Covenant

Faith without works is dead....
Abraham: his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did.
Jms 2v22

Heres the deal, the pathway by which the Messiah sets us free from sin and gives us power to live is one of pure faith. What I somtimes forget is actions are a part of faith (Abrahams faith was impcomlete without actions)

People are made of spirit and body. A spirit without a body is a ghost, a body without a spirit is a corpse. So someone with only faith, un-combined with action, can only exist in the kingdom of the Messiah as a phantom exist with us; one doing lots of work without faith is a corpse in the kingdom. Faith is our life, actions put flesh and bone on our faith and ground us in the reality of the kingdom, so believe strongly and grow in life but work hard to embody that life in your deeds.... simples.

Peace

Feet

I am trying to get back.
For a while I lost patiance with the blog idea. Life was feeling heavy, i think its hard to talk sometimes when you don´t know what to say... filling life with words is a good way to frustrate yourself, words are a tool not a purpose in themselves.
I´m finding my feet again in this culture in Britain... I said that to myself about three months ago but now three months down the line i think i am finding them better... I hope in three months from here i will be able to say i have found them even more....
Life can be one long journey to find your feet... and all along it was them that was keeping you on the journey.

You could sum up my thoughts for the last few months easily... nature is beautiful. I am sitting with my door open in my bedroom which goes out to the garden... its late, pitch black, but there is still soemthing lovely about the quiet peace that wafts in the door, the coolness of outside and the still dignity of the trees. My room has one wall which looks out with three big windows and a windowed door to a garden that is getting quite wild. trees of all colours grace the view in the day framed by sky and clouds sometimes light and airy sometimes dark... there are no houses seen from my window... it is a masterpiece of greens, browns, yellow blue, white, black... I think as i go through life, wondering about purpose and meaning, hoping for love and acceptance, searching for community and friendship... praising, relying, enjoying and searching fro God, wishing for other people to gain passion, gain love, gain a desire to actually work this life we live through in to something good... to work hard to achieve things together... in that life, which is not always easy... the view from my window is a strength and peace I could not do without at the moment...
nature is beautiful... nough said

Puddles

What are puddles? Puddles are dirty, puddles make your feet wet, they´re an annoyance, in your way. They´re not good for drinking, I don´t recommend it.
Puddles form when rain falls and mixes with the dirt and soil and earth under our feet; when rain is not properly collected. When rain, refreshing, cooling, life giving rain is not properly cared for, not collected or received, when we are not prepared to harness one of the greatest of natural resources, or when there´s too much -we get puddles.
Is this right - sometimes things are good, they give us life, they refresh, they give strength, but if there is too much, if they are left on the ground, not collected, not channelled, not drunk, they become puddles. They become muddy, opaque, confusing, an annoyance, in your way. Is this right?
How is it that something as life giving and pure as rain can become something as annoying, opaque and dirty as a puddle? How is it that rain needs to be cared for? How is it that something designed to be drunk gets to be not good for drinking?
Puddles are dirty, they make your feet wet -you´re right- kids like playing in puddles- but they´re not good for drinking, I don´t recommend it.





Reflecting on a reflection: What am I talking about? are puddles a problem? they only form on concrete or less porous soil types, they are a necessary state as water slowly finds its way into the natural underground system that keeps us alive. Maybe puddles are not so bad. - After all, they are only  -puddles. Maybe I just wanted to make a point and do it in a way people think sounds wise and in tune with the inner beat of life, if you do it like that they are more likely to take it in, slowly, and not let it form - puddles? A communication cannot happen without a means, and the means will inevitably be a major part of the communication.  Sometimes we use things to make points, things that can be made to seem true but are not true. Is it so easy to get people to accept things if you present them in a certain way? Do we question? or do we just think "hmmm deep", feel a brief sense of peace, and move on to our busy lives. Are we drawn in? -deeper? Maybe I should just get over puddles, learn how to jump at the right time and buy shoes that don´t have holes in. Maybe I should just get a real job. :-) I´m not sure.- What do you think?

Onwards

Ok... I´m still going with this blog thing, not posted for a while.
I do really like silence, bloggin does not allow for silence. No-one has the answers, we are not designed to have the answers we are designed to relate to one another, our goal is not to understand all wisdom but to live together in harmony (oh man I just threw up at the hippyness of what I just said)
Here are a list of aims I have been thinking about recently, in not particular order they are...
Live in a camper van
Help mental health patients with their lives by providing caring, safe, maybe activity focussed, environments
Live in a sustainable community that is also a place where drug addicts can come and be set free.
Bring hope to sink estates
Be a stand up comedian
Make lots of money that can be used to help these people.
One thing I like about blogging, is that it is a work in progress. Most writing is drafted re drafted and then put out for consumption. Blogging is always developing. I don´t like people who think they have all the answers... confidence which is not based on a deep acceptance of who you are but based on the feeling that you have understood things in a way those around you haven´t... Thats why i don´t like preachers (I think preaching as a medium is generally bad anyway... thats something for another blog) but sometimes the people who seem to be the most successful that are confident enough to stand and talk to crowds are those people whose confidence is based on a misplaced belief that they are worth listening too. Thats the problem with politicians, in order to be a successful politician you have to believe that you over all your peers are the best person to take big decisions on the behalf of others... this in my mind is the very reason people should be excluded from making big decisions on the behalf of others... but then I know this is a well discussed point elsewhere....
There are so many things to talk about in life, how we should organise ourselves in community, what lies at the heart of our pain and our freedom, what is God up to, what is the nature and effect of power and its corrosive effect on groups... Sometimes there is much to talk about, but then there is nothing anyone is saying that hasn´t already been said. The answers do not lie in words...
Anyway, bloggs as they are a record of the development of someones thinking. Imagine Faukner, or Joyce, or Homer, or Lorca writing their greatest works in chronological order from when they first started thinking of them and framing them in their mind to when they were finally finished in their end form... wouldn´t it be interesting to see which bit of King Lear, Shakespeare wrote first, or which scene of paradise lost first past across Miltons mind... a work in progress, which is what we are... a blog. Never finished, always new... the new scenes of life replacing and completing and developing the last thought which we posted on the great cosmic screen... that, I think is one thing I like about blogs...

NOW... you are Talking

They say talking to your self is a sign of madness... I do that by the way, should I be really worried?... no you´re cool... thanks man...
If that is the case (talking and madness, not the other stuff, that was a private conversation) then does that mean that blogging is a sign of madness? really ...who am I talking to?
Could it be that this new internet, media, text based, scrolling, graphically wrapped sensation is just and extension of an age old psychosis (that word should not be allowed to have a correct spelling) which has travelled with mankind from the dawn of its concious existence?
Do people who deny they have a concept of right and wrong spell words in a way that means they are completely and utterly incomprehensible to those who believe in the existence of the devil? Does the need for a basic commonly held grammar system deny the validity of the post-modern project or does it merely make the comment that as soon as words leave the mind of their creator their trajectory and inception by any intended listener is purely at the mercy of said listeners´ philosophical compass and grammatical schooling?
I was given a book for Christmas. This is not a proposition this is a fact, well "this" is actually a direct pronoun, or sometimes an adjective, dependingly, (interestingly, an adverb)... by writing this sentence I have, I am aware, opened the floodgates of pedants who will not be able to sleep before given the concise and correct answer... shame... but then that´s preposition so don´t be stupid.
This book is made up just of questions... it´s fun, but interestingly enough in this either random or planned universe in which we live, the book was not the inspiration for this writing
Something I don´t like about blogging already is that is makes you have to say something when you have nothing to say... as a friend of mine said once (Wednesday in fact) "boring people talking about their boring lives..."
Maybe it´s blogging or maybe it´s my housemate Dan... it all comes back to that, every other day, a rod made for the back of the blogger, every other day... perhaps there are other forces at work here...
anyway... blogging, it is official, it makes you talk to your self,
when silence would be preferable.
Peace....
...
...

Response

Gracias por los mensajes de animo, no quiero despreciar mis hermanos, pero porque cuando uno dice que la vida duele, o estas sufriendo, o cuesta al momento todas las personas responden q necesitas animo? La vida no es buena, el Senor es bueno... si, duele, si, cuesta, pero el Senor vale la pena... dios me esta hablando, siento q estoy recibiendo algo q no he recibiendo antes, de su fuerza, de fe, de su vista… q mas hay en las vida! Si tengo que tener dolor para oir dios, darme dolor.. animo si- pero jesus es el agua q refresca mi lengua seca.. Como dicho no quiero menospreciar el amor de mis hermanos, amor q no merezco.. asi es mi vista de la vida, solo queria compartir.


This is a response to something going on on facebook...
Its an excuse for a blog... it didn´t fit in one status block so i had to do it in three... think its quite fundemental to how we see the world so thought i would store it here for prosperity...

Today I did a video diary in Spanish... related thoughts are: isn´t language funny, I realised doing it that none of my English friends would understand it, but if i talk in english then none of my spanish speaking friends will understand... there are two groups of people in the world who i will never be able to communicate with at the same time... that is wierd I think...

Ps. the above is not a translation of the further above... i just did what i hate in academic texts, untranslated passages in the non predominant language... its not too important don´t worry you haven´t missed much... just focus on the bits you understand...

Morning

I´ve been thinking more intelligibly about bloging. I think, on reflection my morning blogs will tend to be more intelligible than my evening ones, evening tends to be a time for silliness and experiment, morning is much more about clarity and insight.
I remember a story that made me laugh from extracts of a diary of a British soldier killed in Iraq, it was detailing his experience and duties as leader of a unit the most impacting was dealing with infantrymen who would come into his office drop their trousers and say "is this normal".  Looking around at some blogs on the internet there are those, who are doing things they think are unusual or worth of report, people in far off countries and what not, this for me tells us more about what we value rather than what is really important. There are those who seem to have a great feeling that they have something that needs to be communicated, some overarching ideology, teaching, idea, and they seems to feel that they are those people to bring that idea to the world. I was reading one such today, after following a few links beginning with the comment left on my last post about Wittgenstien (however he spells it... is that ironic, the philisopher of language carelessly spelt ... not sure, thats more of an evening comment..) it lead me to a blog slash site of someone who is clearly trying to be a thoughtful scientific thinker life commenting very verbosely and reasoned on religion and science and the nature of everything... this made me a little depressed, this person, be they a he or a she, are clearly very intelligent and well studied, maybe religion is a thing of the past falling away as humans advance into the cold logically future were the power of our minds has thrown of all inequality and injustice... don´t know. It also made me think that this internet thing and all this bloging and what not has exaggerated the world of though and ideas as abstracted from the world of real life. People sometimes call out for things to be more earthy, grounded, simple... while us the powerful debate the nature of truth and how the scientific method does or does not implicate the pre-existence or finality of the divine, the majority of the worlds population don´t ask this questions... they ask "are we going to get and work tomorrow" "will the coffee harvest provide enough income for my family" "when will this civil war end" "how do I make the most of this education my parents have grafted to give me".. Maybe as they develop and their education systems and economic system allow them to site around on morning writing to an invisible world, maybe in that great free rational future they will ask those questions, I don´t know... thats not really what I´m talking about... Deep down I think sad answer is that there will never be enough food for the world because people in their drive to evolve and develop will never be satisfied. I don´t want to live a life founded in my own importance and skill, I want to live a life founded in a trust in God, I don´t think this blog was motivated by faith in God I think it was driven more by my foundation in me.. Its hard to be motivated and moved always by a trust in Gods power and not my own importance, increasingly so since i came back from the Americas, but maybe that theme will develop as I write on...
And finally the third type, motivation, force in bloging... our semi naked soldier... is this normal.
I think all these three... unusual, important... and insecure drive this writing of mine. Perhaps deep down some people just want to share themselves with people so that the can feel validated by what is going on inside. I made a little video, mostly fun, on facebook, it talks about masks... sometimes we have things inside we are just burning to share, perhaps doing that over a blog is possible the stupidest idea someone has had.. not that there is anything notably scandalous... we just have a strange need for people to know who we are...
Perhaps, after all that, thats why we blog.