Sometimes something so simple comes along you have to share it.
Something so brilliant and making so much sense you need everyone to know it.

This is it.

wondering how to light hard to reach candles or many candles with one match?

Light candles with a dry spaghetti noodle.

my life is lightly more complete.

In an essay and book of the same title, Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity (1995), Marc Augé coined the phrase “non-place” to refer to places of transience that do not hold enough significance to be regarded as “places”. Examples of a non-place would be a motorway, a hotel room, an airport or a supermarket.

Supermarkets are the vacuous supporters of the space known as the heart of the community. It used to be churches, then became the village pub, now its the supermarket. But I think the notion of a ‘heart of the community’ has been diluted by our attempts to support it.

Slavoj Žižek makes the point that art used to be about beauty. then came modern art which kicked out beauty and in that space put a toilet. (literally). then as thing change and develop the thing inside the space has become less and less relevant as the fight is not to keep something of beauty within that space called art. anything in the space will do. What become of worth is putting anything in the space, in order to maintain the existence of the space.

Community and the idea of a communal space being the heart of the community has changed and developed as has our understanding/ideas of community. I think that nowadays the supermarkets with their community noticeboards, consistent back packing days and free glass hire for the local community, are perhaps the incarnation what happens after the toilet has been removed from the space.

I was in a supermarket last week, as I walked in and picked up a basket i saw an old man, probably late 80′s sitting in a fold up chair at the door. As I walked past I heard a snippit of conversation between him and a lady who worked there.
‘has your taxi still not come yet? that’s terrible.’
‘no can you check for me’
the lady put back a basket and walked back past him.
‘I’ll go and phone and check they’re on their way you just wait there.’
the man sat beside the door, facing in the shop out of the cold air.

I went and did my shop. On the way out I noticed the old man was still sitting at the door. I walked out the door and saw a taxi. I went and asked who he was due to meet. The taxi driver told me the name and I said I thought it was an older gentleman inside. ‘Wait for me, I will be back.’
I went in and asked if the old gentlemans’ name was… he said yes. I said time to get your taxi then.

He asked for a hand to stand. I offered him my arm.
He said no he would need more than that
I tried to lift him under one arm.
He didn’t move.
I put down my shopping next to his and tried to lift him under both arms.
He did move but I was doing all the work.
I got him nearly straight and attempted to let him go.
‘No I can’t stand yet.”
I continued until he was straight.
‘I can stand now.’
He joked I should have brought my wheel chair.

I offered to take his arm for the walk to the taxi. other shoppers paused to offer assistance, to move his shopping for us. I accepted the help.
The man tried to turn round, but having sat so long, his hip had frozen, moving his right leg would be tough.
He hobbled slowly towards the door, rejecting my help, and complaining about his lack of movement.

He kept moving slowly. the taxi driver came and took his bags to the car.
I noticed a member of staff following us. Slowly. Waiting for us to move.
As we passed by the shopping trolleys he took one and wandered off.
The driver returned and took over escorting the man to the car.
I got my shopping bag back and headed for my car.

Its left me wondering why that stayed with me.
Its left me wondering how we care in communal spaces.
Its left me wondering how we engage with each other when so much of what we call community hubs, are non-places.

I am not sure I have any answers.
but I have some questions, and for now, that is enough.

You know i have never thought about that. The boy is amazing.

SO Google has amalgamated 70 privacy policies for various free tools online into one policy.
that makes things much easier right? Been thinking about privacy, about how much info we want anywhere about us. As i was thinking about this, the UK government announced plans to be able to monitor the calls, emails, texts and website visits of everyone in the UK. Internet firms will be required to give intelligence agency GCHQ access to communications on demand, in real time.

I am very conscious of leaving a physical trail. I am aware my car is quite unnoticeable, but someone who had seen it a couple of times and knew where I liked to park could find me reasonably easily, if they thought about it.

I try and pay with cash when I can. It allows me to actually feel the money leaving my hands and makes real the amount being spend. It also means I spend less.

In physical life it’s kinda easy, yet on the Internet people actively try to find out all about you.
If you are reading my blog, My blog keeps a small record of some of your data. It then reports to me, things about
: your computer – your browser, your screen resolution, what operating system you use.
: your behaviour – how you came to my site, what you read, how long you spend here, what links you click.
: your location – where in the world you are when you read my blog, your ip address.
Thinking about it I dislike this level of information, I am uncomfortable with having it and as such I will disable that before I publish this post.

The point is if this is how much information I can have about you without trying to actively track you, how much do we give away to major companies for free? I have a reward card for several shops, at a basic level they give me “rewards” while I give them information which can be used to sell me more stuff, or perhaps be sold to other companies.

The recent story about the supermarket target in the US developing a system to observe the buying changes around when a lady was pregnant, and send appropriate vouchers, seems good work. When these arrived before the lady had told close family, well that’s a bit of an issue.

The data protection act protects us for records on computers under uk law. There is a big questions about how we engage with data being kept outwith UK law, I wonder about the amount of information that is available and how we control our own data in foreign countries. I think this new government seems at best misguided, at worst, a serious risk to the idea of security. Especially given the current process is (to my very basic understanding) similar to the process of getting a warrant to search your house.

I don’t think the Internet needs regulated. But companies do need regulated. Sharp business practice on wall street or the city of London is legislated against (or more accurately should be), it is monitored and where necessary compliance is necessitated.

I think companies virtual presences should be monitored and compliance thought where they are out of line. Facebook has 900 million users. By owning the data on Facebook, (Yes they own ‘your’ data), analyzing it, and then selling it to advertisers, Mark Zuckerberg is an 18 times billionaire.

Iain Bell in the Sunday Herld neatly sums up how i am feeling about all this in an excellently written piece.
“This begins to look like capitalism’s next phase, achieved with the willing co-operation – the uninhibited enthusiasm – of the masses while governments hitch a ride. Partly it’s conditioning: see how the queues form whenever Apple punts a new toy. Partly it’s technological drift: try to work without access to email. The largest part of it, though, is something new. It is the belief that nothing personal matters enough to be worth protecting.
…
Privacy is identity. In my (non-Face) book, the private person is the person you truly are. Give that away, daily and nightly – give it away to a corporation or a government, indeed – and you disappear into the collective, beloved of SF writers. We needn’t resort to fiction, though. The plain phrase “my business” sums it up. But I think I am being outvoted, and outvoted overwhelmingly.”

Don’t know, but is really sits uneasily with me.

The questions abide.

I am thinking of reviving the tradition of touring Youth groups in churches, making young people listen to music played backwards and then telling them it is of the devil.I remember several people coming various places and doing this for our benefit.
It was bonkers.

the guy (it was all men), would come with a record player, and a bunch of records. It would take about an hour of our time informing us of three main things.
1- some records played backwards sound like they are extolling us listeners to worship satan, or smoke marijuana.
2- some records like ‘Lets get phyiscal’ are really about sex. (S-express above if you put the dash in a different place is Sex-press!!!)
3- Some art work on gatefold sleves contains imagery which is deliberately satanic or idolatrous.

the main problem i had with all this was they guy had all the stuff to show us, thus exposing us to the satanic symbols, they had no problem with letting us hear the backwards record in a church building. (No really, they brought portable record players to the church to play it backwards to us.)
Surely if it was this dangerous, we shouldn’t it be hearing it, let alone doing it in church.

But in general I wonder if it is really a good excuse to buy lots of music and get the church to pay for it.
The certainty involved from the person speaking about something like this is quite stunning.
I saw the S-Express video today and i remembered the sex-press thing and it did have an effect. I am unsure why though, something did happen.

So Yeah I think i should bring it back.
Feel free to email me to book me!

1 location
Good venue

The market place was in a good space and the big tables worked well for meals.

The Food was ok.
No coffee after meals seemed strange for a hotel.

Some of the workshop rooms were too small for workshops they hosted.

2 programme
Mixed
The physical programme looked good, perhaps it could be printed on glossy paper?

Ceildh/pub quiz - missed the pub quiz. Not sure it worked.

Optional worship times
Good/fine.
Seemed (understandably) constrained by venue restrictions,

Morning prayers sat am
Informal to the point of seeming unprepared. Took a slightly bizarre turn with invitation to confession of secret sins or headaches part.
In general fine

Rural youthwork workshop
Good/Fine
Some useful questions

Zoo
Best bit of the weekend.

Main sessions sat am,pm sun am
Key note Speaker spoke entertainingly and told nice stories. Not sure his message actually fitted into what the weekend needed to say to the audience.
The band musically were fine, although they only reflected one way of worship.

3 Scottishness
Good to see that workshops were mostly run by Scottish based youth workers but I think my main reflection was the conference didn't feel particularly Scottish. Deep Impact is marketed as Scotland's national youthwork conference, but I felt it lacked a distinct Scottish voice. If it was there which it may have been, I couldn't find it.
The worship sessions seemed to be based on a vineyard churches model of worship, (Californian 70's Jesus people).
The speaker was English and all his examples were English, entertaining and fun but English.
Is there a distinctively Scottish model of worship which could be used? What would that look like?

4 Development
I wonder how different the programme was in form and structure from the first deep impact? Not too much from my hazy recollection. I wonder if there is scope for a radical rethink and reorganising of the programme.
I may have missed it, but there seemed a lack of edge to the conference which is the raison d'être of youthwork?

the weekend conference seemed to go well, and people seemed to enjoy it. I enjoyed parts of it as well and hope this feedback can help the consideration and planning of the group who organise the next one.

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

So the boss of RBS has been awards a bonus of about £963000, in shares. And people are annoyed. Outraged actually. How can it possibly be right that these rich bankers get big bonuses?

I am not sure I share the outrage his bonus payment. In three points

1-
It’s in his contract. He has a good contract and is being rewarded in the way that the company said they would reward him if he hit certain targets.
Well done on exceeding at you job. You are worth this bonus (down £1m on last year)

2
£963000 worth of shares in RBS? Surely that’s part of the John Lewis style economy which the deputy prime minister was chatting about. (not the greatest idea nicks had.)

No seriously, the sum of £963000 is not that much money. (within the context of banking). Last year RBS paid in total around £1billion in bonuses to employees. In 2010 Lloyds Bank paid out £5-6billion in bonuses. The Guardian reported that, in 2010 RBS have spent $4.13million on US government lobbyists. Given these large figures the Chief Exec getting £963000 seems a small figure. I’d rather give the money to the Chief Exec than pay for US Lobbyists.

Within the general UK context of people getting pay freezes and rising unemployment this is an excessive figure. It seems outlandish that one human is worth so much money. Yet the question is why do we have this moral outrage against one banker when TV personalities, footballers and film stars all will earn more than this amount this year?

Wayne Rooney is reportedly paid £250000 per week. His bonus for running the bank is about 8.3% of Wayne Rooney’s income. Is that Fair?

3
Without some sort of root an branch reform of our reliance on the financial sector, you have congratulate the banks on playing the game well and winning that battle.

Politically the war cannot be won unless the UK can get itself reliant on something’s other than the financial and service sectors.
Without this we are over a barrel and even though we don’t like it. The banks will act with impunity. As they know the UK is reliant upon them, yet they can move as the ‘business case’ makes itself.

I don’t like it but given the things above…I am not sure I can join the moral outrage about it. Instead of outrage I took action, I moved banks to one I thought I would act in a more just way.

First Minister Alex Salmond at the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh today outlined detailed proposals for the referendum in autumn 2014 on whether Scotland should be an independent country.

With under 1000 days until the referendum I should I suppose, start thinking about it.
My starting point is this…

Scotland has no barriers to being able to govern itself.
Scotland has the resources to be an independent country.

Scotland and the rest of the UK have done well together for the last few years.
Scotland the rest of the UK have grown together in an reasonably organic way allowing for each other to challenge and encourage each other.

I don’t think ‘devolution max’ is really worthwhile, a halfway house is not satisfactory to anyone. If we allow 16&17 year olds to vote, I think we have to open it up to every man, woman and child in the whole of Scotland.

Without a legally binding outcome what is the point?

My own position is…
Change can be good. Things will change. Change is not always to be desired. For me Scotland is a country which has retained a distinct identity from within the UK.

I haven’t seen a really convincing argument that independence is a change to be desired.
The current situation we have is very good for both Scotland and the rest of the UK

I look at the £13 million decrease our local regional council has had to its budget. And ask if I would prefer to live in Scotland with higher taxes and the regional council perhaps having an increase in budget or have council tax held where it is and council services reduced.

I don’t know quite how I feel about that. I guess I have 1000 days or so to work it out.

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