ministry was enabled by the fact he was such a strong theologian and understood the Jewish scriptures so thoroughly. His words had weight and authority because he was an expert on the law. And of course he made good use of his Roman citizenship, plus the fact he could speak Greek and Aramaic (and presumably Latin). One would imaging his tent-making skills weren’t learnt overnight either?
So this line of thought brought me to what happened on the Damascus Road. I suppose I’d always thought of it as being the big U-turn in Paul’s life. Like everything before in his life was thrown away as garbage, and only now was he truly living. But I’m not so sure this is the case – it seems to me that it’s not so much a U-turn as a course correction.
Paul had spent all his life to date studying the law, being a Jew among Jews, and was expectantly awaiting the Messiah and the fulfillment of scripture, the start of God’s majestic reign. So far so good. But then the Messiah actually comes – that is Jesus – and Paul doesn’t get it. In fact he reaches the only other possibly conclusion about Jesus and his followers, that they are evil (or mad), have deserted God, and are now a dangerous influence that needs stamping out. At this point he was earnestly and zealously pursuing what he thought was God’s plan…
… except of course he’d turned from truly following God (which would mean recognizing Jesus as the prophesied Messiah) – without realizing it. Jesus intervenes on the road to Damascus and says “Paul – hang on buddy. I am the Messiah you’ve been waiting for!”. This is no U-turn, but God stepping in and turning Paul back on the track he’d been following all his life, or at least up until the couple of years before that point.
Now I’m not saying this wasn’t a radical change of direction, and it certainly gave Paul a lot to think about, not least in terms of his understanding of God. But I see it as more the continuation of his life’s work, not a brand new start!
Time for an utterly trite entry, and I don’t care!
The weather for the last couple of days has been lurvely – and is set to get better and better this week. This is particularly good news as we’re all going to a barbie on Monday to mark the end of house-group term. The only slight fly in the ointment is that I’m at work all week next week, as it’s my hand-over week. I’ve still got a few weeks left on my contract, but my boss is away after this, so we scheduled it for now.
It’s actually been lovely being around at home so much recently – it’s not the way I would have chosen to leave academia, but needs must. There’s a part of me that’s a bit sad about having to throw myself back into full-time employment, and of course office life come September, but another part of that’s looking forward to the cut and thrust of commercial life once again.
Still, the air conditioning in my current office is severe (I’ve been known to wear a coat before now), and apparently impossible to alter, so at least I won’t be expiring from heat at work. The chap I’m handing over to is a good friend, and a smart cookie, so I think it’ll be a fun week.
They say that “it isn’t over until the Fat Lady sings,” and what a true word that is. Everything can seem to be perfectly in place and heading towards resolution, when suddenly a whole new plot-line comes along in (what you thought was) the final act, and it turns out the play might only just be begining!!
Then again, wouldn’t life be dull if it always went to plan?
Basic Types of Pastoral Care and Counselling, Howard Clinebell, SCM Press, 1984.
A very interesting and helpful book – quite daunting in many ways, but very illuminating as to the particular pastoral role that clergy have, and the crisis points that we all face in life. This is clearly a book that needs proper study to get the most from it, as it is fairly practical. There are a number of techniques presented on how to listen and counsel effectively, and good ideas for practical responses in a church setting. These include;
The “six dimensions of wholeness” – Mind, body, intimate relationships, relationship with nature, institutional-societal liberation, relationship with God.
The different counselor responses (EISPUA – Evaluative, Interpretive, Supportive, Probing, Understanding, Advising). Knowing these different responses can help us spot any “lopsidedness” in how we respond, and also help us assess which responses are most appropriate.
The “ABCD method” of helping in a crisis: Achieving a relationship, Boil down the problem, Challenge the individual to take constructive action, and Develop an ongoing growrth-action plan.
And many others; indeed this book is full of 8 or 9 point lists/breakdowns.
However, I had several problems with it. Firstly, I found it one-dimensional to a fault about the role of the pastor. The author seemed to say by far the most important – if not only role – of a pastor was in pastoral care and counselling. Of course this was a book on pastoral care, so this emphasis is expected – and I suspect he is right in saying this is a vital aspect of ordainded ministry that must be taken seriously and training sought.
Secondly, the author seemed to have bought wholesale into secular pyschotherapy without really balancing the need for personal wholeness against the fact we serve a holy God who depands holiness. This comes across most clearly in the area of sex, where he is apparently saying any committed relationship (co-habiting, homosexual, etc) is morally equivalent to marriage. I may have got the wrong end of the stick, and he was rather emphasising the important of uncritical acceptance of the person when counselling. My over-riding impression was more along the lines of “isn’t it great we’re free from the oppression of traditional hetreosexual monogamous relationships”, although I’m very much putting words in his mouth. Another example is actively encouraging “Eastern body disciplines” – e.g. yoga, T’ai chi, without any hint there may be an unhealthy spiritual dimension to these activities.
My last reservation is he seemed to drift off into “mumbo-jumbo”. Easiest to quote here:
The self of everyday experience is not our ultimate identity. It is a reflection of our transpersonal Self. Pyschosynthesis regards this higher Self as our creative center and essence. Making this true Self the integrating center for our being is the primary goal of therapy. The fundamental resources for growth come from the higher Self, which has potent superconcious spiritual energies, with a transforming, regenerating influence on the whole personality. The Self is the source of inner wisdom and the therapist’s main ally. (ch 15, pg 388)
and again
Finally, it is liberating to remember that all healing and all growth are gifts of the creative Spirit of life whom we call God.
… at best a counselor is a finite and often fractured channel for the healing power of the universe! (ch 17, pg 429).
Of course this perspective is coloured by my own prejudices, and I could hardly review a book that majors on self-awareness without acknowledging this – but it still made my spirit uncomfortable.
Nevertheless a very insightful and useful book that has broadened my understanding of pastoral care and counselling, and the very special role the church has in ministering to a broken world.
