Honest chats.

Sometimes I find it hard to believe my job, today I more or less got paid to hang out with some friends for a day. Obviously the context was an encouraging day with fellow staff workers chatting about life, work, God and anything else that comes into the conversation. It was good to know that there was no set agenda, no things we had to discuss, just some talking to people who know that it's a lonely job, who know that it's hard and who know that in the midst of all that there is a God who loves to pour out the grace of rest and reality upon us. I don't know why I'm surprised that just chatting through life with people suddenly makes me realise that I want to carry on. There is something very important about good honest friendship. Coffee shops are also an important feature of such days. Today's was pretty perfect with many big bowls of cappucinos and wooden tables to sit around.

This was followed by opening a small door to the past and meeting up with an old friend from Uni. We had much discussion on the meaning of life, the universe and everything. I'm not sure I had any satisfactory answers for him, but then I don't think that was really the point. We talked about belief, how you can know anything at all, where you come from affecting your beliefs and the whole strangeness of Christian subcultures who leave no room for the doubting, the questions and the what is going on moments. Having to talk through why I was still on this road home was hard. Experiential arguments are not enough, feelings about things are not enough, staying here because I've always been here is not enough. And yet I cannot leave. Jesus compels me, calls me, shouts at me off the pages of the Bible. It comes back to him.

It was good to talk through the meaning questions again, to remember that beauty exists whether you acknowledge the creator for it or not, to be challenged on assumptions I make, good to think through why I stay on the road and good to chat in the depths after little contact over the last few years. Obviously now I want to jack in my job and go away to some mountains to talk to goat farmers all over the world about how they make sense of the universe. I want to study endless reams of philosophy and history and work out how we can know anything. Hmmm. Maybe soon.