Doesn't life move fast?! It was Zoe's 22nd birthday yesterday, which signals both the passing of time and the closing of summer. We had a nice, though slightly stunted day (thanks to the fitting of new windows in our house), which ended with a meal at an organic restaurant in the countryside.

I'm beginning to realise how crucial it is to close your ears to The Voice which creeps up and whispers into your ear "you're getting older, life is moving on, you're missing opportunities..." It's a voice that speaks no matter what age you might be.

If you're single, and dream someday of being married, it often whispers "you're not married, you'd better get a move on, everyone else is with someone and you're going to miss your chance" (if you're female you might also have the biological clock voice chiming in).

If you are a person with great hopes and dreams and you find yourself in a quiet spot The Voice will whisper "you were just ideological, get over yourself, this is life, nothing more..."

But a little secret I've learned is that The Voice isn't always right. In fact The Voice is just there to quash the tangibility of your dreams. The Voice has had its victims, but you can choose if you will join them.

Life is a journey that unfolds before our eyes. It is a story to which a little more is added each day. It is unpredictable, and often surprising. It is an adventure. The nature of adventure is that we don't know how it will turn out and we don't know what will come to pass along the way. You have not arrived, because you are still traveling, which means there is still hope. Don't become a victim of The Voice.

Congratulations are in order...
Joseph George Lewis-Norman was born today at 16:01 weighing in at 8 pounds, 9 and a half ounces! Well Done Steve and Claire!

Phew...another one down. Things have been busy with work recently, which has kept me from finishing my business website - www.lookscankill.org - needless to say it will come. Want to check out some of my work?

Well today, amid the chaos of the windows of our house being replaced, I finished www.via-vineyard.com - a new website for the Form discipleship course which is in the process of being rebranded as 'Via' for it's Vineyard incarnation.

Here are some more I've designed recently:
www.keithwarrington.co.uk
malmo.vineyard.se
sofiacarlbert.blogspot.com

So if you like these, and you need a website designing, email me using:
hello at lookscankill dot org

Tomorrow the four of us jump in the car and head to Northampton for my cousin Esther's wedding, which should be a lot of fun. Sadly Reading Festival is sold out so there will be no dropping by to hear Pearl Jam on the way home :-(

Loneliness (part 3)
I read this this morning and it seemed to fit in so well with my short series of posts on Loneliness as a human condition that I thought I would post it...
"There is a deep hole in your being, like an abyss. You will never succeed in filling that hole, because your needs are inexhaustible. You have to work around it so that gradually the abyss closes.
Since the hole is so enormous and your anguish so deep, you will always be tempted to flee from it. There are two extremes to avoid: being completely absorbed in your pain and being distracted by so many things that you stay far away from the wound you want to heal."
- Henri Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love (p3)

Muriel Fields, or Aunty Mu, as she was known, died a little over a week ago. She was a lovely woman, full of warmth and love. She often took care of me, aged 11, when I was going through a series of tests, and later operations, for the great pain I was feeling in my head. I learned a lot about pain from this wonderful lady. I remember hearing about the crippling pain she experienced because of the arthritis in her hands. She told me of her late husband, a great friend dearly missed.

Even at that young age I was fully aware that my pain made me selfish. I longed for sympathy, if not empathy. Whoever had ears to listen would hear about the injustice of my pain. As I looked into those joyful, loving eyes of Aunty Mu I saw someone who knew about battling pain, and yet seemed to have more compassion and love for others than anyone else I knew.

I was just reading this post regarding compatibility for marriage (no idea why!?), and I was surprised by the list they come up with. For me these would all be prerequisites for 'going out with' somebody, not just marriage...

Loneliness (part 2)
Sunday afternoon we were walking in the grounds of Llandaff Cathederal. It was a lovely, sunny afternoon and I stopped to read some of the gravestones. One in particular caught my attention. It was the shared grave of a husband and wife. The husband had died aged 65 and the wife aged 92.

I began reflecting on the power of that connection between man and wife, certain that this woman had lived out her days in mourning at the premature death of her true love. I imagined that this couple had been married in their mid twenties and had had forty happy years together before he died. Those forty years weren't even half her lifetime. On that day they took their vows had she imagined that this would lead to so much heartache?

Loneliness (part 1)
"Though I may think it is peculiar to myself, loneliness is part of the human condition. To remind me of that and for sharing I carry this quote around in my wallet:

According to the Teachers, there is only one thing that all people possess equally. That is loneliness. No two people on the face of this earth are alike in any one thing except for their loneliness. This is the cause of our growing, but it is also the cause of our wars. Love, hate, greed and generosity are all rooted within our loneliness, within our desire to be needed and loved.

If we could dare to face and accept the fact that we are alone, then we would know that every other person is also alone. It does not matter how surrounded the other is by friends and family. She, too, is alone. If we could know with certainty that well-guarded secret, perhaps we could move towards the other with more compassion, be less ready to judge, less quick to do those things which will cause the other to withdraw from us. yet loneliness is the secret we keep from ourselves as well as from others. It is as though some shame were connected with it - if I am not loved, I must somehow be responsible for it."
- Elizabeth O'Connor, Cry Pain, Cry Hope (p54)

This picture (by Emma) basically sums up what my summer looks like at the moment. It makes me feel like the subject of a painting by Dali (though fortunately without the phallic reference points).

Click on the image for an enlargement.

When I was younger I had this urge to move to a colder climate. I think I must have been somewhere between 7 and 12 years old when the place that I most wanted to be was Canada, or at least the Canada that existed in my imagination. It was something about living in a log cabin, in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by snow and breathtaking scenery.

This came back to me last night when reflecting on my winter in Sweden - the coldest I've ever experienced. It was great to be somewhere with real snow, but also a challenge experiencing cold that chilled to the bone. And that was just the South of Sweden!

Hannah rules the World!
I woke up this morning dreaming that I was having an interview for a job at Paul Frank. It was kind of like a cross between Paul Frank, Starbucks and a record store, because they would show you a 'real life scene' and you had to identify what range of t-shirts it referred to and what music suited the scene, all the while drinking whatever coffee you wanted.

The first scene was a dog sat on an easychair, on a pier, under a bright blue sky, with jazz music playing and the hooting sound of ships cruising by in the background. I was told, "the dog's name is Hannah and she's deaf, so she can only just make out the music." I looked at the t-shirt crib sheet and found a series called "Hannah rules the World."

After giving my answer I was asked to select a new track and the dog took us to a new location for me to identify a different scene.

Then I woke up.