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.

Last week I had my last session with my Chiropractor. I went because a friend of a friend was about to qualify and needed some volunteers. A few weeks before I had come off my bike and had been left with neck ache.

Six weeks later and my neck is much better, thanks to a bit of deep tissue massage and a little manipluation.

One of the things that most stood out to me about visiting a chiropractor compared with visiting a doctor (GP) is the way they actually listen and investigate problems by looking at the whole person.

Looking for my Dad's blog? It can now be found here.

Well well well, it has been a few days since I blogged. Yesterday I was in Llanelli, a little place near Swansea, visiting my Grandma, who has Alzheimers and my Aunt and Uncle who care for her. It was nice to be in a different context for a little while and to have no choice but to stop, breath and slow down my busy mind.

There are some important questions that have arisen recently that you might be able to help me out with...

1. How does one loosen up someone elses' buttons, should one be asked and/or feel the inclination? As you have probably guessed I'm referring to the Pussy Cat Dolls' latest collaboration with Snoop Dogg. I think it's called "Buttons" and it's getting a lot of airplay on Radio 1 at the moment with it's chorus "I'm tellin' you to loosen up my buttons babe...". I assume that they're perhaps addressing a man who carries sewing box wherever he goes.

on to the second...

2. Why is Dave studying Radiography when he is such a talented cartoonist? Click here to see his work.

There is an interesting and confusing sub-theme to my journey which hasn't yet unveiled itself fully. I think I began following Christ sometime in 1998-1999. I was utterly stoked at this love I had discovered - it blew me away, span me round and left me feeling like I could explode if I didn't express it in some way to everyone I met.

A group of my friends decided to go to Soul Survivor (I'm guessing Summer 1998) and I joined them. Jackie Pullinger was there with a whole bunch of young people (former heroin addicts) from Hong Kong. I listened to their stories about how their lives had been impacted through encountering Jesus and I was invigorated. I think there were 8 seminars with Jackie in the course of the week and I went to them all, drank them up like a refreshing glass of water. The only thing that stopped me from signing up and booking myself onto the next flight to Hong Kong was that I was still in school.

So instead I went home and learned everything I could about the poor. I discovered that The Guardian was the most likely British newspaper to cover anything related to the world's poor as though it was of any importance, so I read that. I realised that I could make a small (tiny) difference by boycotting non-fairtrade chocolate and coffee and encouraging others to do the same.

The more I read the Bible, the more I realised that God really does care about justice and the poor. Isaiah 58 became one of my motivating passages as my heart burned to find out what I was to do.

I finished A-levels and decided that I would study Law and Politics, because this seemed like the most likely avenue for somehow addressing injustice. At law school I realised that the majority of my colleagues were in it for the money (something I just couldn't relate to), and that our primary focus was the high-profile administration of our UK context (e.g. "what is the meaning of the word intent in that small sub section of statute?"

To cut a long story short(er), the furthest I've got along this path to date has been helping out occasionally on a soup run before I left Cardiff, being willing to say yes when asked to get involved in work of this genre, and nothing else. Somewhere along the way my passion and belief that this was one of the motivating goals of my existence has found it's way to the back burner.

"I do hope to see the Church grow musically and artistically. The only danger is when people are doing things that are contrived. I heard one record where they are doing one song country, and the next doing (in their own words) a "nine-inch nails" style worship song. The danger is that they are trying to be something they are not. But it is a tendency that many artists fall into. It is important to do what is in you, and not say, "Oh, I want to write a punk song," or "Let's do a new wave song!" or "I really like the Spice Girls, so let's do a Spice Girls-style worship CD." The problem in our day and age is that the Christian musicians and artists have become followers. Our goal needs to be to worship Jesus in the art forms or musical styles that flow naturally out of us. Then, hopefully we could be innovators and leaders and not followers."
- Michael J Pritzl

I've just finished Reaching Out by Henri Nouwen. I loved Beyond The Mirror, the final essay in the book. In it he reflects on a near death experience that he had after being hit by the wing mirror of a lorry. During the experience he felt the presence of Jesus more powerfully than ever before and a sense of love that blew away all the cobwebs of insecurity and anxiety that marked his (and all) human experience. In the light of this love he became aware of the meaning of being "of the world," as opposed to being "from above."

Being "of the world" means that I look to the world for affirmation, security, identity. Precisely because I need the world to provide these I cannot freely love. I'm bound by my need for others to recognise me.

Being "from above" means that I do not look to the world for my security. I find my affirmation, security and identity in God and his unconditional love. Because off this I can really love because I don't need others to tell me who I am.

"...the whole ministry of Jesus was a ministry 'from above', a ministry born out of relationship with the Father in Heaven. All the questions Jesus raised, all the answers he gave, all the confrontations he evoked and consolations he offered, all were rooted in his knowledge of the Father's unconditional love. his ministry was not oppressive, since it came from his deep experience of being unconditionally loved and and was in no way motivated by a personal need for affirmation and acceptance. He was completely free precisely because he did not belong to the world, but exclusively to the Father."

Nouwen is also surprised at his friends' reactions to the news that he had survived surgery:
"Unanimously, they congratulated me on my restoration to health and expressed their gratitude that I was doing so well again. Although I was deeply greatful for their attention and affection, the encounter with God in my hours near death made me wonder whether being 'better again' was indeed the best thing for me...Would it not have been preferable to have been completely set free from this ambiguous world and taken home in full communion with God?"

Months after surviving this ordeal he was confronted by friends who pointed out that:
"When you were ill, you were centred, and the many people who visited you felt a real peace coming from you, but since you are healed and have taken on your many tasks again, much of your old restlessness and anxiety has reappeared."

He finally reflects that it is necessary to continually expose ourselves to this love (or as much as we can of this love while we're here) in order that we don't lose sight of it.

Take a look at Boring Malmö, that wonderful city where I once lived (and hopefully will again). (Tack till The Bruhn Family)

Being an extrovert has its drawbacks. I get my energy from being around people. At the moment life is pretty isolated, which means not a lot of people, which means not a lot of energy. While starting this company I'm working alone, day in, day out.

Something has to change...

Saying goodbye to friends is so painful to do. I remember reading A Purpose Driven Life, in which Rick Warren alludes to the fact that this is because we are "made to last forever." He says:

"This life is not all there is.
Life on earth is just the dress rehersal before the real production. You will spend far more time on the other side of death-in eternity- than you will here. Earth is the staging area, the preschool, the tryout for your life in eternity...
The Bible says, "God has...planted eternity in the human heart" [Ecclesiastes 3:11]...
When you fully comprehend that there is more to life than just here and now, and you realize that life is just preparation for eternity, you will begin to live differently. You will start living in light of eternity, and that will color how you handle every relationship, task and circumstance."

Perhaps the reason saying goodbye is so hard is that relationships are supposed to last. We were made to give of ourselves to others and for our friendships to be marked by an ongoing commitment. It is this kind of commitment which allows us to transcend superficiality precisely because conflicts do not mean the risk of losing the other.