I didn’t get online yesterday, as I was bobbing around Winchester, and checking out the Christmas Markets, taking time to stop off at #WinchesterWaits. Meantime, this note from Brian:
Don’t forget, too, to make space this weekend to stop, relax, breathe and smile. If you find yourself at the shops, practice this somewhere busy, and notice what happens within you.
Interesting thoughts from Ron Glusenkamp – that Advent can be a season for spiritual U-turns, as we stop running away and head towards God… as we crash and burn without God… after some of the conversations that were inevitable whilst in Winchester (are you coming back? being the most frequent one) I still feel that I’m where God wants me to be, though it’s not always easy!
Maggi Dawn’s Beginnings and Endings also deals with a journey – a nomadic journey without any clear ending. For Isaac and his people “Their job was to pick up the vision, carry it on and then hand it over to the next generation.” Something which we may have to accept in a culture which threatens to subsume us.
Isaac might be able to teach us something here. He didn’t pick a fight with the surrounding culture, but neither did he allow it to subsume him. He continued to dig in all the places his father had taught him until he found a place that he could peacefully occupy, a place that his hostile neighbours did not steal from him.
Following on from yesterday, we get the sense of building upon the strong lessons from the past, rather than a feeling that we need to start from scratch (and I definitely feel that with the digital spaces) as we hold onto God’s promises. I also really like the idea that there is room in the world for those who have different points of view – and that we can disagree without becoming combative (oh, if only we could see more of this online!)
There’s a great challenge from @briandraper today – to stop trying to capture everything that is around us (through a camera) lens and just BE a part of something! That was certainly something that several of the exhibits at Lumber encouraged recently – especially within the Cathedral with “fireflies” – one just had to sit in a pew and be there!
I’m trying to find the new video that’s been on TV, but it doesn’t appear to be on YouTube (or I’m not putting in the right search terms), but I found this old one, which also stuck in my mind:
If you have the right to vote, do it… even if you’re not quite sure who to vote for!
A lunchtime event ‘Space in the City’, held at URC Winchester (12.30, for “27 minutes”):
Sarah, who’s behind the @WinchesterCity Twitter account, is always prompt and helpful in responding to Tweets. Last year I tried to report a dangerous path near me, uneven, with at least 2/4 lights not working, to fixmystreet. Because it’s a pedestrian walkway, rather than a road, they couldn’t get a GPS fix, so asked me to let me know the numbers on the posts… well, I can’t see them, as I only use that path in the dark, and it’s dark because half the lights don’t work… I tried to send an email describing which roads it was between, but this was a real case of ‘the computer says no’. WinchesterCity tried to help… the other week it’s was finally bright when I walked down (I’ll stop getting the bus now, so won’t walk past again)… so I have sent it back into the system…
