Sometimes it seems a good idea to wander, even if just for a little while. But then, I guess we’re not really left to truly go astray.
“What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? And if he finds it, I tell you the truth, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off. In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should be lost.”
I’ve been woken up a lot this month. I’ve been talking, as I often do and I have heard a few things that made me ponderponderponder.
There was recently a fundraising concert in our church with lots of loud singing. A friend of mine had been walking by and had heard the concert was going on. In fact, she knew one of the girls singing in it. She told me that she had really wanted to come in but hadn’t been in church for a long, long time and was “scared the elders might shout at her”.
Today, a very lovely friend told me she had thought about coming to church at Christmas time but was scared cause she had never really been because of her parents and was scared about what people from the church would think or say.
What kind of image is that?! I realise this does not represent church everywhere and there are places where such an image is not present but it is clearly still an ongoing image that is portrayed in some places. We talk about making people welcome and gosh…we DO talk about it. That is good. Talking to people is good. But there comes a point where there needs to be action. How often do we sit there, leave it to one group of people to attempt to solve, leave them to talk about it? Maybe it’s something people think will “just get better” over time. It really won’t.
I am rubbish at blogging. I should get better cause I do enjoy it somewhat but it’s hard to find time to do it. I keep starting to write things and then get distracted by so many things. I shall aim to be better at some point.
This is not going to be a long post. But I’ve had one of those weeks where you think everything is going horribly wrong because of one failure moment. The failure itself, is nothing in the grand scheme of things. I hope to look back on it one day and chuckle. It was one of those times I had built everything up and then everything just came crash, bang wallop. But anyway, that is not the point of this post.
The point is…
I was caught up in my own little world and I wanted to hide. I didn’t want to realise I had super people around me. I took them for granted. I was comforted by a phone call, by a text, by a group hug, by joking, by understanding and also by not understanding but caring anyway. I was being melodramatic but people spoke to me anyway.
I love people.
On a slightly more ridiculous note: I very much want to see “A Christmas Carol”. It excites me. Jim Carrey in voice format pleases me more than real life format. Oh, that is a bit rude. I mean, I like his voice. I am thinking out loud for you here. However much I want to see it though, I cannot bring myself to go yet. I am not in Christmas mode. Dundee Rep Theatre are also doing a production of it which excites me too. Hurrah.
I have more “lynsey is excited” tales but I shall save them, meaning I must come back and write them.
I have not been good at blogging. I shall try to be better at some point. I have been considering an imaginary on dinner party in a very serious manner due to bizarre application forms so I shall put ramblings about that on here very soon hopefully.
For now, we have our puppy! She is not called Bella. She is, in fact, called Holly. She is very lovely but sadly wants to chew everything at the moment, especially my feet. Here she is…
On another note. After going through a phase of not really watching tv at all I seem to be pretty much hooked on two things just now. X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing. This is a somewhat tricky combination when they are both on a Saturday night and I tend to spend most of my Saturday nights working. Hurrah for iplayer and youtube and all things that allow me to catch up on the world.
I very much enjoy this unbelievably cool man, Olly:
I’m not sure how many agree but I hope at least some do as I would quite like to keep watching him. Please.
I appear to be back in university land these days, starting third year! Scary, scary. It goes far too quickly. It all seems a bit manic at the moment with huge reading lists been given to us and hand-in dates popping up already. Another alarming thing is that we are constantly being reminded about summer placements, work experience, careers and in the past I have tended to get by quite happily ignoring all of that, thinking it was quite some time away. Not so much now. I shall look upon it as an exciting venture maybe.
Lawyer? Maybe. Hopefully.
In other news. We are getting a puppy very soon. She shall be a liver, flat coated retriever. She doesn’t have a name yet although I am calling her Bella for the moment. I don’t think anyone else is keen on that name. Our other dog, Rowan, is a black, flat coated retriever and she is lovely if a bit over friendly for some people. It is hard to get a picture of her without a ball somewhere in the picture so she ends up looking quite ridiculous but oh well. Here she is:
So yes, I like dogs and I am very, very excited about the puppy action! It was probably the wrong time in life to embark upon reading “Marley and Me” by John Grogan. I never went to see the film partly because I am rubbish at remembering to actually go to the cinema and partly because I had heard about the tears situation. I thought by reading it I would avoid any sort of public humiliation. The book actually made me happy more than anything. Dogs are wonderful. It sounds silly but they make lovely pals and if you are a dog owner reading the book you totally appreciate that. It made my soul light up a bit.
Gosh. Lots of dog chat. Not sure that mixes too well with the lawyer chat earlier.
It’s been a while since Youth Assembly and as usual things seem to move along much quicker in life after it. I’m now back at uni and into week 2 studying courses I think I am going to properly love. Whilst it’s a lot of work I am totally loving it so far despite the occasional moan.
I meant to blog properly about Youth Assembly but I’ll see what happens. It was very much a mini journey this year. I was very nervous about a new location, nervous it was going to be different whilst really excited at the same time about the change. I explored different debate topics throughout the weekend. I was challenged. I dealt with some challenges and have left some unsolved for the moment. I moved on whilst leaving some rubbish behind me. I looked forward. I dreamed. I am still dreaming. Throughout the summer I have had this mini train of thought all based around “hope”. The weekend has definitely filled me with that on so many levels. My dreams are bigger that they have ever been, they are forever changing and are being forever driven by this thing we call hope. Some of these dreams just seem too big at the moment. I always seem to have more questions than answers and am forever searching for something bigger whilst not really knowing what that “something” is.
Here is a beautiful song:
“Teach me how to hum it, cause’ I don’t know the words yet…”
I have now returned from the National Youth Assembly 2009, held in Striling University Campus. I’m exhausted. We’ve been debating, dreaming, reflecting, chatting and rarely sleeping. It was my 5th Youth Assembly and it was very, very different to any other one I had attended in the past. I shall return later after further resting but if you want to see what went on over the weekend, the Youth Assembly blog will be able to fill you in: cosyblog
The next part of our pilgrimage to the Holy Land was very, very busy before having a day of rest which was very much appreciated! We got up early so we could sail across the sea of Galilee. The boat was very fun; having the Scottish national anthem played for us, even if we were not the most enthusiastic of Scots when it came to singing! When we were sailing across it was so, so peaceful, calm and quiet. The boat stopped half way through the trip across the sea for worship. Whilst I do not think you need specific places to worship and be still, the atmosphere was incredible. After some hilarious, old school, childrens’ songs going through my head about Peter and fishes, it was good to be still and think about the stories those apparently silly songs tell and what message they give to us. After singing “Will you come and follow me”, our boat journey continued to the other side of the shore, near Capernaum. Upon reaching the other side we went to see the “Jesus boat”; a boat pulled up from the sea recently which they think is able to give us an idea of the kind of boat Jesus would have used during his time.
As we continued that day we got a chance to go to the Church of the Beatitudes, the church of the multiplication, the church of St Peter’s Primacy and then Capernaum where we saw Peter’s mother in law’s house and the church that is built above it. (bit weird!) We did lots of singing in these places which really helps focus your mind on where you are what stories we have heard about these places! One of my favourite moments of the trip was when we went down to the shore of Galilee after being in St Peter’s Primacy and sharing bread and wine together. What a location! As we travelled to these places throughout the day I was constantly aware of the water around us and could not stop looking out over it so it was amazing to sit, all together, looking out over this beautiful setting and worship together, and share the bread and wine. Some of us also went down to the water and had a wee paddle!
We were very busy that day, and it was incredibly hot and it was an amazing day but it was good to have the next day free of anything programmed. I spent a lot of time sitting on the swing at the hotel in Tiberias, once again looking out over that beautiful water, either talking to people, or just sitting and even meeting a wee bird called Geoffrey. It was good to have space to think about what we had seen in Tiberias and if our images of Jesus had been transfigured from when we first arrived. It was also good to have that time before moving on to Jerusalem where it was so much busier. It was clear that we were not just here to see the Holy Sites, we were there to encounter the people there and Jesus, and his intentions when he was in these places. Trying to connect the stories of Jesus to the Israel we were in, in the present day, was something I didn’t expect from the trip but was one of the most moving experiences of the trip and one of the most important things I took away from the whole thing.
That shall end the Tiberias chat and I shall come back and talk about Jerusalem at some point.
I clearly have lots of Israel chat at the moment and I’m unsure how much of it is very exciting for anyone actually reading it. But on a different note anyway, I went to Perth a couple of nights ago to see Phil Cunningham and Aly Bain play. I had seen Phil Cunningham play but I had never seen them as a duo before and it’s hard to put into words how much I love their music and how excited I was about seeing them. I was not disappointed. It was beautiful and very fun; they have hilarious chat. I am having a bit of an Aly Bain moment currently so here he is…(playing some beautiful Robert Burns action of course!)
After visiting Mount Tabor we were really encouraged to think about the transfiguration story and try and relate it to our journey to the Holy Land. We thought about how the trip was going to change, transfigure, the images we already held of Jesus. For me, my whole idea of who Jesus is and what he did and what he means to people has totally changed. I will talk about how it has changed later on but that was the constant thought process throughout the journey for me and one of the most important things I took away from the trip.
The next stop on the pilgrimage was to the Nazareth Village. If you haven’t heard of it, it re-creates a Galilean village as it was 2000 years ago. It’s a very odd experience walking around first century Nazareth and as you look over the walls of the enclosed village you can see the contrasting Nazareth of today. The walk takes you through a farm, a wine press, and past a donkey pulling a plow (hurray!). This was to give us an idea of the environment Jesus would have began his ministry in. We were led through the village, rather quickly, hearing first century stories about first century people, the “living stones”. I found it a bit tricky in that I found it very touristy, which I guess it has to be to have the appeal of going, and I also kept wanting to peer over the wall and view modern day Nazareth and see what was going on. It was very cool to see all the first century people and the first century lunch was amaaazing. I loved it when we were all sitting around the same table with a first century background. I like to think Jesus would have enjoyed the chat.
Later on, in the same day we visited one of about forty “unrecognised villages” in Israel. These are villages that are not recognised by the State, government, of Israel. I won’t go very deep into the history of these villages, because I am definitely not the best person to tell you so you should look it up and read all about it- and you definitely should. But briefly, it goes back to when Israel became an independent state and many people were forced out of their land. These people now live in these villages where there are very little amenities provided to them. We did not spend a great deal of time in the village and we did not see very much of it but we heard a great deal about the lives lived by the people there. We were greeted by two beautiful men, whose names I forget, who lived in the village. They called themselves “brothers” as they were breast fed by the same woman. One was a Christian and one was a Muslim and they told us lots of stories and it was so clear how close they were, they were family. It was such an inspiration that even through their struggles, they could rely on each other so fully despite their religious differences. I wish the whole world could have seen these two men and seen the love! From visiting the village and hearing the stories about how these people have been treated by the Israeli government makes it very easy to become angry and want to do something about it. Something that really got to me was how peaceful these people were. They still wanted to part of an Israel that has rejected them and cut them off. They longed for acceptance by them. It really made me think about how I, and other people, would react in such a situation?
Later on in the evening when we were back at the hotel we were having a lot of chat in wee groups of people and my group were talking about how easy it was to become angry with this particular situation. It’s very easy to pick it out because we have seen it but there are situations like this all over the world, there are much worse situations right on our doorstep. It’s hard to know what we can actually DO to make a meaningful difference to so many lives. It’s a bit overwhelming.
We were talking about the story of the good samaritan, one of the stories Jesus told and we were trying to relate it to the Israel of today and this tied in perfectly with the trip to the village we had experienced earlier on. It triggered off a lot of thoughtage… who is being the good samaritan to these people? We heard about organisations that were set up to help these people and provide for them. What could we do to help? Jesus told us the story of the good samaritan, giving us a huuuge message. He sought out the outcast people, he helped them. He would have sought out THESE people in the villages. It’s easy to feel helpless against government but what we, as pilgrims, can do is tell people what we have seen, what we have heard; tell people of our journey. People need to be aware of situations before anything can change. It’s all easier said than done, and it’s a very tricky situation and my head cannot so much deal with it.
