Live a Quiet Untamed Life...

I love comments to post that I've written.

I also love it when people quote the bible at me and given that we are currently celebrating 400 years of the King James bible [woop] to have someone quote

1 Thes. 4:11-12 And that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you; That ye may walk honestly toward them that are without, and that ye may have lack of nothing. 

In responce to my book review of Untamed made me very happy. [for the benifit of those who aren't familiar with middle English here is a more modern translation in boh English and Russian.]

I am guessing that the comment is suggesting that the idea of living an adventurous or radical life is in contradiction with this instruction from Paul to the church in Thessalonica. [This is a guess as without any other words it is the best I can do. If I am wrong on this front then I apologise].

So are these incompatible? To answer this it depends what I mean by adventures/adventurous life, what the context of the verse is and a general understanding of the bible as a whole.

My brother, to use this photo I am required to inform you Phil>Chris

Firstly the typical worldly view of adventurous is someone like Indian Jones or Lara Croft [for a female inequivalent]. They are never in one place for a long time, always heading of to the next place after causing a load of havoc. Or if we look at individuals lives maybe just involves throwing yourself of a cliff with a parachute/bungy rope attached.

However the literal definition is an exciting or unusual experience [often with an element of risk].

Now back to the verse. When we look at the whole of Thessalonians chapter 4 we see Paul encouraging the church to live a life that is totally at odds with the typical word around them and our world today. Follow Jesus even more, abstain from sexual immorality, and don't wrong your brothers.

Then we have the full section where Paul praises their love for each other and encourages them to grow even more in brotherly love AND to aspire to a quite life... as some commentators have pointed out the way that Paul links the two together and is saying that the way to show brotherly love and ensure it increases is not to be a burden upon the rest of the church. Earn money so that no one has to support you and that you can support others.

If we follow these ideas then surely we will live an unusual adventurous life. Sure we may end up living in sub-urban Western Country doing a 9-5 job but because we are living working for God we will live in a different way.

I'm not 100% certain and would happily accept responses but I don't see any other way to balance these verse with the context and all the other verses that tell Christians to live in different ways.

The power of poetry

English Club tv have recently been showing a brilliant TV series that was first made for the BBC. In the program the present explores key events, figures and even inventions.

It has been great and English Club really deserve credit for finding a show that has completely got me hooked.

In this program one of the things that had really struck me was the influence of poets and authors upon the language. To some degree it is no suprise that these widely read peices of litterature would indeed affect the language spoken but the extent was really suprising.

I was reminded of Taras Shevchenko the famous Ukrainian poet. He has been a key figure in Ukrainian Nationalism for a long time and in no small part due to his demonstration that Ukrainian was a beautiful language that could be used to write poetry.

Poetry can really be a powerful thing.

1 week left

Leaving places can be a very strange experience. Over the course of my life I've left different school, university, jobs, signing on at a job centre, left my gap year, left the UK and now I'm preparing to leave the Ukraine (well for 2 months at least).

Leaving all these different places have lead to different combinations of joy, excitement, fear and doubts (all in different measurements) due to the different circumstances.

To be honest at this moment it's all a bit messy.

I of course really want to return home, see all my old friends, enjoy all the benefits that can be had in the UK and yet at the same time there is almost a sense of dread in me at this moment. You see one of my aims in life was to live in a foreign country for a year and, give or take the time that I was out for Christmas, my friends wedding and the summer holiday, next week I will have achieved that.

That's a big tick of my list of things I wanted to do in my life and I suppose it really brings up the question of what next....

I have already agreed to stay on and teach next year as I have really enjoyed teaching English as a foreign language and really didn't want to stop. But there is still the underlying question of what next...

What happens after next year? Or the year after? Am I just postponing facing the real decision of where to be or is this right? Is it right for me to be in a state of flux not knowing where I'll be next year or the year after?

One of the main factors behind these thoughts and feelings is my own doubt in my ability in English due to my Dyslexia. I do sometimes feel like a fraud who is just waiting to be found out by those around him and making mistakes like writing stagging not staging or similar things.

As I've said before I know what amazing progress I have made [from the kid who in year 6 couldn't even use paragraphs) and despite all this I still feel a bit like a fraud.

Together and yet miles apart

One of the advantages/disadvantages (perspective depending) of not having the internet in my flat is that to use some online services I have to stay in the school or go to a coffee shop with free wi-fi. This also present the benefit of getting to know the staff at said coffee shops very well!

At one point I did try using a mobile internet dongle in the hope that this would allow me to use skype. However, the network here seams to slow for this to be successful and so instead it just lead to an increased in procrastination and no net benefit in my communicative abilities which I had sought to improve.

There are some disadvantages to this though. Sometimes other teachers join me in the coffee shop. In fact quite often another teacher will join me to have a coffee and check their emails etc [despite other teachers having internet access at home]. And so there we sit. Two or three friends, all on the computer all doing our own thing, occasionally dropping the odd word or conversation about the news or something but not entertaining a full conversation. We find ourselves together and yet miles apart.

I sometimes wonder what a difference it would have made if on a few of these occasions I had just put my computer away and just spoken to them about, whatever! Anything! Would we be even closer than we are now?

Who am I writing (songs) for?

Continued from yesterday:

A few years back I wrote songs.

They were for no one except myself...and maybe God.

Sometimes I share a secret ambition that other people would hear them and think they were amazing and tell me so. However in general these songs were written just for myself and for no one else.

However I went to university and something changed. I stopped writing songs.

Well more precisely I stopped finishing writing songs, I could come up with a little riff or chorus but I couldn't advance.

I'm not sure why exactly but at the same time I started to do some open mic nights at university and also found myself leading worship for the CU on a few occasions. So playing music became public for me.

Maybe I decided that my songs weren't as good as the professional musicians songs that I was singing [and they weren't] or maybe it was something else but I could no longer write a song.

And so this continued and I basically gave up trying to write songs. Until this year.

This year I set myself the challenge to write a song and put it up for public display to explore this side of me again. But I haven't and it has really frustrated me that I can't seam to finish/like anything that I write, certainly not enough to put it on the internet.

And so I read these things and realised that I have been trying to write songs for the wrong people...basically you. Really I should just write songs for me again, like I used to.

They may suck but they will be for me and to be honest that is all that matters.

So I may put some songs up on here...I may not. If I do then they'll probably be really bad but hey they'll be something that I've done.