This list comes from Katherine Venn (Greenbelt ’10 contributor) and I found it interesting:
Do it yourself/be a punk. Don’t ask an expert to do something for you. Why? Because you learn how to do things by doing them; it’s easier to do interesting things when you don’t actually know how to do them; you discover all sorts of new things along the way; and it increases the chance of serendipity.
Say no to the unimportant things so you can say yes to the important things. (I suppose this is related to the previous post, about trying to do interesting/special things at all.)
Always be trying to do things that are too hard for you, that are just beyond your reach. There are limits to what you can do, obviously, but you should always be pushing yourself. I have to say I always start off thinking that writing anything is beyond my reach.
Make your head your office. You should always have a few problems/ideas that you can pick up and work on wherever you are, consciously or otherwise. I like this mental habit in particular, though I haven’t yet managed to cultivate it with any kind of success. Too much of the time I equate writing with sitting silently at my desk, but I know I need to learn to be puzzling things over more of the time, and I’ve definitely solved things or had good ideas while doing the washing up or whatever. I think those are the two key points of this habit: it assuages work guilt (you don’t have to be at your desk to be at work), and it allows you to mull things over more easily both consciously and unconsciously.
Be strict about doing a little of whatever it is you’re doing every day – even if just for fifteen minutes. Which is the same advice as not breaking the chain.
Have strategies in place for dealing with failure. If you’re going to be trying to do something special, as per the previous post, and if you’re continually pushing at the limits of what you can do, you’re going to fail a lot. So you need to learn to see that 95% of what’s wrong with getting something wrong is actually your own response to it.
Remember that what you’re working at is an act of discovery as well as an act of creation. Knowing that it’s not all internally created takes a lot of the pressure off: the difference between quarrying a piece of rock out, and thinking that with a bit of dust you have to actually make the rock yourself.
We had a new fridge today. This was very exciting, as we’ve been coping for a month without any form of fridge at all, so it’ll be nice to have fresh milk again. But that’s an aside. When not playing with fridges and moving stuff around the house, I’ve been preparing for Greenbelt – you know, things like rolling up sleeping bags etc.
So I thought I’d take a moment to list who I’m excited about seeing at Greenbelt this year:
Music
Fionn Regan
Foy Vance
Martyn Joseph (playing Greenbelt? What a shock!)
London Community Gospel Choir
Talks
I admit it. I’m a nerd at heart. For me, the highlight of Greenbelt is the talks rather than the music. I love the academic vibe, the freedom for people to explore new ideas and the new perspectives I gain from hearing people outside of my usual stream of church. For me, these are the top people to hear this year:
Fr Richard Rohr - Franciscan Priest, does a lot of work on sacramental theology and community.
Stanley Hauerwas – United Methodist theologian, known for his work in the field of ethics and especially his commitment to pacifism
David Morrisey – well, actor, of course! From what I can make out from the website, he’ll be talking about his work in Beirut setting up acting classes, which’ll be interesting.
Panels – the normal interesting range of panels. Some that stuck out at me include ‘Is meat murdering the planet?’ and ‘the capital problem’
John Bell – well, of course – the Bell is always worth a listen!
Maggi Dawn – first class theologian and one of my favourite bloggers. Also, I’m over the moon that the Sunday morning worship will include both Dawn and Stuart Townend – might be slightly less cringe-worthy than the norm!
Peter Oborne – Daily Mail journalist (yes, I want to go and hear a Daily Mail journalist. Deal with it!) but more importantly, author of the book ‘ The Rise of Political Lying’. Could be an interesting perspective to go and hear.
Contemplative Fire – an Oxford-based emerging worship group
Aoradh – art and worship group based in Argyll
Tomorrow: a few words on the extra surprise guest who is joining our Greenbelt party this year! In the meantime, I just thought I’d mention I’ll be tweeting my way through the festival this year @davidbunce – providing I can find enough battery life to get it through!
Interesting video from Matthew Taylor on the new strap-line of the RSA. Video picking up on a lot of current debates going on in sustainability and epistemology, such as the need for ethical thinking, critique of individualism, exploration of what it is to be human and most of all the need to change our thinking in order to meet the challenges of the 21st Century.
If you’re at all interested in this subject, you’ll end up watching this video again and again, picking up a thought and running with it.
Thanks to Jesse for pointing out these amazing colour photos from a century ago. I think it’s a beautiful insight into the country and really captures so much of everyday life in the late Russian Empire. The photos were taken just 6 years before the start of the first revolution, yet remarkably, there was not that much in the way of discontent at large in the country – much of the discontent that would lead to revolution came as a result of the First World War.
The website has only a few of the Library of Congress’ complete collection of photos, and I would love to spend a while looking through the whole lot, but this is enough historical feast to be getting on with for now!
“To be known is to be loved
and to be loved is to be known”
This is an amazing performance art video based on John 4 – there are so many directions to begin taking my thoughts when watching this video, and every time something new jumps out at me.
Today in the car at lunch I finished my copy of “What’s so amazing about Grace” by Philip Yancey. Needless to say, as with all Yancey’s writing, it was a very easy going, pleasurable experience that required little of me and gave a lot in terms of big picture beauty grounded in the reality of human examples. It did confirm what I’ve thought for a long time – Philip Yancey raises the bar of technical quality when it comes to popular Christian writing, and it is really a joy to read books that are both thought provoking and also well written (especially as bad writing seems to be a perennial curse in Christian books, with notable exceptions of course).
Anyone who has read the book will have no doubt been haunted by the scene that Yancey sets out as the premise of the book of a Prostitute who is utterly broke and had to resort to hiring out her two year old daughter to make ends meet. When gently asked why she didn’t seek help from a church, she replied with the words “church? Why would I want to go there? I feel bad enough about myself already!”. Such is the background to the book, and it is one that made me fundamentally question how we ‘do’ church – even if we’re not outright judgemental (and praise God, most of the churches I’ve had the privilege of attending have been welcoming, accepting and loving communities to be part of), can we still be guilty of making people feel bad simply by the fact we try and deal with all our dirty laundry by ourselves and not have the courage or permission to be broken with each other as community.
So what are my thoughts? The book does well in grounding the doctrine of grace deep within both the Biblical tradition and the human experience, both individually and corporately (in fact, I would argue that, unlike many evangelical books, it actually handles the corporate much more confidently than the individual with it’s concept of ‘ungrace’, which makes for a pleasing change). Yancey carefully articulates the ways in which Christians can often be known more for their judgementalism than their grace, and asks difficult questions – also, these difficult questions have a habit of turning their spotlight on me just as I am getting into the mode of “thank God that you did not make me like THOSE Christians”, which is very healthy. He also presents an attractive and reasonable argument for how grace holds the answers to the hurts of society way beyond individual santification.
However, I would offer a counter-weight to that point: I sometimes find Yancey oversimplistic and . . . a wee bit Holywood ‘happy ending’ . . . when dealing with issues of political significance such as the Holocaust or Gulag. I don’t know if it’s simply because I know quite a bit about these subjects or just because the book by its nature is not an exhaustive study of these situations, but either way, I found some of his treatments of these issues to make light of the terrible evil that occured and to simplify the historeography beyond a point it should be simplified. That said, it’s not an easy task to reconcile the unsettling, simple way of Jesus with complex acts of systematic human evil, so I think Yancey is to be forgiven for going more one way than I would like!
At the end of the day, I would recommend the book to anyone who needs to take a breather from all the business of doing church and life and hear again the fresh air of grace that breathes through the world and challenges us and heals us.
I'm a student from Didcot studying German and Russian at St Andrews University. These pages chronicle my
thoughts about life,
faith and just about everything else.
Today in the car at lunch I finished my copy of “What’s so amazing about Grace” by Philip Yancey. Needless to say, as with all Yancey’s writing, it was a very easy going, pleasurable experience that required little of me and gave a lot in terms of big picture beauty grounded in the reality of human examples. It did confirm what I’ve thought for a long time – Philip Yancey raises the bar of technical quality when it comes to popular Christian writing, and it is really a joy to read books that are both thought provoking and also well written (especially as bad writing seems to be a perennial curse in Christian books, with notable exceptions of course).
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