job??

This weekend i was at a wedding and at a family 'do', both full of people I'd never met before. Hence the question, "So what do you do?" was a decidedly common feature. I'm still never sure quite how to answer...

well, in the space of the last 4 days i...

- have written (almost) a 2500 assignment on creativity [student?]

- hung out with 14-16 year olds at an after school youth club, playing volleyball [youth worker?]

- helped deliver food to about 10 different projects in Brighton and Hove [charity volunteer?]

- telephoned various projects to carry out a survey for FareShare [researcher?]

- washed several hundred 3D glasses in a bath tub [uhhh...??!!]

- cleaned someone's bathroom [cleaner?]

- edited wedding photos taken last weekend [photographer?]

- manned church office [receptionist/administrator?]

- looked after friends' children [babysitter?]

I guess that's the cool thing about not having a job persae; or not being PAID for anything i do. It makes me able to bring in the variety of things i do during the week in answering the question (that is, when i think the person asking is genuinely interested. Usually i must admit i say something vague like 'working for my church'). Most people do plenty of interesting things that they may be more passionate about and that define them much more as a person than their 9-5 (or whenever) waged work. But often nobody asks about that! We just seem to want quick, easy answers that allow us to label people, classify them in grades of interest, intellect, ambition, etc. When we're probably only skimming the very surface!

and even with all the doing listed above i think my favourite parts and what i think are some of the most important things in life are the cooking for friends and catching up and enjoying being together...

wedding photography...

Have just written about my first 'official wedding photographer' experience for my friends' fab new online magazine: "Dressed in the Dark" - for ordinary people living creatively.


Check it out here...

from the very beginning, they danced

Those who sketch the truest history of dancing would tell you that in the first generation of all things the dance grew up, appearing together with ancient Love. In fact, the circling motion of the stars and their intertwining with the fixed planets…are signs of the primeval dance.

(Lucian of Samosata, Antioch, 125-90 AD in 'The McDonaldization of the Church' by John Drane, p.104)

little sailing boat(s)

by llewellyn

time to celebrate

I am still having to learn (or to accept!) that life goes up and down, seasons change, we cry, we laugh, we lose, we find. When you're in one season sometimes it's so hard to imagine life being any different - whether that's good or bad. This week, anyways, I am celebrating. Aware that next week i might feel once again that the sky is falling. But that is not today. and today there is much to be thankful for. My sister was given an offer for medical school. Woo! So Proud! Some friends at church have been given legal permission to adopt and by the end of the month they will have a son and another precious person will be added to our church family. Oh, and i am so grateful to be a part of that family of simultaneously very ordinary and fantastically extraordinary individuals who express truth and life and love in a thousand unique ways. Which leads me to something else i am overwhelmingly thankful for. and that's FRIENDS. oh what a great invention! phone calls and cups of tea and long chats over dinner and late night tired-slightly-surreal-conversations and hugs and honesty. i am rich beyond measure in terms of the people's whose paths have crossed with mine, regardless of whether we are walking side by side right at this moment. And i am celebrating with those who over the last few weeks and months are discovering new levels of freedom, who are discovering who they were really created to be and daring to living it out and finding that they are enjoying it and suddenly realising how much they are loved. Praise to the One whose very words create; the author of life.

longing

"How lovely is your dwelling-place, O LORD Almighty!
My soul yearns, even faints,
for the courts of the LORD;
my heart and flesh cry out for the living God"
Psalm 84:1-2