ask me no questions, i'll tell you no lies

sean preached last sunday from psalm 13 about being honest with God, with ourselves and with others. incisive words for many of us i think. i just got back from cell group (was about to write that mine is terrorist, unlike richard's, but you never know who's reading these things) where we were talking about the masks we wear. don't pretend you don't know what i mean...the 'good christian' mask. the 'always happy' mask. the 'my life is entirely under control' mask. the 'my church ministry/job/marriage/studies/forced unemployment/long-term illness' is going exactly as i'd always hoped it would' mask. mmm.

but the thing i hadn't seen before was that it's not just about my struggle to be honest with others; it's about helping people to be honest with me too. what mask do i ask people to wear when i speak to them? when i ask someone how they are, what am i silently telling them i want to hear? because if i'm asking "how are you?" whilst passing in the corridor on the way to do something very important that i'm already late for, i'm essentially asking them to lie. lying's bad.

i know, i know: the "how are you" - "i'm fine" exchange is a fundamental relational tool. i am english. but it's ridiculous.* i don't want to ask someone how they are unless i've made space for them to answer, and to answer honestly. i don't want to ask someone how they are unless i've searched my heart, suspended my own agenda, and readied myself to listen. i don't want to ask unless i'm prepared to stand with them and not just hand out clichés. i don't want to ask unless i'm prepared to not even give advice, to not even say anything, but to really hear. i don't want to only ask the people i think are doing ok because i'm too scared/lazy to deal with the other answers. ultimately i don't want to ask anyone to put their church leader/happily married/not a care in the world/Jesus-freak mask back on when i say "how are you?".

so from now on, i won't be asking, unless i'm sure. sorry if that makes starting phone calls with me a little tricky.

*there is a small possibility this all stems from that embarassing conversation i had with the web designer last year...

me: "hi"
him: "hi"
me: "how are you?"
him: "fine"
me: "fine thanks"
me: "oh, you didn't ask"
me: "i'll carry on talking then shall i?"
me: "SO, our website..."

two things

i never blog any more. why? maybe i've stopped thinking. ha. maybe facebook has become an even more immediate way of keeping up to date with people's lives. hmm. i want to, i think. maybe i'll reinstate 365. is that sort of thing allowed?

first thing: MA has started. it's nice! they're breaking us in gently. so far we're thinking about why we even study literature the way we do, and whether we should carry on doing it. which is comforting. the conceptual and the theoretical abound. this is fun.

second thing: type...delete...type...delete...i don't have words. there is a song which makes my heart both break and beat. it's like pressing a bruise; it hurts, but it's compulsive. in my more melodramatic moments i could be convinced there's no point going on living after you hear it. ha. go see: www.myspace.com/mumfordandsons

why why why

picture the scene: nicola wants to make some tasty treats. nicola locates two recipes, and gathers the required ingredients. nicola commences combining the ingredients in the appropriate manner. nicola then looks at what she has created, and decides it's not quite right. so she adds more of various things she happens to have to hand. because it's perfectly reasonable to conclude that someone with little to no natural culinary flair would be more accurate than an actual recipe in an actual book. obviously.

so downstairs i have a tray of butter exploding away merrily in the oven, with a few oats rolling around in it - it's not that normal to have to drain your flapjacks, is it? - and a tray of biscuits and nuts trying desperately to "cool" in the fridge, despite the content:chocolate ratio being off the scale (in the bad direction).

why do i do this every time?!

//EDIT// having baked the flapjacks for twice as long as recommended, poured out the surplus butter and strategically chopped off (and eaten) the crumbly bits, it turns out this recipe is more than adequate. i took great pleasure with regaling flapjack-consuming commentators with the trials of my baking experience. perhaps i do it because i love the drama?

the times they are a-changin

this seemingly innocuous little notice is very troubling:

facebook clearly don't understand their british market. don't they know we like a) specifics. when is "soon"?! and also b) we may want to use new facebook ahead of time, we want that to be our decision. stop cunningly changing to new facebook every time i click on an event! i do notice!

alpha in reading

if God did exist what would you ask?

the alpha course is wonderful - in fact, the nice people at the guardian said it well: "What Alpha offers, and what is attracting thousands of people, is permission, rare in secular culture, to discuss the big questions - life and death and their meaning."

the reading family church alpha course this autumn starts:
i find myself in the very privileged position of being alpha's guardian for a season, following on from steve waldron's incredible hard work for as many alpha courses as i can remember (in particular steve secured a lucrative deal with the best nepalese and thai curry house for miles around, for which all alpha attendees last autumn were very thankful!)

i'm excited.

i'm excited because not only will the first talk be on Christianity: boring, irrelevant and untrue? (the question mark is very important there) but we'll be showing that Christianity is not boring, not irrelevant, and not untrue.

Christianity - following Jesus - is anything but boring. sometimes terrifying, but never boring! i really think Christians should have more fun. we should be the ones having the best parties, where water gets turned to wine! now i can't guarantee that for alpha (could get messy), but i am really glad to be able to hold the course in a super trendy new bar and restaurant. it's so important to be engaging with culture, to be going where the people are, to be meeting them on their terms, to be doing real life with them, and to be reclaiming these places for ourselves. (an aside: the darkness has not, and will never, overcome the light, which means when we take light - Jesus - to places only known for darkness we actually change them. bring it on!)

Christianity is relevant. as lovely mark driscoll very insightfully pointed out, we don't have to make it relevant. we don't have to change the message. but we do absolutely have to show it's relevant. often this means adapting the form, the 'how' we present things, but never the 'what'. we'll be showing Christianity is relevant by every evening having a different person share their own story of exploring these big questions, and the answers they found. real people, real lives, real decisions, real consequences.

Christianity is true. we'll be looking at historical evidence for who Jesus is and what he did, scholarly reasons why the Bible is a valid and trustworthy document, and ultimately everything will be firmly based on the Bible, our highest authority: what the God who is unable to lie says about himself.

i'm excited because alpha never fails to surprise: the people God brings along, the relationships which develop, the way you get to see people markedly change as they explore truth and encounter Jesus.

i'm excited because i get to meet new people! (- who is this girl - i thought she was an introvert??!) seriously, working for the church was absolutely wonderful, but it did mean i had few friends from "real life". people are interesting, they have stories, they have ideas, they see things and hear things and know things i don't. that's good.

i'm excited because i've never been responsible for anything on this scale before, and people i really love and respect have trusted me with it, and God's going to have to provide!

i'm excited because it's not just theory. brutal honesty: i love theory. sometimes i think i would happily marry a theory or a concept. (you can marry the berlin wall these days, anything's possible) but it's not always healthy. there's academic pen and paper life, and then there's nose and grindstone life. guess which one's messier? guess which one we're all called to?

i'm excited because when i get to heaven there'll (in faith) be a few more people there i know.



i'm sure there will be more thoughts on alpha to follow. but for now i just want you to invite your friends! and please please pray.

Labels: alpha, course, rfc

town house, country house

once upon a time, maybe a couple of years ago, i dreamed of living the rest of my life probably somewhere resembling a slightly ramshackle stony cottage on some rocky cliffs by the sea, not a sign of civilisation for miles around, bla bla bla. rustic and rural and wonderful. ok, maybe a slight exaggeration, but beautiful and all very english country garden anyway.

but newfrontiers' relentless emphasis on 'the city' seems to have seeped into my thoughts. i believe in it - in being upstream, in the church effecting cultural change, in relating to the people where the people are, even in the simple numbers game. david stroud's words at mobilise 07 cut me: "Jesus didn't die for clean air." i want to live big and fast and colourful.

but last weekend i traipsed down to north devon with some pals, and was overwhelmed with the glory of God in creation. there's something about the ocean, something about ragged cliffs, perpetual tides, the force of the waves. in the city, everything is manmade, and as a result the city effectively posits man at the top. man is behind everything that exists there, everything that happens there. the city says "man made this." and as long as the city stands, we know man still stands. we feel so little because it's all so comfortable, so contrived, so flattering to our egos. but the country...particularly the coast. on the cliff-edge, you really know you're alive, precisely because you know you're just seconds, just centimetres, from death. the cliffs and the sea don't need man. the water cuts into the rock and the tides move in and out regardless of man's presence. the cliffs and the sea say "God made this". a big God, a powerful God, a self-sufficient God. a dangerous God.


no answers. but the sea is in my heart. maybe i'll become a fisherman.

putting the fun back into funding

good news! i got funding from the arts and humanities research council for my MA in modern and contemporary literature at reading starting in october!

it was all very amusing. there's a group on facebook called 'why can't the ahrc just give me money?' where people have been rallying together over the past month discussing their postman-stalking antics. i've watched from a distance, not feeling very much at all about the whole thing. i guess some are waiting for PhD funding for the several-th year in a row and it's their life ambition, so it's understandably anxious stuff. either way, i wasn't too bothered. like i said before, "part denial and part supernatural hope and faith" i suppose. i had a few moments since the application went off in march when i sensed something special was going on.

actually, let's back-track. how did i end up here? i adored my degree and knew increasingly towards the end that God had provided for me in a big way, especially in ideas for my dissertation, and ultimately its mark. but i also knew i was ready to finish uni at that point - i didn't even go to the postgraduate study meeting. then i found out there was a new modern MA starting at reading in 2008. and suspected something. then at graduation i realised i probably wasn't finished with academia, or at least it wasn't finished with me...basically i'd very clearly seen God's specific blessing, figured it was for a reason other than me feeling smug, and i wanted to see how far it would go. plus, i knew reading family church was the Place To Be, and i couldn't think of a job i wanted to do. so i started gathering prospectuses (prospectii?) from various exciting unis - edinburgh, london, brighton, exeter - all the trendy and beautiful ones. but in the end, i didn't even bother to apply to them. they were incredibly attractive prospects, but in my heart it just wasn't right. so i apply to reading, get a place, start incredibly long funding application process with much help from wonderful people in the english department. these wonderful people took great pains to warn me how hard the competition is - apparently this year the ahrc had changed the system, and significantly decreased the budget, so i was facing a 15% success rate. lovely.

application was dispatched in march. cue classic ostrich problem solving technique, and adamant "there's no plan b" responses to all well-meaning enquirers. that's the denial part. so yes, the few special moments. there i am happily ignoring the problem, and then i had a dream that i didn't get it. i woke up feeling really worried for the first and only time, panicking about what i would do instead, blah blah blah. but something told me that kind of fear wasn't appropriate, had no place in the call of God, and that i could and should chase it away. so i went out and bought a file to keep all my work in when i start the MA, as a kind of act of faith. it's a little thing, but i think it was significant. no more bad dreams. back to the peace/ignoring. also there were a couple of occasions, one in a church prayer meeting and one just walking up london street to work, when it was like God spontaneously put joy in me for when he'd provide, it felt like a new strength...faith i guess. so that was good. but still, ostriching must continue.

and then on thursday after i'm home from work my dad came upstairs and handed me an envelope that had apparently been lying around all day. terrible doormat-observance on my part. and it said good things!

so my conclusion is, when God has called you to something, he will provide for it! enjoy believing him.

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