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PowerPoint woman

Happy faces
Mugs full of coffee
Talking starts
Slides begin

Mugs empty
Caffeine wears off
Eyes open
Nobody home to listen

Half an hour has passed
The talking continues
She asks a question
And answers it herself

More cluttered slides
No time to read
Heads propped up by hands
Looking out the window

An hour is up
A comfort break
Just in time
I needed that

Back for more
The schedule is fixed
Cannot chat
Break was scheduled for fifteen, not twenty

Caffeine doesn't work this time
Eyes are glazed over
She paces back and forth
Barely pauses for breath

She's running out of time
Clicks madly through the slides
Says the jumbled mess is how she thinks
Too bad if we don't get it

Time is up
We fill out forms
We write down we liked it
We are all liars

Save a life

Peeing with rain on a bank holiday - hurrah.  So much for cutting the grass.  So I went out to save a life instead.  If you can, give blood too - you never know when you'll be needing it.  You have 8 pints of the stuff -you'll not miss one.

Eyebrows

Some people think I have distinctive eyes.  Well, distinctive eyebrows.  They are shown below, for your benefit.



Coupled with a very tight haircut, I can see why they would stand out.  Oh how I long for the days when the nurses would coem to my hospital bed and go "Awwwwwwww, look at his eyes!".

Imagine my wife's shock when one of my eyebrows escaped and took up home on our back wall!

Really, it did...

Awaiting his fate

8.50am, Tuesday 1st May.
John Alvison sat on a hard wodden chair in a cold, dark 8x8 room contemplating his fate. In ten minutes' time, the door would open and he would be summoned down the long, equally dark, hallway. Once there, it would all be over in minutes. His past deeds would finally have caught up with him. His fate was entirely deserved.

He sat with both feet firmly on the floor, elbows on knees that barely supported upright arms.  His head was planted in his hands and dull, senseless eyes stared blankly at the cracked plaster on the opposite wall.  His mind full of what was about to happen and of memories of events that brought him here.

For a year-and-a-half he had waited for the coming day and its date had been fixed sometime just after Christmas. He had no way out. His friends had deserted him - the ones who had brought him along this path to destruction, who taught him to disrespect authority. Now it was John, all alone, awaiting his fate.

He wanted to go back in time and tell that stupid young man he had once been to wise up: to have sense, to choose the right path. It was too late for that. Plenty of people had told him to have sense and he had laughed at them. Oh sure, it seemed like a good idea at the time. His soul was filled with regret.

8.53am. In seven minutes the door would open and the formalities would begin. They would ask him if he felt well (like it would matter if he didn't?). He would be walked down the hall and then....

The night before he had talked to his parents and confessed all that had brought him here. He had never been scared before, but oh boy was he scared now. For an hour he had talked and cried.

Nomatter what you've done, you are still our son and we love you.

He knew that deep down, they were ashamed of him. His sister, the high-flier, stood in stark contrast to this waster.

8.57am. A uniformed figure glanced through the window with a look of contempt. "I could take you on," John thought, "I could take you all on". Then he remembered that it was that sort of behaviour that had contributed to his current situation. If only they would let him start again - he knew he would be different - he would be a good, hard-working person - a model citizen.

9.00am. Footsteps marched in time up the hallway, clicking sharply on the wooden floor. The door opened - "Alvison?"

John stood straight without thinking - at least he had finally learnt some respect.

"How do you feel this morning?"

"Fine sir."

Of course, he really wanted to beg, recalling the sleepless night of worry and fear, of bowels turning to liquid, of breakfast being repulsive and of managing a few mouthfuls of stinking coffee. He wanted to tell them he would be different if he had a second chance.

"Follow me" the Voice of Authority commanded. John followed, walking straight and proud behind him, a few uniformed figures looking at him scornfully. He would not show fear

They reached the end of the dark hallway and passed through a door, the light from tall windows almost blinding John. The Voice of Authority stood behind a desk. The formalities were about to begin.

"Just get it over with!" he wanted to scream.

"Alvison, you have been briefed on the procedures?"

"Yes Sir." He kept telling himself to be brave- it would be over in ten minutes. He would be free from their torture. Tears began to well in his eyes.

"Please sit... comment t'appelles-tu?"

His GCSE French Oral had begun.

old photos - chuck them out!

We've spent the past week or so clearing out a load of old family photographs. Some bring back happy memories: there's me and my grandfather when I was two, for example, playing in the back yard. Some are confusing: who are those people standing outside our house in 1960? Some are, frankly, embarassing. Most photographs of me taken prior to my twentieth birthday fall into the latter group. You were a geek? I was geekier.

Sitting beside me is a photograph from the 'King of Tyrone' festival. It was the local education board's attempt to bridge the sectarian divides in our wee town by having the normally sectarian-divided youth clubs do something together. Our youth club hosted the joint youth night: a hundred or so running riot around a Presbyterian hall with one of our lads going after some Fenian with a snooker cue for simply being a Fenian. Quite embarassing really - everyone else was civilised about it.

The Tech hosted the quiz: we lost to the Methodists and I fell out with the question-setter because we lost points in our joker round when he was wrong. I started the complaints - most other teams took up the challenge. He didn't back down.

And then the pagent. Aye..... such things should be banned. I remember little of it except it was a cold, rainy day pretending to be the summer. There were floats (lorries with people standing on the trailer), a 'King', and peasants. I was a peasant.

It was embarrasing. Well, at the start it was but then I forgot my embarrasment - until yesterday afternoon and this newspaper cutting.



My wife thought it funny. When I told her I was a peasant, she almost fell to the ground with laughter. At least the girl beside me had the wit to hold her 'banner' in front of her face. Only now have I the dignity of obscuring my face...

Promise not to show anyone, won't you?

Only the good die young...

I'm writing this in an effort to gather my thoughts for something more important that I should be writing: a sympathy card for a friend whose husband has died in his mid 40s.

I played badminton with him - always preferable to play with him than against him. He was one of those players who didn't seem to move much, but was always in the right place to play the most fiendish of returns. His serves were impossible to predict too. I worked with his wife. They pair of them were always laughs and smiles and if you met them while out walking they were inevitably holding hands.

They were obviously as much in love as they were 20 years ago.

This year they went on holiday - only he didn't return.

I've spoken to a few people. He was one of those ones who nobody ever had a bad word about (unless you were lying in a heap by a badminton net, feeling stupid). I had the awful duty of phoning a couple who had named their children after the husband and wife in question. Surely this is meant to happen to bad people or old people? Good guy still young - why?

People are in shock, lifes distorted forever. Three children are fatherless. And here am I, wondering what to write on a card - like that's really going to help her right now?

Both were very much involved in their church and para-church activities. His faith has no doubt stood him in good stead for meeting his Maker and while that is a comfort to the family, it still doesn't fill the empty chair or the empty pillow.

As for the card? A hug and a smile will say much more but "Thinking of you" just seems a bit bland.

This is random and thrown together. A bit like how a lot of people are feeling right now.

Current mood: Sad


Bruchko, by Bruce Olson

I've been asked to do a book review in Church on Sunday.  You fortunate people get a preview!  It just so happens to be my favourite biography and one of my two or three favourite books overall.  I've only read it a dozen times....

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When I was asked to review a book this morning, there was only one choice I could make. It is a biography I have read many times, learning something new each time and being challenged and encouraged in my faith.

This book has the strange name of ‘Bruchko’, which I will explain in a few minutes. Some of you may know it by its other title – For this cross I’ll kill you.

Church Times, when they reviewed it in the 1980s stated it “Deserves to be read alongside the Acts of the Apostles.” High praise indeed – and entirely justified.


The story starts in the 1950s, in Minnessota in the United States. Bruce Olson, in his mid teens, attended a church that was more about ritual than a relationship with Jesus. From a friend’s church and from reading the Bible for himself, he discovered that God called each of us to a relationship with him and we were all accountable for our own actions, regardless of upbringing or our parents’ beliefs.

When I first read this, at around 17 years old I drew a lot of encouragement from it. Nobody else in my family were Christians and when I became ‘good living’, as my Granny called it, they didn’t get it. I was in a similar situation to Bruce, though thankfully I was never locked out of my house at night because I was late home from a Bible study!

Bruce continued his studies as a promising young linguist and by age 19 should have been starting university. He was, however, convinced God wanted him to be a missionary. After writing to a few missions agencies he was told to go to Bible college and re-apply in three years time – this didn’t alter the fact God wanted him to be a missionary in South America right now.

So Bruce scraped the money together for a one-way plane ticket to Venezuela. The missionaries in Caracas completely disowned him because he came without the proper backing from home. He wasn’t impressed with them anyway because as far as he could see, they were more about teaching people to follow Western culture than to follow the teachings of Christ.

Eventually his money ran out. So with no friends in a foreign country he had a big dilemma. At this point I would probably have given up, headed for the British Embassy and pleaded for a ticket home. Bruce took this as his call to head into the jungle with only a mule for company.

His trip into the jungle was interesting. Bruce already knew the natives didn’t want anything to do with white men. Being beaten and bruised and having a five-foot arrow sticking out of his leg soon after reinforced this. Even near-starvation to death and a bout of dysentery did not shake his conviction that his calling from God was to remain there to tell the people about Jesus – even though they had nothing in common, not even a language.

After five years, and after crossing into Columbia without realising it, Bruce had few friends in the Motilone tribe who turned out to be peaceful, if inward-looking people. He had learnt their language and their culture but had little impact. They had given him the name Bruchko – hence the name of the book.



Then his friend, Bobarishora (or, Bobby) asked many questions about Jesus. It was very sudden and came about as Bobby realised the prophecies in the Motilone culture about a tall man with yellow hair pointing them back to the God they had lost touch with, were fulfilled in Bruce – a sort of John the Baptist to the jungle. Bobby, a young leader in the tribe, put his faith in Christ and at the next tribal get-together told the entire tribe of his faith. Soon after, they had all accepted Christ.

The story doesn’t end here. Their land was fertile and rich with oil and many white settlers wanted these uneducated Indians off the land. In Christ they were, for the first time truly united and stood together to preserve their heritage. Forty years later, Bruce Olson is still in Columbia and is a citizen of that country. His life has been given over to teaching the Motilone of Christ while helping them come to terms with western civilization.



You may wonder how this happened so suddenly. Something that really struck me in this story was the contrast between Bruce Olson's ministry and that of other missionaries he mentions who tried to to convert the Indians to western culture as much as Christianity wheras Bruce took on-board Paul’s teaching about being a Greek to the Greeks, and so on and showed them Jesus through Motilone traditions and culture.

I’d like to read a passage from the book where one unsaved Indian chief from another tribe gives Bruce Olson his feelings about the Christian converts in his tribe, "Why, they've rejected everything about us," he said. "They won't sing our songs now. They sing those weird, wailing songs that are all out of tune and don't make sense. And the construction which they call a church! Have you seen their church? It's square! How can God be in a square church? Round is perfect." He pointed to the wall of the hut in which we sat. "It has no ending, like God. But the Christians, their God has points all over, bristling at us. And how those Christians dress! Such foolish clothes…"

"I thought of the Indian Christians I had seen at the missionary compound. They had been taught how to dress in clothes with buttons, how to wear shoes, how to sing Western songs.

"Is that what Jesus taught? I asked myself. Is that what Christianity is all about? What does the good news of Jesus Christ have to do with North American culture? Were the missionaries making a mistake in their preaching? Of course, it probably made them happy to see the Indians dressed like Americans, singing "Rock of Ages." But was that the only way Jesus could be worshipped?"

It would have been impossible for Bruce Olson to simply walk into the Motilone tribe and start preaching the gospel – he had to laying down his own personality and culture because his culture was completely alien to them.

I don’t have time to fully do this wonderful story justice or to tell you of witch doctors, poison, beatings and torture and murder. It even has a couple of romances in it. It is simply a fantastic story - so fantastic I’ve read it around a a dozen times over the years, being inspired and challenged and learning something new every time.

It’s simply a story of what can be done when one person completely forgets about himself and lets God do the work. It then becomes a story of a tribe who are now having a huge impact on their country simply by believing and letting God work. My words cannot do it justice – simply read it for yourself.

Some people are thinking they would read it if they had a copy. It’s just as well I’ve put a copy at the back of the church which anyone can take, on condition you either pass it on to someone else in the church or leave it there for someone to pick up. If you don’t get the book, check out the web site - bruceolson.com.

If you want your own copy, it will cost a tenner from Wesley Owen though Amazon can do it for less. As it happens, the sequel I’ve been waiting fourteen years for is published this week and I intend to be first in the queue.

Rome (1)

A few weeks ago we were in Rome.  As an accompaniment the official guides we had Dan Brown's Angels and Demons, based around the city.  It was interesting spotting where he has distorted fact to spice up the story (I'll save the rant about distortions of fact and the Da Vinco code for another time though...)

Below we have some pictures from The Pantheon - originally a temple to all the gods and later rededicated to some saint.  The statues of saints and relics have replaced statues of Roman gods.  There is a hole in the roof (meant to be there) that lets both light and rain in - it's supposed to be quite pretty when it snows.

The dome is a perfect half-spere, I'm told.  All designed by Hadrian (when he wasn't building walls across northern England).  The city is full of such ancient buildings that put the life-expectancy of modern architecture to shame.