Busyknitter

What can I say, we had a completely awesome time. Huge thanks to my good friend who came to help out with T; couldn’t have done it without you. It was also great to spend some time with my brother, who is a Greenbelt old lag (compared to me that is)

As for the little fella, he loved it! Quite the little autistic party animal he was. He especially enjoyed any event with music.

As Greenbelt newbie, it took me a day or so to work out what was going on and when. But we still did loads. Beer’n Hymns was a particular highlight (two nights in a row!) As was a talk by John Swinton on the theology of disability. Also one by a bloke who walked the entire route of the M62 and wrote a book and a blog about it. And then there was the Taize worship. And the dinner I had from the Pie Minister stall (almost a religious experience in itself). Oh, and the Iona Big Sing. I could go on.

Camping with T was not too bad at all. The first night’s sleep was a bit rubbish; we went to bed at 1am and T woke us up before 4 and that was that. But Saturday and Sunday were a lot better.

And I spent a small fortune on books

Here’s a few pictures. There will be more on facebook.

I’ve been trying really hard to ignore all the troubles going on in the Church of England. But the noise levels are getting to the point where it’s bloomin’ well unavoidable.

So this weekend I spent some time doing a little homework, reading both the Gafcon Final Statement on Global Anglican Future. and ++Rowan’s response.

Now this is the hard bit. I have to say I do agree with the words of the GAFCON statement. But that’s not the same as saying I support the motives and objectives of those who wrote them. I’m not sure that homosexuality in the clergy is a communion-breaker for me. But then I’m not having to address the question in my parish.

To be honest, I’m just very sad that all this is happening. I have absolutely no clue in my head or heart about where God is in all this; to work for unity at all costs or to draw the line in the sand and not cross it.

I guess this is how children feel when they see their parents heading for divorce and are powerless to do anything about it

Thus endeth my lenten internet fast.

It’s been an interesting ride.

A couple of things happened early on which made it vey obvious that I couldn’t in all conscience step away from my online life completely. I’d always planned to keep track of emails and of course I have to use t’Interweb for work. But there has been some serious life and death stuff happening over the past six weeks to people I care about, and with whom I mostly interact online. So right from the start I’ve been bobbing in and out of a couple of important websites.

Jesus was never legalistic, so I guess I should try to not let that sort of thing bother me either.

Which meant I’m not wearing a hairshirt over buying vacuum cleaner bags online. Or that Amazon order.

What I wanted to achieve from the fast was to break my growing habit of eating up time aimlessly by surfing around websites when I know full well that there is nothing interesting to read and I’d be better off sleeping, praying, reading or speaking with a human being who is actually in front of me. And for the first four weeks, I really managed to keep my internet usage down to that minimal activity. I even spent some of the extra time doing all those excellent offline things.

I did watch more telly than usual, which wasn’t really part of the plan.

However, for the last two weeks of lent it all slid rather badly; Daily newspapers, the BBC, Arts and Letters Daily, Spiked! - all my favorite information sites proved too tempting. I did manage to keep well away from The Ship of Fools (in fact I hardly missed it at all), blogs and all the knitting sites.

Normal service is now resumed; except that I plan to keep one or two of the good habits that I tried to instill in myself.

Have I learnt anything? That in the virtual world, some parts of it are more virtual than others. That living on the internet is no different to concrete life in that it’ really is all about relationships (or the lack thereof).

From the Internet that is. See you all in the middle of March

I’m generally very happy with the school that our teenage son goes to. He’s happy, has a decent circle of friends, doesn’t get into serious trouble and seems to be actually learning a thing or two in most subjects. But tonight he came home with a story that just goes to show that the world will never be completely rid of terrible teachers.

His opening line was a cheery “I got a lunchtime detention in RE today, Mum. Do you want to hear how it happened?”

Me Uh-oh Did you not do your homework?

Firstborn No, nothing like that. We were discussing baptism, I asked a question and she gave me a detention for being blasphemous

Me So what was the question?

Firstborn Well I asked why people don’t wait till they are very old to get baptised, then they can be cleansed of all their sins and won’t have much time left to get into trouble again

Me Then what happened?

Firstborn She just gave me a stern look, said “I will not have blasphemy in my class” and told me to report for detention later.

So now lively kids get into trouble for asking intelligent questions (he swears blind he wasn’t cheeking her). He didn’t seem that bothered about it at all; a school boy acceptance of inevitable rough justice if you will; so, whatever. But GOOD GRIEF! Does the stupid woman not know deferring baptism was the norm in the early church till about AD400? The Emporer Constantine himself was baptised on his deathbed.

I offered to make him some “FREE the RE 1″ posters and report the case to Amnesty International. At which point he got cross with me for being silly.

Blogging that is. I’m in danger of losing touch with my blog altogether if I’m not careful. So I’ll ease myself back in with a quick start of term report

Everyone is happy that school has started. T’s behaviour and general happiness levels have improved about 300%. And S seems to appreciate being in Year 9 (mainly because it means only one more year of compulsory French!) Me other half is just thrilled to get his own life back (weekdays 8.30 am - 3.30pm). And I’m totally immersed in the busiest period of the year at work. Wahaay!

That’s all OK, but what’s really rocking my boat at the moment is the fact that choir has started again. And what a programme we are working on! The big November concert will be Vivaldi’s Gloria, Handel’s Coronation Anthems and Puccini’s Messa di Gloria. It’s the society’s 80th anniversary gala concert and we were told this evening that we are going to be filmed for a programme on BBC4! In addition to that, we will be reprising our showtunes programme for the opening concert of the Preston Arts Festival and holding a Come and Sing workshop on the Vivaldi. Oh and there’s a carol concert in December.

Now what else is happening? I read 2 Timothy last night for the first time in ages and that blew my mind slightly. I think I need to get a decent commentary on the book.

Oh and Mr. Busyknitter and I will be celebrating our twentieth wedding anniversary in 2 days time. Hopefully with a walk up Pendle Hill and a cheese butty at the top. But if it’s sheeting down with rain, we’ll probably get tanked up in a restaurant somewhere near home

Christ is Risen. Alleluia!

Our bishop encouraged everyone in the diocese to fast for 24 hours around Ash Wednesday. It didn’t have to be a complete fast, suggestions were given for fasting from cars, from watching the telly that sort of thing.

My church actually had a party on Ash Wednesday. A little unusual, you mght think, shouldn’t we have had the social the day before and given Ash Wednesday over to penitence and prayer? Normally, yes, but 1st March 2006 was the the 10th anniversary of the comissioning of our lovely, modern church building. So,the decision was made to have the social on the Wednesday and put great emphasis on fasting for the preceding 24 hours.

I always approach this kind of thing with great trepidation. I’ve read all the books that tell me how fasting is an essential christian discipline, that regular periods of fasting will awaken in me a new spiritual hunger and deepen my relationship with God. But the truth is, ever since I first became pregnant (over 12 years ago now), I can’t miss a meal without keeling over. I’m also a complete caffeine addict.

But I decided to go for it. The plan was to eat a decent dinner on Tuesday and then nothing but water until Wednesday evening. How hard could that be?

Well, by 10 am Wednesday, my tummy was rumbling and I was feeling a bit light headed. I was invited as a guest to the regular team meeting of one of my groups of staff at the college. A cup of tea was thrust into my hand as soon as I sat down. There was no way I was going to come over all pious and refuse it on the grounds of fasting so I drank it, thinking - one cuppa won’t hurt. I’ll still do without the food.

By 1pm, I was sitting at my desk trying to do some work. My head was thumping and I just couldn’t concentrate. And that’s when i cracked and went to the refectory for a plate of sausage and chips. This, gentle readers was I think my greatest mistake. I probably should have just had a sandwich.

As the afternoon wore on I was feeling worse, not better. My last event of that day was a 2-hour meeting with the auditors. And by then I was feeling physically sick. I got through the meeting as best I could (hope they didn’t think I was a complete idiot).

I went home at 5pm, collapsed into bed and went straight to sleep. Was woken up 40 minutes later by T falling off a chair that he was dancing on while wearing my high heels! The sleep helped, but there was no way I was fit to go out, so no party after all.

Which brings me back to my original question. What is fasting actually for? The only effect that it had on me was to more or less put me out of action for a day. And rather than bring me closer to God, well I just spent the whole day thinking about myself and my feeble constitution.

Sunday was a bit of funny day (ha ha and peculiar).

Church in the morning, the monthly family service. Which meant that older son got to bunk off. While he actually thinks a lot about God, faith, the world etc (well a lot for an 11-year old) he absolutely cannot bear corporate worship, especially childrens songs with daft actions. So as an act of compassion, I let him stay at gome with his heathen Dad.

However younger autistic son adores family service. My parish does a fantastic job of looking after T and including him in things as much as possible. While he copes pretty well with Sunday school sundays, he loves being in church itself with all our hymns and silly songs and happily pootles about to his hearts content (it’s a modern building, self contained and very safe).

What really gets him going is the drumkit at the front. He stands about three inches away from the cymbol and gazes adoringly at it, while our drummer (who is also our vicar) tries to avoid hitting him. But this Sunday, we started off with a traditional hymn, and no drums. So T snuck his way to the front and planted himself on the drum stool. And he just sat there through the whole hymn with a ridiculously happy and triumphant expression on his face. I wish I’d had my camera with me.

That was the morning.

In the afternoon, we went off to a country pub to meet a load of people from church to celebrate someone’s 50th birthday. T often cries when we arrive at a place in the car, but particularly new places. He must have been tired or otherwise out of sorts, because the moment I pulled up at the pub car park, he set off into a major, major meltdown (I think it qualifies as his worst ever). Which went on for an hour and a half for goodness sake! He spent most of the time slapping the tops of his legs, which are now all bruised.

‘Fraid I didn’t cope very well. People we knew kept hovering around trying to help and making daft suggestions - “Would you like to come and fly a kite, T?” People we didn’t know just looked askance. We were sitting in the middle of a large, open field, but I only wanted to find a cave to hide in.

I changed my route slightly this morning and was running past the local baptist church, when I saw this cheery sign:

“Jesus says, ‘Whoever believes in me will not be thirsty’ ”