WE HAVE MOVED

We havemoved house, jobs, towns, counties, years...etc.

So has our Blog. Ah- times change.

So this country life, this happy narrowboat, this sort of qite niceparidise,

thisOtherEden can be found HERE

(whilst it finds a permanent home)

Give peace a fighting chance

HI all,

Worst thing to happen to a blogger is the computer crashing after composing a sensationally interesting and grondbreaking blog but before it has been saved and posted. Most of that just happened to me!

Anyways, I was busy telling of a great New Year and Christmas. Spent NY with ROb, Polly, Johno and Sophie in W. Cardiff and did a wee bit of walking and kite flying/ leaping tin the torrential squal. Emma and Sophie got waylaid/ lost and had quite a mini- adventure.

Best pressies were the Live TRax 18cd set that Emma gave me from the Dave MAttHEWS BAND. Close behind were M&S slippers, Progressive Patriot book by Billy Bragg and the Garden State Soundtrack.

Also reading at the moment John Snow's BRILLIANT autobiography Shooting History- easy to read, fast paced and he has been and seen everywhere/ thing/ one from the first English language interview with the Pope to the Berlin Wall's demise, from behind the Sandanistra and Muchacho's front lines to the Oval office for four decades. The son of the Bishop of Witney, he sung in a Cathedral Choir, got kicked out of Uni and started out as a Settlement Manager in Soho working with addicts.

Life on the Cherwell is good still but cold and muddy. Mud, dirt and Mud. And more mud.

There are signs that the big turn, as I call it, is on the way. Our neigbours are all up and about working, clearing trees and undergrowth and hatching plans for this and that. We are thinking about a couple of chickens of our own to get a stead supply of cheap eggs to eat and barter. (or butter our city living friends up with)! Our garlic and winter peas are up and out of the earth climbing lithe and green to about 4 beautiful inches under their cloches. Elsewhere the foraging chickens are getting a startle as bulbs of all kinds make their first escape, like moles, from the muddy earth to peak p, welcome signs that Winter won't last forever.


Visited this farmyard this morning to collect hay for the dairy cows with Jane and was amazed by the beef herd and sheep, who are due to lamb in 9 weeks only!! The yard was ramshackled and fascinating and nearby we walked to an old church in Hampton- Gay next to an abandoned manor house, now in ruins since the enclosure's act. The countryside around here seems to breathe history and community.

Emma's work continues to be well and I have enjoyed me first of days at FOR. My colleagues are mostly quakers and seem to be all activists- one of them having served nine months in the nick for opposing arms expansion....pretty impressive committment. I have been making advertising and funding material under my catchy new slogan: "

Give peace a fighting chance"!

Any thoughts? Well- we'll post soon and get some pics up when we get a new camera. Getting some fun ideas about what to do next and with my spare two days a week!

HAPPY CHRISTMAS ONE AND ALL

we went to see WIcked last night, and it was great. Then to Smolenskys on the Strand by Rickshaw. Today at Mill Lane Farm and then off to Woking and Guidlford for Christmas!

HAPPY CHRISTMAS ONE AND ALL

With three pages of 'christmas' google images before you get to any religious pictures at all share these thoughts from Revd Tom Cuthrell of St. Cuthbert's, Edinburgh. They give a fresh outlook on God's gift.

'In a very real sense the birth of every child is a small protest against the tired, cynical view that there is nothing new under the sun, that we are condemned to a future which only repeats the stupidities of the past. Moreover, the birth of Jesus is God's heartfelt protest against letting things be, abandoning people to their own devices, leaving people to fall back on the threadbare poverty of their own resources. Jesus is the saving, dynamic help of God among us; he is the one Word on God's telegram of hope'

Results

Puma 1- 0 MGB GT

MGB GT

footprint

TAKE the test CATEGORY GLOBAL HECTARES FOOD 0.7 MOBILITY 0.3 SHELTER 0.2 GOODS/SERVICES 0.3 TOTAL FOOTPRINT 1.5
	IN COMPARISON, THE AVERAGE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT IN YOUR COUNTRY IS 5.3 GLOBAL HECTARES PER PERSON. WORLDWIDE, THERE EXIST 1.8 BIOLOGICALLY PRODUCTIVE GLOBAL HECTARES PER PERSON.
	IF EVERYONE LIVED LIKE YOU, WE WOULD NEED 1.0 PLANETS.

Take the test at this site

Mud
Every day for the last week has brought mud, mud and mud- it gets everywhere! And since our old peugot 306 has bought it at last- head gasket blown- we haven't been able to get into town to pick up our washing. i was down to one pair of trousers and they were thoroughly plastered!!

We're going to look at a couple of cars this weekend so let us know your opinions!!

Ford Puma

MGB

That is my fave!

On another note. Interesting story about James Dobson making an ass of himself
ex-gay proof cherry picked

Advent

The C of E have produced a fab online Advent Calendar with lots of potential and promise........go enjoy!
Cheers Rev.

Andy

TallSkinnyKiwi@ hOME

What their talking about in our new church community- home

CLICK HERE FOR PODCAST


read andrew jones blog at

www.tallskinnykiwi.com

Sword drill? Ghandian style?

Hiya,

Just had a good skype conversation with Javi in Wamena, West Papua and we have been talkeing about the church and its role in social development. What some ave called transformational development. Making cSome thoughts I had starting from the familiar UK questions of "What is our christian distinctiveness or how do personal salvation and social transformation go together what has salvation got to do with society and many more similar..... It starts with an assertion that lots of people can hope to express....

Since we do try to believe that our relationship with God of the Bible HAS got something to do with restoring just political, social and economic relationships among people, (and vice versa), it could be that a Christ-centred community development work would focus development on communal prayer and scripture, “not so much in a doctrinal mode but rather as a text on transformational development”. Going back to a belief that Jesus way works best for our community and us for change and re-creation has got to lead us to the answer! But we need to allow our Christianity to live in our work in a new and living way.

As an aside- it would be a worry to simply secularise since we have no reason to believe that secular development won’t end up as screwed up as the rest of society, (60% divorce in Guildford for e.g.). Perhaps the holistic participation of scripture and spirituality in our work would help avoid the problem Thomas Merton describes:

“He who attempts to act…without deepening his own self-understanding , freedom, integrity and capacity to love, will not have anything to give others. He will contribute only of his own obsessions, ego-centred anxieties, delusions about ends and means, ideas… etc”

In our context the use of scripture would be anything other than self-justifying- (‘baptising our own ideas after the event’). Community reading of Scripture can be for us the mediator of the creative power of God that is our true distinctive. In order to do this we must believe that Scripture is primarily:

Addressed to the community- not the individual

About all spheres of life – not just the personal

Primarily about this world- not just the spiritual

Written from the divine point of view, and the view of the poorest.

You shall have the trumpet sounded loud ... You shall hallow the fiftieth year ... You shall proclaim liberty throughout the land .... It shall be a jubilee for you.

We must set it free from the strictures of the sermon to invade the rest of our church life, culture and organising. A couple of suggested methods for using scripture are ‘Seven Steps’ and ‘Scripture Search’ as discussed in Myer's Walking with the poor and working with the poor. They both involve the church and/or community members using the Bible as a text on development and transformation with a powerful vision of the world. Through discovering God’s ways in relation to specific issues and problems of living in the midst of action we will become more convinced and experience conciousisation or conversion. Such a deep rooted consciousising may form the bases of new liturgies in church, new identities in ourselves, and new people’s movements in our community.

Scripture can help the Church understand what we are really doing and why; and how to develop a spirituality that is needed to engage in our community as servants. I have already said that the church often splits evangelism and community work as it also splits spirituality and action. This has many knock on effects that I have noticed. It means the vicar and the community worker have distinct worlds of operation. It means that the PCC and the community association have distinct areas of interest. It suggests that the worker does the work and the rest of the congregation does the church. It means you are either evangelist or social worker, professional worker or church member, member or employee, in or out, and a number of other divisive labels and creates isolating spaces for both church workers and members to reside in, full of potential frustration and un-fulfilment. But a holistic understanding and practice that uses scripture as our bases for action needn’t create this artificial divide.

Things then may have to change a little. The Bible shows that Christian community work is compassionate community work. (COM- with, PASSION- to suffer). The Christians’ manual for community work says that our life’s calling is to ‘suffer with’ our community. This is not an elusive notion but it essentially means living with, spending time with and prioritising our neighbours. It means meeting them where they are and experiencing our faith with them and helping them experience theirs with us. Often the Church has fallen into playing games with its community. Identifying with our community as Jesus was incarnated into his, means we cannot play these games any more.

Not the piety game- where we proselytize them into church membership.

Not the ideology game- where we indoctrinate them into community work

In order for this compassionate work to happen there has to be a change of focus from these games. The worker needs to be able to resource the Church more, empowering the local congregation to be in and with their own community. He must not simply take up the professional partnership or specialist social service aspects of what is the whole church’s business.

The church community itself needs to be the catalyst for community development work not just its worker, (this includes the P/DCC’s having plenty of crossover with the community association for e.g.). The local congregation is called to be with society, to be part of society. It is not “called out from society or “over and against society”. It is called not to be against flesh and blood but against the dominators of society- the “domination system”. If the worker is doing all this ‘for’ the community it is like the priest ‘taking’ communion on behalf of the congregation. It would be better for the worker to be an amateur, to step out of the way because he is standing in the way of the Church community taking part in their own calling and receiving their own sacrament. We are called to be incarnate- that means a determination for win-win and should anyone lose, everyone should share the loss.

The work of being with and then suffering with is a personally converting and empowering one that is at the heart of our communal faith. We are all called to share in it. It is part of our spirituality and could be said to be an intercession to as much as an intervention. And this process of conversion relies on learning and reading and praying and being together.

The empowerment that compassion can bring to the congregation and to the community is a gentle but strong and persuasive power of inner change- not a coercive power or a bargaining ‘power over others’. The church and its community must develop together a power from within that people exercise over themselves. This needs to be the focus of the work. Each member will and must go through a process of inner change- confronting comfortable habits, accepting futility and other demons of “conventional ways of doing things”!

Despite our rhetoric, in much of our community work we rely far too much on ‘secular convention’ and do not refer to the plans of our organisations founder! Funding and numbers for instance. Many- though not all- of our ‘projects’ rely on the worker to provide people or cash. This is not only dissatisfying for the workers and volunteers but encourages people to project the power to solve problems onto other people and in so doing makes us, if not totally powerless, certainly no more aware of the powers within.

Christian community work should increase the power of the spirit in self-discipline and compassion- loving others as self. This conversion or conciousisation is not something that is discussed in the project planning cycle very often but it could be the bedrock! For instance we could take the fruits of the spirit as virtues for community work:

Love/ (Compassion), joy and peace- personal virtues

Patience/ (persistence) and kindness- in relationships

Goodness/ (Generosity) and faithfulness/ (fidelity)- in our community life

Gentleness/ (Non-violence) and self-control/ (self-management)- in our political life.

These virtues do not include success, political power, value for money, efficiency, best practice, partnership….Community development work is about poverty, participation and power not partnership, professionalism and pandering. In this we have all gone a little awry!

There are examples galore of how scripture could influence our community and our community work more if we let it get more involved and let ourselves be led by it. Another good example is that our idea of community is connected to our identity and to God through the idea of the Trinity. The Bible shows us that our communities should be models in and part of our community. For instance they should demonstrate:

Communication

Movement and pointing to the others

Unity and diversity

Gender Equity

Equality- no.’s one, two and three alternate.

Space for the stranger

Have suffering at the centre and in the shape

Incarnation but transcendence

Using worship and prayer can help understand these things. Rublev’s icon of the Trinity demonstrates these qualities for instance.

So to conclude- by letting scripture and prayer flow through our work. By making this discovery and application the work of the church community we can discover and live out our real distinctives:

Some real distinctives then when using our own CD manual might be:

Secular Christian

Intervention Intercession

Professional values Compassion

Power over situation or others as key Power over self as key, (conversion)

Keeps an appropriate distance Is Incarnate

Monitors results Monitors what is the right thing to do

Public Servants and volunteers Suffering servants and members of each other

Good Practice Models Jesus’ model in the gospels

Action, reflection cycle Prayer, action, reflection cycle

Deficits Appreciative inquiry

People who have written in this style and about these issues are Ched Myers, Dave Andrews, Noel Moels, Walter Wink, and John Howard Yoder

update on Left ( Jesus) Behind Computer Game

http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/content/news_syndication/article_061128games.shtml

FLOOD, AIRCRASH, ROUTER

been away for a few days as the countryside takes its tole on the technology. First the cherwell flooded and then a light aircraft crashed into some cables, (no one hurt), and then I found we needed some better firmware upgrade for our Linksys Modem/ Router.

Last night during the power cut, (caused by the airplane), I went and had tea with the Fanner-Hoskins's with cheese and plenty o wine. It was fun and when the power went back on we were all so dissapointed that we kept the candles and stayed in the dark! Technology and bring us together from afar but it keeps the neighbours at bay. So as comfort often reduces contentment, so it reduces cooperation!

Anyway, BIGGISH NEWS- I got the job at Fellowship of Reconcilliation as International Projects Officer on Monday after a weakish but apparently ok interview. Excellent news.

May not start until january or just b4 Christmas.
------------------------------------------------------------

LITTER UPDATE:

1.5 carrier bags of solely plastic bags and covers etc. in a fortnight.....mmmm victory is in sight.

Howrrr ya, Been a good couple of days. Dave came over about 11 on Wednesday and I had been down in the field milking with Wendy, (cow), and Jane, (landlady). Also I felt that Jake the shire horse was much friendlier today as we extended the field a little, (called strip grazing). He got me under his head and gave me a massage- but he is massiff so I was worried he might crush me or step on me by accident!

Today on ITV central we kept up the tradition and 'Pan', the boat as well as Jane, Vyv, Tom and the family were all on TV on Heart of the Country. The program just've been made a while ago and it showed life here in the summer when all is busy and sweet!

Heard good news that I got an interview on Monday so, if you do, please pray for that.


Also on breaks from playing Star Wars, (much like little boys), we went off in Vyv's morris with just dave and me to borrow the kayak, (christened Peter.....), from Peter, back to Pan, if you follow. The Morris Minor is quite a machine with no electrics and just old fasioned stop, start, choke and pedals so stiff it takes five times as long for anything to happen!
I had a good old paddle upriver and it was brilliant!! It was a slow trip but much more of an adventure for it.

Speaking of going slow I remembered this shrewd line from Narrowboat by LTC Rolt:
"Early one morning....a very young policeman was crossing the BRackley Rd. Bridge in Oxford, and seeing the old man, (John Harwood), placidly ensconced at the tiller of his slow-moving boat, he lent over the parapet and called sarcastically, "Now then, don't you be in too much of a hurry". He had not reckoned with old Jack, however.
"If no one went no faster than what I do", came the sonorous reply from the canal, "there'd be a sight less trouble in this world, and what's moreyoung man, you'd be out of a job like as not".

We watched Ken Loach's Land and Freedom which can be found HERE. It was an excellent portrayal of a scouser who goes off the fight for the spanish republicans in the civil war, which happened 70 years ago today. Reminded me of Insurection, a book about the Easter Uprusing in Dublin that I read a few years ago. Tragic, sad and poignant. Funny the way we never celebrate the start of wars but only their endings and yet are still so keen to get them started...

Also about the Spanish civil war and about our boats' namesake watch out for Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth coming out soon. Pan´s labyrinth is the story of a young girl that travels with her mother and adoptive father to a rural area up North in Spain, 1944. After Franco´s victory. The girl lives in an imaginary world of her own creation and faces the real world with much chagrin. Post-war Fascist repression is at its height in rural Spain and the girl must come to terms with that through a fable of her own.

Casino Royale

Em and I went to see the new Bond last night and it was brilliant: much more real and less slapstick than the last few have been. Less femenistas undermining him, less gadgetry, more tradgedy and more Connery! We saw it at the Vue in Oxford which was MASSIFF. Comfy seats and a huage screen. Go see it!

Funny though, given the events of the week- it seems all too real to life...

Russian Poison

Cabinet Assasination

My weekend

Park Barn won again this weekend. 3-0 this time! Got a good shot here of our first 11.

Then we had a curry and drinks for Dave's party and messed about with the Gford crew.

Autumn

Digging deep

We were talking last night about how we have been doing the last couple of weeks and I have been finding it quite hard to know what I am feeling at present! There is some sense of a leaving and grieving process I'm sure but I am basically happy and enjoying being out of the tumbledrier that was my life in Park Barn and in a different place.

We were talking about how we feel about Oxford and realised that we have been very concious all the while of being and wanting to be rooted in some sense of story and place. In Guildford our life had a very clear story, a clear sense of place and the two were connected which gave us strong roots and a feeling of peace. Now we get to be stuck in the post-modern malaise!

I don't know what our story is to be here except that we are on the (Emmaus?) road, or just casting out to sea on the boat and haven't made it up to the cabin to look at some charts yet!

That is to say it is not an urgent matter...but we want to listen out for a story, (like in Emmaus), that will give our journey meaning. Certainly being in a village and on Mill Farm gives some sense of place and perhaps Emma's job and a potential job in peacebuilding will also provide that sense of story to go alongside.

In the meantime the story must come from the place as it did in Park Barn. This time I wont have the structure and there might not be a map in the chart room at all- maybe just silence. So in the mean time we take a step at a time as if in the dark, like this morning digging the earth for roots, milking Wendy and picking lots of mushrooms. We trust that life on 'the farm' will be bringing a new search for peace in a new way.The exploration of this peace and what on earth Im talking about is what were mainly thinking about today. Having so much space in work and leisure without much control over anything is so new to us and could be good or bad...

In THIS BOOK: Finding Peace by Jean Vanier we read together some words of Joseph Pieper, (whose book Leisure the Basis of Culture I wrote about last year HERE), "Leisure is only possible when we are at one with ourselves. We tend to overwork as a means to escape, as a way of trying to justify our existence. There is only one justification for our existence: God loves us. We fear relaxing and letting go because we lack trust in love. And so we are always in control, always in haste, lest if we slow down we face ourselves. It is no dramatic overstatement to say that the basis of all joy and happiness and creativity is humble self acceptance. The is selfacceptance is the basis of freedom and holiness ...and peace of heart. He goes on..."to aquire inner stillness there is absolutely no substitute for prayer and reflection. We must hear God's plea: 'Be still and know me'".

oooooh Emma

Have a goosy at Em's new PK webpage.

http://www.pearnkandola.co.uk/stc/emmat.asp

the missing peace

Much better that you buy your kiddies something from HERE:

http://www.metanoiabooks.org.uk/index.php

Or register to go to Peace School:

http://www.peaceschool.org.uk/


Might think about this next summer???

Happy Apocalypse folks!

if you cant beat em laugh at em...

Number one: I think this OFFICIAL GAME takes the piss out of itself!!

Game description

Wage a war of apocalyptic proportions in LEFT BEHIND: Eternal Forces - a real-time strategy game based upon the best-selling LEFT BEHIND book series created by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. Join the ultimate fight of Good against Evil, commanding Tribulation Forces or the Global Community Peacekeepers, and uncover the truth about the worldwide disappearances!

· Lead the Tribulation Force from the book series , including Rayford, Chloe, Buck and Bruce against Nicolae Carpathia – the AntiChrist.

· Conduct physical & spiritual warfare : using the power of prayer to strengthen your troops in combat and wield modern military weaponry throughout the game world.

· Recover ancient scriptures and witness spectacular Angelic and Demonic activity as a direct consequence of your choices.

· Command your forces through intense battles across a breathtaking, authentic depiction of New York City .

· Control more than 30 units types - from Prayer Warrior and Hellraiser to Spies, Special Forces and Battle Tanks!

· Enjoy a robust single player experience across dozens of New York City maps in Story Mode – fighting in China Town , SoHo , Uptown and more!

· Play multiplayer games as Tribulation Force or the AntiChrist's Global Community Peacekeepers with up to eight players via LAN or over the internet!

Screenshots

what a load of toss.

Number two: I think the real thing often needs a little help from willing hands, so to speak:.

.

.

.

Rumsfeld Gets Cute At The Podium

Go Sloe

Dave's got a new blog HERE- www.howtotelthetruth.blogspot.com

______________________

After spotting some sloe's on a walk from our lock- pidgeon lock up to the next lock, here is the sloe gin recipe we'll be using:

You will find recipes for sloe gin in old winemaking books. Most of them involve collecting sloes and pricking them all over before immersing them in gin. This sounds easy, but when you try it, it's like hard labour. Anyway, my basic recipe is a lot easier:

1) 1 pound sloes
2) 1 pint gin
3) half a pound or sugar, brown or white

So... Pick your sloes, and ensure that they are ripe. I have given the basic recipe above per pint of gin, because it's not cheap; you can increase the amounts in proportion. Put the sloes, freshly-picked, in one pound packs in the freezer, and leave them there for several days, until they are frozen solid. If you look at them at this point, you will see that they have burst, and this is exactly what you want.

Take them from the freezer, loosened so they are not sticking together, and put them into a large jar or bottle into which you will also put the gin and the sugar. Make sure that the bottle you use for this is large enough; it's very annoying to put two ingredients in and then find that the third can't be added. If you're making a large quantity, a winemaking demijohn may be suitable. You can also add some almonds for extra flavour if you wish; you need about a sixth of an ounce for each pint of gin, and they should be chopped. You can also add a couple of cloves if for each pint of gin.

The container in which you are making the sloe gin needs to be shaken every day for about a month, then occasionally for another month; then it can be strained and bottled. A related drink, blackberry gin, is equally good and well worth making. Quantities and method as above.

______________________

Also found a really cool rope swing over the Cherwell just yards from the canal. All

The trash count is up as we had guests so lots of packets from the fajita kit- maybe we should make our own? Then a cheese packet for cheaper cheese we used in some sauce and then a paperchase plastic bag!

Nearly all plastic so if we can find a plastic recycling place we are set....hmmmm.

__________________________

Pan sprung a leak last night...DOH!! Its only a wee hole in the roof but inspired me to learn more about the boat and how it works! Here it is from the other side of the bank!

the great waste

Been really thinking about all this waste stuff yesterday. So- we have put in a razorhead, a bodyshop shampoo bottle and a raison packet as well as some cellaphane that went over our laundry...that's just one day though- is that a lot.... it sounds too much when you think of it item by item.

Went to that 'Home' church NT Wright study group- it was really easy to be comfortable and like any good Bible Study it felt more like a Book Club than a mini church service.

Tom's down this weekend from Norwich and Park BarnUnited got their first £7700 grant! Wahey.

First things first

Good Morning- its 9.30, I think its Thursday and the sun is out! As Emma gets up for work I sit in bed and read NarrowBoat by RT Rolt. This morning they arrived at Leiscester and he is very disparaging about cities in general and Leicester in particular with its Gin Palaces and uniformily drab housing....but then that was 1939...

Up as Em leaves to walk her across the dewy grass to the car to get to work. I then get some breccy of farm eggs and farm milk, which we pick up from the yard every couple of days- did you know that milk is pasturised to prevent Bovine TB being spread to humans but without intensive farming the risk is almost nil and an injection to te cows eliminates the need for pasturising, skimming, homogenising etc. Here we have genuine need to stir, cream on top, tasty original jersey milk!

Suddenly this morning there was a splash and Lilly has fallen in again chasing the ducks down the side of 'Pan'. This time I'm near by to see her catty paddle- what a great swimmer. No pannic and now she is drying off in the sun!

Then it's time to bring out the composting to the back field to the 'live heap' past the bantams, whose cockeral- Monty- has been moved but whom we miss to get us up.

We dont get wasted collection of any kind here so we are on a purge to cut down on plastics which cannot be recyled locally and all other non-recycleble waste. As I empty the bins this morning we are going to record all the waste per day to see if we can cut off! ALready the two biggest contributers are food and paper- both which we can compost or recycle. Watch this space!

So its now nearly ten and Ive got to check the post and start finishing the big dig on our plot. Then it's time for collecting the laundry from the village shop and posting some cards and playing on the PS2!!!

Nice one Norman

Norman Kember at the Fellowship of Reconciliation/ Quaker Peace arts event, Greenbelt 2006

We're back, (on the net)

Hi all, We're back on the web. I spent most of today in Oxford and then sorting out how to get Broadband via an ADSL wireless/ modem kit onto 'Pan'.



Then we sorted out skype so please get on and join us- we can video phone you and anyone in the world for free. Hi Sis's ( Canada and Wamena), and co.: watch out for us. Hopefully we'll blog quite a bit from now on about all that is happening in our new country life.


Meanwhile in the last week we have found our local church and another emerging community called 'Home'- see HERE.
Also found a potential job for me- have a look and let me know what you think on www.for.org.uk.



Watch out for us on the edge hog. xxx Andy and Em