Great meditation here from Mark Berry.

I particularly like the Celtic link with St Brendan. I’ve loved for ages the prayer of St Brendan the Navigator in the daily prayer book of the Northumbria Community, which is subtitled ‘a call to risky living’.

It reminds me of my earlier, younger, faith when I would do anything. It causes me to ask hard questions of myself and consider why I stopped. It encourages me to start to take those risks again. Old trendy ‘No Fear’ sayings come to mind such as ‘if you are not living on the edge, you are taking up too much room’.

I used to believe I was living on the edge. I used to think I was taking risks. I think, actually, I stepped towards the edge, tried out a few things, but never really got right to the edge, never really took any significant risks. I wonder whether I have really ever been truly out of my comfort zone. I doubt it.

I think I am struggling with a fair bit of stuff at the moment. How do I achieve a balance between family life and risk taking? What sort of risks should I be taking for the sake of the gospel? What is ‘living on the edge’ as a reality, what doe it mean? All those questions can melt into one … what is the gospel to those around me?

For the next few days I am pondering these words of St Brendan:

‘Have I the faith to leave old ways
and break fresh ground with God?’

This evening I accepted the truth.
I very quietly and carefully walked around the house.
I took down 4 England flags.
I then removed the England flag bunting from outside my house.
Finally I removed the 2 flags flying from my car.
They are all now safely packed away.
For me, this world cup is well and truly over!

I managed to catch up with good friends Dennis and Sharron today. Dennis is director of Weald YFC and Sha works with YFC.

It’s just cool to be able to meet up and hear of plans, share frustrations and all that sort of stuff.

I’ve mentioned before that Den runs survival weekends for youth groups and their leaders. He ran one last weekend, and is running another next weekend. I’ve seen Den work with young people and he is excellent – if you want something different for your youth group, something with an edge, something that will make them consider their faith (or lack of) differently – then why not get in touch with Den in the Weald.

Such an exciting day at St Marks today. 4 people were baptised and it was an honour to be one of the sponsors for Josh and really cool to see how he is growing up.

Two of the others who were baptised are young people that have become Christians through the work of Gillingham YFC, so that was cool too.

After the baptisms we all walked up the road to the vicarage site for a great BBQ put on by the two teams of people going to do some work in Uganda later in the year. Today was a day when you could feel St Marks is doing good stuff.

The photos of the day can be seen in my flickr album.

I’m gutted and speechless.
Can’t believe it’s happened again.

Before and after the lunch yesterday I was able to visit 2 exhibitions.

In the morning I wandered the Howard Hodgkin exhibition at the Tate. It was stunning and I remember being particularly struck by the time some of the works had taken to complete. I find it interesting that Hodgkin took 9 years over one piece which he then called Snapshot.

I particularly loved Chez Max – this great circular piece which only took him 2 years to complete! I sat in front of Chez Max and got totally absorbed in the whole picture. Stunning!

After the lunch Darrell kindly treated me to a visit to the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts. This is a massive exhibition (1326 works!) with unknown artists displayed alongside established. There were a few I would like to have bought, but then I don’t have a few thousand spare! The exhibition is well worth a visit, but if you are passing and stretched for time then at least pop into the courtyard where you will be amazed by the bronze statue of the Virgin Mother by Damien Hirst.

After my mass of art intake, it was great to meet up with Sheena and then trundle off to a local bar so the 3 of us could enjoy a beer and watch the football. Surprised at the outcome and now just hoping England make it past Portugal today!

Yesterday I had an interesting time attending a lunch hosted by my good friend Darrell on behalf of YFC. A while ago Jonathan Aitken had expressed a desire to help YFC with fundraising and offered to speak at a fundraising lunch or breakfast for us. Darrell organised the whole event, held at the Royal Overseas League, and invited some friends and colleagues to listen to Jonathan Aitken and then Roy. The event’s aim was to raise some seed funding for our Reflex project running in Young Offender Institutes.

Being a life long member of the Labour Party it was strange being near to someone whose mis-fortune I had taken some delight in at the time. To his credit he was very open and honest, and he is quite a reformed character.

He shared shocking statistics coming from prison communities. I have not checked these but he quoted the average age of a prisoner to be 23, he quoted that only one third of the prison population is literate.

People at the lunch seemed genuinely interested and touched and there seemed to be a desire to stand with us, so I hope this translates itself into some badly needed funds.

Thanks Darrell, Jonathan and all those other people there – it was very kind of you to give up your time.

It’s been a day for realising things.

Today it was really cool to meet up with the team of Gillingham YFC and good friend Nick Shepherd. A couple of years back Nick started his PhD and used us at GYFC as part of the study to look at how young people become Christians; and by that meaning what is actually going on.

From our point of view, we wanted to know what was going on to, particularly why young people were doing what they were doing, and what was it that was making things successful. Crack that and we could keep going.

Today Nick fed back something that really surprised me. He talked about how, actually, we had developed a Christian community through 133, the name of the GYFC drop in. Young people joined this community, became part of it by being accepted by others in that community, and started to assign titles and roles within that community.

Looking back I can see how some were seen as older siblings, some as parents. It worries me in some way that Sarah and myself became, and are still called by some, grandma and grandpa. I still have a mug for ‘The Greatest Granddad in the world’ which I use regularly and brings a smile of memory now and again.

I found today’s chat fascinating. We made a conscious decision to set up a drop in. The Christians there were genuine; genuine in their interest of the young people, genuine in their love for the young people. As someone said, the relationship did not exist just through the project, it existed and was/still is a reality outside with visits to homes and so on. As a result of this commitment to each other a community developed
in such a way that we needed an observer who visited a number of times to make us aware of this.

One notable thing, which again I had not realised until today, was that all felt part of the Christian community that we had developed. Today all still are part of the community. There is not a hierarchal structure, there is no membership based on belief. All are full members.

In this setting things like Alpha for Youth work remarkably well. Out of this community of belonging young people genuinely consider their options and only respond when they want to, or when they feel convicted to do so. As they are already full members of the community, they do not need to respond to gain acceptance. They know they are accepted already and that a decision to become a Christian or not is not going to affect that acceptance one iota.

For me, as I embark on a thought process of what is church and how do we develop fresh expressions in emerging culture it throws up a lot of questions, memories and thoughts. It reminds me again that genuine serving relationship with no agenda other than to share Christ relevantly and see what happens is the secret of what is needed.

Thanks Nick, Mal, Abs, Duncan and Lisa for starting the thoughts rolling again. You are a bunch of diamonds … do diamonds come in bunches?

Picture the conversation:
‘What would you like for your birthday tea Beth?’
Beth ponders …
‘Can I have anything I like?’
‘Yees’ say the starting to be worried parents.
‘I think I would like one of Ray’s curries’

It is then that I suddenly realise that we have, after all, brought up Beth correctly.
What a start she is.
(for those outside Gillingham, Ray is the owner of the New East India – the best curry house in the south east!)

Beth 10 today.
Where did that decade go?!
The pic shows her posing on her new roller blades.