A few thoughts in the ocean of other thoughts…

I am unsure whether I will post this. If you are reading this then I did, and am probably as a result more sure.

Much has been written about ‘the rioting’. This is  just a drop in the large ocean of comment, blogatiousness etc etc.

I guess I was pretty surprised, shocked and generally baffled by the rioting/looting. Strange to see places on the news I have been many times in flames and stores smashed perhaps by people I might have walked past on another occasion.

But in seeing the response by some key politicians and the courts I think perhaps my response now is suprise and shock at our collective response. I think I perhaps want politicians not to act as I would in a moment of rage but as I would hope I would after careful consideration.

In the long term what will we do?

This is not a rant against politicians: I could say ‘I like politicians, some of my best friends are politicians’ but this is largely untrue. However I have met a number of politicans from different parties and found them to be, regardless of whether I agree with their ethos and opinions, a generally well meaning bunch (in person away from the television screens). However it does seem that for what ever reason they are constantly in the moment and never in the future. Focusing on the next election and not the next 20, 30, 50 years.

What are we going to do next? How can we understand? How can we better educate? How do we develop our communities?

I don’t know. I am at a loss to imagine why people acted as they did and there is inevitably a spectrum from the opportunists, to the criminals to those in financial need. Equally I am not saying that policing, courts, prison… have no place. And in some ways initiatives by politicians to create ‘citizens’ and ‘community spirit’ and in general hug all hoodies everywhere might well not be the way forward.

Hug me... I am a hoodie

I just cannot believe that tough policing and tough sentencing is the only answer. I heard that after the recent killings in Norway recently the Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said that the response must be for more democracy, more openness and more political participation. A brave, bold statement I think.

Remember Remember

In some ways at the moment I feel like I have lost my voice.

My blogging voice that is. That’s why I have been quieter of late.  

So for now when I am a big croaky and feel like blogging less I am going to just talk in pictures.

These are a couple from Bonfire night. I love November 5th. Fireworks.

The cold (and it is very cold in Aberdeen). The smell. Wrapping up warm. Being in a big crowd.

And after the crowd had lost and found two small children we we treated to this display.

And here is a glimpse for you.

Some fireworks

some more fireworks

Nuts, Native Americans and Naberdeen

Its been a little while since I have been actively blogging but for now I raise my head above the parapet once again and welcome you to my inaugural autumnal post of 2010. Though of course it is entirely possibly I will in fact write only one autumal blog. Or become a once a season blogger. Or in fact hibernate through the winter.

So, things have changed a little since last I wrote so in case you missed it,

I live in Aberdeen.

I  study Native Americans (though not ones in Aberdeen, they are fairly absent).

I have recalled most expertly how to take the skin off my elbows in pursuit of flying plastic.

I enjoyed (though this is probably too strong a word) a night in the Aberdeen Royal Infirmary after an accidental run in with a nut.

Other than that the last month has been fairly uneventful, just getting used to being a student once again. So for now I have a few photos to show you of the general area in which I live. That is all.

King's College Aberdeen University

Aberdeen Beach

Aberdeen beach again

Warnings

Is less more?

I love loud things.

I love the weather when it is stormy and rainy and the window is open and I am curled up under the covers.

I love it when I listen to music when the bass sound beats and vibrates through your whole body.

I love listening to my ipod so that it blocks out the rest of the world.

I love playing in a band with guitars and bass guitars and drums and singers.

I once had an American history teacher at university who had previously taught in a deaf college in America. She said that many people often think that a deaf college would be a very quiet place but that in fact it is very loud because many deaf students carry huge stereos so that they can feel the bass vibrations though they cannot hear them.

I loved that idea.

But recently I have been thinking about quiet things.

At church we have for various reasons over the last year lost musicians from our church music group. I’m not suggesting we just misplaced them because that would just be careless. Some left the church and went to a new one. Some left the church. Some decided they did not wish to play anymore. But that is not really the point.

The point is that we have ended up having smaller groups. At first this frustrated me because you cannot always pick the music you would want to and it can be harder to fill the space with less sound. But last week we had just two guitars and two singers and it worked. It made me think more about what you can do with less. How with two guitars can you layer them? How can you use dynamics differently? Can you begin with one and then add one?

Of course these things can be done with a big band but somehow it is more noticeable with less.

This week at practice we had 3 singers, one mandola, one djembe drum and one guitar (although not all at the same time). And it was interesting. Exciting to try new things, new sounds, new textures.

So I still love loud things. But maybe sometimes I like some quieter things too now. Perhaps less is more.

A while

Well it has been a while. This is mainly because I have not had anything to say. Nothing at all.

And also of late because my procrastinating energy has been channelled into other areas – namely watching NCIS.

But while you may be expecting me to launch into ponderation and wisdomous words to make up for lost time, I’m still not sure I have anything to say.  Soon but not today.

That is all.

Irreligious ranting and merchandise from the Mother Shop

There are some crazy people out there. In the dark underworld of the world wide web. I am obviously not one of them myself.

But the rest of them, they are a bit crazy.

So one day last week for reasons best known to I don’t know who, I delved into the world of Christians (and others) arguing over specific points of doctrine on the internet. The comments centre around the main themes of everyone else being a false prophet, being illinformed and being at risk of their soul going to hell. So light reading then. Of course this does not represent everyone and it wasn’t a suprise to suddenly discover these people ‘out there’. And yet I managed to get sucked into reading more and more and becoming more and more irate.

Can this really be a good way to engage? I don’t know. But what does strike me as amusing is the knowledge that everyone knows that they are right and concerns me is the lack of compassion we can have for others when hidden by the annonymous internet. We statistically cannot all be right all the time but why do we so often think that everyone else must be wrong?

The book covers come in fashionable ipod black and white

Anyway that rant sort of leads me on to a book I have just read, and what this post is really about, called The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ by Phillip Pullman. It is the sort of book that Christians could write off as a subversive irreligious rant by an athiest hell bent on criticising the church but that would be a bit predictable and dull. Instead, read it and ponder what it can say to me? to us? or in fact what is it actually saying in the first place?

Pullman’s book is fasinating because it doesn’t write off everything about Christianity. He doesn’t believe in God but he does know things about Christianity and about the ethics contained within the bible and so produces an interesting read. The book also clearly has on the back ‘This is a story’ and so he is not pretending that he is updating the bible. This is not The Message Bible by Phillip Pullman. Nor is Pullman asserting he has found some secret previously hidden by the church. It is a book that reflects on Jesus, institutionalized church and storytelling and mythology in general. One reviewer, Bishop Alan, suggests it is a contemporary myth about Jesus.

The book basically tells the story of twin brothers: Jesus, who is physically stronger, good, popular and represents the Jesus of the gospels. And his brother Christ, representing the institutional church, is a darker character, scheming, addicted to the magic and miracles, who subtly comments and re-writes the story of Jesus from the background and eventually betrays his brother to death.

One thing I heard Pullman say in an interview on the radio the other day is that he thinks that he gospels are for everyone and not just the property of Christians. Which I would have to agree with and it is interesting that it is Pullman that can provide a dialogue to discuss this.  I have seen that some people have said that this could be a dangerous book, but I think if we say it is dangerous it is maybe because we fear such writing. I think it might be dangerous if Christians began to believe that only they had possession of the gospels, because are they not for everyone? And I don’t think we need to fear it, instead we can read it, examine it, disuss it, go back to the original bibical text.

 Lots of other wiser more famous people have by the way recently reviewed this book, and in a lot more depth, such as Nick Baines and Rowan Williams and you may be interested to read what they have to say. I think it is particularly interesting to consider the two questions that Baines raises for Christians who read this book, 1. Why do we read the gospels in the way we do? and 2. why does the institutional church seem for many people so far away from the Jesus in the gospels?

Merchandise from the Mother Shop

There are as with all things some bad things about the book. And the section where Jesus is in the garden at Gethsemene doesn’t quite seem to hold with the way that the character has been up to this point. And if you read the book believing it was merely an addition or re-write of the gospels you might get yourself in a muddle. Furthermore some of the demythologising is quite light. But in conclusion I recommend the book, Christian or not, it is at any rate a good story and is worth a read.

By the way on a wholly seperate note, here is the requested photograph of the glow in the dark Mother Teresa, a striking likeness? Maybe not.

Glimpses of Kolkata

photographs © Emily Magrath April 2010

Some more on India

I have just looked up the temperature in Crawley and observed it is today a cool and balmy 12 degrees which I think probably compares a little unfavourably with the 38 degees we have today enjoyed (or possibly endured) in Kolkata. In fact the air conditioning in my room just now is  think warmer than Crawley. However if returning to the cold means not having to eat rice for a while it may be worth it. I am sad to be leaving but I am also excited to be going home… it has been a busy couple of weeks. Anyway here are a few brief thoughts before I leave and look out for some photos when I return.

I have seen some very bizarre things here – like a man who walked into the middle of the road, took his shoes off and walked off. Or the many different ways people have of carrying items – like a man with a huge basket on his head full of chickens, or the man carrying a fridge on a bicycle. Or the bamboo scaffolding and the men climbing up it with no harnesses or safety nets. These things are strange and maybe take some getting used to but then there are the other bizarre things like a child on his own washing with water from the gutter or the children who beg or sell sweets at car windows in the middle of the road. But do we get used to these things too? Like when we are so used to seeing the same pictures on television screens over and over… like we know what this looks like, but what does is smell like? Sound like? Feel like?

There are many stories of hope here. I have met dedicated people, seen amazing projects and met hundreds of smiling children but nevetheless when I go to sleep tonight, not far from here on one side are families living in a room smaller than the one I am in now, and on the other side or me families living on the pavement.

We heard the other day about how one of the families who live at the bottom of the driveway of the Guesthouse we are staying at live there out of some choice. They can make more money begging from the street and particularly from westerners than they could from a job, and the father of the family is a drug addict who has been through detox programes and given up, and the children who don’t wear clothes do so because it will make them more money not because they don’t have any. So then it is easy to become a bit cynical and think that what we see is not necessarily the truth… but this story is in itself a bit crazy I think. Its seems bizarre that is is more profitable to live on the streets and do nothing than work and get paid for a job?

We have seen so much since we have been here. I guess I think that what we have done is a small drop in the ocean. But what we have been part of is more because the work that EMC do here is so important. And finally coming here has given me a chance to buy a glow in the dark Mother Teresa, what more could you want?

India

Well hello from far away and even as far as a whole other country. I have managed to borrow a computer so I can give you a brief update at least. 

We arrived a little late in India after some delay which allowed us to go on an extra airplane and visit an extra city (Mumbai) and spend an extra 9 hours travelling. Having been warned by nearly every person in the world about culture shock I don’t think any of us quite expected it and we were all most definately shocked by the time we arrived at where we are staying (Baptist Missionary Guesthouse). The first night was very hard and I think all of us were quite ready to go home immediately. It was difficult to take in all the differences of India such as overwhelming heat, mad driving, no seatbelts, cows/goats/dogs/chickens wandering in the roads (and dead by the side of them), many different (and often horrible) smells and that was before we had seen the beggars, the kids selling things to car windows in traffic jams, babies curled up alone on the side of the street on their own to go to sleep. I think I had a lot of questions that first night… I wondered a lot about how God allowed such things? How comes people lived in slum houses right up on the edge of Mumbai’s runway? How comes they were born here and I was not? Just because it is up to us to help people why does God not do it anyway? How can God watch all this?

 After all the overwhelmingness of the first night (and yes I say it is a word and thus it is) I was not expecting a good first full day in India but it was very interesting. From the beginning, being introduced to EMC (Emmanuel Ministries Calcutta), the 37 projects that they are involved with and the people who work there I have been so impressed. I think after the first day I felt a bit like Job when God answers him. The fact is that the people who work for EMC make an immense difference. Of the many things we saw on the first day we saw a project that works with mainly boys at the station in Kolkata who live alone, survive alone, and most of whom (about 80%) are addicted to drugs. These kids are like 6, 7, 8? And they are begging for money to feed drug habbits. They were also filthy, really grubby kids. But they were great. They wanted to shake all our hands (so we had ample supplies of anti bacteria spray ready) and they wanted to know our names, and I have never seen kids eating so enthusiastically rice with their fingers!

Boys at Anandaloy

Later that day we went to a residential project called Anandaloy (a Bengali word meaning house of joy). This is where EMC house these same boys after they have been taken away from the station after they had been through a detox programme. We spent the afternoon playing games with them like duck duck goose (hash, hash, rajhash – which is actually duck, duck, King duck) and Vat is ze time Meester Wulf? It was so hard to remember where these boys had come from and that some of them had literally been in the station a couple of weeks before.

 All the time we have met kids from the slums, children whose parents work in the redlight district, kids who are ex drug addicts and so on who are full of happiness. At the projects we have been to it is so hard to believe where these kids come from. In particular we visited the EMC formal school. EMC have a number of education projects but this is the only one affiliated to the highest Indian education authority. It is the only school in India like this where 100% of the students come from the slums. But these kids are well presented, they are smart, they are lovely and they live in a small room with maybe 4, 5, 6 or more other people. Some of them have to study by sitting in the corner with a blanket over their head and a torch to see.

 So there have been lots of challenges and we have seen lots of different things. The projects that EMC operate are truly amazing. This morning we went to the EMC church and I played in the worship band (which was nice as its something I rarely get to do). It was so nice to see a mixture of the faces from all the people we had worked with and met so far this week. Also it made me appreciate the sound system at St. Mary’s because that one rarely bursts in to flame during the service. Randomly I also played Graham Kendrick’s guitar this morning so small world! (or small Christian world)

 Well I will fill you in more some other time. We have a challenging and busy week ahead but I believe that it will be as fun as interesting and sadly as hot (or hotter) than this one (and annoyingly everyone we meet just says hot? It’s not hot yet…) 

See you’all around (and by the way Amanda kept interfering with this blog and informing me of words to write… she wants me to say that this was a positive not a negative interferingness).

The one with India and the partner in crime

Of late life has seemed a little hectic and thus my blog writing has suffered somewhat. Now however I am supposed to be packing things so my procrastinating nature has risen to the surface and here I am…

Ten jabs down, a training day, muchos visa hassle and many flurrying emails I guess I am more or less (time will determine which) ready to go on my trip (to Kolkata, India). I have started taking my anti maleria tablets (which apparently can only be taken in India due to resistance in mosquitos in the rest of the world to them, which in turn led me to wonder what would happen if a holidaying mosquito got me?)

I am going to India with the charity Tearfund as part of my job type thingy but as yet do not quite know what I will be doing. So for your delectation I will outline the details I do know, which probably will not take that long. So 7 of us are going including me (all people doing the YES scheme), and we will be helping  a partner of Tearfund called EMC (Emmanuel Ministries Calcutta) who do alot of work with children from poor backgrounds or from difficult homelives. Other than that I can say that I know where we are staying, which airline we are going with and which airport we are leaving from and going via which is handy. I don’t know whether I will have any way of keeping in contact while I am away so if not I shall fill in the blanks upon my return.

Lucy in a crazy hat throwing snow at me

The second part of my blog today is a completely ‘unprompted’ discussion on the subject of Lucy, my sister. The aforementioned sibling, being younger than me, has often been at the mercy of my wily plans over the years.

For example there was the time when I had a plan to break my leg (to get a plastercast) by jumping from the stairs, obviously however the optimum step needed to be established (otherwise one might hurt oneself unnecessarily), and so Lucy was despatched.

Then there was the other time when we wanted to break into the study (there were probably many times but this occassion was in order to steal the icing of the Baptism cake of our youngest sister), a plan was devised to stand on a chair to get the key from the top of the doorframe (however there was some risk of getting caught and thus to avoid possibility that the plan could be blamed on me) Lucy was despatched.

Other such childhood games were more mutual, I think, such as get the loft ladder down game (getting the loft ladder down without being heard and then back into bed before being caught) or the food theft game (getting food from the fridge while meetings were going on without being caught).

Anyway in honour of my partner in crime these many years I am happy to offer her a mention a shameless plug here in this very blog in honour of her running in a sport relief mile (and wanting some sponsorship) www.mysportrelief.com/luce89 (oh and she now has her very own Lentern running related blog too http://lucyslent.wordpress.com/ if you want to check it out).

Well anyway, and just because I happen to be watching a star trek movie at this moment, I will be boldly going to return to my packing or possibly, and more sensibly just go to bed.