Unfortunately my current bag (the male version of the one above) has broke.
I need a new bag.

I like this one from these guys Scaramanga
It is big enough for an iPad (not that I have one. but it will take a decent sized book or two and is the right size for how I use my bag. it may even be too Big!

The main complication to this straight forward purchasing strategy is my adoption of cycling as my go to activity.
Given the Scottish weather it is appropriate, perhaps necessary, to carry a change of clothes when you cycle places for a meeting, hence I would like to avail myself of this bag…

from the ever popular Howies

But you know me. It might take a while to decide!

fell free to leave a comment, telling me about your favourite or current bag, extolling its virtues and foibles.

buy something in the auction – it could be yours!

Solas Festival is an arts festival I volunteer with. We exist at the sharp of of the Arts, Justice and Faith. We are a small fledgling but beautiful festival full of music, poetry, stuff to make you think, things to do and amazing things to see.

We are a small independent charity which runs and makes the festival happen. We have no big sponsors, we fund ourselves primarily with generous sponsors such as Christian Aid, Iona Community and Greenbelt Festival, a small but wonderful group of people who see what we do, like what we are doing and give money generously, monthly or yearly. (for this we grant them sainthood and call them our Solas Saints.) Other than that it is mostly money from ticket sale which sustains us and pays for the best small festival in Scotland.

This year we have been able to get funding from Creative Scotland. no mean feat given their reduced budgets and the amount of people who apply, while this gives validation of our position as a quality event, and allows for some very nice things on the programme.

You can help us,
buy a ticket – it is a great weekend at the end of June
become a saint – give a monthly or annual amount of money
buy something in the auction – it could be yours!

I missed entering @VBrich’s prediction tournament for the African Cup of Nations this year. the cup which happens every two years, unless they decide to have it every year (like next year.) Given this lack of competition i have been following like the competition loosely.

Performance of the tournament so far has come for Sudan.
a country which has been war torn for decades, fighting with itself and its neighbours, currently existing under a Military Coup d’état. Worse still they ware ranked at 120 in the world. (That’s not good) Earlier this week, they qualified out of the group. Beating Angola (85 in the world) and Burkina Faso (66 in the world).

The team are young (average squad age of 23. Everyone of the players run currently play their football in Sudan. The Sudan national football league is a good league. They are playing together as a team, growing together as a team, working to make the team successful again.

Could this be the model for the Scottish national football team to follow.
Risk it all by picking a young team.
Sticking with them for 5-10 years.
Make it a requirement to be playing in the Scottish league to play for Scotland.

success
We couldn’t.
As fans we demand success, why else do so many thousand people from Scotland, Ireland & England travel to Ibrox/Parkhead every week. Success can be bought for a £600 season ticket.
But success is kind hollow in this way. Without quality competition sporting success is, well, meaningless.

I guess that’s why I fell out of love with big team football. Yeah sure i keep up to date, but I have no reason logically to support a big team. I need a small team.
the last three football games I went to within Scotland were Partick Thistle and Ross County.

fame
The appealing part of the Sudan story is the ‘journey’. Journey is an metaphor familiar to everyone who watches talent shows on the TV. Paul Potts or Susan Boyle probably being the best examples. I wonder about the story of David Sneddon or Michelle McManus. given the journey they went on, then were dropped. the journey was not enough. Constant ongoing success was all we were interested in.

Maybe journey isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
But with stories like that of Sudan this year, football maybe redeemed.

oh and heres a video of why we watch African football

Intro: Been thinking about worship quite a lot since Deep Impact 2012. Partly because i realised it reminds me of spring harvest 20 odd years ago. Partly because it challenged me in an unexpected way. These thoughts are rawish & unexplored. probably containing badly made points so feel free to ignore them. They come with a little experience of standing in pews, worship services and events, and some of organising and leading worship in a few contexts.

what is worship?
worship is time spent noticing God.
It can be done privately or corporately
Private worship it can include personal bible study and prayer times.
Corporately it can include liturgical action such as praising, thanking, invoking, confessing, proclaiming, interceding, and blessing

Worship within an congregational setting is not a private event.
Obvious right? If you gather with a group of other people, the relationship is public.

I do wonder about the individualism of worship. Particularly within songs, songs which refer to ‘I’ or ‘me’ and my relationship to a God. This can be helpful in songs of intimacy and praise, hymns and prayers of lament and confession.
Does this creates a false understanding of the privacy and intimacy of that moment. If I consider that during a public time it is actually a safe environment to have one on one time with God, how does that regard and speak of the others within the church?
The oft quoted ‘where two and three and gathered’ provokes the question about how God deals with each person within that. this questions has some momentum when each member of that group could be worshiping privately and individually while part of the whole.

Privacy
When we gather for worship, we gather.

We.

We bring our experiences, reflections, happiness and sadness and join together. That joining to notice God can mean different thing to different people but we do things together. Inherent in this is a public notice and reaction. If i do something in a congregation there is an expectation that people will notice and and expectation of a reaction. a smile, a nod, a frown, perhaps a stolen moment of commentary. That is part of a group coming to notice God. The reality that we can notice God in each other.

When David danced in front of God. He did it publicly, literally in front of everyone, (leading the soldiers back from battle). And others started joining in. The story goes that one of his wives looked out the window and saw him and was shocked, catching him later and asking about his actions.

When we join together, we are public. We are deliberately not private. Our gatherings are hopefully advertised, inviting people into churches to be with us. We look for critical engagement with those who have not joined with us.

Privacy is a hot topic with the CCTV, interweb, human rights and personal safety issues involved in the discussion. But privacy in a large gathered group is much harder to contend with. What does this mean for those whose job it is to lead a group in worship. it means our outlook and focus should be on the appropriateness of action within our gatherings for our culture, for how each action helps us notice god, & how we can notice God in a way which causes us to think & play.

Social Media
It would be easy to point to Social Media as something which disrupts our ability to notice God. It is endless and constant in the demands it makes our our time and our skills. With blogs to read (yes, Irony), RSS feeds to check, twitter to update, Facebook to update, thinks to re-tweet, like and comment on. Taking time to notice God seems entirely counter cultural.

For years Christianity especially has dealt in social media. First Communion Cards, Footprints book markers, entire shops of books and things to communicate publicly. With the advent of mass recording, Conferences & Festivals have recorded talks and concerts and sold them to those present and those absent, right up to and including dedicated radio and TV stations across the UK.

The problem comes with the speed of current social media. Twitter expects updates within seconds of each other. Facebook, within minutes. With this speed comes a lack of control. Anyone can say anything, picture anything, and have shared it with millions of people within seconds. This is no possibility of editing the message.

This immediacy gives rise to fear. The real risk of a negative getting out is realistic. Yet social media has the ability to bring those absent physically, into worship. Enabling for joining in and enriching our noticing God. It allows for those opting out of the worship to engage with those within in. It allows for dialogue.

Public worship invites comment and social media provides one of the main ways currently to comment. As a force with the ability to instantly allow for the engagement of a large group of people, it is unbeatable. As a aid to our efforts to notice God in a corporate spaces it is a tool which feels under used, with this great possibilities

On Monday morning I woke around 4.20am it was cold and i got up to check my daughter was warm enough. I returned to bed as noted through my hazy sleep that the ladies on radio4/ the world service, were very fivelive-y. throwing to interviews, everything was pacy and punchy. I didn’t get the reason. I listened though and remembered them throwing live to Barack Obama in the white House, apparently, about Osama Bin Laden being dead. I listened hard. I heard the statement it struck me his delivery, his style, his authoritative voice, but his embodiment of the decision as his. I was impressed with his delivery of the news.

Over the last few years there has been two massive yet comparable terrorism decisions. One taken the other night by the American government and one taken by the Scottish Government. As I thought about the statement Obama made, the more I was disturbed by it. The more it seemed to jar with the the Statement of Kenny MacAskill.

Lokerbie Decision on the Scottish government website Vs text of Bin Laden decision from BBC website
I vs We
Obamas speech is peppered with reasoning residing firmly in the “I”, not the subject of the decision being taken ” i take the decision”, but in regarding the reasoning for the decisions,

“And so shortly after taking office, I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture of Bin Laden the top priority of our war against al-Qaeda, even as we continued our broader efforts to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat his network.”

Over the years, I’ve repeatedly made clear that we would take action within Pakistan if we knew where Bin Laden was. That is what we’ve done.

Now I understand there is an election coming up in America, and politically, President Obama can really kick start a campaign with news like this. It makes him look strong. makes him look determined and says to the conservative right (of the middle ground) that voting for him will get things done. But it really jarred with me.

When Kenny MacAskill gives the key reasoning. He talks of Scotland, what it is, what it can be and what it would like to be.I don’t regularly vote for the SNP, but i liked the Scotland I heard described. It was aspirational, no just for scotland, but for what justice was and how it could be carried out.

In Scotland, we are a people who pride ourselves on our humanity. It is viewed as a defining characteristic of Scotland and the Scottish people. The perpetration of an atrocity and outrage cannot and should not be a basis for losing sight of who we are, the values we seek to uphold, and the faith and beliefs by which we seek to live.

Our justice system demands that judgment be imposed but compassion be available. Our beliefs dictate that justice be served, but mercy be shown. Compassion and mercy are about upholding the beliefs that we seek to live by, remaining true to our values as a people. No matter the severity of the provocation or the atrocity perpetrated.

I like that i live in a country where our elected officials can made decisions based on what the country can be, should be, and is.
I like that justice can be aspirational. The Scotland Mr MacAskill described is the Scotland I believe in and want to live in.
I think on balance I like our approach better.

What a contrast between Obama’s inspirational “Yes we can”, campaign to become president and the presidential reality of shooting a wanted terrorist, in an secret operation in a foreign country, to get revenge.

Giving up crisps.
Reading a book.
Giving up all music I had heard before.
Eating less.
Giving up caffeine.
Giving up alcohol.
Publishing a record of my spending on the Internet.

And this year I am struggling to work out something appropriate.

Lent is the period of 40 days which build up to Easter Sunday. The key is that you give something up in order to prepare yourself for Easter.

Lent has never been a festival which I had marked but recently it has been something I have been thinking about.

This year I want to do something which marks that preparing and respect for Easter but also something which embodies the “slow” translation of lent as well.

Dunno what I will do but I look forward to trying.

This week’s new group is Beer’n'Bible

Yeah it is a mixture of Beer and Bible.

The first one is tonight at The Clydesdale Inn, Lanark, and hopefully we will have a few people who want to come along, have some bible things and some beer things. My aim is to have some space to question, discuss and work out things, if you believe nothing, everything or something.

Don’t know quite what to expect, just trying to work out a couple of format ideas depending on who turns up. What ever the outcome, it should be fun.

Work
I left a full time job for a mix of part time work, childcare and housework. That has worked well mostly. (my polishing still needs some work…)

Volunteering
I am a volunteer Director of Solas Festival and much of the 33rd year was taken up being site manager and licence holder for our first weekend event. It was busy and hectic, but also enjoyable within it’s hecticness. So good indeed we are doing it again this summer… (you should come.)

Developing
My main learning/thinking has been on the MSM course from Fresh Expressions.I ma enjoying it kind of. It is quite similar to work I have already done, but it is good to keep reminding yourself of good practice and how things can happen well.

Edges
Part of childcare has been transporting my children to swimming.
The boy can swim (kind of) and a huge step forward from being scared of water.
The girl goes to a baby and mother class, where I am the only male. (ditto the mother and toddler group).
I am quite conscious of being a man in that situation and my physical presence, and I wonder about how the woman feel about having a guy there.
It has been fun to be with my daughter though.

Weight
I went on a diet and from the 1st of September to the 25th of December, I managed to loose 3 stone exactly. Only 3 more to go.

Meetings
I enjoyed meeting up with some friends and having good chats. I think I should do more of this.

Reading
Didn’t do enough of this.

Listening
I really enjoyed the music of
The National’s ‘High Violet’
Shearwater’s ‘The Golden Archipelago’
Anais Mitchell’s ‘Hadestown’
plus The Innocence Missions achingly beautiful ‘My Room In The Trees’

I also enjoyed seeing live music close up at Solas 2010
The National
Fyfe Dangerfield
And looking to Hadestown at Celtic Connections on friday…
(now if only I could get access to that after show party!)

I really enjoyed doing the work for the Laconic Hegemony mix. Might do some more of this.

Home
I enjoyed getting the work done in the front room and playing at being foreman.
The double glazing has also been awesome.

In general
Year 33 has had downs as well as ups, but on balance the ups have it.
bring on 34. it can’t be that bad.
can it?

Anaïs Mitchell ‘Hadestown’ is definately in my top ten albums of 2010. I have just seen on the Celtic Conections website that they are putting on the album during the festival. with Anaïs Mitchell herself, Ani DiFranco and my friend Iain Morrison.

now that should be a concert worth seeing.
well done celtic connections.

tickets are here

PS
Seth Lakeman and Tom Jones are also great bookings!

Today was a snow day (no School or nursery) and I had fun with the children.

We played at home and went to the Lanark Loch to feed the swans.
The snow was deep and crunched under our feet.
The Loch was quite busy for a Thursday in December.
We took bread and decided to feed the ducks and the swans.

There was a broken piece of ice where the duck and swans were.
We parked and my son got out the car.
I handed him two bread bags with a couple of slice in each.
As I put together the push chair for the the girl.

“Look at the swan.”
I looked up as I put together the extremely well designed dutch pram.
A swan had wandered up the car and was marking his territory around our car.
I put the children around the other side of the car.
A second swan came round in a flanking manouvre.

Buy the time the girl was in the chair we had four swans chasing us across the car park.
I asked the boy for the bags of bread and put them in my jacket.
With the disappearance of the branded bags the swans backed off and lost interest in us.

We wandered the edge of the loch we saw swans dominating the space and walking around on the pathway.
We stopped about 10 meters away and started to throw some of the bread.
The swans took their time getting to us, but the ducks quickly realised and came in numbers.
Every time a swan got to close on land we walked on 20-30metres.

Until after 3-4stops we got rid of the branded bags.
the ducks wandered off and swans decided to stop following us after a while.

We wandered in the snow, free from the chains of swan consumerism.
Enjoying a snow day.