god

is this result of a corporate makeover for the Catholic Church ? Management speak has converted congregation confessional boxes in to ‘client admission centres’.

kezia likes to do the sound check for the piano when we are playing. she was given a microphone whilst she was playing today but she shooed it away, preferring to concentrate on the accompaniament rather than singing.

here is a not very brilliant picture of a clock outside a funeral directors. it’s constantly reminding us that our time on this planet is very much finite and time is ticking by.
funeral shops are funny old places. they never really get to meet their clients properly.

i just popped out to the sandwich shop to get my lunch and i popped in to the newsagents to get the chocolate element of my lunch. the conversation went like this:
me:[after looking at the chocolate for a while] there sure is a dazzling array of confectionary available for the modern man
newsagent: yes, too much if you ask me. people still want more and aren’t happy with what we’ve got
me: yes, that’s because chocolate can’t satisfy the soul
the newsagent then stared at me like i was completely mad. i took my queue and left.

A good few years back there were lots of campaigns to ‘keep sunday special’. the basic concept was that we should all have one day a week where we enjoy each other’s company and think about and ejoy life stuff rather shopping.
needless to say the world of shopping won and many shops in the UK are open on Sundays albeit with reduced opening hours.
10 years later, John Lewis have just caught up. their balloons in their Oxford Street window declare they are open every day, especially sundays.
my local john lewis is open on a sunday but shuts on a monday instead just to confuse everyone.
yeah for the world of retail.

easter has arrived already. here are a load of chicks in a shop window. they’ll be fully grown chickens by easter day.
bank holiday wise, in the UK you get as many holiday days for Easter as you do for Christmas. God-wise, Easter is as important, if not more so than Christmas.
Shopping wise, Christmas wins hands down (with the probably exception of chocolate). Meanwhile, let’s enjoy lent.

a friend sent me a spam which linked to this site. it’s a lovely idea. the ministry in a box concept is nice too.
disclaimer: This site has nothing to do with me and i would highly recommend you don’t get ordained. any distater or general badness resulting from your ordination via this route is not my fault. ok ?
Be Ordained Now

can you guess what i’ve given up for lent ? i’ve even surprised myself with the randomness of this plan
UPDATE (also redated to reposition it)
here is the item i have snubbed:

jane (my wife) said “it’s just a stupid idea. there’s no point. why are you doing it”.
i said “it’s good to have a challenge”.
and she said “well, i think it’s just stupid”.

we had a music practice at church last night. the pathway lights made some great grave shadows. here’s one.

here is liz. she had her birthday party today and we were invited. liz goes to the church we went to before we moved house. so it was great to see her and a number of other families with little children who we hadn’t seen for ages.
i know i’ve said this before, but i’m really looking forward to heaven. it’s going to be so cool to meet up with christian friends we’ve known throughout our lives (and billions others !).
once again i’ve managed to change the topic from happy stuff to death. but you see where i’m coming from i think.

there’s a thing on every sunday in february in reading called 5:14 and it’s run by Reading Vineyard church. it’s most excellent.
the band contained a couple of friends and a singer called suzie.

here is an interesting link to a thing to amuse you for a few seconds (needs sound). probably only makes sense to british viewers.

the devil might be in the detail, but Jesus is on the sugar.
here is the sugar sachets in a regular cafe we went to today. they are by “Kingdom Coffee International” and contain a Bible verse.
this reminded me of my plan for ‘litter evangelism’ which involved throwing leaflets explaining about Jesus all over the street so that people might pick them up and read them. this concept remains untested.
i also had a plan for ‘whistle evangelism’ which involed whistling well known christian songs to subliminally influence members of the public in to believing the truth about Jesus. this wasn’t very successful as not many people know christian songs these days.

here’s a poignent (pungent?) thing. it’s a tramp asleep in a door way on Oxford Street. There’s a fair amount of them about in london so nothing new there.
but i was struck by the writing in the shop window. was it referring to his life expectancy which he’s been daily reducing from 1 week only to last day.
has he read what his life expectancy is or is he carrying on regardless ?
furthermore, this person has got nothing except a sleeping bag. yet the sign above his feet says ‘or less’.

i was thinking – imagine we all had little counters at home which showed how long we had to live. that would certainly focus my mind …

esther and kezia helped us load in the guitars this morning.
it was also the debut of nu:generation, the young people’s band. we had two singers, 3 blowy instruments (not sure what they were!), piano, guitar and drums. jane and i joined in on guitar and bass. they had style and volume. a great combination

one thing i’m looking forward to about being dead is the fact that there is probably going to be lots of parties in heaven. we decided to have a smaller scale party at our house last night for all the people who help out with the music, overhead projector (for the words) and sound stuff at church.
there were around 20 people (i think) including spouses. Here are some of them:


and here is ian and Big Eye tony:

i went to All Souls this lunchtime. The question was ‘How good do you have to be to get in to Heaven’.
The answer was that there’s nothing you can do morally or spiritually to make ourselves perfect enough to meet the entry requirements, so as human beings alone, we’re stuffed which is a shame. and that’s where Jesus fits in to the story.
You can listen to the services here. Life makes (more) sense when you’ve got an eye on the end game. otherwise, what’s the point ?

it was our church carol service this evening. i think it all went very well. the thing i got from the service was how christmas is all about life (ie jesus coming to earth as a baby), but is actually more about the important question of what happens when you die.
here is tony who made all the mulled wine. or was that the mule-ed wine. or the mull(et) wine ?