marramgrass

As I’m still fooling around trying out some new ideas for this site, there’s a couple of new things in the sidebar over there to the left.

Up at the top, under ‘Info’, is a new link to Diversions, where I fancied trying to keep a log of the books I’m reading, the DVDs I’m watching and the music I’m listening to. It’s very basic, with new stuff being shoved in at the top, and it’s more for my own amusement and curiosity than anything else, but it’s there if you’re curious.

Then, at the very bottom of the sidebar, you should see the funny-looking widget from whos.amung.us, which is a stats thing. It’s bit different to the usual, because it’s main purpose is to say how many visitors are on the site right now rather than doing any detailed logging. It’ll probably be quite depressing, actually. If you happen to look at it and see a number bigger than 1, please leave a comment and let me know!

Tonight I have done some housekeeping on the server, including updating my WordPress install to the latest version.

What did you do with your Saturday night?

When these things happen, things can get a little jumbled. Accordingly, if you find any problems on the site, I’d be grateful if you could leave a comment here or shoot me an email to blog AT marramgrass DOT org DOT uk.

Cheers.

So, this site got broke for a little while from last night. Some more configuring at the web host that caught me on the hop.

All is well again.

So, “while I was away”, my web host did a couple of very cool upgrades. I likey.

Unfortunately, one of them broke my WordPress install in an extremely subtle way. It disappeared the email address through which I receive comment notifications. This has had two consequences: people left comments that I didn’t know about, and spammers left comments that I didn’t know about. 3000-odd of them, actually, mostly really nasty pr0n stuff.

Ewww.

Sorry.

If you left a comment, I didn’t ignore you on purpose.

If you saw the ick, I apologise. It wusnae me.

Now the war on spam begins in earnest, with an investigation of what excellence the world of WP plugins has to offer…

A new link added to the sidebar: on old friend from Edinburgh is blogging at Travels with my yak.

Elaine dropped me an email after I did my falling-out-of-touch thing. She is an entertaining writer and a cracking person as well.

Go, read, enjoy.

So, yesterday the daily posting got overlooked. Unexpected passing of a family member, busy with gatherings, etc. It’s been a hectic couple of days.

As I work myself up to it I guess I’ll have a lot to tell round here. The last… well, five or six months, really, have been an experience that caught us by surprise. It’s been a tricky time, and one that has left wounds that may or may not become scars.

The question then becomes one of appropriate self-censorship. Not everything is to be shared with the web at large, of course, yet at the same time there’s been some learning about myself and about life that is worth telling. There’s things we’re not good at talking about, especially in churches, and I feel strongly that we need to learn some openness, but that’s easier said… Laying yourself open to the judgments and sympathies of people you know and don’t know is tricky, and can have unintended and unforeseen consequences that I am concerned about.

How best to proceed? In the period that things have been quiet on this site I have rediscovered the discipline and pleasure of writing a real dead-trees journal as a personal thing rather than in a work/recording context. That’s something to hold on to, and to maintain, and should help me pile stuff on here.

A side-effect of the recent experience has been my almost total failure to maintain communication with anyone outside my immediate family. That’s tough, and leaves me feeling quite sheepish thinking about trying to pick things up again. If you are one of the neglected, thanks for bearing with me and I hope I’ll get my act together soon.

Meantime, we’re okay, really.

I have been absent from here of late due to various circumstances and an extended period of ill health. But, getting back on my feet, I have been challenged (you both know who you are) to get a week of daily posts in in order to get marramgrass up and running again.

So today’s post is:

Back pain. Aargh.

It’s certainly much cheaper to borrow a van and do it yourself – with the substantial assistance of some very generous friends and family – but it’s rough on the arms. Being unaccustomed to such labour, I ache.

It’s great, though. We’re finally here. Sweet.

And now the epic saga of the unpacking, the searching for towels, the squirreling-away of books and the organisation and reorganisation of kitchenware… Now it begins.

Let’s call it 10 things…, number 9.

As I’m settling into my still new-ish job (I haven’t passed the three-month mark yet, after all), one of the things I’m enjoying is getting to visit the parents of as many young people as I can cram into my time. [In the past I've learned that youth ministry is as much to do with spending time with the the parents as their young people.]

Tonight I was visiting a family, and I was struck by the diversity in attitudes and values that makes up even what is on the surface a fairly normal Presbyterian church. Everybody expresses their faith, religion, upbringing, tradition, experience, background, whatever in a slightly different way. There are the people for whom the church as it looks now is just as it should be and fits them nicely. There are the people who are just a bit dissatisfied with it all because they’re asking certain questions and not getting the help they want to find the answers.

Actually, that last sentence doesn’t quite sound like what I mean. An example: I spoke with a lady tonight who has an interest and concern in peacemaking and reconciliation, however that’s expressed, be it in cross-community work or otherwise. Yet her perception is that in and around the church the prevailing attitude is one of, “What’s that got to do with us? Everything’s fine here.” Maybe she’s right, maybe not. I’m not sure. Certainly looking at the surface of the community, that’s what you’d expect – but it’s not universal by any means.

Anyway, what I’m saying is that we each take this thing (this thing that we probably each think about in different terms, anyway: faith, religion, ‘church’, Christianity, even Presbyterianism) and in our heads we imagine it looking a little bit different to the next person. Then we come together, and a bunch of us are close enough to do the same thing each Sunday morning, but never quite close enough that all (any?) of us are totally happy with it. Then when somebody else comes along, we have real trouble understanding them or relating to them unless they’re willing to sign up to at least our ‘close enough,’ if not exactly what’s in our head. How can we blame them for turning around and walking away again?

In our desire to do things right – and in there somewhere I still need to think that it is through a positive desire to follow God – we draw lines and then look at people according to what side of the line we (we, not they) place them on. And logically I think there must be a truth and a meaning to some line somewhere if anything is to mean anything, but I increasingly wonder how reliable the lines we draw are?

I think fewer of them matter than we tend to think, and if that’s the case… well then, do we need to tread a little more carefully, speak a little more softly, and perhaps listen a little more closely?

… the word of faith we are proclaiming: That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

The table quiz was a most excellent success – thanks to those who came along and took part. We raised a sizable pile of cash towards our total, and much good fun was had. Although I may have to join those asking a few questions about the question master’s geographical skills…

The past weekend was thoroughly hectic, and that kind of continued into today despite me having a fairly low-key one planned. The next couple of days should be spent working on the house and getting bits and bobs on the computer done – lots of writing waiting to be approached, some of it pretty urgently. None of it on here, but that needs continued too: NaBloPoMo is proving to be quite enjoyable in terms of making me write, although I should offer my apologies for some of the drivel and linkdump as an excuse for posting.

(Just overheard on the TV on in the background: “Are you telling me you’re attracted to a disembodied set of eyeballs?” I’m sure I can come up with a [very] small prize to the first person to leave a comment correctly placing the quote.)

Then I’ll be running pretty quickly downhill into another insane weekend. Welcome to my world!