Born of frustration.

Read this. And as ever my brother might have hit the nail on the head. "No pointers - except one - forget the blogs, read the bible".

"7Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son[b] into the world that we might live through him. 10This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for[c] our sins. 11Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us."

Off to see how this works out in practise. Head down, getting on with not trying to be right or prove some points but to figure out how to get on with loving the people I meet. Posturing, pondering and interesting thoughts will seem more attractive, always. What matters is living it out daily. Much harder and less kudos but the Jesus way.

Dusting.

Saturday morning is cleaning morning in our house, generally done to the tones of 60's Soul music and aided by the cute cat who seems to be convinced that this is his house. In the spirit of cleaning it seems appropriate to dust down this fair blog and do some spring cleaning here. Convinced I've alienated even my most hard core readers by the lack of posting. I can breathe a sigh of relief and get back to writing random rubbish without the added pressure of thinking, who will think this is witty, clever, holy, wise and any other adjective you care to think of. (I think it's an adjective that I'm after, I could be wrong...). The observant reader might notice the slight pointless nature of writing for an audience who might not exist and ask why I don't go back to just writing thoughts on the computer for my own personal consumption. I'm still not sure of the answer but that's the conundrum of blogging and so I'm going to ignore that glaringly obvious point and get back to enjoying this blogging thing again.

Sigh. Over explanations of blogging are the most boring blogging posts but as I'm in the mood for doing pointless things I'm going to leave my chunterings.

Anyway. I feel a need for a Dear Diary moment (more extensive details of our trip here) and inform anyone still listening that I *heart* NYC. Yes the Big Apple was visited, thanks to the lovely Sarah and the nice people who pay her lots of money to do her job. We had more fun than we deserved and I discovered that it is possible to find beauty in cities. I thought I really needed the mountains to discover beauty, but it turns out I just need a good view, some huge things that are bigger than little old me, some ascetically pleasing food shops and I'm sorted for my need to gaze in wonder.






In a slightly more geeky train of thought, I now utterly understand what the makers of SimCity were trying to get me to do all those years ago. They wanted me to make New York. I wanted to make London in a random swirly pattern and not have nasty big roads, they wanted me to make the proper grid system and make the city work. No room for creativity and self expression there. (ok so their style of city works much better but that is besides the point.)

I also enjoyed wandering in Greenwich Village, seeing the place where some of my favourite artists made wonderful music. I've always had an obesssion with American folk music (probably due to my parents slightly random record collection), from Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger to Bob Dylan, to Bruce Springsteen. I can't really explain what it is that I love about this strand of music but I think it fuels the desire in me to head back in time to the 60s, grab a camper van and drive across America in a drug enhanced road trip. That's what reading Steinbeck and Kerouac as a teenager will do for you. (yes I also drank coffee black for a time because it was cooler, there's a beatnik poet lurking deep within me just waiting to get out.)

My final thought for this Saturday morning is that it has been sunny for a whole week now. Sunshine makes me want to get out of bed despite overtiredness from Jetlag. Sunny days give me the opportunity to do my job outdoors which makes Bible study more fun. This time of year my room is filled with little specks of sunshine from the mirror ball I have reflecting the light. This makes me smile. Sunny days also lead to sunny evenings and the joy of gazing at beautiful sunsets with pretty pink skies. It's a beautiful world out there.

Update:
It is now officially spring/summer. Our Christmas Hedge was taken down today and placed in our ever growing surrealist garden. I think we've finally accepted Birgitte has gone and can move to the next process of the grieving stage. For the record our garden now contains a broken washing machine, a broken bicycle, a 70s swivel chair, a dying garden table, two dead Christmas trees, some poorly made concrete bird baths and the broken head of a pottery sheep. Surprisingly it still looks pretty, green and as if you'd want to spend time there.