Today has been an interesting day of mixes of emotions and stuff.

I opened an email that literally made me cry! It must go with yesterdays post and maybe there is something in this ‘in touch with your feminine side when you reach 40 sort of stuff’.

The email was from someone I used to work with in YFC and they have decided they would like to be one of my personal supporters my giving me (well…YFC actually)some money each month.

YFC national staff have to raise 50% of their salaries and I have just found out that I am drastically falling short of the target for this coming year. I think I need another 20 people … actually I only need 19 now!!

I hate asking for money! It’s not even asking for me, but I still hate doing it. It’s embarrassing, its uncomfortable and it puts friends and family in a difficult position if you do ask.

Today, however, I have been reminded of the other side – how both exciting and humbling it can be to experience someone wishing to personally invest their hard earned cash in you to enable you to continue to make a difference.

As I sit and write the faces of my supporters come to mind watching me, a bit like angels I guess. It’s a great motivator – I don’t want to let God down …. but I certainly don’t want to let the faces down! I think knowing these people invest in me gives me that little extra kick when I am feeling lazy.

Anyway – you know who you are, and I know you are probably embarrassed as you read this – but you are a star and you can only imagine how amazingly encouraging you have been to me over the years and not just now! Philippians 2:12-18 in the NIV is for you … continue to shine like a star my friend in that place where God has placed you.

Today I went to the Bishop of Rochester’s staff meeting with Phil.

It was a good experience but strange also to be given a 30 minute slot to talk about how YFC and the diocese could work in partnership in mission with young people.

This could be a great and exciting opportunity. We could be on the edge of something quite exciting and pioneering.

I went from this exciting meeting to SEITE. Two contrasting edges of the church. Leaving a meeting of bishops, archdeacons and the dean looking at working together in mission to joining a class looking at the history of daily prayer and the liturgical cycle as part of my training so that I can ‘do mission’ officially within the church.

It’s no wonder I get confused quite easily at the moment!

A funny for a Monday morning.
You can find more here.

We’ve had a great weekend and have felt quite privileged and lucky this weekend. It’s been fantastic and relaxed; a fantastic way to celebrate our 40th’s.

We stayed in the Crown Plaza at Blackfriars which was conveniently close to the Tate modern where we spent Saturday afternoon and wandered around Rachel Whitehead’s ‘Embankment‘.

We wandered a lot and sat in a number of coffee shops. The show and meal were great and it was lovely just for us to be able to wander and enjoy each others company. A beautiful sunny Sunday morning saw us walking along the Strand, after a great breakfast, up Drury Lane and around Covent Garden.

I don’t want to sound sloppy but …I’ve come away from the weekend remembering why I love Sarah and why we got married some 16 years ago! I’m not saying that I had forgotten that we loved each other, just that I’d forgotton some of the why and where that love came from – from where, and why, it initially started. Spending time together, alone, meant I was reminded of this all over again.

I guess it’s obvious that the same can happen with me and God – I know that we love each other, but it is easy to forget why – and one way to remind myself is to spend time alone together remembering why.

A number of people made this weekend possible: Tery and Jo; Tom, Beth and Joe; Ernie and Janet; John and Judith – big big thanks to you all!

Sarah and I are now off for the weekend to be free!

The grandparents have the children and we are off to London just to wander and spend time together, eat together, watch Guys and Dolls (which stars Ewan McGregor), spend the night in a nice Kensington hotel to then idle time away before returning home sometime Sunday.

We go feeling very lucky to have such nice parents and great friends who have planned and funded this weekend which was a present for our 40th birthdays earlier in the year. Thank you to those concerned – we love you loads!

It’s going to be cool just to be away together – I can’t remember how long ago it was since it was just the 2 of us for such a long time. I’m really looking forward to it.

I’m sure I’ve said that before! But the really good thing is this whole new community thing which I really like being a part of. I caught up with Gordon for a coffee in Bluewater today and we chatted mission, ideas, shared funny stories … and all because we blog!

It’s cool as apart from new friends, if gives new opportunities to meet people, fresh opportunities to be inspired and enables you to share ideas and hear people you would otherwise never knew existed. In some ways I think it makes you feel less mad to hear that others are on similar, but not identical, journies!

Blogging really is cool!

the new Little Britain started tonight.
At one point I had tears running down my face and was laughing so much it hurt.

It was great, too, to find this link on the web where you can download the first ever ‘bitty sketch‘! Now my sides are hurting again!

It was great to get to Blah last night and listen to Ben’s story and ideas. I was very fortunate due to a slow mind (I got the timings wrong and turned up early) and so got a chance to chat with Ben before many turned up.

Ben started by showing how ‘new age spirituality’ stuff is becoming mainstream. Most towns have an alternative therapy shop – even small towns like our Gillingham have a regular mind, body, spirit fair / psychic fair. People in the media are mixing different spiritualalites and, in some cases, re-defining and creating their own beliefs from the mix that is around them.

Ben introduced a term I am unfamiliar with, Occulture, to describe this process where all things new are being influenced by the new age. (The Occult part of this term refers to all new age spirituality, not the meaning that many of us may associate the term with). In a sense it’s like an underground movement slowly, and un-noticed, influences and changes culture so that their practices become mainstream and have an impression on everything. We are seeing this in music (listen to Sinead O’connor, Robbie Williams, Madonna and many others, in everyday language (karma, auras, therapy, clothing and everywhere we care to look.

Just for fun I thought I would do a google search on ‘spiritual clothing’. There are over 5 000 000 references! At number 4 is spiritual fitness wear who claim, to a background of calming pipe music tell you their clothes are designed especially for your mind, body and soul’ and that spiritual Fitness Wear is designed to help you believe in your unique mind, body and soul’.

This would once have given me a lot of concern – but I think my studies at the moment are causing me to think ‘is this really a problem?’. Does it matter how people connect with God. Don’t worry – I still see Jesus as God incarnate and the way to the Father … but I do question what seems to be the assumption that the church has the monopoly on that – God is bigger than the church and so he must be able to speak to people without using the church. Before you shout … yes I know the church is Jesus choice, he created it and all that blurb … but the church has done a crap job! Maybe God has got impatient and decided that despite the church he wants to connect with his creation and his people. It’s only a view! My view is also that there will obviously be some dodgy stuff at such places, not everyone is open and honest; but there is a difference between what is harmful, and what makes us uncomfortable due to the way we have been brought up.

Ben talked us through the sorts of people you meet at Mind, Body and Spirit Fairs. (quite normal people if you were wondering?). He chatted about what they did – which in essence is listen and pray and with people. Ben said something like ‘we offer free healing, we chat, we listen and our prayer with them reflects their concerns back’.

As I know with young people – we are not listened to anymore. Maybe like to tell their stories and be heard, these people wish to share their story and are looking for listeners. The church, us, can be and should be so good at that.

I found my mind flitting between two extremes, which for me, who can be quite stubborn and very committed to a cause, is quite unusual. The two extremes of ‘Yes, this is sooooo obvious, we just have to go for this; spiritual people are here, Christians aren’t and so we need more people involved in this – people like me!!’ to the other extreme of ‘My good evangelical upbringing has taught me to stay away from these things, and to pray that other people will stay away due to their extreme harm and extreme dodginess’. There is no obvious middle ground between those two points of view.

Ben shared his concerns and difficulties and was, I think, quite honest. People are prayed with at their stand, and then they go off to others to have auras read, or visit another healer and the question begs ‘should we be involved here?’

Our groups answer? It was a yes … as with sowing seeds, we do not know what God is doing in peoples lives. I can look back now to that time before I was Christian and see that God was clearly working in my life. I was connecting with God long before I was a Christian, yet I did not recognise that at all. Is it so bizarre to think that God can communicate through some other stuff as well.

I have come away with lots of thoughts and questions, probably more than I had before I listened to Ben and chatted with others their last night. There is, though, to me one definite opinion or view I have come away with … if Christians do not get involved at such places, what chance have these people got of ever connecting with their God?

I had another great day today despite a naff start due to the closer of the M2 after what sounded to be a horrible accident. I was thankful for Lara (the un-enlightened would call Lara GPS) as she talked me through many country lanes that I would never have seen before to get me to the Dartford Crossing.

I visited Jerry, Jemima and Katie at Newmarket YFC in the morning. Big congratulations to both Jemima and Katie who were proudly wearing their engagement rings and looking forward with quite a bit of excitement to wedding days sometime in the summer. We all chatted together about how things were going, moving into new buildings and struggling to meet demands for schools input.

I heard of exciting plans, a desire to change, a yearning to make an impact in the lives of young people that will last – I heard a passionate God looking at the young people of Newmarket!

After spending cool time catching up I shot across to Mid Norfolk to meet up with Cle, Dave, Marie Ann and Mark. Again, top quality people involved in loads of excellent stuff and always asking the question ‘what next’ with a healthy ‘should we keep doing this/is this still meeting a need/should we change/should we close this and start something new’. I always think those in ministry that regularly ask questions like this as ‘the norm’ see exciting things happen.

I heard stories today of groups of girls becoming Christians in school, of young people praying for other young people in school who then experienced God, and of young people being healed after others had prayed with them. The exciting things and the challenging self analysis go hand in hand.

Also … Mid Norfolk YFC kept up their fantastic standard of a great lunch!!! (not that I am fickle or easily swayed … but I will return soon!)

I felt a tinge of sadness as I started to drive home – I though how great it would be to spend longer, to get involved again, to invest in more young people … but the role has changed and someone has to invest in the investors.

I removed one boulder and filled in one pothole today!