Hi there bloggers,

The time has come to think of many things (as the poet said) and one of them is whether or not to come with me to my new-life and new-blog-site. Remember, there is only a way there, there is no way back.

If you're with me, then follow this url:

http://thelandbeyondbeyond.blogspot

If you're not then, adieu mes amies!

L, J

Hi Folks

For those of you who are regular readers of my blog, you will be probably catching on to the fact that something rather powerful is going on for me right now.

Everywhere I go, I don't seem to be able to escape one particular message which says "Go for it! Stop being diluted and made luke-warm by the stuff around you and held down by the dust and rubble from the wasted years. Just follow the light at the end of the tunnel and leave everything else behind."

It's been in 3 different sermons at three different churches on 3 consecutive Sundays, in an email document sent by a friend, in a Samuel Jackson film that we just happened to be watching on Monday and then yesterday I was talking to a friend of mine and we mentioned how much can be risked by doing nothing! Doing nothing is a risk, because at the end of your life you risk the regret associated with knowing that you didn't join a band or go to a different country or in my case, to pursue a call to work with the homeless in the centre of my own city, and what a regret that would be especially if you knew that you didn't even try?

Last Valentine's day I did a shift at the Gatehouse in Oxford City Centre. At the time, it was my way of dealing with the fact that I was destined to be lonely that night, but getting this message coming through to me time and again around the Valentine's season makes me wonder whether there was more to it than that.

In my last blog, I made allusion to the fact that Christ was my first love. Back when I first became a Christian at 13 years old, I wouldn't have needed telling over and over again to go for it, I would've been out there, both hands to the plough and no looking back. I wasn't interested in a tick-box mentality that said you have to do a set list of things and be able to just say that you'd done them at the end of the day, I wanted to really do stuff with my whole heart, soul, mind and body;- Jumping in feet first and not held back by fear the entire time.

So why do I hesitate in the middle of the tunnel now, when the Lord told me to work for Him in Oxford back at the Fusion Expo-day in November? Well, to be honest, it's the dust and the rubble that I mentioned earlier. You see during the wasted years of luke-warm love for Christ, I've got weighed down, and when I throw off some of that weight, which I will do, I will have to do some things that will be perceived as socially unacceptable and I'm scared that my friends won't come with me on the journey because they'll get caught up in the mesh of what other people think.

A young boy looked at me this morning as through something was wrong. I instantly checked my bike-lights and fell off hitting a wall. it seemed to me that this is what happens when we get to concerned about what other people think. We fall and we hit a barrier and then we have to pick ourselves up again and carry on, but now that I have a graze on my elbow to remind me, perhaps I will be aware not to take on too much from what other people do or may think. The question is will you?

I'm planning starting a new blog. There will be a link from this site to the new blog, but there will not be a way back. It will be a one-way ticket from the old life to the new life. Will you come with me? Knowing as I will that there is no way back?

In some ways, this is the point of no return, but in another way, it is a very valid and necessary return, because it is a return to loving and following my first love. It means getting back to living on the edge and not being luke-warm. It's not going to be easy and it's not going to be comfortable, but it is going to be easier to live with myself.

In a truly Mancunian way, I'd like to finish this blog by saying, "I'm not going to risk doing nothing!" Are you? Or will you raise a toast to the new life with me?

Cheers!

J

The world of individual feelings doesn't exactly get a lot of coverage in the media, but it is where many of us live and as such, perhaps it should be more clearly portrayed in the living literature of our newspapers.

But then, aren't feelings irrational and open to mis-interpretation?When it comes to relationships I find I actually have to make a conscious decision sometimes to act in a positive way even if I'm not feeling positive inside.

I know from my own experience that it can help to briefly acknowledge my feelings out loud in a controlled way. It can help others to see me as a human being, but relating well to other people is not something that comes naturally to any of us. It is a learned skill.

If only I had known when I was a kid that things like learning to say please and thank you and how to step in and help someone are actually very important for social development! There, that's one feeling of regret that I've acknowledged, but I can't help 'feeling' that that's not the end of the story.

Deciding to stick to a chosen moral code inspite of our feelings is exactly what the apostle Paul was referring to in the famous passage on love in 1 Corinthians 13 vs 4 to 8, where he says that Love is patient. The world of feelings is never patient! Being patient with someone or something has to be a conscious decision.

Let's just stop for a moment and consider what is not said in this probably most famous passage about love. There is no mention of love being passionate. There is no mention of losing control. There's nothing about butterflies in the stomach or not being able to get someone's picture out of your head. None of that stuff comes from a concious decision and yet it's this "in-love" stuff that we pay most attention to here in the West.

Julia Swahalla (the actress) recently traced her family roots on the BBC Programme "Who do you think you are?" Her father stated powerfully that Love for people in the East is very different to the idea of love that is so prevalent in our media in the developped world.

Co-incidentally, I have recently been pondering the greatest love of my life who happens to be from the East and who lived and died 2000 years ago. When it came to giving up His life, His feeling world was saying, "If there be any other way, then take this cup away from me" but his concious moral decision was "not my will, but yours be done."

Surely, that is the way to truly love! Can we learn to love like that this February? Let's hope that something of that love brushes off on us this Valentines season!!

Btw, I'm going to add a bit more to this blog in the next couple of days, so watch this space.

A demain!
L, J

Happy New Year Bloggers! Many apologies for not having blogged for so long!

A friend of mine mentioned staying in the land of Spare Oom recently, which reminded me of a real Oxfordshire story, which I couldn't resist relating to you...

The adventure starts in a furniture shop on the outskirts of Oxford in a little known place called Abing Don. The young enthusiastic salesman was doing a brilliant job of selling a beautiful suite of bedroom furniture in finest Mango-wood inset with smooth stone pieces. Unfortunately, his boss got in the way, upset us and then ended up losing the sale to a competitor, but we still bought the same items and saved ourselves a whole lot of money into the bargain!

The bedroom decorating project continued and everything was on schedule to receive the furniture just before Christmas, but then, a message was relayed which warned that the furniture would be delivered sooner than expected. This was a surprise move and it nearly outflanked us, but outward calm was retained and with a lot of hardwork, the room was finished in time to receive the newly accelerated suite.

Up and down the stairs bobbed the delivery men. Piece after piece of handcrafted wood was placed in position and then there was a pause.... It was a long pause...Something was wrong...

And then the bobbing up and down re-sumed and more pieces came in, but sure enough, there came another pause...

One of the men called us out to the van. We've got a problem they said, as if we couldn't have guessed. Two of the pieces of the wardrobe had been screwed together and a hack-saw would be required to divide them and get them up the stairs. Thankfully this was not beyond our resources, so hack-sawed it was, but the larger piece still wouldn't go up the stairs. We turned it on it's side, took off the doors, tried putting it through at an angle, tried opening an upstairs window, but all to no avail.

The wardrobe was initially sent back, but where there's a will there's a way, and we had a lot of goodwill. In fact, I am still wondering how much goodwill will come through the wardrobe, but first let me finish the story.

In the old-fashioned way, we consulted our family carpenter who being still quite far away urged utmost caution and recommended that we get a local tradesman in to look at the problem as the wood would have to be cut extremely carefully.

So we consulted another friend who being nearer, having some experience of furniture restoration and seeing our determination to make it work, encouraged us to get it back and try to divide the offending chunk into two pieces.

We got on so well, that I could see that much more was being restored than our hopes for the wardrobe. Friendship and trust were coming through. Patience and tolerence were also slipping into our sights. What else might come through the wardrobe I wondered as I opened the door to our downstairs Spare Oom on the evening of the second delivery day...

...I almost jumped back as my heart bounded within my chest! The back was completely out of the wardrobe! It wasn't so much walk-in as walk-through! The panels on the back had not been glued at all. They were just slotted in and quite easy to remove. At one corner the joint had also been severed almost seemlessly.

On further enquiry, I learned that the glue used was not the usual strong wood-glue that we use in our DIY in the west, rather it was a primitive animal glue used by the manufacturers in the Far East. It was actually fairly easy to divide into the two pieces we had envisaged and within a day and a half, the wardrobe was up the stairs and re-assembled ready for action.

We were both relieved and exhausted, so we still haven't disposed of the old wardrobes yet. And do you know, I have this little dream that something is going to come through those wardrobes too, and no I'm not thinking it will be lions, or witches or children, rather I am hoping that I can get a small group of friends to help us dismantle them and thus bring kindness, fraternity, good relationships and a restored image of what community life should really be like.

Those of you who are familiar with the Foundations course run by Fusion will know that all the qualities I have mentioned are part of our vision of the Kingdom of Heaven coming on earth. So let's think back to CS Lewis, or Jack as we fellow Oxfordians like to call him, maybe his Chronicles of Narnia weren't quite so far fetched. Perhaps it is possible for one very specific kingdom to come through a wardrobe, a joint car-fixing project (which we've also done recently), a decorating project, a community litter-pick or anything else where people can get together, help each other and discover something more of what we were made to be!

Let's hope so!

Bye for now,
L, J

This Saturday saw me getting up early because I couldn't sleep. When asked I said I didn't know why, but I knew the truth was I was too excited!!

It was eXpo day. This was the culmination of about 12 months of planning, the chance to get together with lots of my youth-working friends whom I never get to see enough of when we're not working, and a chance to brush up my skills for the job I love most, which is not my paid work, but rather being part of Fusion Youth and Community in the UK.

I arrived at about 8:30 am. My job was to help with setting up, making sure everyone was in the right place and clearing away at the end. I'd just finished going through all the meeting rooms when I bumped into one of the key-orgnisers who confessed to having forgotten his mobile phone. So I went to retrieve mine from my jacket and put it on vibrate just in case.

I usually keep my phone on silent, but as I picked it up, I noticed that there was an incoming call and it was from a friend in need. The chances of me picking up that call under normal circumstances would've been practically zero, but in this instance, it seemed someone was watching over us.

The day itself went very well indeed. There was a lot less of the faffing around and worrying than I usually associate with middle-class England and a lot more working together and really listening to one another.

The opening talk was really one that rallied the troops and made sure everyone was on board. I had to go on security duty for the second bit, but the other steward told me about one bit of it and I heard about another bit later.

Then came the workshops and the question that's always asked of course is, "Why did you choose this workshop?" Did I know? I'd originally planned a different workshop in the morning, which had since been moved to the afternoon and therefore conflicted with the other workshop I'd planned to do, so I'd actually made quite a quick decision on it. I was last to answer the question, and as it came round to me, I found myself just explaining that I felt my calling was towards people on the fringes of society who often get missed and I was looking for ways to help me to help them.

When I'm dealing with someone who is feeling "down and out" it can be overwhelming sometimes and I can get hung up on just getting them to a place where I can say they made it or I got them this far, but there are two fundamental things wrong with that statement:
1. There are two I's that are out of place. Why do I need to get people to a place where "I" can say anything? Is it about them or have I made it all about me? And what about the concept that "I" got them where they are? That's equally inappropriate and actually completely and utterly untrue. "I" am not wholly responsible for anyone feeling down and out and "I" am not wholly responsible for their rescue mission. In fact there's someone far more powerful than me who doesn't get overwhelmed and there's also an entire team of people I can call on if I can only get passed my vain childish desire to be the one to save the world.

2. Helping others to grow is not a finite thing that you can just tick off your list and say, "I've done that now. Let's have a break and a cup of tea." It's an ongoing commitment, to be interruptable, open to others as much as possible, and to perhaps settle for sligtly less tea in the future!

Well, that was only half the day, but the rest of it was equally mind-blowing, and I scrawled a few teaching tips down as well as getting more of the content fully into my little grey cells.

We ended the day with worship and there was a supper for anyone that wanted it.

Numbers had not been huge, but it was a good day nonetheless, and I fully expect to be just as excited next year.

Back to the grindstone,
L, J