Friday = My day: Episode 14 – Closing shop… feel free to browse.

I have decided to retire ‘The Weekly Mash [and Peace!] blog after 14 good weeks.

With the pace of life at the moment the pressure to produce 5 specifically themed blog posts as well as what I passionately want to write has at times felt a little overwhelming and I hate producing sub par stuff. So I am wanting to put more time, energy and focus into my main blog, Irresistibly Fish and so encourage you if you are a subscriber of the Mash to head across there and subscribe to that.

In the meantime, if you are looking for something to read today, here are the three most popular posts on Irresistibly Fish that I would want you to read:

For those of you who are single [but also those of you who are married – it is excellent for you to hear this stuff!] these stories by some good friends of mine on their journey as single people [desiring not to be] has been such powerful reading and very popular – read and share away cos this is encouraging stuff.

I also did a Taboo Topic [rarely spoken about topics, in church and elsewhere] on Parenting young children when it’s not particularly been easy and this post by my friend Candi for some reason just blew up – people resonated with it, it got a gazillion shares and she has been invited to write and speak in places because of it which has been so exciting for me to watch. Read this one and also the one by Steve Wiens which got a lot of airplay and share it if you haven’t because you have friends with young children who desperately need to read these.

Thirdly, largely due to a comment and link I posted on this excellent blog post, ‘How I know my wife married the wrong person’ by Tyler Mackenzie, which became a four part [and growing] series, there was the series I ran a while back called How to save a marriage [before you need to] in which I invited something like 18 of my friends who are in strong marriages to share one or two things that for them are the foundation for a strong marriage.

Seems like relationships are what a lot of my readers are interested in but one non-relationship one [well not people with people] that I would like to recommend is the series called ‘Aslan Jesus’ that I have just started which is looking at aspects of Jesus that show that He is good, but definitely not tame. I am very excited about writing [and seeing written – have some guest posts coming in] this series.

In terms of looking back over the 14 weeks of ‘The Weekly Mash [and Peace!]’ the top blog that stands out for each day would be:

By far and away Cloud man for Monday – I am glad so many of you enjoyed this with me… gets me every time…

For Tuesdays it was surprisingly celebrity marriage advice [there you go again on the relationships!] with Ben Affleck and Will Smith.

No surprises that for Wednesday it was wife with nail in her head which sounds horrible but is just such a powerful thought-provoking piece that you have to watch and share if you have not seen it yet. Incredible and so hard to explain in a way that would make anyone want to watch it. But do it!

Thursday the top-rated post was the one I did titled John Piper and the three little pigs, but the one I want to put here is yesterday’s post ‘Time to let the church die’ as it hasn’t had the time to be read as much but no doubt will – an excellent article and an excellent video clip giving some strong prophetic voice to the church and the gospel message.

And lastly, Friday being my day, well interestingly enough ‘Blessed are the Geeks’ was the most viewed post for that day and it was all about the labels we put on people and so a really good read.

Thanks for being part of this experimental journey. And please come on over to Irresistibly Fish if you are not already there. There will continue to be humour and news-related posts, relationship advice and stories as well as spiritual hunger pieces and every day will in a sense be my day. As for this blog it is not going to be vaporised and so you can continue to catch up on old posts by using the day tabs at the top of the page which are archives for the whole journey. And as a going away present, if you feel up to sharing this post, then it will give access to a lot of great blog posts to your friends and fellow ‘Farmville II’ players on Facebook.

 

Thursday = Thirsty: Episode 14 – Time to let the church die

As this is my last Thursday post for The Weekly Mash [and Peace!] I decided to use both of the posts I had set aside for Thursdays to come because they are both so powerful. So there is not intrinsic link between the two except to say that maybe they both capture the heart of what this thing we believe is truly supposed to be about. The first is an article called: ‘Open letter to Church: Let it die’ which I’m sure prompted a lot of well-meaning people to chime in with angry comments without reading this first. It is an article by a guy called Aaron from the Cultural Savage blog page which in essence is saying’let that which the church is not meant to be about but has become, die’ – it really is a good read, but you really need to listen carefully to what Aaron is trying to say and especially hear the big CHURCH I LOVE YOU halfway through the piece:

http://culturalsavage.com/christianity/open-letter-church

Next up is N.T.Wright who I have sadly not been able to read much of yet but he is a name that comes up a lot and I respect him just from the little I know him and how highly recommended he comes from people I really respect. But this video clip of him was my first main exposure to him in which he talks about what the gospel really is about and it is a very powerful and accurate piece so really try and find for yourself the 13 or so minutes it takes because this is great stuff to hear and be reminded of:

[For last Thursday’s Jesus rose from the grave [and you can’t even get out of bed] click here]

Tuesday = News Day: Episode 14 – Paint the town red [and blue, green…]

This is a story from a while ago that caught my attention.

‘Make a city beautiful, curb corruption. Edi Rama took this deceptively simple path as mayor of Tirana, Albania, where he instilled pride in his citizens by transforming public spaces with colorful designs. With projects that put the people first, Rama decreased crime — and showed his citizens they could have faith in their leaders.’ 

If you have time to check out the TED talk that introduced me to him, check it out.

But if not, then simply read the article which talks about how this Albanian mayor brings art to politics. The colours on the buildings may not look so amazing in themselves [to me, anyways] but it’s when you see the new building held against the picture of the old one that you see just what a difference it makes and then when you hear/read the story you get an idea of how transformative this is.  Have a read.

‘Edi Rama has been in politics since the start of the 21st century, but before that he was a painter. It was this deep affinity for light and color that informed Rama’s time as mayor of Tirana, when he literally painted the town … every color. Rama is best known for the removal of government kiosks all over the city, thus cutting down on endemic bribery, and for the establishment of a modern new reception hall for citizens with paperwork requests. Rama’s administration also demolished thousands of illegal buildings, removed hundreds of thousands of tons of concrete from riverbanks, and planted thousands of trees and bushes all over the city. Rama continues to serve as a leader of the Socialist Party of Albania.’

He asked me for a compromise. I said, ‘No. Compromise in colour is grey. And we have enough grey to last for a lifetime.’ Edi Rama

[For last Tuesday’s Hey dude, Were’s my husband’s bike click here]

Monday = Funday: Episode 14 part II – Kent-Leigh [by Mariah Carey]

I am not sure how I could post three awful music numbers and forget this absolute classic.

At the last Vineyard church where I worked as a youth/student pastor one of my youth guys [and now students] is a guy called Kent-Leigh which was a unique name for me but we got to know Kent-Leigh and watched him grow up and learn to speak and all was good and well and normal in the world, until this happened:

A lady auditioning for the Bulgarian version of Pop Idol [called Music Idol] surprised the panel of judges by confidently announcing that she will be singing the hit song ‘Ken Lee’ [I think the ‘T’ was silent] and went ahead to sing this classic Mariah Carey number she had obviously ‘learned the words’ from just listening to it… and so Ken Lee Tulibu Diboo Douchoo was born [which we sing full volume every time we hang with Kent-Leigh and he loves it. Probably].

I give you ‘Ken(t) Lee’:

[For Part I of the music mess, I mean mix, click here] 

Monday = Funday: Episode 14 – Music to move you [far, far away from its source]

Well, you know the vibe – it’s Monday again and I’ve taken it on myself that no-one should start the week with Monday blues and so in a bid to put a smile on your face [although this week’s smile strongly resembles a grimace] here are three music-related clips to inspire you [to thinking greater thoughts about your own shower voice]. If you only have enough time for one of them, then the challenge is to see if you can sit through the whole of the third one [my favourite part being the breath the singer takes mid-note] but all of these are classic[al] in their own right:

I give you the theme to Titanic. A powerfully moving piece, until this guy picked up his recorder:

Theme song to Titanic the way you probably don’t remember it. [Not Safe For Having Friends after you’ve made them listen to it]

Next up is that rousing theme which helped transport us into a world where dinosaurs became real once more and walked the earth:

The theme song to Jurassic Park. In a different other way you probably don’t remember. I think it’s great:

And then finally, one of the greatest song clips of all time and truly a lesson in endurance. Fill the room with people. Gather them around the screen. And press play on this soulful rendition of ‘O Holy Night’

[For the Bonus track on Part II of this Music montage featuring the woman who thought she had a Mariah Carey song figured out, click here]

[For last Monday’s hilarious Buried Alive in a Box, click here]

Friday = My day: Episode 13 – The route of all evil [and it’s NOT money!]

LEAVE U ALONE!

American speling irritates me.

I hope that doesn’t offend you, but it really does. Take the word ‘colour’ for example. It’s like Americaland took “There’s no ‘I’ in team” to some kind of crazy extreme and added their own little corollary of, “Oh well, if that’s true, then there is no “U” in ‘color’ which makes no sporting analogy sense whatsoever.

It’s “Colour!” Deal with it.

But you know when American speling really gets me mad. When they’re right. [fortunately I don’t get mad very often]

A chief example [of the two I can think of] [yes, only two! That’s it – it’s like the extent of American success in Word War I and II] is the word ‘route’.

I PRONOUNCE YOU…

I just realised what irritates me even more. That I just now realised the point I was wanting to make was about pronounciation and not spelling at all. What a waste of a witty and insightful introduction. No, screw it, I’m leaving it. No ways am I going to be able to be that creative on pronounciation.

As a good descended-from-the-British South African, I pronounce the word ‘route’ as Americaneses would pronounce the word ‘root’ hence my title having the same self pronounciation for us as ‘Money is the root of all evil’ [it’s not – money AND raiSINs perhaps, but not money alone].

So it really bothers me when I hear Americaneses pronouncing the word as a word that rhymes with “out” but starts with an ‘R’ but only mostly because they are correct. I have no idea how ‘ou’ became ‘oo’ from us between the paper and the tongue. It makes absolutely no sense and now I feel like I’m on the losing team. I’m one of the last two left in the picking teams game and the other captain just said, “Ah, you can have both of them.”

Have me? You got to earn me homie! But I digest.

So I will concur for now that ‘route’ should be pronounced like ‘shout’, ’bout’ and ‘doubt’ and not in the same way as you would say ‘hoot’ ‘boot’ or ‘shoot’ but I will continue to say it the wrong way. I’ve moved my driving over to the wrong side of the road, so you will have to be content with that.

‘TO’ MEANS ‘UNTIL’

The second Americanese speling thing that irritates me, I just now realised is a different word usage thing [Man, I did not think this through!] but again, the intro was pure literary brilliance and it is too late to veer over and drive on the right side of the road. [the left side being the ‘right’ side, if you get my Tokyo drift]

It happens in morning prayer which we do every Friday. Part of the devotion is two people reading Bible passages. The South Africans will take chapter 1 verse 1-10 and day “I am reading chapter one, verse one to ten” whereas the Americalanders will say “I am reading chapter one, verse one through ten” which sounds completely stupid to me, but only because I grew up doing the other one.

And once again, they are correct. Because ‘to’ to me suggests until, upto, to the point of. If I drive you to school I don’t drive up the steps and into the building – I drive you to the very edge of school and you take over from there. And so 1 to 10 really should mean I am going to read verses 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 and then I got you to 10,over to you. Right? Sad face!

Again, I’m probably not going to change because it feels so wrong to me when I hear it and when I say it [I’ve never said it!] But every time I hear someone else do the reading and they say “verses 1 through 10” I look up and give them a little victory acknowledgement nod.

But we still have colour! And you can’t take that away from me. No matter which root you try to take.

[For last Friday’s Everything happens for a reason, click here]

Thursday = Thirsty: Episode 13 – Jesus rose from the grave [you can’t even get out of bed!]

I was going to ask my friend Robert Martin for permission to reblog this recent post he did looking at a Jon Foreman song that is almost straight out of the Old Testament prophets, but which I imagine still holds true today. It contains the following verse:

I hate all your show and pretense
The hypocrisy of your praise
The hypocrisy of your festivals
I hate all your show
Away with your noisy worship
Away with your noisy hymns
I stomp on my ears when you’re singing ‘em
I hate all your show

And you can go and watch and listen to the rest of it here if you want to.

But then I figured he has already done that and it reminded me of a man who influenced my life a lot and that is a guy called Keith Green who my favourite and most life-transforming book [after the Bible] No Compromise is the story of. If you haven’t read that book, I can’t encourage you enough to.

I have never been a fan of people calling songs or books or other people ‘anointed’ because of the certain understanding of the religious jargon that goes with that definition largely in the circles I have heard it used. But there are at least two of Keith’s songs which just connect with something in my spirit and a number of lines just smack me in the face every time I hear them [in the best of Godly prophetic ways]. If you have a lot of time then you can seek out the other one, which is his interpretation of the story of the Sheep and the Goats which you can find here, but the one I want to share with you is this one called ‘Asleep in the Light’ – listen to the words and hear the passion and feeling that Keith pours into them [this video comes with bonus Spanish subtitles so forward it to all your Spanish speaking friends] Just listening to this again has struck a chord in me [and a future blog post] about how comfortable we’ve made the Gospel in so many ways so that it almost doesn’t have to affect us at all:

The world is sleeping in the dark
That the church just can’t fight
Cause it’s asleep in the light
How can you be so dead
When you’ve been so well fed
Jesus rose from the grave
And you, you can’t even get out of bed

I hope this challenges and changes you. I hope this challenges and changes me once again.

[For last Thursday’s Definitive Guide to Insulting the Creator, click here]

Wednesday = Wed day: Episode 13 – From “I do” to “We do”

When the beautiful Val [tbV] and I finished our time at the Simple Way, our bossman Darin suggested this wooden artwork, that  a friend of theirs could put together for us, with some words that we had spotted on the Book of Facings, as a farewell gift, and we jumped at it.

These words are powerful and are a covenant of who we would like to be as a family and the kind of home environment we are working towards, both for ourselves and for the many people we hope to extend hospitality to who will come and stay with us, and, for a short or long time, become a part of our family.

Some of these are definitely easier than others.

But all of them are valuable to us.

And it feels like we’re making progress on a couple of them.

This list is not all-inclusive by any means, or even close to. But it is populated with words, experiences and principles that we value and want to chase enthusiastically after.

Ah, wait, I’m doing it wrong. I said WE WANT TO CHASE ENTHUSIASTICALLY AFTER! 

[That’s better]

We didn’t come up with this list, so you are welcome to borrow them and embrace them. Even come up with some of your own.

So let’s hear from you then… What are two things you would add to this list if it was in your home?

[For last Wednesday’s Search for MEDS: Married, Engaged, Dating, Single, click here]

Tuesday = News Day: Episode 13 – Hey dude, where’s my [husband’s] bike?

So today’s story is this inspirational one about a marathon running mom who, when she saw, her husband’s bicycle being taken out of the garage decided, ‘Not today mister!’ and took off after the thief.

‘Sarah Tatterson, 37, of West Seattle, Wash., is an accomplished runner, who has completed a dozen half-marathons in her lifetime. So earlier this month when she noticed a stranger walking up her driveway, entering her garage and making a quick exit with her husband’s bicycle, her running instincts immediately kicked in.’

Maybe the best part of this story [if there’s a better part than 37 year old marathon mom chasing 40 to 50 year old man on bicycle down the road] is that Sarah had just finished her Master’s degree in counselling and decided to put it to good use as she chased him:

“I was trying to get him to talk to me, and he wasn’t wanting to talk about his feelings,” she said. “The options were letting him go, or him going to jail. The full meaning of justice is that he’d be rehabilitated. I don’t know who he is, but I hope he gets the help he needs.”

You can read the rest of this inspirational and fun story on the ABC News site over here.

[For next Tuesday’s Paint the town red [and green and blue] click here]

[For last Tuesday’s incredibly creative street art, click here]

Friday = My day: Episode 12 – Everything happens for a reason.

The way I view the world, there are three forces/people at work:

[1] God – I don’t believe He runs the world like a puppet master but I do believe He is involved – When someone becomes a follower of Jesus His Holy Spirit comes and lives inside of us and directs, guides and prompts us and helps us to live a life that looks more like Jesus. I experience this in my life. Sometimes the voice of the Spirit is very clear and I really believe I am hearing from God on something and know how to act or what to say, but often it can be more subtle and sometimes I can feel like God is far away and distant. Because of the hugeness of God as I perceive Him to be, I have no problem with the fact that I do not fully understand how He operates or how He works – when He gets involved and when He chooses not to be. If He was able to create the Universe in a moment then it makes perfect sense that I would not be able to come close to understanding everything about Him. But I can have a picture of Him and as I spend time with Him and experience Him and learn more about Him so that picture goes.

[2] The enemy – The devil, satan, lucifer – once again I don’t really understand how the devil works but I do believe that God has an enemy who has some measure of power and is doing everything he can to thwart the work of God and take down people. Called ‘the father of lies’ the evidence is strong that there is a person or force in the world that is trying to move everyone more towards ‘the dark side’ – temptation, lust, violence, greed are a bunch of the tools of his trade and you just need to pick up a newspaper or turn on the tv to see the evidence of this.

[3] People – us. I don’t believe we are robots who don’t have free will and are living predetermined lives but that we have a strong measure of free will that influences how we live – the decisions we make and the actions we live out as well as the words we speak and how we act on our thoughts and inclinations.

So when it comes to how life happens, I believe all three people/forces are working all the time. God building His kingdom particularly through those people who follow Him; the devil doing anything in his power to thwart or uproot or break down what God is doing and to hurt and damage and destroy people as much as possible; and us living our lives while being influence by both good and evil and making decisions and learning and growing [hopefully] as we go along.

I had a friend at school who went for a bike ride on the night of his 18th birthday and was knocked over by a drunk driver and killed. A lot of people in situations similiar to those tend to blame God for what happened. “How could you take him like that?” But God didn’t kill my friend, a drunk driver did, when he made a really bad decision and then didn’t perhaps have the reaction ability he needed when he came upon my friend.

Some people have a ‘Whatever happens is God’s will’ approach to life, but I take issue to that as well. People dying is not God’s will, people being sick is not God’s will, abuse and divorce and rape, racism and sexism are not God’s will. They happen because we are in a broken and messed up world [brought about by our sin and disobedience or those who have gone before us] and so yes, God allows stuff like that to happen [a whole other discussion] but not everything that happens is because He wills it to. Holding a ‘Whatever happens is God’s will’ view to life often relinquishes us of the responsibility we should be having for our actions.

And so I do believe that everything happens for a reason in the sense that something or someone made it happen. Not necessarily in the sense that it has meaning and purpose and destiny. Sometimes things just happen because that is how we exercise our free will in that way. Which is why often the things that happen have the odour of crap to them.

Oh, and one more thing…

[For next week’s The Route of all Evil [And it’s NOT money!], click here]

[For last Friday’s Well maybe I SHOULD jump off that bridge, click here]