Thanks David for publicising my ramblings.
Like RevRuth, I find the blog stats page offered by WordPress very interesting and my hits went through the roof yesterday.
I do feel sorry for the person who googled “youth and loincloth” and found my blog. So here’s a gratuitous picture, just so that person is not disappointed!
I am still subscribed to job alerts on s1jobs.com from my old role and each time one appears in my inbox, as it did this morning, I can’t resist a wee look. Lots of money for doing easy stuff.
What makes it easy? For me, I think it is dealing with data, words, statistics, policies, strategy rather than people, feelings and faith. The second is personal. The first is not.
In my old job you could have long running battles with people about things, but nobody took it personally. It was just work. And you could laugh about it over lunch.
In church and children’s work it is personal. It involves your beliefs and those of others; nobody is necessarily right or wrong. And that to me is a big challenge.
I’m reminded of the children’s poem “There was a little girl who had a little curl”… when it was good it was very, very good and when it was bad it was horrid!
While grubbing around in the huge sand pit “Bones and Stones” at the Almond Valley Heritage Centre this afternoon with my 2 children, my 3 year old asked me about the full size model skeleton that somebody had dug up.
I though it would be a good chance to try and have another go at the ”death chat” with him. Mainly because we are heading to Cambridge in a couple of weeks time for the burial of my grandmother’s ashes and I know there will be lots of question then, and I’d like him to be a little bit aware of what is going on.
It seemed to be going well; he understood that people died when they were very old or very ill. And that a skeleton was their body that they didn’t need any more. And that sometimes this gets turned to ash or powder.
He also then explained to me in a matter of fact manner that when it was dark, the skeletons would wake up and give people a fright cos the green group lady at nursery had read them a story about it all.
Aaagh!! At least he didn’t seem worried or disturbed by any of these thoughts!
In this life we all have good days and bad days. Yesterday was not one of my better ones. It was one of those rare days when I went out of church feeling worse than when I had gone in, having unwittingly managed to offend a couple of people.
My husband sent me off in the evening to an ecumenical service to “try again”. When you are bi-lingual there is always the opportunity to say the wrong thing. The fact that he struggles between ‘ecumenical’ and ‘economical’ is forgiveable and I like envisaging what an economical service would comprise. Tesco value wine? Playing the organ with one finger? The other two words he has confused with much worse social consequences are “obesity” and “beastiality”. It still makes me cringe to think about the deafening silence created in a conversation… I’ve also had my moments when speaking German and unwittingly told my mother in law the equivalent of “shut the f*ck up” rather than “please don’t say that”.
But then yesterday afternoon, I think I got to the ‘bottom’ of my bad day.
I’d put my pants on back to front.
Well, our introductory session for the Core skills for children’s work course went really well today.
People all turned up (which is amazing!) and had so much to share. It was good just to get a dozen people together to talk about issues in working with children in church and realise we’re all in the same boat.
Next time I think we’ll need to do some running around or wild dancing, as the cathedral chapterhouse was pretty chilly for just sitting around in!
I’ve been doing some preparation for a training course I am co-leading tomorrow. Part of the course that I am doing is on children and their culture. So the shelves in Tesco are empty of trashy teenage magazines and I have been reading up Teen Vogue, More, Mizz, Girl Talk…
Blimey, I’d forgotten how explicit these magazines can be considering they are generally read by a younger audience than you’d expect based on the content. And then there are the Cbeebies ones, where the kids want them for the cheap toy on the cover and they can’t read themselves yet anyway. Not much availbale for boys - I did pick up Power Rangers but lost interest pretty quickly as I couldn’t find the ‘position of the week’!!
Now all I have to do is get the curry stain out of my white tablecloth that I offered for covering the table for the closing worship!
If there are any bi-lingual 20-35 year olds out there in the SEC who happen to be free from the 9th July - 9th August, there is a great opportunity to apply for the chance to represent Scotland as a steward at the Lambeth Conference.
Drop me a note for further details (closing date is 28th February 2008). I’ll put more info on www.edyouth.org once I overcome a techy server issue!!
On the way to nursery this morning, a white van man drove past us looking a bit lost. My 3 year old announced in a matter of fact manner - “That man is a bit fat, Mummy. He ate too much cake”.
Oh, the chances of mortification are high at this age!! And there are several ‘larger ladies’ at our church who may get the same comment.
I decided to play it cool and simply agree with him, as I thought if I went into a whole discussion about what to say and what not to say, he then has ammunition to embarass me further!!
Just back from a lovely couple of days at Crieff Hydro to celebrate my husband’s 40th. A wonderful place for families to relax and do things together. And great to have no cooking, cleaning or washing to do.
Until you get home again!
I am currently reading “The Bookseller of Kabul” by Asne Seierstad and it is fascinating. I am one of those people who is incredibly ignorant of the detail behind the various conflicts in the world, but this true human story has brought some of the aspects of recent Afghan politics to life.
Did you know that when the Taliban stormed Kabul in 1996 they made 16 decrees? If you had 16 rules to live your life by, would you expect them to include: prohibition against kite flying, against drum playing and against the rearing of pigeons? I think it makes the 10 commandments look very sensible.
I wish I understood more politics, but whenever I try and watch the news in detail it goes in one ear and out the other and half the time I end up unsure who the goodies and the baddies are.
Maybe it should be a late new year resolution to make myself better informed.
