Personal thoughts

Adopting an over-worked cliché…

Posted by David Ward on 01/09/2010
Posted in: Personal thoughts. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment
theunexaminedlifesocratesquote copy
If you Google this quote it will quickly become apparent that it is a popular quote in lots of blogs. This alone must demonstrate a felt need to make some attempt top slow down the frenetic pace at which most of us live our lives in order to try to make sense of our experiences and to be able to make changes to our attitudes an behaviours.

So, why do I feel the need to join the hoards and quote again what must surely be becoming an over-familiar cliché?

It all started when I decided to re-read a book that made a real impact on my devotional life when I read it back in 1988, the year I left Youth for Christ, worked with Andy and Simon Hawthorne on “Message ‘88” (the foundation for Message Trust, The Tribe, Eden Project etc) and, towards the end of the year, joined the staff at Ivy Cottage Church, in Manchester as youth pastor…just reading that little list makes me remember how desperate I was to improve my prayer life, and, almost on cue, along came a book by Bill Hybels, pastor of Willow Creek Community Church in Barrington, Illinois entitled “Too Busy NOT to Pray”.

I devoured the book, did the stuff, taught the stuff and really grew in my prayer life.

Since then I have tried a lot of other ways to pray. I gave up the “shopping list” prayers that my tradition so often seemed to encourage and learned other ways to make space for God to speak into my life…using a Daily Office, ‘Lectio Divina’, Centring Prayer, praying with prayer beads.

Recently the scriptures reminded me that asking for stuff really is OK as part of a balanced prayer life…I needed to be reminded about that.

 

“Don’t worry about anything: instead pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he’s done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.”  Philippians 4: 6-7.

 

As I re-read the book this week the chapter that stood out was about “Slowing Down to Pray”. It’s simple, helpful ideas spoke to me as freshly as when I first read them. I felt like somewhere in my quest for a deeper prayer life all I’d got was a more complicated one, and often a less intimate one too.

 

And somewhere in the middle of the chapter, Hybel’s quotes Gordon MacDonald’s “Ordering Your Private World”:

 

“Most of us, the author said, live unexamined lives. We repeat the same errors day after day. We don’t learn much from the decisions we make, whether they are good or bad. We don’t know why we’re here or where we’re going…”

 

One thing leads to another, and so I found the Socrates quote. Along with all the other writers, it’s something I needed to hear, a gift from God at this time.

So for a while, I’m back to daily journalling, prayers shaped by the acronym ‘ACTS’ and a time of deliberate listening. It’s simple, disciplined and I feel more involved in my prayer, more like I’m actually trying to have a relationship with God.

I don’t want to live an unexamined life.

I’m certain some of you will be thinking, “Ah, Dave’s getting older and he’s returning to old certainties; he’s going to an evangelical church and he’s abandoned all the good stuff he’s learned and gone back to being a ‘good evangelical’.”

All or some of that may be true. I prefer to think that maybe I’ve grown up just a bit…and I want to grow some more!

 

Windows Live Writer beta

Posted by David Ward on 18/08/2010
Posted in: Blogging, Personal thoughts. Tagged: , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

WindowsLiveWriterlogo copyI’ve been using Windows Live Writer to compose blogs on my desktop for some time now, and really like the tool. I was getting a bit frustrated with the lack of options on the “quick launch toolbar”, which couldn’t be amended in any way and with the fact that some features (e g the picture editing and formatting sidebar) were not usable on my netbook as they didn’t fit the screen resolution. As I often use my netbook to write in a local coffee shop this was inconvenient.

Several of the programmes I use regularly have adopted the ribbon interface of Microsoft Office 2007 (Serif WebPlus, MindManager), so I was delighted to discover that the beta of Windows Live Writer, issued in June 2010, has adopted the ribbon.

This has the “quick launch” mini toolbar, and organising tools on the ribbon interface means that the working area now fits on a smaller screen. New releases will also be added to Microsoft Update, meaning that it should stay up-to-date (and hopefully not cause problems, like some MS updates do, too often.

I know from the reviews that this doesn’t suit the people who find change difficult, but for me at least it has made a great blogging tool even better. Don’t take my word for it, give it a try, remembering that it is still a beta release so may be a bit buggy (although I haven’t found any yet).

The Process of a Pilgrimage-an introduction

Posted by David Ward on 17/08/2010
Posted in: Personal thoughts, Pilgrimage, Theology. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment

Stations banner

In the next few posts I want to explore the actual process of pilgrimage, or, to put it another way, the activities or stages that go to make up the total experience of pilgrimage.

And because the underlying theme here is about life as pilgrimage, I intend to begin with the process of an actual, physical and geographical pilgrimage and then to move on to how we might interpret that process as experiences and activities in our 24/7/365 lives.

Most writers seem to suggest that there are 5 stages to the experience of pilgrimage, and I want to suggest a 6th stage that may be implicit in the normal 5 but is worth spelling out.

A physical pilgrimage is a circular activity: one begins at home and, unless death or an urge to settle somewhere along the route of the pilgrimage occurs, at the end of the pilgrimage one returns home, with:

Something to bring back to show you have been there:a lock of God’s hair, stolen from Him while He was alseep; a photograph of the garden of the spirit. As has been said, the point of travelling is not to arrive but to return home laden with pollen you shall work up into honey the mind feeds on.

‘Souvenirs’ by R S Thomas

This diagram shows the 6 stages that I will be working with:

6 stages