I am one of those people that always needs to be doing something. I can’t watch TV without my laptop going, or walk without listening to music, or drive without preparing a talk in my head! I am learning, mostly the hard way, that sometime soon I should really try and implement some kind of strategy for stillness.
I talk a lot of the urgency of what we do for others, the drive to give all we can to change things, to be outward looking as a matter of importance. And I stand by all that! But the danger of not stopping once in a while is that you miss the whispers. You miss the glimpses of beauty all around. You miss the chance to know peace.
You’d think that in the poorest communities of the world they’d spend most of their time listing the needs they have, but in my experience it’s quite the opposite. In India recently a friend of mine spent the beginning of every one of our conversations listing the blessings of the day, including that he was about to talk with me! On one occasion he paused mid sentence and said ‘Laura – stop! Let’s just be still...’ We had a lot to do that day including discussing the problems faced by their community project, but in that moment of quiet I felt the pressure of the task replaced by calm perspective.
I’m trying to learn that resting does not let anyone down, instead it equips and prepares for what’s to come. I’m going to learn to listen for the quiet whispers and develop the art of stillness.
Saturday 26 June 2010
Thursday 24 June 2010
Just a snippet...
Is the floor in your home just dirt? Because if your floor is anything other than dirt, you’re in the top half of the world’s population.
I wonder if your home has a roof, a door, windows and more than one room? If it does, you fall into the top 20% of the world’s population. If you have a fridge – you’re in the top 5%.
And if you have a car, a microwave, DVD player, computer and your toilet has a door… you’re in the top 1% in the world.
For 99% of the world’s people life has no luxury, and a third of our world live in desperate poverty.
But poverty is not a statistic, it’s a person.
I wonder if your home has a roof, a door, windows and more than one room? If it does, you fall into the top 20% of the world’s population. If you have a fridge – you’re in the top 5%.
And if you have a car, a microwave, DVD player, computer and your toilet has a door… you’re in the top 1% in the world.
For 99% of the world’s people life has no luxury, and a third of our world live in desperate poverty.
But poverty is not a statistic, it’s a person.
Sunday 20 June 2010
I couldn't say it better...
This is the PowerPoint I used today having spoken at Brentwood Baptist Church, the church from whence I came...
Click here (will take you away from this page, do come back...!)
Click here (will take you away from this page, do come back...!)
Saturday 19 June 2010
Numbertastic
It feels like we live in a world of statistics sometimes doesn’t it?
Meaningless big numbers whether we’re talking debt and deficit or population or distance. Here’s some more big numbers: If we woke up today with more health than illness, we are more fortunate than one million people who will not survive the week.
If we have never been shot at, or imprisoned, or tortured, or starved, we are more fortunate than 500 million people in the world.
Recently I heard a wonderful way of making a certain statistic a bit more manageable:
A billion people live on less than a dollar a day, and two billion on less than $2 – that’s a third of the planet’s population. I know a billion is a big number – but do you know how big? If we counted to one million, at a rate of one number per second, it would take us 11 days.
With this in mind, how long do you think it would take us to count to 1 billion?
It’s actually 32 years. But if 10 of us do the counting – it’s only 3 yrs.
If 100 it’s about 4 months… and a 1000, brings the task to 11 days.
The seemingly impossibly big challenges can be cracked if a community of people say – together, in a loud, clear voice, enough – this must be done.
And this is what happens every year in Christian Aid Week, when a third of a million people – another enormous number – take to the streets to collect money house to house, and many, many more run coffee mornings, events, sponsored walks – all sorts of things that raise money and awareness for the work of Christian Aid and our vision to end, yes END, poverty. It’s a huge task, but one we’re undertaking together.
Meaningless big numbers whether we’re talking debt and deficit or population or distance. Here’s some more big numbers: If we woke up today with more health than illness, we are more fortunate than one million people who will not survive the week.
If we have never been shot at, or imprisoned, or tortured, or starved, we are more fortunate than 500 million people in the world.
Recently I heard a wonderful way of making a certain statistic a bit more manageable:
A billion people live on less than a dollar a day, and two billion on less than $2 – that’s a third of the planet’s population. I know a billion is a big number – but do you know how big? If we counted to one million, at a rate of one number per second, it would take us 11 days.
With this in mind, how long do you think it would take us to count to 1 billion?
It’s actually 32 years. But if 10 of us do the counting – it’s only 3 yrs.
If 100 it’s about 4 months… and a 1000, brings the task to 11 days.
The seemingly impossibly big challenges can be cracked if a community of people say – together, in a loud, clear voice, enough – this must be done.
And this is what happens every year in Christian Aid Week, when a third of a million people – another enormous number – take to the streets to collect money house to house, and many, many more run coffee mornings, events, sponsored walks – all sorts of things that raise money and awareness for the work of Christian Aid and our vision to end, yes END, poverty. It’s a huge task, but one we’re undertaking together.
Tuesday 15 June 2010
Live
So, what are you looking for? Happiness maybe? Relationships, respect, security?
It seems perfectly reasonable that we would search for such things and others, we understand that we have the right to live as whole human beings. Through my work and personal encounters I know that there are many people not even close to ticking off their list anything they are looking for. For the majority of the world, the poorest on our earth – they are ‘just’ about living.
Let me narrow the question – What are you looking for in church? Are your answers the same? And how are your needs met? My experience with churches suggests that for most people, including clergy, we’re not quite hitting the mark. For some churches and for many Christians, well - it sometimes feels like we are ‘just’ about getting by.
So here’s a thought, how about we all embark on just living. Living justly. It’s when we look beyond ourselves, as churches, as Christians, as human beings, that we start to embrace what this life has to offer us and each and every person on this planet. Justice should be a core part of what we do and who we are – not an add on extra once the church roof is fixed…!
Christian Aid allows us to live out our values in an astounding way; to visibly embark on just living through our prayers, actions, collections, events and support as we stand alongside those tackling poverty and injustice around the world. Everything we do for Christian Aid joins with a movement that is tackling the root causes of poverty and helping people of all faiths and backgrounds help themselves to a better life.
Let’s not just live. Let’s live justly.
It seems perfectly reasonable that we would search for such things and others, we understand that we have the right to live as whole human beings. Through my work and personal encounters I know that there are many people not even close to ticking off their list anything they are looking for. For the majority of the world, the poorest on our earth – they are ‘just’ about living.
Let me narrow the question – What are you looking for in church? Are your answers the same? And how are your needs met? My experience with churches suggests that for most people, including clergy, we’re not quite hitting the mark. For some churches and for many Christians, well - it sometimes feels like we are ‘just’ about getting by.
So here’s a thought, how about we all embark on just living. Living justly. It’s when we look beyond ourselves, as churches, as Christians, as human beings, that we start to embrace what this life has to offer us and each and every person on this planet. Justice should be a core part of what we do and who we are – not an add on extra once the church roof is fixed…!
Christian Aid allows us to live out our values in an astounding way; to visibly embark on just living through our prayers, actions, collections, events and support as we stand alongside those tackling poverty and injustice around the world. Everything we do for Christian Aid joins with a movement that is tackling the root causes of poverty and helping people of all faiths and backgrounds help themselves to a better life.
Let’s not just live. Let’s live justly.
Saturday 12 June 2010
Messiness
I grew up in the church and was a youth worker in various churches and denominations. I had a pretty tidy view of God; there were the answers I’d learnt mainly in Sunday School and Youth Group, and anything I couldn’t grasp I put down to my youth. Tidy.
The thing is that through my travels around the world and my work, I’ve been exposed to seeing the world as it is – a world of pain and suffering and struggle. So my once neat and tidy image of God no longer fits. Where is my God of love who saves us, where’s my gentle Jesus meek and mild? Now my image of God has no neat lines or easy answers. It is an image that challenges me and fills my world with more questions than I have answers. Messy.
Maybe it’s just my awkward character, but I’ve come to quite like that God isn’t that easy to put in a box. I like that my messy God understands my messy spirituality, which seems to reflect a messy world. But this untidy God hasn’t left us without any idea of how we should be. In the early 20th century George McLeod wrote this:
“I simply argue that the cross be raised again at the centre of the market place as well as on the steeple of the church. I am recovering the claim that Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral between two candles, but on a cross between two thieves, on the town garbage heap, at a crossroads so cosmopolitan that they had to write his title in Hebrew, Latin and Greek. It was the kind of place where cynics talk smut, thieves curse, and soldiers gamble. That’s where he died. And that’s where Christians ought to be and what Christians ought to be about.”
That quote reminds me that if we shy away from the frontline, if we’re too comfortable, we become ineffective. Being tidy about our faith and our mission might well be the easy option, but it’s when we get messy that we start getting the job done.
The thing is that through my travels around the world and my work, I’ve been exposed to seeing the world as it is – a world of pain and suffering and struggle. So my once neat and tidy image of God no longer fits. Where is my God of love who saves us, where’s my gentle Jesus meek and mild? Now my image of God has no neat lines or easy answers. It is an image that challenges me and fills my world with more questions than I have answers. Messy.
Maybe it’s just my awkward character, but I’ve come to quite like that God isn’t that easy to put in a box. I like that my messy God understands my messy spirituality, which seems to reflect a messy world. But this untidy God hasn’t left us without any idea of how we should be. In the early 20th century George McLeod wrote this:
“I simply argue that the cross be raised again at the centre of the market place as well as on the steeple of the church. I am recovering the claim that Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral between two candles, but on a cross between two thieves, on the town garbage heap, at a crossroads so cosmopolitan that they had to write his title in Hebrew, Latin and Greek. It was the kind of place where cynics talk smut, thieves curse, and soldiers gamble. That’s where he died. And that’s where Christians ought to be and what Christians ought to be about.”
That quote reminds me that if we shy away from the frontline, if we’re too comfortable, we become ineffective. Being tidy about our faith and our mission might well be the easy option, but it’s when we get messy that we start getting the job done.
Wednesday 9 June 2010
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