Beginning again

Two months, nearly, it's been since I last posted. Asked by a friend the other day why I'd stopped, I replied that I wasn't posting any more because I wasn't sure how to say what I wanted to say without sounding judgemental.

That's not changed. It's not that I want to sound judgmental, it just comes out that way... so I type with some hesitation.

So, if that's why I've not been posting, why then have I come back? Well, there are a couple of reasons.

The first is that, for a number of reasons, my blogging habits have recently changed. My work blog, which used to be the home for occasional, long, academic posts has, over the last couple of months, become somewhere that I post to nearly every day. Writing vague, half-cooked ideas, explorations and honest reflection... things that pretty much drift to the surface of my mind as I live in the subject from day to day has taken the pressure off having to strive to achieve a particular 'quality' and, ironically, probably delivered more interesting material. And, it's been a lot more fun.

So, I wondered whether I could apply the same practice to this blog and abandon the polished for the rougher and the cooked for the more raw. I spend a lot of time just mulling over God-based things... so why not post that and opt for the honest over the safe as the strap line on the blog suggests.


The second reason though is that in a previous post, I promised to let you know how I got on being a comfortably olivey olive in a church salad full of more normal fruit (confused?)

The answer? Not very well. Although I continue to feel the freedom that I mentioned in that post to be me, and to not be too bothered about what others were doing, I'm still not putting into practice any kind of 'alternative, really me' type church.

This could be another good reason not to write. After all, who wants to read about someone not really doing what they intended to do?

But then, last Sunday afternoon, while attending a tea (we're so British - yes, there were even scones and cream - and it was pouring with rain) for some friends who live and work in Albania, I saw someone who left our church a number of months ago because of a disagreement over the direction that the church was taking. Committed to seeing the church change to the point that they were prepared to leave it... since they've left they've had no impact on it at all.

So, although there are things that I'm not comfortable with, and I'm not even really sure what I want from church any more - withdrawing from it, and taking my oliveness somewhere else is not going to achieve anything. 

So I'm sticking around...

Several weeks...

As the blog by my friend Pop reaches its one-year anniversary (congratulations Pop, by the way... no-one doubted you'd make it... and you have, provoking much thinking on the way... thank you!) ... in a torturous 'tedious link' I think I have to comment that a year is 52 weeks...

Pipe smoking, ex PM Harold Wilson famously suggested once that "A week is a long time in politics".

The Barenaked ladies too, took time to point out that a week can be a long time...

The former was a political heavyweight... the latter ended up singing about Sushi and Chinese Chickens... but they've both got a point.