Fixing clocks

Fast on the heels of my success with the printer, I turned my attention to our non-working clock. It's a small brass carriage clock that was given to us when we got married 34 years ago. The only value it has is sentimental, and to be honest we're not that sentimental, so replacing wouldn't be an issue. However, every so often I get interested in why something has stopped working and how I might be able to fix it.

Maybe a year ago the clock started to have problems. A battery had failed and the negative battery connection had become corroded. I cleaned it up with a bit of emery paper and the clock worked again with a new battery. But the problem with corrosion is that it takes a lot of effort to clean up and once it's set in it doesn't easily go away. Eventually the clock failed again and I assumed that that was it. For over a month now it's been sitting in the lounge declaring the time to be 11:55, causing confusion and occasional panic!

So I decided it was time to explore, and I had a look at it. The terminal was indeed terminal. Corrosion had spread over the whole surface and there was little point attempting to clean it away in the ope of restarting the stopped clock. The question was: Did the mechanisms still work? Off the the man garage!

No doubt you've heard of the concept of the man-drawer, a place where men keep useless stuff that might come in useful one day. Well for some of a drawer is simply not enough space, we need a shed or even a garage! I have bits of things in boxes and crates. I have a large supply of screws, nuts, bolts, washers, hinges, plastic thingies form fitted kitchens and wardrobes stored away just in case a major incident occurs and one of the stability brackets from an Ikea bookcase is the ideal solution to the problem.

I dug around and found some flat town and earth cable from an old wiring project from years ago and stripped out a bit of copper wire. Using a fresh battery I bridged the connections and listened. The clock ticked. It was alive again! Next job was to remove the old negative terminal and come up with a solution. I twisted the copper wire into a spiral rather like the ones you see in the end of a torch or battery compartment and shaped the other end to make a connection with the circuit board. A bit of soldering and the job was done.

The clock is ticking, or at least it was when I left it half an hour ago. If it runs for a day I think I can declare it fixed. If it doesn't, it's still fixed, just not in a permanent fashion!

All my music on demand!

A few months ago I finally got around to getting all our music into our iTunes library. I say all, there were a few CD's that I decided to omit from the digital storeroom because quite frankly I'm not sure I want them popping up in a random playlist and send me lunging across the floor for the nearest available way to skip the track! I remember meeting someone at the gym who was rehabbing a broken ankle sustained getting off an exercise bike to answer his mobile 'phone. Don't want, "Trying to skip that annoying version of a song I'd forgotten we had on a CD" on a list of weird accidents reported at A&E!

Anyway, it's nice to have completed this part of our digital library. Whether I'll get around to doing the same with our DVD and Bluray collection who can say. But having done the CD's it's rather nice to use the Remote facility of my iPhone to set a playlist in motion. We have our sound system in the lounge connected to the network and I invested in a sound bar for the extension so we can have a nice jazz mix playing quietly in the background during dinner. Had you there for a minute!

At the moment I've got an interesting playlist running: Bob Dylan, Crowded House, Eva Cassidy, The Zutons, Simon and Garfunkel. It's certainly an interesting mix. I'm not sure how many CD's we have, but I"m guessing we listen to far more music using digital playlists than we would if we had to go to the CD's and stand there staring at them to decide what to choose.

Perhaps this is indicative of the way we listen to music these days. Rarely do we sit down and listen to a whole CD anymore. I guess the digital library is our own private radio station without annoying adverts or DJ's. The only problem is that sometimes you get the opening of a live concert but nothing more because that's where the engineer decided to put a track break. Ah well, it makes for interesting juxta-positioning of musical styles!

Friday, August 1st 2014

I'm experimenting, I don't know for how long, with the idea of using Friday as a day to reflect on the events of the week. I'm doing it because I want to, because I think processing ideas and thoughts is important, and because it's one way of breathing a bit of new life into my blogging. I've been blogging for quite a long time now. Six years, maybe more, I don't remember. I've seen others come and go. Some reappear, but many of the folk who got me started have long since faded away.

Over the years I've occupied myself with theology, woodworking, sport and a lot of general nonsense. I make no pretensions to be an opinion former or commentator on world affairs. I just write about things that are on my mind.

This week, the things that concern me include the ongoing crisis in Gaza (good news this morning that a short-term ceasefire has been agreed, lets hope it sticks), the increasing isolation of Russia and the implications for the future, and the Commonwealth Games! I've already talked about Gaza, so I won't revisit that. Russia worries me.

It worries me because the leadership seems to feed on the growing isolation, becoming ever more entrenched. I wonder if the country as a whole suffers from some form of collective paranoia about the rest of the world. Perhaps you can take a country out of a cold war but you can't take the cold war out of a country.

As we commemorate the outbreak of a war that became the Great War because of its scale and then became the First World War because a second soon followed, we can but hope that a situation like that in the Ukraine does not precipitate another major conflict. It seems hard to imagine that major powers would end up fighting each other again, but such complacency would be dangerous. The UN and NATO need to work harder than ever to keep the peace whilst seeking justice. The world remains a dangerous place that appears to teeter on the edge of conflict whether in the Middle East or the edges of Europe.

The Commonwealth Games are moving towards their climax. Amidst all the fun and games there are the subtle reminders of the inequalities that exist across the world. Cycling teams from so-called poorer nations turning up at a local bike shop for repairs and even to borrow bikes! it reminded me of the wheelchair racer we met at the pre-paralympic training camp who didn't even have a proper racing chair. In that case too a generous individual made one available and it's been good to see a dedicated charity working hard to make sure those who need fresh kit can access it.

It's easy to forget, with all the money poured into the high profile sports in the UK, that for many taking part is significant in itself. We measure so many things by very narrow margins of success and failure that we so easily lose sight of the triumph for some of simply being there. Not everyone gets to win.

And maybe that takes us full circle to Gaza and the Ukraine. They are in many ways no win situations. Compromise will have to be the way forward at some point. Easy to say, difficult to apply I know.

Fixing my HP Officejet printer

I can't remember how long ago I bought my Officejet 6500 wireless printer, but it must be quite a few years now. Alongside my Samsung laser printer, this printer has been used to primarily to scan stuff or copy it. When the network works well, it's great to be able to print to it wirelessly and, since it lives downstairs, not to have to run upstairs to get the print!

Recently it's begun to misbehave and not pick up the paper. At first it was reluctant, but with a little encouragement it would work. Now it just doesn't want to know. A long time ago, when I got my first monochrome HP inkjet I had a similar problem for HP supplied a fix in the shape of a piece of glass/sand paper on a block and a bit of software to get the rubber roller running through a cleaning cycle.

Perhaps, I wondered, could it be that the pick up roller on the 6500 was suffering a similar fate and had become smooth or dirty to the point where it could no longer grip the paper? This called for a little experiment!

Staring into the paper tray I watched as the pick roller vainly tried to grab a sheet of paper. I could see the small rollers spinning around on the surface of the paper like slick tyres on a Formula One car on a wet track!

The MK1 Roller Cleaner!

So I went into the garage and got a piece of 320 grit aluminium oxide paper and double-sided taped it to a sheet of paper where the roller picks up. I then inserted the paper into the tray and held it gently in place while I set the printer copying some piece of paper.

You may be able to see the marks made by the roller as I did this several times. The printer simply reports "out of paper" and I just kept hitting the button to set it going again. Eventually I reloaded the paper tray and let it go. Hey presto, it picked up and printed!

I don't know how long it will last. Perhaps tomorrow it won't pick up again, but I'm guessing that dirty pinch rollers were the source of the problem and now they are clean the printer should be good for a while longer. Saves sticking it in the bin!

If you try it, remember not to let go of the paper while you're cleaning the roller. Otherwise you'll get a print copy at best and maybe it will get jammed at worst or even worse the sandpaper will damage the printer somehow.

An open letter about Gaza

Much of my blog is mundane, even trivial. A random collection of partially worked out thoughts and ideas, reflections and stories. Occasionally I stumble into something thought provoking and even more occasionally articulate something thoughtful in response. I range from theology to sport, work to leisure, politics to biomechanics. It's wide, it's eclectic and it's me.

Some things bother me deeply, Gaza is one of those things. It's a mix of politics, theology and centuries old issues and rivalries. Palestine is not the only region of the world where this is true, but it does evoke all sorts of responses within the Christian community. As an evangelical Christian I've often been confronted by those within my broad theological fold who support Israel come what may. Citing all sorts of biblical passages, they often seem to have little time for those of us who do not share their perspective.

So I'm going to make my thoughts as clear as possible and risk the retribution that may come my way. Some thoughts will be far from complete, but that's me and I make no apology for thinking out loud.

I am deeply distressed by what I see happening in Gaza. As the body count rises I see no end in sight to the shelling and exchange of fire. By God's grace I hope a ceasefire comes sooner rather than later. Leaders on both sides must accept responsibility for what is happening. I am not so naive as to think one side is more to blame than the other, although Israel's response always seem out of proportion to the threat. If you've not seem Jon Snow's moving account of his recent visit to Gaza, then find it and watch it. It raises a lot of questions.

For me, an attitude that supports Israel on the basis of some theological conviction that there is some divine right to the land is both misplaced and highly questionable. Is it not a reasonable reading of Scripture that disobedience has consequences and historically the loss of the land was once a consequence of a failure to obey the Law? Does some eschatological expectation of the Messiah returning through a specific gate really abrogate that principle?

Perhaps we should go one step further and say that given our understanding of the cross and its central role in the redemption story, that the land no longer figures in the same way it once did and that the nation of Israel is now a secular state and not an all important immutable part of God's unfolding plan.

Where the solution lies in such an intractable situation I do not know. While Hamas, and others, continue to dedicate themselves to the destruction of Israel, it's unlikely that the region will be ever see peaceful coexistence, but that does't mean that such coexistence is not on our radar of hope, and in the case of those of us who believe in prayer, on our list of topics that we bring before God.

Tony Campolo has pointed out in the past that God loves Palestinians too. We ought not to forget that truth. Whatever the political right and wrongs, whatever the theological arguments may be, people are dying, children are dying, and personally I believe that grieves the heart of God. Let's not forget that even in the Old Testament, Israel was under instruction to care for the foreigner in its land, and was repeatedly warned about the consequences of not doing so.

So enough is enough. Let governments and organisations around the world do whatever they can to bring an end to the carnage and to work as hard as they can to broker peace among the people of Palestine, and let the Christian community be unafraid of challenging those who need challenging because of either misplaced theology or a sense of guilt over the past.

First Aid Kit

The more I think about First Aid, the more I see how important it is to be prepared but also how important it is to be able to improvise too. Not having a fully stocked with you is not reason not to be able to do the best you can.

Having said that, I've taken a bit of time to sort through some of the First Aid stuff I have and think about what I would put in a kit that I had in the car for example. I know you can already buy ready stocked kits for different situations, but who wants 3 or 4 different kits? Well, apart from me that is!

The point is I do different things. When I'm walking I don't want to carry excess weight in my bag, so a small pouch with a few essentials does the job. I guess if I were on some sort of expedition and responsible for First Aid in some way, I'd carry a lot more stuff. But it's usually only my own feet that cause trouble, so Compeed* other dressings and tape and scissors along with ibuprofen is about all I need. something for bites and stings is also useful.

Pitch-side you need a different stock. I haven't started doing pitch-side yet, but I'm guessing nasal sponges, more gloves, ice sprays and tape will be needed. If it's a travel bag, then the Immodium or equivalent would be added. You get the idea.

So I've come up with a basic list for a simple kit to keep handy. This includes things like:

• Dressings
• Irrigation
• Plasters
• Compeed
• Paracetamol and ibuprofen and aspirin
• Small scissors
• Triangular bandage
• Face shield
• Wipes
• Bite and sting cream
• Small tweezers
• Gloves
• Ice packs

Ice packs might be a bit cumbersome, requiring a larger bag, and maybe a small roll of gaffer tape would be useful!

All this needs to be in an easy access bag and I found what I think is just the job. Lifesystems do all sorts of outdoor equipment and this includes First Aid kits. Pre-stocked they do a kit for Camping, travelling or mountain climbing. My small walking kit is a Lifesystem kit with a few extras added. What's nice about the empty bag I bought is that it has three sections with clear pockets so the contents are easily visible.

Hopefully, being bright red, it will be easy to find amongst other bags, although my rucksack is also red! In the car it will certainly be easier to spot than say a black bag.

Even if you're not First Aid trained, it might be worth thinking of buying a ready stocked kit in case you find yourself helping someone who is and who either doesn't have a kit to hand to needs extra dressings etc.

Now all I need to do is stock my new bag!



*Compeed is a gel-like blister dressing, just in case you didn't know or it goes under another name. I do not get any royalties for mentioning it by name and I even have a similar, generic product in my bag too!

Walking vicariously!

Maps are fascinating things. At least in our household! While we don't have a compete set of OS maps, we have quite a few. When you scan the collection, memories of weeks in the Lakes District and the nearly trip to the Peaks come flooding back. We'd not been married very long when we planned to explore camping in the Peak District, only to be summoned to Nottingham for a family crisis. Looking back perhaps we should have said no and stuck to plans to have a holiday, but we're not wired that way at least we weren't then, and we duly took the train to Nottingham and did what we could.

Wherever we've lived and holidayed since, we've always bought maps. Spread out across the dining table, we have searched out footpaths and measured routes for possible walks. When we've gone out to walk we've often got a little lost or followed paths that aren't paths (my lack of colour sight doesn't help distinguish county boundaries from footpaths occasionally). But you do end up discovering places and scenery you never expected to see. You turn a corner and emerge from a wooded area suddenly to discover an amazing panoramic view falling away from you down some valley, or you find yourself wandering through the industrial docklands along the south bank of a river or canal. All very interesting.

Along with the maps are the many guidebooks we've collected. I suspect we could spend several years, if not decades, completing all the walks in all the books that occupy the maps box in the loft! This is when, if you're not careful, you walk vicariously! After all, reading the book is a lot less effort than actually lacing up your shoes and risking getting lost. We joked about this a little yesterday as set out to walk from Limehouse east towards the Thames Barrier.

Now, it's important to note that on Friday I went out for a walk around the village in a pair of trainers I thought were okay but that in fact were not. I ended up with two rather large and nasty blisters on my heels. Not unusual for me, I have awkward feet. But it did mean that they were still rather sore yesterday, and even with padding they were still a little painful at times. This meant that by the time we reached the O2 my feet had had enough, and although I'd have made it to the Barrier and back, it was better to head for home and leave that bit for another day.

So our walk began from Limehouse station via Canary Wharf. Anne was on call, so we had her laptop with us and we dropped it off at the office just in case she got a call. We figured that our intended route meant that she was always in reach of the office if needed. Having deposited the computer, we went off in search of maps and a drink while we decided the route. Two maps and two books purchased from Waterstones, we settled down on Pret a Manger to prepare ourselves.

The route is not complicated, and you don't really need the maps, but we like maps! We followed the Thames Path as is drifts to and from the river front passing all sorts of interesting little places. For example, there's an interesting little site where a large boat was launched broadside into the river and a little further east we discovered an old wharf, now redeveloped, that had the most stunning building, at least o my eyes. It looked rather mill-like with a chimney on one side, and although somewhat asymmetrical in design, it was just wonderful. Turns out it was a colour making factory.

We followed the path the Island Gardens where the Greenwich foot tunnel emerges on the north bank of the Thames (if I remember correctly this is the left bank by convention). Walking under the Thames is a nice cooling break from the hot sunshine we were enjoying above ground. Two idiots came past riding their bikes where they shouldn't be riding, but there are idiots everywhere and these were fine specimens of the species!

On the south side of the river we set off eastwards towards the O2 past the historic building of the Naval Academy. These opulent buildings eventually gave way to more modest architecture and industrialised areas the further east we went. Redevelopment was rife, with new and newish houses and apartments lining the riverside.

A few more twists and turns and we reached a sign that gave us two options. One offered us a mile long walk to the O2 via the riverside, the other a 3/4 mile walk to the same destination but cutting out the bend in the river. We were gong to go the shorter route, but when I saw the footbridge over the road at the entrance to the Blackwall tunnel, I opted for the the extra yards of the riverside path!

We were now in working wharf country as we passed Morden Wharf. Thames Clippers were powering up and down the river creating quite a wash as they did so, and the drone of large machinery at work among the graded sand piles of the wharf, reminded us that this was a working docklands still, no matter how much it has changed in the last 30 years.

Eventually we arrived at the O2 having walked a good 8 or 9 miles so far. Sitting in the restaurant we'd chosen for lunch, we decided that this was far enough for the day and after a lazy lunch we made it to the pier just in time to catch the clipper back to Canary Wharf to collect Anne's laptop and buy ice-cream. I convinced Anne to go for yoghurt instead and we took it out to Woods Wharf where we discovered a large screen and fan park for the Tour de France.

Suitably refreshed we set off home via the Jubilee Line and the C2C from West Ham, bumping into a couple we knew from Upminster. It's a small world!

Friday, July 25th 2014

In my late teens/early twenties, I discovered Alistair Cooke's "Letter from America" on Radio 4. A quick Google search reveals that it ran for almost 60 years and over 2800 episodes. The letters were reflections on current events sprinkled with anecdotes and stories. I sometimes wonder how different the media might be if we had a little more time for reflection rather than the soundbite journalism to which we are so often subjected.

Take for example the news item earlier this week about the Mayor of London failing to reach his target for affordable homes. There was the inevitable politicking about the numbers but no reflection on the value of the target, was it meaningful, too ambitious or not ambitious enough. No one seemed ready to point out that had there been no target then it's quite possible that very few, if any, affordable homes would have been built at all.

When you think about it, the process of reflection would be helpful in a whole lot of situations. One only has to look at the intractable state of affairs in Gaza to realise that politicians and leaders need to do some careful reflecting. They need to ask themselves some tough questions. After his presidency was over, Bill Clinton spoke at the Labour Party conference and raised some interesting issues. I remember him saying that it was time we asked ourselves in the West why the militants working under the guise of Islam hated us so much. A question that perhaps George Bush and Tony Blair ought to have asked before diving headlong into Iraq. I'm sure there were some wise people around who could have balanced the analysis. I still wonder if the only reason the Americans were so sure that there were weapons of mass destruction somewhere in Iraq was because they had provided them in the first place.

In the Old Testament David sought out the men of Issachar because they "understood the times and what needed to be to done." When I wrote to then Prime Minister about Iraq I was informed that Mr Blair knew better, and I got the feeling that my questions about democracy and the legitimacy of invading a sovereign state were simply dismissed. Let's hope that somehow the UN can become the vessel of wisdom for places like Gaza and Ukraine, to name but two regions in turmoil at this time.

On a lighter note, the Commonwealth Games have begun. Perhaps not as exciting as the Olympics, but still quite a spectacle. What's more, para-athletics are integrated into the games, something that is logistically difficult with the Olympics because of the scale of things. I found myself caught up in watching the Triathlon and a bit of the cycling. riding a tandem is a scary thug in itself. Doing it at speed around a banked track when you can't see much at all sounds insane! Very impressed. And as to the triathlon. I'm not sure i could any one of the three disciplines in the time they do all three. I really felt for the guy who got lapped on the swim.

It was interesting to watch the two Brownlee brothers running together. Alistair's ankle looked far less stable than his brothers. Could this be why he suffers more injuries? Can't imagine his stiff upper body helps either. Ah, the wonders of biomechanics!

First Aid Training

I've just posted something about First Aid training on my other, work-related blog In2Motion. If you want to read it you can find it here.

I spent the weekend doing a two-day pitch-side sports first aid course and it was exhausting but so worthwhile. I won't go into detail here, you can read my thoughts and rave review of ReactFirst in the other post.

I spent the better part of my life avoiding First Aid training. I really don't like role play, and role play is really the only way to learn to do FA. I also don't like getting things wrong, especially in front of other people, and you make a lot of mistakes on a FA course and everyone gets to see them! Imagine my horror then when the trainer puts a scoring system up n the board and tells you pretend casualty to score your treatment.

First time around everyone is so nice and scores you pretty highly until the trainer asks a question and you realise you missed a vital step that falls into the "lethal" category and you score goes from a generous 4 (very good) to a 0 (lethal)! Even at the end of the course, having worked to burn the process into you memory, you might still score 1 or 2 because of something that needs work.

So it's tough, as it ought to be. After all we're talking about basic life saving protocols, not putting a plaster on a paper cut. But the skills are so important, and ! have to say that although I still hate role play with every fibre of my being, I will probably continue to do these courses because I keep learning so much and somewhere there's someone who one day will be grateful for what I've learnt. There might already be that someone, I found him on a train unconscious and slumped in his seat.

Reflecting on church and missional living

I've had a couple of conversations recently that have revolved around the theme of church and missional living. Of course the church ought to be defined as missional, but we all know that in many places it is stuck in a legacy model of church focussed primarily on meeting the internal needs of the members.

So, what shape church should take in order to fulfil its primary mandate of being a people living on mission with God, partnering with him, incarnating the gospel in everyday life? For me it begins with what we believe about Jesus, this in turn shapes our mission which then shapes our view of church. Christology, missiology, ecclesiology.

The order is important because if we put church before mission we will define the mission in church-centric terms. The world becomes a dark place full of people bent of doing evil, a place that threatens the purity of the church and seeks to undermine our faith. When I first became a Christian in the mid 70's discipleship seemed to demand that you left your non-Christians friends behind. Spending time with them caused question to be asked about your spiritual life. Unless you could demonstrate that you'd "shared the gospel" it was almost assumed that you were "backsliding"! Putting church before mission feeds a doctrine of separation from the world and mission becomes a sort of commando raid into enemy territory.

When you allow missiology to flow from Christology you get a different perspective on the world and the church. Mission becomes a life to be lived, the world becomes the residence of those missing from the kingdom rather than those enemies of the kingdom. Church becomes a gathering of those who live missionally, a place to share stories of God's mission, to encourage each other in that mission as well as a place to engage in worship, prayer and reflection. To me this seems a far healthier and more biblical view of church.

Where's the connection?

I've just started reading Steve Peter's The Chimp Paradox. For those who don't know, he's the guy who's been working with British Cycling and other high performance athletes and sports people.  I've only just started the book, so I can't give you an overview of the whole thing, but I did start to think about the theological implications of the way he describes the brain.

Using a very simplified model of the brain, he divides into three parts: the human, the chimp and the computer. The computer is the storage centre and the other two the active controlling brains. Put simply, the human brain is who we want to be and the chimp brain essentially interferes with our fulfilling of our potential.

What struck me as interesting is that theologically we talk about the will and talk about how sin affects our ability to do what honours God. I hear the echo of Paul's words when he speaks of doing what he knows he shouldn't do and not being able to do what he knows he ought to do (Rom. 7).

Now, I'm not trying to find a theological correlation or interpretation of Steve Peter's work in order to make it somehow Christian, rather like the quest for finding parallels between the Star Wars saga and the gospel. All I'm saying is that i'm intrigued by the the concept of a part of me that interferes, that gets in the way of me becoming that which I have the potential to be. That concept seems to have resonance with the way I understand the gospel, redemption and the whole of the Biblical narrative.

When we declare that we can't help it, the simple truth is that we can. Just because we're tempted we don;t have to fall for it. We always have a choice. When I first came to faith one of the first verses of the New Testament I committed to memory was 1Cor.10:13 "No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it."

I've always thought that is possible for us not to sin, but probable that we will sin. This is the battle we face, the battle of choosing. This makes reading The Chimp Paradox an interesting prospect!

Remembering Maths!

I used to love maths at school. Solving equations and doing all sorts of algebra was really interesting. At least it was to me. I can't honestly remember doing a lot of maths when I was working, even though I was involved in research. I guess it was always there in the background. It must have been part of what I did because I was working out equations for curves and for computer models.


I mention this because the other day I wanted to work out an equation for the standard stopping distances given in the highway code. I was reading an article about speeding and wanted to calculate the stopping distance at a particular speed. According to the article, a driver had been caught doing 149mph on the M25 and another doing over 90mph in a 30mph zone.

Anyway, I took the data and worked out an equation. It's written down somewhere, but it was something like:

total stopping distance {in feet} = 0.05(speed{in mph} squared) + speed

Of course in reality it's more complicated, but these are "rule of thumb" numbers anyway. The point is that when you stick in 150mph, the stopping distance is over 1200ft. That's further than a pro golfer's best drive!

What I haven't tried yet is to calculate the deceleration of a standard car over the stopping distances. I'd need some more data and more time on my hands to play with the maths. At a guess I'd say the deceleration will be a curve rather than a straight line. I remember seeing a video of a car braking from 90mph. After 315ft, the standard stopping distance at 70, the car doing 90 had only slowed to 70mph. Scary!

Which brought me to the final bit of maths trivia for the day. A number of years ago I got asked by a nephew this question:

At what temperature is the temperature in Fahrenheit the same as the temperature in Celsius?

I happen the know the answer, but I wanted to remind myself of the maths behind it. Here's how I worked it out.

C = (F-32)*5/9

When C=F

F = (F-32)*5/9

9F = 5F -160

F = -40

Therefore C = F at -40 degrees on both scales.

It might not be very impressive, but at least it kept me amused for a little while the other afternoon. And it's nice to know that not everything I studied all those years ago has disappeared out of my brain!

Some reflections on the elections

Perhaps the saddest thing about the recent local and European election results is the implication that most of us don't really want to be well info red about the real issues but would rather vote on the basis of soundbites and misinformation. At least that ho it appears. One "local man in the street" response over immigration for example, was to complain about the number of Eastern Europeans working in coffee shops.

I worry that voting is less and less about ideology and more and more about self-interest and half-truths. Even the major parties appear to be in danger of large scale reductionism when it comes to seeking to win next year's General Election. So, David Cameron talks about eh conservative Party as the only party that can deliver a referendum on european membership. The implication being that if membership of Europe is your main concern then only electing his party is the way to go. No thought need be given to whether you think they've managed the economy well, created a more stable job market, improved education. Just ask yourself if you want to vote yes or no to Europe.

I seem to remember Paddy Ashdown once suggesting that the European issue was more complex an issue that could be reduced to a simple in/out vote, and surely that's true of the broader political issues at stake in any election. Sadly we seem to have evolved a culture where we'd rather rather watch Eastenders than Panorama, Mock the Week than Newsnight. And I must confess that given the choice, I prefer to be entertained more than informed.

Perhaps it will only be because we choose to be informed that we will become more informed. We can't force it upon each other, we can just encourage it. I do think politicians and journalists have a significant role to play in helping us do this, but they can't do it alone. Yes it would help if some parts of the media stopped sensationalising things in ways that fuel the prejudices of some, but we all need to take responsibility for getting the facts straight.

In the wake of the weekend's results I'd like to see some real effort made to tell the truth about the issues at stake. Some intelligent discussion without political axe grinding. Too much to ask for I know, but if we let the loudest protest voices carry the day, we may find ourselves making wrong decisions based on errant information, and there will be no going back.

If we want our MPs, MEPs, and local councillors to do a better job, then we need to know what that better job looks like before we tell them.

Having finished "Bounce: The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice"

So I've finished reading Bounce. The last section of the book seemed to take a long time to make its point about genetics and relative success, but the conclusion is in keeping with the premise of the book that it's practice that makes the difference. Whist your genetic make up may predispose you towards a particular sport and/or sporting success, there's no substitute for good and focussed practice.

Actually, when you put it like that it doesn't seem that new a concept. The only "new" thing is the demythologising of talent as an overriding factor. However, the jury is still out on the role of talent in many ways. For example, is hand eye coordination built in or developed? The answer is probably a combination of the two. I could always catch as far as I remember. I don't ever remember having to learn how to do that. I do remember learning how to refine the technique of catching in order to improve my skill and I do remember practicing throwing a ball and catching it for endless hours. I even remember the infamous cradle at school we used for catching practice.

As to the premise of the book, that it takes 10,000 hours of focussed and appropriate practice to achieve excellence is anything, well that statistic is somewhat undone when you dig a little deeper. The research on which this principle rests shows a much more significant variation that you'd want to see if you're going to establish a precise principle in terms of hours spent developing technical skills. I also suspect that it is quite difficult to control all the contributing factors. Put simply, not everyone practises the same way with the same coach and the same equipment. Not everyone develops at the same rate physically, mentally or technically. So variation is to be expected and trying to draw a universal conclusion is always going to be difficult.

Maybe the key concept form the book is grounded ion the basic principle that practice matters because practice makes a difference. If you want to get better at anything you have to practice and you have to practice in ways that help you improve and not in ways that ingrain bad habits.

Bounce is certainly a book worth reading if you are tempted to think that you will never be any good at anything because you simply lack the talent to do it. Just remember that you have to pick the right thing. If you can't hold a tune, I doubt whether 10,000 hours of practice will ever give you the pitch required to star in your musical!

Competitive Sport in School

Once again (is this an annual debate I wonder) we're having a debate about competitive sport in schools. At least on BBC Breakfast we are. There are those who say life is competitive so get on with with it and there are those who have been put off sport for life because it was, or seemed to be, all about winning and losing.

Now I have to be honest and say that there are times when I've got quite frustrated by those who advocate a completely non-competitive approach to sport at school. Competing is a fundamental part of sport and learning to do so in an honourable and healthy way is a good thing. But, if we fail to recognise that there are many people for whom competing is not the goal, then we are doing them a great disservice by making them think that if you can't win it's not worth the effort in the first place.  We need some perspective. How many children and young people playing sport at school go on to play professionally? Very few. For every 25 children playing tennis at a local club perhaps only 2 or 3 will still be playing in their late teens. Some may return later in life, but many will simply find something else to do with their time, especially when work and other life pressures are added.

So what we need is a strategy that encourages the widest possible participation and that teaches everyone from children to adults that sport is good in and of itself without having to win anything, and that playing sport to improve is just as significant as playing to win something. We need to stop debating competitive versus non-competitive and start discussing participation and the proper place for competition.

And last but not least, those of us who can play need to encourage those who struggle to have fun trying.

A Quiet Day at the Marathon

Well this year was a much quieter day at the marathon compared to last year. It would seem quite that the location is quite important if you're going to get runners to come to the charity's reception. The last two years I've been in St James Park and we had a lot of runners come through. I think last year we had over 130, certainly over a 100 across the 8 or so couched we had open. This year, although the charity with whom I was working had over 150 runners, only 24 came to the reception point.

That was rather disappointing for the therapists, but you can't blame the runners for maybe not wanting to walk the extra half mile or so up towards Piccadilly after running 26.2 of them! It might have been that they just wanted to sit in the park or just hop on the tube home. It never ceases to amaze me that after running all that way, many of the participant just casually get on the tube and very people seem to take any notice.

As for me, I got to act in a supervisory role rather than a hands on therapist. That was good for me and I'm very grateful to the actual supervisor who gave me the opportunity. It 's always good to extend what you do and think about how you might lead a team should the opportunity ever arise. The one thing that can be said for supervising is that you don't have to drag your couch across the city. This year's assault course included navigating West Ham station between the C2C and Jubilee line, then changing from the Jubilee to the Piccadilly line at Green Park before dragging myself up the stairs to street level in search of my final destination.

All the runners were magnificent. Some just thrilled to have made it, some achieving or just missing out on personal bests. Mo Farah was not alone on missing his target, and like all the runners I met you would never dare to call them failures. Perhaps those who do ought to try a mile or two for themselves before offering such twaddle in judgement.

If the Ark isn't a symbol of God's power, what is it?

I'm talking here about the Ark of the Covenant and not the large vessel Noah built and has become the subject of heated debate with the release of the film, just to save any confusion!

The story of the the loss and return of the Ark in 1 Samuel is still in my mind as I think about the implications of the story. There are plenty of theological books available that will discuss the Ark, it's significance and meaning. What I've been doing is thinking about why Israel took it into battle and why, when it was captured, the events unfolded as they did. Perhaps some of the answers lie in the relationship between God and Israel and God and the Philistines. Perhaps not so much.

I guess some of the problem lies in the simple fact that we can make what was sacred into something far more superstitious than sacred. There's an almost logical reductionism that causes us to interpret and then reinterpret things to the point that they bear little resemblance to the original. And it has to be said that whichever side of an argument you present, you face the danger of interpreting texts and objects in line with your presuppositions and prejudices. It's only natural.

So, without this turning into an in-depth bible study, what does the Ark represent? What is it's significance? Well, at it's very heart it is the resting place of the God-given law code for Israel. That law describes life under the covenant between God and the people. It's a treaty document you might say, and it describes the responsibilities of both suzerain and vassal, master and servant. Failure to live up to the terms of the covenant brings consequences.

But there's something else at work with this particular covenant. There's an escape route if you like for when things go wrong, for when the people fail to meet the expectations of the code. A rite takes place and blood is sprinkled on the Ark. Now, I happen to think that Ark contained both copies of the law. Typically treaties of the era would be written out in two copies, one for each party. I think both god's copy and the people's copy are in the box. both people and Lord have only one reference point, the Ark and so when the blood is sprinkled both copies are "covered" by the blood of the sacrifice.

Now, when God looks at the law he sees the blood first. There law is "hidden" beneath the blood. It does not disappear. Rather than being judged against the law, the people are now judged against the sacrifice. Mercy, and grace, triumph over judgment, to paraphrase James.

Perhaps that's why the Philistine statue falls over, because there is no blood to cover the law and so judgment prevails (You shall have no other gods...). But even where judgement might prevail. God remains gracious and even the Philistines work out a way to send the Ark back. Even in their misdirected faith and practice, God seems to find a way to be gracious towards them. Perhaps this is a symbol too of what is to come when he will make a covenant that is wider than a nation.

You see, I find it fascinating the way that God interacts with people. The way he seeks to save and not destroy. The way he works with where they are rather than where they ought to be if only they knew  better.

Missional church life is not just about doing more mission or doing more social action. Part of the missional DNA is to inhabit the neighbourhood not just visit it. To find ways of incarnating the gospel, living the grace of God n the mists of a community that is mixed up and messed up. To find a way of demonstrating a better way to live from within. We are in the community, we are for the community and are with the community as together we journey with and towards God. This is not a universalist position before someone accuses me of such. It is an assumption that everyone is somewhere on a journey with God. That God is at work in my community.

For the record, I think God loved the Philistines just as much as he loved Israel. I think he wanted to show them a better way, to bless them in ways they couldn't imaging. It was just that the example he longed to set for them through the people he had set apart wasn't working.

You might be tempted to say the same is true today.

Will there be tennis in heaven?

Over Easter I'll be in Ipswich taking part in the first tournament of the year for me. It would be nice to think that this year I might make some progress and win a few matches. I have no expectations of winning any tournaments, but a match or tow wouldn't go amiss!

The other day, while speaking at church, I jokingly suggested that if there wasn't going to be the chance to play tennis in heaven I wasn't sure I wanted to go! To which someone replied that it would be boring because it would be just one long rally because no one would miss. That made me laugh but also go me thinking. To what do we really owe our concept of heaven?

Either we se heaven as some sort of idealised paradise based on some utopian world, or we seem to see it as one long worship event. We'll wander around with sickly sweet smiles on faces, living out an eternal version of a Star Trek episode where we're all happy and have rejected technology to live in simplicity in a temperate climate where time is no longer relevant.

But is that really what it will be like? If all we are going to do all day is sing then I for one will need a much better voice than Currently possess. i know God loves a joyful noise, but surely even he would baulk at it for all eternity!

Too often our view of heaven is based on an assumption of a return to the garden ideal. I'm not sure that's how it will be. On the other hand, I don't know much more than that it will be a place where God dwells among his people and that the old order of things will have passed away. But what belongs to that old order? John tells us that it has to do with things like dying, mourning, crying and pain. So, my knees and back might not ache, but does it mean that technology will disappear and that sport will become a distant memory.

I'm not so sure.

For what it's worth, if there is the opportunity to play tennis in heaven I think my backhand will still need work and that playing it will still be just as difficult then as it is now. Heaven won't be some stylised paradise where nothing goes awry and mistakes don't happen. It will be a place where we have learned to live in true relationship with the God who loves us. A place not marred by sin and fallen human characteristics but defined by the character of God expressed through the people who dwell there.

Perhaps I will finally be able to see in colour and without glasses, but if I'm still chromatically challenged and short-sighted then who cares. I'm not seeking perfection, I'm seeking God.

Where are we now?

A video conversation with Reggie McNeal about the missional movement. In this video he makes some interesting observations about the journey so far and shares both concerns and hopes for the movement going forward.

The hardest thing for most people as far as I can tell is getting  grip on a completely new way of seeing the church. It's not about adding more programmes, but fundamentally shifting our paradigm for what it means to be the church. Moving from a church-centric narrative to a kingdom narrative is one of our challenges. Seeing ourselves as 'in', 'for' and 'with' our communities is also a challenge.

Some thoughts about the early part of 1Samuel

I decided I wanted to read the story of Samuel and the transition to a monarchy in the life of Israel for my daily devotional and I saw something I'd not seen before in the first few chapters. Well I guess I had noticed it, but not quite in the same way. As the story unfolds we find Hannah praying, moving her lips but with no sound coming out. Eli assumes she's been drinking but soon discovers that's not the case and that in fact it is out of her deep distress that Hannah is praying with such intensity.

But why did Eli presume Hannah was drunk? How bad had things got at the Tabernacle that it was more normal to assume someone was drunk than deep in prayer? This has little to do with ecstatic prayer or issues around speaking in tongues as was the case in Acts. Things must have been pretty awful, and indeed we soon discover just how bad things were as the antics of Eli's sons are revealed.

Yet God still speaks. Hannah gets an answer to her prayer, Samuel is born. Even though life around the Tabernacle is far from holy, God still connects with his people, still looks for someone to stand in the gap, still desires righteousness. His passion remains to be amongst his people.

A second thing that caught my eye comes after the battle and the loss of the Ark. Now quite why Israel thought that taking the Ark into battle was a good idea and that a wooden box covered in gold was a solution to their problem is a bit of a mystery when you think about it. I guess they were trying to assure God's presence with them, but as with all human beings, they'd forgotten the fundamentals. Anyway they lose the battle and lose the Ark.

The Philistines however win the battle, capture the Ark, but things don't go so well for them. All along, whether Israel or Philistine, the people look for man-made solutions. The Philistines never ask what the wider implications are of the presence of the Ark. In fact their response to the Ark is to avoid stepping on the threshold of the temple because that's where some of the bits of the statue of their god had landed when it fell over.

Life among the Philistines was pretty messed up too.

As it get moved from town to town, people fear it's arrival, and at the end of chapter 5 of 1Samuel there's this little phrase: the cry from the town rose to heaven.

The cry from the town rose to heaven. God even hears the cry of the Philistines. Somehow they work out a solution. There's no great act of repentance, they just want rid of this problematic box.

But this got me thinking. If God still speaks in the midst of the mixed up, messed up life of Israel; and if God hears the cry of the mixed up messed up lives of the Philistines; and he he responds, then what about my neighbourhood and what about yours?

Our God is the God of mission and we are called to partner with him. IF he is listening to the cries of our neighbours then how do we learn to listen too? And having heard, how do we then respond? I have no simple answers, only questions. But if he cared enough to engage with unfaithful Israel and irreligious Philistia, then there surely is hope for the place where I live.

TED Talks

there are many helpful and interesting TED talks. The other day I posted a link to a conversation with Edward Snowden on Facebook, and after I watched that broadcast I followed a link to a talk about bionics. Now if you grew up in the 70's you will remember The Six Million Dollar Man and the spin-off The Bionic Woman. I believe there was also a bionic dog somewhere in the storyline too, but maybe I'm just dreaming!

Whilst the programming became more and more ridiculous, the early concept, loosely based on the novel Cyborg, was intriguing and seemingly far-fetched and futuristic at the time. But here we are 40 years on and we now actually do have some amazing technology that has incredible potential for prosthetics.

Interestingly, in the Ted talk, alongside the amazing bionic legs described is a very challenging idea. Put simply, it's that technology is what is broken not the individuals with challenges. We are, or so it seems, edging ever closer to the reality of those famous opening lines form 1973, "We have the technology, we can rebuild him..."

An addendum to "Is all sin criminal?"

I've been thinking about my previous post and wanted to clarify something that's really important to me. I'm concerned that some might misunderstand my point just because of the title and so I want take it a little clearer having thought about for a while.

Essentially my point is this: Should we consider all sin (things that we do that do not honour God) to be outside the law?

I want to avoid being misquoted and misunderstood as suggesting that some things that we might call sin out to be called criminal. That's not the case. I just wanted to raise the question of how we understand the relationship between the legal system, the rights of the individual and our theology.

Does that make sense? I hope so!

Maybe I should also add that the real challenge that faces the church is not how we control the state but how we express the kingdom. When our incarnation of the gospel is an expression of exclusion of certain groups of society, then how can we expect them to be reached when we hold them beyond arms length? Are they only allowed to draw near the cross when their behaviour or beliefs are acceptable?

Is all sin criminal?

Without any heart fanfare, the news this morning made mention of the the fact that as from midnight gay marriage becomes legal in the UK (or maybe just England and Wales, I'm not sure). anyway, I was wondering when the first pronouncements might be made about this from those who have spoken so loudly about it in the past and what it says about our society's general decline. Now I've blogged before about how I see the issue and that in my opinion it isn't the ultimate threat to our way of life that some evangelicals would suggest. I'm also not so sure that the floods and storms are necessarily God's angry response to our secular government's decision to pas this measure into law.

And that's the point. We live in a secular society, and the best secular society can do is to protect the rights of all its members, or seek to do so.

In the shower this morning I was thinking about this and wondered how a conversation might go between myself and someone who wanted to understand what I thought about the whole thing. Where would my emphasis be? What questions would I raise and what reasons might I give? In the end, what is my theology, or rather how does my theology work itself out in practise over such an issue.

I remember reading John Stott's Issues Facing Christian Today when it first came out in the early 80's/late 70's. What I took away from that book wasn't necessarily a series of systematic doctrines about certain issues, but rather a way of thinking about things that was hopefully more Biblical than just textual (i.e. based on a broader understanding of the whole Bible than just the direct application of a handful of proof texts). I wasn't thinking about the book in the shower, but it's that thing about facing issues and thinking "Christinanly" about them that's the key.

I wonder if the reason we, as Christians, have got ourselves in a stir over this and other things is that we have confused the idea of what does not honour God (i.e. sin) and what is criminal. It seems to me that while all crime is  a sin, because all crime surely offends God, not all sin is a crime. Think about it for a moment. We don't criminalise lying, except when under oath in a court, but telling untruths is surely listed as dishonouring God. Similarly we don't arrest a couple for setting up home together yet from a biblical perspective we would probably agree that such a choice does not sit comfortably in the context of a desire to live a God-honouring life.

So there you have it. not fully worked out, not all the nuances explored, just a simple thought: Is all sin a crime? You tell me.

Early morning exercise

Ah the joy of getting out of bed and walking/running around the streets before breakfast! The last couple of days Anne has been on the later train and so I've got up early with her and we've gone out for a quick 25/30 minutes walk before having breakfast and starting our respective days.

It's amazing how energising it is to spend just half an hour outside at the start of the day. Not that the last few days have been warm spring starts. On with the thermal base layers, hats and gloves; pockets stuffed with tissues for the inevitable nee blowing requirement. And of course the challenge of leaving a nice warm bed for the cold kiss of frosty air. Nevertheless out we have gone and good it has been. At least for me.

Once I get started I want to keep going for as long as I can. Something inside just seems to shout, "Run!" Sadly the knees are not so keen so I keep to a pattern of intervals, walking some times, running others. Today we used lampposts, running two, walking one. That was fine until we turned a corner and realised the next two lampposts were quite a long way away.

I don't suppose I'll ever be running 5 or 10k's anymore, the knees won't take it and running isn't the only exercise I get. I often tell people that you use just as much energy walking a mile as you do running it, the only difference is how quickly you use it (and technically speaking what you use to some extent to produce the required energy).

The most liberating thing is to understand that there are no rules that say you must run. The only "rule" has to be to get out and do something and have some fun doing it. Yes it can be tedious if you're training for some endurance event, but for the average person to stay healthy the guideline remains 30 minutes of moderate exercise 5 times a week.

So go on, pull on the running tights and thermal top, cover it all up with a t-shirt or two and a pair of yoga pants, dust off your trainers and enjoy some air while it's still comparatively fresh! Your porridge will taste great when you get back!

Racket stringing update!

Well I took the plunge and restrung one of my playing rackets. In fact I've now strung it four times with different strings in different combinations.

Although quite tedious process, it's quite rewarding to string the thing and then go and play with it and see what difference the strings make. Now I'm not an ATP tour player, but even I noticed a difference. I'm lucky enough to have 3 rackets, so I have two that have been strung by the club coach for me, and I play okay with them, so having a third racket for experimental purposes is a great help. It means I don't have to restring one I like and risk getting it terribly wrong!

My first shot was with a hybrid mixture of the original Head string that the rackets come with from the factory and a synthetic gut of similar diameter. Tennis strings come in 4 or 5 thicknesses. Then I did it again with the same pattern but a different tension. The third attempt was just the factory string at the recommended tension.

My last try was to use the same pattern the coach uses in my other rackets. I figured that if I could get the same playing characteristics from my stringing as I do from his then I was doing a reasonably good job. I tried it out last week and it was fine. So I'm rather pleased with that.

The question now is how many experiments do I perform? There are so many variations of string from which to choose, one could spend the next year trying new combinations. There are hexagonal and pentagonal profiles, monofilaments and multi-filaments, braided, kevlar, titanium, synthetic and natural gut. And what about colour!! Blue, yellow, gold, red, white, black, natural. So much choice!

For the time being I think I'll stick to the strings I've got, but I might just be tempted to try something new!

Does local democracy work?

Well, in answer to my own question: We shall see.

I'll confess that the older I get the less interested I am in voting, especially in National Elections and even European ones. I'm not sure my vote actually means anything, and the argument that if you don't vote you have no right to comment or complain is just ridiculous. None of us vote for the FIFA presidency, but many of us have an opinion about it! In fact, not voting can be more meaningful than voting as long as it's not arrived at by apathy and worn out arguments. Although disillusionment with the political system as it is is probably one of those old arguments!

Anyway, to local democracy. We've got local elections coming up in our borough and I got canvassed the other day. To my surprise I heard myself say that I was beginning to think that local elections might be more important than national ones. If local democracy can be made to work better, then maybe there's hope for national democracy.

I've decided to involve myself in local democracy over an issue that impacts my immediate community. I've taken the first step in writing to a local councillor and refreshingly I got an honest and hopeful reply. A good start. The last time I wrote to political office I got short shrift and was told the Prime Minister knew better than I did. Something history might suggest was somewhat wide of the mark!

Local councillors probably have a tougher job than some of their Westminster counterparts. After all they often have full-time jobs as well as serving on the council (rather than having lucrative consultancy jobs outside parliament-or is that just cynical?). I'm hoping that my initial burst of enthusiasm isn't snuffed out by lack of action or response.

As I said at the start: We shall see!!

Lost along the way but still looking!

A number of years ago I got very excited about the emergence of something called conversational evangelism. Alongside things like servant evangelism and ordinary people doing ordinary things, it seemed to me that we were on the verge of recapturing the simplicity of evangelism as an act of sharing our lives and stories with others. No complex spiritual laws to apply and no carefully crafted answers to the 7 main objections or whatever it was.

That conversation appears to have moved on given the quick internet search I did this morning. Conversational evangelism seems now to be defined as pre-evangelism and even appears to have drifted into the old area of apologetics. Now I don't have a problem with apologetics as such, I just wonder how you can effectively argue a logic, reasonable case for faith in a post-modern world. does post-modern man or woman really want to be convinced about absolute truth?

Perhaps I'm doing the journey a disservice, but I'm concerned that as evangelicals we still only have a single way of measuring our kingdom effectiveness and we can't see the bigger picture of a person's move towards God in any other terms than those of a prayer of commitment. I'm all for people putting their lives into the hands of God and acknowledging their need, but does that mean that any other conversation, i.e. conversation that doesn't lead to conversion, is nothing more than the preamble to the real thing? I hope that's not where we are headed.

As I continue to struggle to work out what it means for me to live a kingdom life in partnership with God o his mission, I often find myself wondering about the value of the things I do. But do I really want to return to the guilty life of failed attempt to turn the tables in witnessing.

Somewhere along the line there is a place for an intentional conversation, but knowing when and how to do that is never an easy task and ought not to be the determining factor in how good or bad I am at evangelism. At the very least let's acknowledge that there are many links in the chain that leads someone to faith and sometimes we are privileged enough to be there when the final link is added. But often we are just one link in many, and our goal should be to make sure we don't leave behind anything that blocks the next link in the chain.

So, if apologetics has become the defining factor in describing conversational evangelism, then so be it. I will need to look for a new term. On the other hand  it might just be that we can rescue a potentially significant thought and recover the idea that reaching others for Christ is a process not an event and all our conversations matter. For me conversational evangelism remains a process of sharing and hearing stories and exploring the kingdom links within them. The truth is that we don't all have all the answers and our evangelism ought not to be passed on any assumption that we do.

The God who comes looking

In my last post I talked about the mission of God and how I understand it. One of the themes of my preaching over the last 20+ years has been this idea of the God who comes looking. The gospel is a story about incarnation. God becomes human, lives among a people and can be touched, heard, and seen. It is a cornerstone of the good news.

But it's not just a theological truth. It expresses something of the heart and passion God has to be amongst his people, the people he loves. It starts in the garden of the early chapters of Genesis and runs through to the later chapters of Revelation. God comes looking for Adam even though he knows he's broken the commandment not to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge. In Revelation, the final stages of the unfolding story are described in terms of the new city. A place where God "dwells among the people and they will be his people and he will be their God."

But this isn't just a neat literary device, neatly drawing the two ends of a long narrative together. It's fundamental to the whole story and woven throughout it's pages. God is seen regularly making special excursions into the lives of individuals. He speaks directly to some and does extraordinary things in the lives of others. I think God's great desire to live amongst his people is most clearly exemplified in the building of the Tabernacle. When you read the description of the tents and the design and layout of the Tabernacle, you might think it's designed to keep the people out. Clearly demarked areas and processes to be followed, threats of imminent destruction and judgement for failure to follow the rules might make you think that God was excluding them rather than including them.

But shift your perspective for a moment and ask yourself how does a holy, perfect God live right in the middle of an unholy and imperfect people without destroying them? If the natural outcome of an encounter between the unholy and holy is that the unholy is judged and with that judgement comes destruction, then the Tabernacle becomes the only way God could achieve his desire to be among the people without destroying them. Mercy does indeed triumph over judgement.

Ultimately this passionate desire to live in close connection with humanity is seen in Jesus Christ as the holy God becomes flesh and blood. Amazing isn't it, to think that there was a time in human history when a person could touch God without dying a sudden death. When God comes looking, it's because he loves you.

Yes, there are those salutary moments when judgement breaks out, when the holiness of God seems no longer to be able to dwell with the unholiness of humanity. But the overwhelming narrative of the Bible is that God comes looking for us and does so because in some way heaven is incomplete without us and he can't stand the idea of us not being there. He will do and has done whatever it takes to make it possible for us to live with him as he desires to live with us.

For as long as I get to keep preaching, I'll keep talking about the God who comes looking.

Defining God's Mission

It's somewhat presumptuous of me, or anyone to think that we can actually define what it is that God wants to do in the world. We can however look at what he has done and what he says about what he does, and try to interpret that in a way that helps us participate.

For a long time now, my guiding principle for understanding my relationship to the mission of God has been in the form of this simple question: Lord, what are you doing, and how can I help? It comes from reading John 5 and the statement of Jesus that he does "only what he sees the Father doing". I've been around church long enough to have sent enough time conceiving grand plans on the assumption that God would naturally bless whatever it was we were planning to do. Rarely, if ever, did we stop and ask ourselves what he was already doing in our communities and neighbourhoods.

With the advent of missional church language and through a process of reflecting on why evangelism was so hard and how we could make it a more natural expression of our discipleship, I began to discover a working vocabulary that has helped me redefine the mission and my relationship to it. It is not complete yet, ad I guess probably never will be. I also must report that as yet we haven't seen anything spectacular, we haven't planted a thriving new church with a whole new outlook on community engagement. We're still on the journey and I'm none the wiser about what God is doing in my neighbourhood.

But, over the years, I've come to a few realisations and conclusions that have helped me see God's mission differently to way I saw it back in the 70's and 80's. Those realisations include the following:

• First, generally speaking, church works for people who like church and it doesn’t work for everyone else! 

• Second, people who don’t yet know Jesus aren’t really unhappy, unfulfilled and having a bad time. They actually seem to enjoy their lives far more than the average Christian enjoys theirs. 

• Thirdly, the simple fact that God is on a mission and has a church through whom he wants to work, and with whom he wants to work in partnership.

The church's mandate is to partner with God in his mission rather than seek to plan and do the work for him. Mission is much more than just evangelism. John Stott once defined mission as everything the church does. I didn't fully comprehend the implications of that statement at the time and even questioned whether it was true, but that was mainly from the perspective of looking at what the church was doing and wondering if it was actually part of God's mission. Looking back, I think I understand more fully how this fits in the context of we might now call the missional church.

The other thing that shifted my perspective was the concept of servant evangelism and the idea of ordinary evangelism. The latter is best summed up in the words of Jim Henderson, which I'll paraphrase from memory:

If ordinary people can't do it (i.e. evangelism/mission) in ordinary ways, ordinarily it won't get done.

I do believe that taken together, these concepts have helped me understand more deeply where I fit in big picture of what God is doing. It needs seasoning with some intentionality and a few other things,  but overall being ordinary, doing ordinary things, but understanding them to be part of trying to see what God is up to and partnering with him is the natural environment for my part in his mission.

As to defining that mission, well I got asked to preach this last Sunday and I chose to share our story in the context of talking about some of these things. I defined God's mission this way:

To let everyone know that God is for them and not against them. That he loves them with a passion and we can make this known through the things we say and do and the quality of the relationships we share.

That mission is redemptive (restoring the broken relationship between humanity and God through the cross of Christ) and it’s active (God came looking, Jesus said, “Go!” He sent the church to the world, not the world to church.)

This is the kind of church I believe Jesus wants to build. A church made up of people who will partner with him on his mission to bless the world and share the message of his redemptive love and sacrifice. Being missional is about making disciples who make disciples so that the world can be saturated with people who love Jesus. It's not about doing more mission. It’s not just about becoming socially active or engaged.

We do what we do because we are the people of God partnering with God in his mission to the world. That mission is primarily a mission of incarnation, where God comes to dwell amongst the people he loves and seeks to redeem them into relationship with him.

Balance the reports please!

As you know I rather enjoy playing tennis. I'm also quite interested in watching it and reading about it. I often go to the BBC website to news of tournaments. But I have to say I'm rather disappointed in the BBC website's reporting of the semi-finals from Indian Wells in the last couple of days. There was an article about Federer and Djokovic. 19 sentences, all as single line paragraphs, detailing the two semi-finals and making references to Federer's new coaching team. Fair enough, not a bad summary of events.

Then I went to read about Li Na's semi-final against Flavia Pennetta. Shorter at 11 sentences, but here's the rub, only 4 of the 11 sentences were actually about the match. 6 were about Federer and Djokovic, 1 about the fact that both finals were on Sunday.

It might sound picky, but I found it really frustrating that whoever wrote the second report thought we need more about the men's final rather than the women's tournament. There wasn't even a mention of the other ladies semi-final.

There's little I can do about it, and I'm not sure I'm going to take it up with the BBC, perhaps I should. It just annoyed me that someone thought a decent report about the ladies matches in their own right would not be enough to make the article worth reading.

Promises

Hannah took her vow to dedicate Samuel to God's service very seriously. Her prayer was profound and heartfelt. It came out of her sense of deepest need and trouble. But her promise was no simple off the cuff remark, uttered like a "get out of jail free" card. The kind of promise we make to be good if only the presenting situation resolves itself in our favour. Hannah's promise was no virtual promise, no promise without intention to see it through.

It was a promise she would keep. She would take Samuel to Eli and leave him there. How hard must that have been? How strong must she have been? How flippant some of our promises must seem in comparison. How littered are our lives with broken promises made in the heat of the moment but lacking any intention to fulfil.

Think about Hannah the next time you hear yourself making a vow.

Another new skill!

Over the last couple of years I've been thinking about learning how to string a tennis racket. Why? Well because it's interesting, at least it is to me! Perhaps I have an inquisitive nature or just some deep need to try new things.

Anyway, I bought myself a stringing machine around Christmas time and I finally got around to setting it up and having a go. The delay was mainly due to working out how to calibrate the tensioning system. There instructions are clear and I bought a tension checker when I got the machine. The only problem was that I wasn't sure the checker was accurate. The scales didn't seem to match (Pounds and Kilos) and I didn't know which one was wrong. Anyway, I got some fishing scales and compared the two, but this still didn't satisfy my scientific need for accuracy. I needed up weighing a large bag of cat litter using both devices and decided which scale I could trust.

With the machine set up, I took and old racket and set about stringing it. I've done three now and worked out a few useful tips. The most important one being to keep my fingers out of the way of the brake lever when tensioning the string! It locks out with quite a snap and if your finger is in the way it's both painful and messy when it hits the soft bit just below the nail (ouch!)

I haven't yet strung one of my playing rackets, but I will take the plunge at some point and do one now I'm okay with the process. The difficult bit is making sure you've got notes of where the main and cross strings start and finish. Quite how you do that when you buy an unstrung frame I don't know, maybe they come with instructions.

So why am I doing this? Is it just because it's interesting? Well yes and and no. Strings can have an impact on the way you play. The more tension they have the more control you have and the lower the tension the more power there is. Different strings have different playing characteristics, and it might be fun to explore different combinations to see what effect they have. And it's a nice thought that when a string breaks you can bring the racket home and restring it yourself. They say that you should restring your rackets as often in a year as you play in a week. At the moment that would mean restringing my rackets every 2-3 months! Three rackets at £12 a racket works out at £144 to £216 a year! Not that I do that, but if I did and if I did it myself I think it would work out at between £2 and £5 a racket. So quite a saving.

In reality, you get your racket restrung when you break a string, probably once every 6-8 months in my case. So I'm not saving a fortune, just learning a new skill and keeping the grey matter working. 

Speaking of which, I'm currently reading a book on biomechanics alongside finishing off "Bounce". I find the whole biomechanics thing really interesting, and when I've finished that book I have one on myofascial structures to read. I feel a trip to a coffee shop coming on!

Cracking on through "Bounce"

To people who have never reached a national or international level of competition, it may appear that excellence is simply the result of practicing daily for years or even decades. However, living in a cave does not make you a geologist. 

I came across this quote in a paper by K. Anders Ericsson, Michael J. Prietula, and Edward T. Cokely called: The Making of an Expert. I read the article because I'd also read a piece on the BBC website around the topic of practice and excellence because I'm working my way steadily through Matthew Syed's book, and very interesting it is too. While it would be a rather reductionist simplification of the book, the basic premise is rather simple: Practice not talent makes for excellence.

From what else I've read, the 10,000 hours principle of purposeful practice is both a generalised average, some achieved excellence with fewer hours and some with considerably more, and really only the beginning of understanding the path to doing something well. Other evidence does appear to suggest that there are factors other than practice that contribute to one's overall ability to achieve your goals. For example, some research suggests that visual acuity is better is better performing athletes where their sport involves what we might call hand-eye coordination.
It is however quite clear that too often we buy into the talent myth, and limit our own potential on the basis of our perceived lack of talent. Most of us don't like practicing things we find difficult to do, and, when we do try something harder, we are quicker to declare that we can't do it than we are to encourage ourselves to persevere.

Perhaps the truth lies somewhere along a continuum of complex abilities married to purposeful, deliberate practice. Practice that stretches and challenges our abilities from a position of what we can do towards what we can learn to do better.

The truth is that if you reduce either Ericsson's research or Syed's book to a simple algorithm, then you miss the point. If I want to improve the percentage of forehand's I make in a game, then I have to measure both my success rate and the repeatability of those successes. In other words, when I practice I have to have a goal in mind and I need some form metric to apply. That metic not only needs to take into account how many shots I make but how "good" my technique is when I make the shot.

Reading Matthew Syed's book carefully, thoughtfully and critically will draw you to those conclusions. Read it superficially and you'll probably be disappointed in ten years time when you've practiced for all the required hours and still not achieved greatness!

Some rambling thoughts about independence

I'm not Scottish. I'm English, to be more or less precise about things. Actually I prefer to think about being a citizen of the UK, although that has caused confusion in the past! We were in Chicago staying at a local motel. I'd put "UK" on the form as our country of origin. The owner thought that meant Ukraine and complemented me on my English language skills!

Anyway, back to independence. In a few months time Scotland will decide whether to remain a part of the union or not. It sounds simple, but as with all of these things it's actually quite a complicated issue, made ever more complicated by history, or so it seems. Now, not only am I not a Scot, but I'm not an economist and I'm no great student of either history, politics or social sciences. I'm pretty neutral about who should vote too. I don't have a "West Lothian" question to raise.

What I do wonder is why the arguments in favour of staying in the union seem to be predicated upon a foundation of fear about what might be lost. don't go independent, you'll lose the pound, membership of the EU is not a given, all those sorts of things. Are there no better arguments pro union that these? Surely there are things about the union that are positive beyond a common currency a shared defence force and oil revenues.

Perhaps, what the arguments lacks something to do with interdependence, working and living together in a society not divided by our historical mistakes and prejudices, but shaped by a mutually positive future. You don't have to have an old Roman wall between you and Westminster to wonder about some of the decisions that are made there. I lived in London in the early 80's and watched as the then government dismantled the coal and manufacturing industries of the Midlands and other regions of our country. I only had to jump on a train back to my home city of Nottingham to see that central government appeared to be out of touch life away from the metropolis of London.

So here's my plea. If you're going to say anything about why Scotland should vote to stay in the union, then make it positive. If they vote for independence than we will work out what to do with the currency, what to do about sharing out the debt and how to negotiate our way through a period of change. Hopefully we'd support them in a bid to be part of the EU in their own right and we wouldn't become protective of the border!

Storms, tempest and judgment

If someone asked you if you believed that God was judging the nation through the floods and storms of recent weeks, what would you say? Would you say no in order to avoid being thought of as a religious fanatic, when in fact you rather think the correct answer is yes. Or would you say no and wonder what that says about your view of the Old Testament in particular?

On the other hand you might well say yes because you see God acting in this way in the Bible and see no reason to deny that he continues to to do the same and that in fact the Bible makes it quite clear that judgment is coming and that will take the form of earthquakes and floods because you remember reading that somewhere or you heard it one Sunday night when someone preached about the end times.

Perhaps I should call my insurance company and ask them how the determine whether something is an "act of God". Then again, maybe we ought to remind ourselves that judgment, whatever form it might or might not take, is God's area of expertise and his prerogative, not ours. You'd think sometimes that we believe that we're best placed to make the call, but that would put us at the very least on an equal footing with God if not slightly ahead of him, and that is surely a dangerous position in which to find ourselves! Is it not enough for us to know that one day God will judge and he will do so righteously. Ours is a simpler task: to live lives that honour God. To love others into the kingdom rather than judge them out of it. Sometimes that's messy, sometimes it looks like we're compromising our faith. Jesus was known as a friend of sinners and it wasn't meant as a complement.

I try not to judge anyone. When I was the minister of a local church, something I did for 20 years, I often seemed to end up asking folk who's found themselves in some situation or another whether they thought their situation and the way they were handling it honoured God or not. Rarely did I ever have to point them to a particular verse or passage that talked about their situation. They knew the Bible well enough to work it out for themselves.

Is that enough? I don't know. And for the record, neither do I know whether the recent storms are a result of global warming to divine displeasure. The former is certainly a factor and as to the latter, I haven't asked and God hasn't told me.

Sugar versus Fat

Did you see the Horizon programme about sugar and fat? It's still available on iPlayer until about the 3rd of March if you haven't seen it. It's an interesting experiment with some interesting conclusions. I know it's a bit of a spoiler, but the final conclusion, that refined foods are the biggest issue, is far from as surprising at it appears to be in the programme. What was interesting is the reason why.

It would appear that it's down to the fat/sugar ratio and the way that tricks our bodies into not self-regulating our intake. In other words, we just keep eating. These refined foods are calorie dense, very pleasing to eat and have the ability to switch off the self-regualting system. That's what makes them dangerous.

The Myth of Talent

I've started reading Matthew Syed's book "Bounce: The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice". It's a book I've been wanting to read for some time along with Malcolm Gladwell's "Tipping Point". Gladwell's book was first published in 2000, and Bounce in 2011, so I'm typically late to the party, but better late than never!

The premise of Bounce is that practice not talent is what produces excellence. Elite sports people might look super talented, but it's the hours of practice that make the difference. The first part of the book is all about debunking the myth that it's talent that distinguished the best from the rest, and that anyone can achieve things that seem beyond their abilities with sufficient application. Interesting.

Syed cites a number of researchers and research studies that support his thesis, and the data is compelling. It's quite heartening to know that, for example, I can become a consistently better tennis player given enough practice. But the practice must be purposeful rather than undirected. There's one great quote from Jack Nicklaus:

It isn't so much a lack of talent; it's a lack of being able to repeat good shots consistently that frustrates most players. And the only answer to that is practice.

 Okay, so here's the not so good news. It takes 10,000 hours of practice to achieve excellence! At 1,000 hours a year, that means it takes on average 10 years to achieve that level of performance. This apparently holds true across the board. Those youngsters who appear talented beyond their years and in comparison to their peers, on investigation have just compressed their practice into a shorter time frame and have had the advantage of superior coaching along the way.

How does that inform the rest of us? Well, take the example of church leadership, something I have some experience in! When someone is appointed to the leadership team of a church do we just assume they come with all the skills and gifts required of them to perform well as a leader? How do we give them the time to practice, to prepare for leadership? How do we develop their skills so they become excellent leaders?

We can't get them practicing four hours a day for the next ten years, and in truth they come to the leadership table with many gifts and skills already developed. That's why we appointed them, right? But a typical two terms as a deacon in many baptist churches might just not give someone the opportunity to truly develop their potential. Asking them to serve for 10+ years in a row would often wear out all but the most determined or simply belligerent of leaders!

I don't have an answer, but simply ask the question. As for me, I realise a couple of things. Firstly, if I'm going to improve my tennis I need to practice more and maybe play less. At the very least the balance of practice and play needs to be thought through. When it comes to my massage practice, there's a similar challenge around the amount of clinical practice I need to go from being a competent therapist and an excellent one. Sadly I probably don't have enough years left to fully achieve my potential in either of these disciplines, but that doesn't mean I don't have a target in mind and some goals to achieve.

The point here I guess is that you need a plan. Whatever your goals might be and no matter how realistic they appear, the key is in that phrase "purposeful practice". It might be a simple plan, for example to hit ten consecutive cross court forehands into a specific area of the court rather than just "over and in". It might be to sign up for a CPD course on sports injuries to further my knowledge base for therapy.

And for you? How are you going to apply the principle that it's not about how much talent you have but how much you are willing to invest in practice whatever that might mean?

Online abuse and bullying

I must say, I'm getting rather concerned about the whole issue of online abuse and bullying. It's come to the fore once again as yet another sports person closes their Twitter account because of threats received via that particular medium. Something surely needs to be done. But what?

Not being an internet savvy kind of person, at least not in the tracing ISP's or DNS locations, I have no idea how easy it would be to block a particular location regularly used by an abuser. Obviously companies could close accounts and block usernames, but choosing a new username and setting up a new account is the obvious get around for such action.

I guess this kind of behaviour is almost a natural extension of the couch bound sports watcher who shouts abuse at the TV from the comfort of their armchair or even from the terraces when they can muster the energy to drag themselves to the stadium. Perhaps you have to play or have played sport to understand just a little of what it means to compete and how small errors of judgement in the moment can lead to failing to achieve the goals you've set for yourself.

Perhaps online abuse is just a symptom of a wider malaise that infects our society and undermines our communities. How different might it be if we sought to be encouragers rather than critics.

In the end the only thing that is likely to have an impact on social media giants is loss of revenue. That would require a large scale rejection of the service, thousands of people closing their Twitter or Facebook accounts, or maybe a strike on updates and comments. Perhaps a day of action when everyone posts a "This must stop" message, a sort of internet version of the famous scene from Network, when Peter Finch's character, Howard Beale, calls on his audience to open their windows and shout: "We're as mad as hell, and we're not going to take this anymore."

On the other hand, a quieter revolution, one where we we teach ourselves and others that there is a better way,  one where we take responsibility for ourselves and own our comments. One where we remember that abuse hurts whatever form it takes and most people are actually more fragile than we think.

If you have a minute, read the Wikipedia entry on "Sticks and stones", the old adage that suggests that abuse, in the form of name calling, doesn't hurt. And then ask yourself if it's true.

Communities not missionaries

Here's a really interesting post from David Fitch about sending communities rather than individuals. The premise is that migration is key as communities move into new areas and live subject to God's reign.

Read the article here.

David Puttnam on "A duty of care"

This is an interring short talk and worth a watch. It raises a number of issues, particularly around the role of the media, but it has implications beyond that. For those who access the Bible, the theme of "a duty of care" should certainly not be unfamiliar and echoes of Isaiah and the story of the Good Samaritan, to name but two, come immediately to mind.

I guess the really big question from the talk is how do we go about reengaging in a democratic system that has lost it's soul as ours appears to have done.

My first attempt with a sewing machine!

I talked Anne into buying a new sewing machine on the basis that I would have a go with it too. I wanted to make a thin hoodie to replace one I used to have but wore out. When I play tennis in the winter it's nice to use several thin layers, but most hoodies are relatively thick and too warm for me.

And this is the result of my efforts with help and encouragement from the aforementioned Anne who helped me understand the pattern, cut the pieces and figure out the assembly process. But I did all the sewing, which is probably the most straightforward bit of the whole process!