July (flew by!)

Only after returning home in early August did I realise that I spent half of July away from home. Half of the away time was spent at Buddhafield Festival with the SPEAK Network. We brought our yurt to share our campaigns and to get to know people there. It was a really cool festival with great people and interesting conversations. Really chilled and enjoyable.


The following week I went with Rob to Freakstock Festival in Germany where he participated in a service, doing some storytelling on the theme of pilgrimage. He told the story of Tom Joad through the eyes of Woody Gutherie who wrote a folk song about Tom’s journey during the dust bowl. It was great seeing Rob on that stage in front of so many people and speaking with such confidence. The festival was a great time to see old friends and make some new friends too.


We spent the following three days in Berlin, site-seeing and shopping in the alternative district of Kruezberg. It’s good to be back in London now though, I must say! Enjoy some photos from our trip!

Friday Service @ Freakstock	Friday Service Crowd	Rob storytelling
Storytelling about The Joad Family and Pilgrimage	Impromptu gig  by band Praiser	“Peace Out”- Jesus Christ
Holocaust Memorial, Berlin	Brandenburg Gate	Checkpoint Charlie
Near the River Spree	East Side Gallery	So true.
Alexanderplatz	Part of the old wall	Photo Opp

A year half over or half to go…

I think I speak for us all when I say that I cannot believe it’s June!! The weather in London the past couple days actually reminds me a bit of Oxnard with the June gloom. I kind of feel like I’m already staring December in the face and I don’t like that. Yet I know that the remainder of this year is already looking a few shades brighter than the past six so I’ll do my best to drop the reservations and embrace the possibilities.

I thought that this would be a good time to revisit those ‘resolutions‘ I made earlier on in the year to see how we’re progressing. To recap, I decided to pursue the following in 2010: Fun, creativity, relationships, less time online, Shalom, a haircut & real job, and finally, reading more. So how has the first half of twenty-ten faired?

1. Having fun: Well as I mentioned, I applied for a sweet job at The Fun Fed, went through a two-hour audition playing games and acting like a buffoon, and I didn’t manage to secure a post as a facilitator. However, the group was generous enough to give me a year membership to attend any session at any time for free. I’ve only had that come through in the past couple weeks and haven’t taken advantage of it yet but you know I will! It’s funny actually since writing that resolution and feeling it very strongly, that life has changed so much with some things dying. Yet people have come through with one resounding word of wisdom: Have fun. It’s wild that God would be instructing us to do this in life during this time and what a great bit of guidance to be given to follow! We’re working on it and hope to enjoy an even funner end to 2010.

2. Creativity: Well I’ve not done the best job with this since the whirlwind of activity that began the year off. But since setting my mind to complete a few crafty tasks before… well, we’ll get to that later… I’ve managed to do quite a bit of creating in the past week. I’m tuning into the rhythms of my body more with this as well, which I’ll blog about in the near future, and this is very helpful in creating and not becoming frustrated if it just isn’t happening. Current project: working on a skirt I bought that was wayyy too small and customising some shoes.

3.  Relationships: Why is this such a struggle in London!? It’s freakish in a city of 10 million to not be able to get together with people regularly! Yet with the understanding that it is difficult and it’s not just us, I think we’re managing to tackle that one fairly well. One way of marrying resolutions 1 and 3 is to have people around weekly. We’ve been hosting wine and cheese parties, breakfast cereal-athons, film nights, all in an attempt to welcome people to our space and to have fun and build relationships. As we’re still struggling financially, it’s still difficult as most people are accustomed to going out rather than having people over, but we’re managing to do a bit more on that front, thankfully.

4. Less time online: Fail. Between escapism, looking for work, looking for a new flat, and trying to keep in touch with folks back home, this has not worked. And clearly I’ve not been blogging very well. Yet, there are still six months with which to work on number 4!

5. Shalom: While I’m more aware of the pursuit for Shalom, I can’t say that I’m implementing the necessary practices to see it happen. I know that spending time meditating, reading and in contemplative prayer are requirements to see this happen in my life and I’m crap at these things. I still need a rhythm in life which has been difficult to find with everything being up in the air. Yet, as we’ll see in the following point, that rhythm is coming… so hopefully too will the Shalom.

6. Get a haircut and a real job: Well the haircut would probably get a gigantic wince from hairstylists around the world, but I have managed a new style between Rob’s and my endeavours to trim my do. The exciting part B of this point however is the real job! I begin my first ‘real job’ on the 21st of the month with the Speak Network. I’m so excited and it just feels so incredibly right. It also allows us the freedom to move to a larger flat outside of Camden, which we can’t flee quickly enough these days. I cannot possibly begin to tell you what a blessing it is to have this provision! Thank you Jesus!!!

7.  Reading more: In direct opposition to point 4, I’ve spent far too much time reading online, but most has been in an applaudable effort to learn things, which has been successful. I’ve managed to get a few books under me though, including the long read Eyeless in Gaza by Aldous Huxley and A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller. I’m presently planning on finishing by next week Making Room by Christine Pohl  about Christian hospitality practices. That one keeps kicking me in the gut it’s so freaking good yet challenging.

So yeah, I guess it’s good that there’re still six months ahead with which to engage these resolutions more fully. I think with number six accomplished, the other six will be more easy to achieve and I look forward to that happening. 2010, may it live up to its reputation of the year of fun!

Living Fully Present.

I remember back in the day of Dungeons and Dragons that role play games were considered to be weird, and some would even go so far as to say they were demonic. It was a fringe of society that engaged in role play and spent their time huddled around a board or later on, around a glowing screen and keyboard in the dark.

But today most of us are guilty of being the ‘weirdos’, engaging in a virtual reality experience that sort of looks like real living. I see streams and streams of updates on my Facebook telling me about people’s needs, wants and exploits in Farmville. Something like that is kind of a funny example of the larger issue at hand, innocent at the surface but it does smack of the same role play/fantasy type thing as D&D. I’m not hacking off on Farmville here or D&D though so stick with me…

I might sound a bit overly dramatic but I see a real epidemic in society right now. As much of a blessing as technology is it’s really stabbing us in the backs. Machines are sapping us of our attention, energy, money and contentment. I’m not going to get all sci-fi or conspiracy on you here so don’t worry but I do want to peel back a layer of this issue and toss out some ideas.

I love the idea of social networking, being someone who lives thousands of miles away from my long-time friends and my family. It’s enabled me to forge some great relationships- some really deep, some quite shallow. But I admit that I do find myself checking in at the expense of my day to day relationships and living. My immediate relationships and my creativity have suffered as a result of just logging on too frequently, checking up on people, and entering a few pat words on what’s up in Vickie-dom. I find that a lot of the world around me that I’m presented with has caused me to sometimes avoid reality.

I’m not living fully present.

And I have seen others who are really taking this to new and dangerous levels. I know people who cannot keep away from Facebook, IM, Twitter, etc. even in the same room with friends. Some of them are driven in the early hours of the morning just chatting and then suffering the consequences the next day when they’ve got to get up early and actually LIVE. And yet they complain about not having enough time. Their work is suffering, their relationships are suffering, and they aren’t truly living life to the fullest.

Even before technology really broke through to our every-day, we could see the effects of not living fully present. Daydreaming, fantasizing, affairs, mid-life crises. I mean think about it- what causes one person to cheat on another? Yes, sometimes the relationship sucks. But ultimately it’s because one person or both are not fully present in the relationship. Their heart is elsewhere. It’s a matter of discontentment.

Not living fully present causes our most immediate relationships to decay because, obviously, they need time, work and effort to grow and strengthen. Not living fully present leads to an immediate sensation of community, relatedness, intimacy, but like any hard drug it causes us to feel the torturous after-effects of isolation and loneliness.

I know several people who are wanderers at heart, myself included. We love the feeling of change, of seeing new things, meeting new people, broadening our horizons so to speak. It’s like having ADD of lifestyle. Sometimes we can find ourselves mentally in another place – ie. on the beach in California eating a burrito with no seagulls around. Sometimes it can be as severe to wish ourselves away, out of where we’re placed – either by life or by God Himself. We short circuit our futures by living mentally elsewhere- not being fully present where and with whom we’re situated. This can be in a city, with a partner, at a job, in a church, on a project. We allow ourselves to be robbed of the experience of the here and now- which is REAL, LEGIT, and STEEPED IN POTENTIAL- all for a few hours chatting to someone where we’d rather be. Or dreamily looking for a new home. Or just not investing ourselves fully because we spend too much time bitching and whining about the here and now.

I really hope some of my dear friends read this post because I’m concerned for your lives, your futures, and all that great stuff that is waiting for your attention in the here and now. Conquer this mountain, then let God lead you to the next. Be fully present. We need you.