come on ireland :)
despite many heavy things happening this weekend and that i am walking like a cowboy again, the boys won yesterday and there are few things better than watching ireland beat england YYYYYYYYOOOOOOOOOOO

thinkin...

I have been reading the di vinci code and thinking about why there always seem to be more motivated women about than men and i think i have vague theory...

woman was created last, more mysterious and beautiful than all, the pinacle of God's creation, from the rib of man, in my opinion, to illustrate our dependancy on her, that man is not complete without woman, "it is not good for a man to be alone" "a man should leave his mother and father and be united with his wife"

in the middle ages pagan goodess worship was rife and to stamp it out loads of mad stuff happened witch trials, murder of smart ladies etc etc. a lot of women were killed needlessly and to look up to woman at all could have had your head on a block, now this could be hugely inaccurate but i reckon a whack of traditional church doctrine was written around then...

so here we are a good few hundred years later, woman not understood or honoured as they should be and men lacklusture and uncertain... but women instinctively know they have been robbed of their right to understanding and respect and so in the western world over the last 50 years, they fight for equality and achieved it. Man's lack of belief or understanding in himself is conpounded as women are now being better men than them, but still some areas of the church hang on to a women-inferior attitude and sexism survives in the background....

so i am suggesting that womens fight for equality was right but ended up in sameness, i actually think we need to go one step further and truly revere the Godly beauty of women (beauty as a character not just a physical word) understanding that man cannot be man without woman, not neccessaryily in a personally intimate relationship, but to generally rejoyce in and healthly repect their unique qualities and heart.

Allowing ourselves to be inspiried in this way, allowing God to talk to us through them freely will rejunvinate us, allowing us to be inspired to greater things. And in this process women will be rightly elevated so they are not becoming hard in the process of forcing men to appreciate them but are free to achive all they can.

this is all loose thought so please gimme a comment


on a much lighter note click here for a double dragon type flash game, its not quite right but will definately bring back a few happy gameboy/NES/arcade memories...

CHOKE

had a great weekend, erol alken on friday, brilliant mash up and dancing proper. chilled sat, herad are REALLY inspiring woman talk about global change and tackling the issue of rolling out AIDS drugs in africa. Out dancing again, but a bit more chilled and chatting to kel for a bit. more sleep, chillin, church, bumped into a few guys i hadnt seem in a while. kel had been talking about callling in sick on monday cause she was wrecked, she was joking but then later i text her, challenging her to call in and we could go on an adventure. spent the next 2hrs trawling the internet for pirate stuff to do in ireland (the condition on the trip was that it had to include pirates)
find loads of stuff on the west of ireland (4hr drive) so start looking at hiring cars and taking boat trips closer to dublin, go to sleep with the makings of a masterplan...
wake up and choke, didnt want to lie to my manager, it was snowing and now just sitting in work doing nothing.... so now having a much worse day that would have because the opportunity was there and i didnt take it...

i hate regreting not doing something. like in someways it was a stupid idea dommed to failure but in other ways it was sheer genius

ah well back to the drawing / dreaming board

challenge for the day

attempt to fit "visa-v" into as many sentenances as possible,
bonus points for when it makes not sense
extra bonus for making the person you are talking to starts using it ;)

"The Glory of God is man fully alive, the life of man is the vision of God"

I think I saw a bit of that glory last night, a friend Jill was playing in a bar and to hear her voice was unreal. A wee girl physcially, last night she filled the room. I only made it for three songs but they were incrediable...

its almost as if i hadnt met her, like hadnt seem her till she sang last night like her true existence is somewhere between the body she is in and her voice...

maybe we never really meet a person until we see them do what they were designed for, or really passionate about...
but that leaves the question of if i havent discovered that passion am i really alive?

for anyone in the mighty belfast and wants to engage God in a different vibe to church etc, check it out:

Just a note to let you know godspace is back on this thursday (17th) but at a
new venue - at a room off the common grounds cafe at city church on university
street. Kick off is at the usual time of 9pm. Hope to see you there.

All welcome.

The theme of the evening is 'comfortably numb'


godspace - a place for reflection, meditation and contemplation

www.godspace.co.uk

me heads wrecked

feeling a bit stressed out at the minute, just got one of those 10 things to do at any second feelings coupled with a the thing i am doing inst really important...
need to sleep a bit too, i cant believe i have totally destroyed the peacful chilled existence i once had in dublin, it was so nice....

saw a dutch film last night at the Jameson International film festival here in dublin, it was good, quite subtle and complex and in danish so the subtitles required a lot of attention ....

"when the chips are down.. eat rice"

the underground is breaking through,

the church i go to in dublin(core) is cool, and has some very talented worship leaders/ musicans, i often feel totally priveledged just to be there. But i suppose sometimes I like to say, this is a "worship church" so the teaching isnt so good and this is a "preaching church" where the worship is dry but the word is always sport on.

and i had once or twice slated the teach at this church... but yesterday, hold on till your seatbelts cause you are in for a ride.. the fill in leader and then the worship leader in the evening rocked the joint... i will post links to the mp3s of what they said when they get them online but this was serious... radical calls to discipleship uncomfortable words to make me squirm and feel uneasy... briefly the challenge was not to be a "vampire christian":

"ill take a little of you blood jesus, but i dont want to be your student, dont want to learn your character, just leave me alone and ill see you in heave"
is this who we are? is eterinty with someone we didnt really want to spend much time with what we want?

but a disciple:
"someone who is learning from Jesus, how Jesus would be living your life, if He was in your shoes" not quite the exact quote but i think its the vibe.

and just to add to the head wreckin beauty of this

"The Glory of God is man fully alive, the life of man is the vision of God" St Irenaeus of Lyons (quoted by pete grieg in the vision and the vow)

lets push things forward,

since last post i have been to southampton, seen a whole load of people I love, got accepted to lead a habitat team to... somewhere and eventually finnished the 24-7 Miami Team blog (please link it)

Brett the canadian legend has also moved into my house, so its all a bit hectic
anyway some photos from weekend will be up sooner or later...
peace g

grandma's underground....

went to training tonight to volunteer with Grandma's Ireland, which provides simple practical care and babbysitting for families dealing with aids.

This nights training stuck me in a differnt couple of ways, i am gonna rant about each one cause i dont want to forget my current emotions or what God has been saying.

1. There are 6000 people diagnosed hiv positive every day, 60 million have died so far. but stop thinking third world this is happening in the uk and irelnad. right now there are huge numbers of people living with Hiv, like on the bus, only reason we dont know is because, funnily enough they dont shout about it. Stop thinking gay the biggest growing spreader of the disease is unprotected heterosexual sex. To parapharse the Rev Jesse Jackson, heavily involved in the movement that won black people equal rights, this is our generations challenge, this is our great injustice this is our world war II.

2. Where are Jesus' ppl in this? it was His people abandoned to Him who listened to the whisper and began education for children, built hosiptals when they didnt exist and generally shaped the things in society we take forgranted. How can the ruined church of europe recover from sex scandals and totally loss of relivance to the average person? could it be by loving the people the world wont touch? could it be by returning to the concept that church is listening to God's heart beat and meeting ppl where they are with the Love of Christ?

3. There were about 10 people in the training tonight, there are 30 families on this charities waiting list, a charity which by any statistical assement is working in with less than 1% of the people affected by aids in ireland. where is the army?
but most worrying is that i was the sole male there. Where are the guys? Although you might say that child care comes easier to females, I would be tempted to say there are MANY fatherless familes crying out for a father figure(which there are) BUT instead i ask you where is the equivalent ministry going on that guys do easier? There isnt one!

The simple fact is the guys arent doing anything.

In every church i have ever been to guys walk in the pale shadow of thier sisters, they might preach and lead worship but when it comes to getting hands dirty, getting creative, serving, they are no where to be seen. What sort of a body are we if one half is carrying the other?
WAKE UP WAKE UP WAKE UP.
The God who dreamt up this universe has a destiny for you that is an adventure beyond your wildest dreams with higher hights and lower depths than you will experience outside of Him.
and we miss it, one day at a time, sitting on a sofa scratching.
we dont have to have this dream or big plan, God is waiting to give it to us, all we have to do is listen...