I don’t seem to be able to upload the actual video, just a link. I’ll keep trying! In the meantime, please click the link to see the animation 🙂
Love the cartoon! Personally, I like the ‘lights party’ idea as the best response a Christian can have to hallowe’en. I don’t want to look like I’m passing judgement and spoiling everyone’s fun.
I think Squidge managed to answer the door last year and announced, in her high-pitched squeak, “Sorreee! We don’t do hallowe’en!” and slammed the door in their face. Which is another way of tackling an issue. Get yourself a Squidge.
Saw this great cartoon by Crimperman yesterday about some traditional Christian responses to Halloween:
As regular readers will know, we now like to carve a Christian pumpkin and tell our callers about it before giving them sweeties and a tract. Mez McConnell in Niddrie has been thinking through his responses to Halloween with the help of a thought-provoking blog by Steve Utley.
We in the Vicarage are going to have to do some extra thinking through this week as the Joker has been invited to a Halloween party this week and we need to work out how to respond. What will you be doing this Wednesday evening?
Welcome to the parallel universe of Sunday morning in an English non-conformist evangelical church. Click the link to watch my first-ever animation. It’s not brilliant – and I couldn’t get the camera angles to work properly, but it’s not bad for a first attempt I reckon. The choice of voices was somewhat limited – only a plummy RP accent for ladies, and the only non-RP male accent that was vaguely acceptable was the Australian one. I’d have loved to have done this with Yorkshire or Lincolnshire accents.Viva English humour 😉 Check it out!
I’m no photographer, but I like this photo taken before we moved. Who says wind turbines are ugly?
I am not a huge fan of facebook, but I realise others enjoy it, so I have created a facebook page for Just Zoë, Just Life. This may make it easier to access for those who don’t wish to sign up to notifications from wordpress.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Just-Zo%C3%AB-Just-Life/283577645093266
I have been humming this song this morning. Cheered me up no end 🙂 Lovely, rousing song. I nearly became a soldier in the Salvation Army a few years ago. Then I went and joined the Baptists… There are some things the Sally Army do so very well. This song is one of them:
To God be the glory, great things He hath done.
So loved He the world that He gave us His son
Who yielded His life, an atonement for sin,
And opened the life gates that all may go in.
Praise the Lord!
Let the earth hear His voice.
Praise the Lord!
Let the people rejoice.
Oh, come to the Father through Jesus the son
And give Him the glory,
Great things He hath done!
To all my readers: have a blessed day – may you walk in grace 🙂
I am like this picture this morning. Poor HRH says he doesn’t feel well so has gone back to bed.
The neighbours didn’t shut up until nearly 1am, for the second night in a row, when they were stood in the street outside chattering like monkeys before some of them climbed into cars and drove away (why stand outside, where the sound carries and disturbs even more people than when you’re indoors?). I don’t think they’re exactly partying, or doing anything illicit (which means, in plain English, that they don’t look like chavs, but I don’t want to sound judgemental).
They’re just noisy and it’s doing my head in.
Just a tad.
Short of having my own Mr. T., I composed the following. I shan’t send it yet. I need to reflect on whether it says enough, too much, or too little. Any thoughts?
Dear Neighbours,
We don’t know your names as we have not had the pleasure of an introduction in the nearly four weeks we have lived here so far, so we can’t apply a better title to this letter. Yet it is almost as if you are part of the family; after all, we hear you through the wall late at night when we are trying to sleep (because we have a young family and have to get up in the morning whether we like it or not, to look after the sprogs and to remain in gainful employment).
May we say how much we admire your commitment to mastering the art of percussion. We hear you practising the drums over and over (and over and over) during the day.
While we can only applaud your enthusiasm, the repetition, nay intrusion – let’s call a spade a spade – of this banging and bashing and clashing and crashing, into our family home, has led to some rather uncharitable thoughts, along the lines of shoving said drumsticks where the sun don’t shine.
Do enjoy your youth and your zeal for life! But don’t do so at the expense of your neighbours. They’re only trying to mind their own business and get on with theirs.
Please invest in some electronic drums with volume control and headphones. Go on, embrace the digital age! Better yet, find a practise room in a building where there are no neighbours – then you can crash-bang-wallop your heart out.
May we also suggest that a teeny tiny 200-year-old house is not the best choice for late night, boisterous gatherings. Do consider buggering off going somewhere else if you must do this. The pub, perhaps. Pubs love loud voices and raucous laughter. Raise a glass to us while you’re there. Cheers! And do bear in mind your neighbours are also living in teeny tiny 200-year-old houses and are thus quite close by whenever you embark on raucous gatherings within the home; a matter of a few feet, in reality.
Godspeed in your youthful endeavours. Just do them a tad more *softly*.
Please.
Shhhhhhh!
Thanks.
Yours faithfully
Bleary-eyed Neighbours (who would appreciate some consideration)
Adrian Plass is one of my all-time favourite writers. His books have seen me through some very dark times. Sometimes, humour reaches the places other things can’t, especially when you’re very low. His mix of speaking and writing, particularly using humour to minister to hurts, is what I aspire to for my own life. I am currently reading ‘A Smile on the Face of God’.
Anyway, pondering our efforts to find a new church since we moved, I recalled this wonderful poem:
‘I take my problems to the altar, but my steps begin to falter,
And I feel as if I’m starting to fall
For it’s hard to recollect the proper way to genuflect
Upon arrival in a Pentecostal hall.
And I really want to share it, but know they’ll never wear it.
And the question in my head is underlined.
But just as I am saying “Who on earth invented praying?
Hallelujah in the back of my mind.’
To read the rest of the poem (before I violate copyright!) by the inimitable Adrian, click here:
http://www.openwriting.com/archives/2010/06/hallelujah_in_t_1.php
I have been thrust into homeschooling an autistic adolescent. HRH has not taken too well to this. Neither have I, truth be told, but I have been determined to do my best, for my boy’s sake.
You don’t get second chances at childhood.
Part of Autistic Spectrum Disorder is enjoying things the same, all the time. Every little thing, if possible, becomes part of the ASD person’s own little universe. The move has thus been very disruptive. After Wednesday’s three-hour-lunch debacle by the 2012 Olympic Faffing Champion, among other things, last night I laid down the law (when I lay down the law, you don’t mess with me – even HRH gets this).
Last night, before bed, I reiterated that home school must be done the following day. No ifs, no buts.
Home school.
And you will focus. No wii until after school, mister!
So this morning I was awaiting His Royal Highness to descend from on high when the door suddenly opened and in walked a boy dressed in school uniform. My anxiety over whether we were going to get anywhere with ‘no-ifs-no-buts-it’s-home-school-mister’ was immediately dispelled and I laughed for the first time in a week. He grinned (the golden smile!) and, breathing a sigh of relief, I thanked God. It has obviously made it into HRH’s head that we were doing school today!
We began with a computer facial expression game called Rubberface, where you have to correctly identify the emotion that the face is displaying, differentiating between happy, sad, angry and scared.
Then we did this:
Reading the instructions. Supposedly developing literacy skills but actually more a test of gobbledegook-translation ability.
First, we screwed the legs in place, and I tried to explain why saying “I’m good at screwing” might be misunderstood if you said it out of context (as kids with ASD are wont to do).
More instructions. More gobbledegook. Mind you, the last thing I put together had instructions in Mandarin. DIY interpretation is one of the lesser-known spiritual gifts.
We put the bottom on the wrong way round, but didn’t realise until the end when there seemed to be a bottom shelf missing, so we had to take it off and turn it round. I say ‘we’. I mean him. At that point my role was more supervisory (in the grand British workman’s tradition).
It is nothing short of a miracle that I persuaded HRH to let me photograph his hands. He has a phobia/obsession over cameras.
A handle, which HRH was enormously keen to hang towels on.
Ta daaaaa! We should work for Ikea.
So proud of my boy 😉
Just Zoë, Just Life 