Caption Contest: Oooh look at you in your brand new dress!

Well, that's you starter for ten out of the way.

There are many of you sending me mails or asking, when we meet, the question: 'When are we having another caption contest?' Well the answer is, 'Now!'

You may turn over your papers :-)

There will, of course, be a (yet to be determined) prize for the best :-)

What Blogging is about for me

Every now and again I get engaged with by someone who asks me why I'm not like [insert name of blogger here] and blog every day. My response is usually that unlike [use name inserted earlier] I am someone who blogs when it feels right.

When I started I bumped into someone who was, at the time, one of the leading lights in the blogosphere and they were very kind about my scribbles. We got talking and as we entered into various topics of the the day I noticed that they would scribble bits of it into their little notebook for use on the the blog later. A year on we met again and as we talked the notebook appeared again and scribbles were made. The scribbler, noticing that I was looking at them scribble as we spoke told me of the curse that blogging can bring as the need for content now obviously drove them. 'I can't hold a conversation or hear things without feeling the need for notes so that I can use anything interesting later,' they confessed and followed that with. 'In fact the blog drives me rather than me driving it. I have become its slave!'

What was interesting was that a few months later they mentioned this on their blog as they announced their decision to disappear for a while - and since then have vanished from the blogosphere (under that alias at least) apparently for good.

My latest conversation ended up with the question, 'Why don't you publish every day?' something which brought the response that, 'As just a boring cleric, what would I'd write about?' That said, I do blog every day as I publish the daily office after I have done t myself to encourage those I do vocations work (and members of our church and others with whom I have relationships) to get into the habit of a daily discipline of prayer.*

But this blog exists for me to internally dialogue with meetings, issues and other things encountered during the course of my day. I am not too concerned with looking at the trending issue and writing on them to add my voice and (says he cynically) to attract an audience for the sake of having one. Those with whom I engage, read and, converse over the issues that come up (more often than not by means other than the comments, which is sad because most are clever and funny types who should be read!) and this is what this place is.

It is a glimpse inside the addled and confused brain of an almost average dog collar. I meet someone and discuss something and then come back and reflect (usually over a brew) on the whole shebang before rushing out to fill the buffer with more stuff from the next encounter.

What bores me is the fact that so many bloggers all comment on the same stuff, albeit with their own spin, and end up being a fairly second rate version of the daily papers or the religious press. What I want is to find real people with real views who excite, challenge and even cause concern and panic (a reason one friend reads the blog just for that!).

So there we are - what you get is often a splurge of the brain and five (sometimes ten) minutes of bashing the keyboard as I lay out my encounters, pacify my frustrations and tether my demons. It's rarely pretty, frequently weird but one hundred percent me.

you're never alone with a clone!

* What makes this fun was the person who asked what the point of my blog was because, 'All you do is post the daily office!' Their response when I pointed out that there was 'much more than that in my blog' was, 'Oh, I wouldn't know - I don't generally read it!' Always good to have the informed opinion innit? Of course, were my the daily office to be the only thing I put on the blog, were it to encourage people to have a solid prayer and Bible reading practice I would still consider it to be worthwhile.

One last school Christmas event

Having reached the end of the journey with the 'Finding Talent' report I am now free to read what others have said on it but there is something of more merit, of more joy and of more encouragement for me as a bit of a low key cleric - the penultimate school service of the Christmas period!

Tonight I will be celebrating Christmas with one of our local schools and as this nears:

I have to say that I have been blessed by tiny children singing 'Glory to God' and telling the age old nativity story through fresh eyes (the eyes of a 'Stable Rat').

I have done Christingle services with children and had the joy of seeing them pass by on their way home with their glowstick 'Christ lights' shining in the darkness (please Lord, may it shine in their homes and in the lives of all who enter them).

I have prayed, read Bible passages, blessed and sung my heart out in the old familiar carols.

I have sung strange songs from foreign lands and been challenged by people who wanted to substitute 'Father' when speaking of God for the term 'Mother' (and one person even wanted God as an 'it'!).

I have endured folk religion and struggled with odd understanding relating to God and His Son, Jesus, the Christ (and not all of it was from the clergy ;-) )

BUT

I have to say that Jesus, the blesséd babe of Bethlehem has shone through and I want to express my Christmas wishes to each and every person who passes by this place of madness that is my blog. So I thought I'd wish each and every one of you a blessed and peaceful Christmas and give thanks for Mary's 'Yes' - God made flesh - Immanuel.

Social Media - not about preaching . . .

Not about posting Bible passages on Twitter!

Not about preaching from a one-sided pulpit.

For me, one of the greatest benefits of the social media, twittersphere, blogging world is not that we take for ourselves a platform that makes us known but that in it we find a means to make ourselves more accessible, better understood and, most importantly, accountable.

Posting on Facebook on any of the other social media sites is not about being 'down with the kids' or evangelising. In fact if the only reason you post on a social media site is to 'win' people then might I most respectfully* suggest that you stop it and go buy yourself a sandwich board and at least have some integrity.

We don't win people to Christ by posting trite stuff, nor do we do it by posting contextually isolated (and often confusing) passages in cyberspace**; we win people to Christ by making ourselves open, honest and transparent.

I post here because, as I have said many times, it is a place of reflection and internal dialogue with the added benefit of inviting others to offer correctives where they might be required and to enter into the dialogue that I might better understand, be better understood and perhaps (for those reading and especially for me) shine a light on the world of faith that is Christianity.

God became man and was found among the people He came to save. This is what blogging, twitter and social media offers us - an opportunity to be part of the people around us and to learn of their needs and to make ourselves known in the hope that the same Spirit that raised jesus from the dead, that IS in fact Jesus, who is present in us, might just shine out, like a diamond in the darkness of a mine, in the darkness of our lives.

So - a Plea - to all who engage in making themselves known across the many facets of the internet.

Do it with integrity

Think about who the focus is in your scribbles

Remember that once posted it is there for ever - even if you delete it!

Remember that Jesus and His bride, the Church, might well be judged by what you write and think before you post.

Pax

* Well, with as much respect as I can honestly garner that is!

** And to then render it in the King James version is double-folly and compounds your first silly act into something of gigantic proportions in my book!

Twitter as a barometer

One of the funny things about my posts over the past few of days is that, using Twitter, you can see the opinions register in much the same way as the 'clapometer' used to on some of the old TV talent shows!

Recently I wrote something and saw the 'followers' rise quite markedly. Then I wrote something which some didn't like (a few pm'd me to tell me before they left) and the numbers of 'followers' sank a bit.

I rather like this immediate response device, a bit like the stall warning flap on the leading edge of a wing it tells you when you are running out of air or perhaps about to enter into a bit of excitement (mind you letting the wing drop and kicking in loads of opposite rudder realllly makes it exciting - especially in a Harvard!!).

I know that when I rush in a splurge that it doesn't always make sense and that at other times (especially when remotely on an iPhone) the words are sometimes jumbled and the path through the wilderness of my mind is a long and winding road that leads to . . . . But thanks you to those who do keep up and mail me comments or post them on the blog, it's a real blessing and an aid (or perhaps a panacea) to my particular form of madness (something I need to address regarding others when I get back from inducting Chaplains).

Pax

Restricted sites

What a great day thus far - loads of assemblies, couple of funeral visits, a funeral and more besides to keep me distracted.

After first assembly was talking to school administrator and attempted to access 'Vic the Vicar' to show her a graphic that I thought she'd enjoy only to find that the 'web-content filtering sofware' prohibits access to the site. Now she'll probably get an email warning her about trying to visit sites of dubious content - seems everyone's a critic these days :-)

Still, everything else has been good and didn't have a repeat of an end of term assembly at one school where I asked them what day it was going to be on the next friday. Quick as a flash one of the smaller kids put their hand up and impressed I asked them for the answer. problem was the answer wasn't what I had perhaps hoped for as I was duly informed that it would be 'bloody Friday!'

"I think you mean 'Good Friday'," I said (helpfully).

"No, it's bloody Friday," came the response, "Daddy said that we have to go and visit Nanna on bloody Friday!"

Hey ho! Never a dull moment with children and assemblies it seems :-)

And better still the administrator of the first school today will never be able to read this "Happy Easter Libby!"

:-)