The most frightening, yet amusing, night in Princeton yet...

There was one puppy left from the www.doggyinthewindow.wordpress.com litter. Just one lonely little Zoe. And there was a man, a lovely man, who loves puppies, but doesn't have one. So we thought we should bring together these two creatures - made for each other.



A little bit giddier than should have been permitted two cars rolled into the drive of the mansion house that is home to the lovely man. One person immediately bails at high speed into the darkness of night, unable to be part of the posse that ring that bell. Door bell rung. No one answers. One more time the bell rings and no one answers. All a little bit relieved, we return to the two parked cars. Only one set of car keys are clearly locked inside one of the cars.

Halarity ceases.

Suddenly it's just cold and dark and we are trapped in the driveway of the mansion house.

The driveway belongs to the president of our seminary.

With Jesus giggling, the other car troops back to the home of the puppy and locked car owner. We pray in the darkness that she left her front door unlocked. (Who does that?) We pray that they don't pick up the spare keys to her roommates car. We pray with every passing car that they will not turn into the drive and we will be found clutching puppy in the bright light of headlamps in our faces. We pray no one is inside the mansion house calling the police. The thirty minutes that pass seem like a life sentence in jail.

Then the headlights are coming towards us.

We have nowhere to run.

No hiding place for a locked car.

So we face the oncoming headlights, waiting for Christ to come again.

And he comes in the form of our friends with the spare set of keys. We load ourselves in the cars and make a hasty retreat.

Only we see his office lights are on and we have come this far...

His assistant tries to fob us off, saying now is probably not a good time, but we insist we have just come to sing Christmas carols to the president. We wait a short time and he emerges from this building.

We hold forth the puppy and their eyes meet. The normally crazy puppy has a moment of calm as she meets the reason for her existence. With both hands he handles the puppy and looks her straight in the eyes and for a minute we have all vanished from his world. It is just him and the puppy. The most endearing Christmas card picture ever - the Christmas wreaths on the front door, the light from the street lamps and the president locked in a world with a chihuahua.

Sad this story comes to a halt, with no new home for the puppy. "I'd love to take her , but, you know, she would complicate my life immensely."

Poor puppy.

Poor puppyless president.

What are you thankful for?

So another year has gone by since Thanksgiving..nearly, so I thought it about time that we put in our minds what we are thankful for. If you are reading this, that means you. This turkey gave it's life for people to be thankful - so tell me what you are full of thanks for.

Sunny days
Rainy days
Deadlines met
Food for mealtimes
A roof over my head
Turning 30
Friends sharing time together
Packages (brown papered ones, tied up with string)
Mary Poppins
Visitors to Princeton : Carmen, Ma and Pa, David, Amy
Montreal weekend
Moosie
Skype
The Liger and the ITor
Escape days
A day on the east coast
A snail on my wall
Kate the Librarian
Afternoons/evenings drinking tea
Lazy Sundays in the garden
White chocolate and raspberry tart


Keep adding to the list

Getting dirty...

I got my knees all muddy. Had dirt under my finger nails and made a mess in the sink with mud when I came home. Today I volunteered to help in a local garden planting some bulbs for the spring. I picked a slightly easier job than most, not fighting with tree roots whilst planting irises and some other pretty tall pink flower. Then I joined the merry gang who were fighting with the tree to plant some daffodils and tulips. I think the others had some kind of landscaping effect going on, however I deliberately mixed up the white daffodils with pink tips with the tulips, so the section I was working on with have a grand surprise, even if the person planting them thought they were landscaping!

It was so nice to be working on something that I had a small input into, that I can go away and forget and then be surprised when something beautiful outwith my control occurs in the world. I am looking forward to spring.

Autumn Days/Liger on Tour

Today is a beautiful autumn day. It's warmer than it's been and finally there is a stop to the rain we had been getting. Everyone wanted to be outdoors today and I decided there are many days for reading here at Princeton Reading Camp, and today might be a day for a walk in the beautiful sunshine.

Here are a selection of photos from around Princeton. The Liger is in town and so I have taken a few pictures of him around town. Look out for the teeth!

There's no place like home

My parents came to visit and brought a little bit of home to me. We left Princeton Reading Camp and headed to Baltimore. It was a lot more like home that I could have imagined. A harbour town, that has gone into decline, losing almost all of its industries and so having to reinvent itself as something new. The Inner Harbour area has been developed in the past 15 years or so, and now is a lovely shore side area for shopping and nice restaurants. It is beautiful by night too. Around the harbour itself there are yuppy developments which we walked around. A little like some of the ones in Glasgow or the Docklands in London. It is hard on any town to lose so many of its industries. We visited the Museum of Industry and saw how they had lost newspaper/print industry with the advent of computers, car manufacturing with the advance of imported vehicles, the shipping industry - one of the few left is Domino Sugar, which provides a lot of the sugar for Hersheys Chocolate and Coca-Cola. It had us wondering what people did for employment now. Apparently the biggest employer is the Johns Hopkins Hospital.

My biggest surprise was how happy I was to return to Princeton after being away. My neighbours had left messages on my door and I was quite overwhelmed that anyone noticed I was gone. It seems that Princeton is feeling like home, at least for a while.

Ask and it shall be added unto you....

So I had a list. A list of things I'd like to make me feel like my little room was more than just a study cell. Only problem was I have no money. I also didn't really want to buy things that I only need for a short time and so I felt I could live without them. But yesterday the final thing on my list arrived.

The most exciting day so far, that led to many spontaneous smiles was the International Student Garage Give Away. Although I was still feeling a bit sick after the dogdy-doesn't-quite-stand-up lamp I thought I need to go myself to get the final few things on my list.

Some kind people collected us from the dorm and took us to the garage give away. There was a policeman directing the traffic. Well a man in a police vest, who I wasn't sure was a policeman until I saw him eating a donut - then I was sure he was real. We were allowed to disembark from the vehicles, but our chauffeur was not allowed to park on the street at all. A lady with a clipboard greeted us and the registration began. We had to fill in a form with who we were and what other events we might be interested in and then we were given a RED sticker with our name and number. The people giving out the labels all had BLUE stickers with their name on. Red for those that are being given to and blue for those that have the power of gifting.

A "do not cross" tape was wrapped around where all the furniture was and we were told that there was strictly no brousing. So we waited by the tape. We were given instructions that we could only have ONE piece of furniture, which we had to WALK and NOT RUN towards after the whistle blew. There were signs "WALK, NO RUNNING" on the trees and people with blue stickers were holding up for us to see.

So we all looked for the one piece of furniture that might be ours to take home. A saw a big sofa, a three seater AND it was a sofabed. But I decided it was too much for me. So I saw a littler sofa. But decided it was more than I really needed too and finally settled on a little 2 seater sofa and thought that would be enough for my seating needs. I decided I could just borrow cushions for visitors to sleep on if I needed to. So the prayer was said. The whistle blew and I walked, not ran, towards the little sofa. At the same time as I got there, a guy from a different direction arrived too. I just held out my hand and touched the sofa, as if I was throwing the red hand of Ulster towards Ireland to claim it as my own. We conversed about who needed it the most and I was calm enough to just say I had visitors coming to stay and I didn't have anything for them. He graciously just said that was fine and went to look for something else. A blue sticker guy came and put a sticker with my number on it and then we moved it to the holding area. I was already overflowing with joy!

I happily skipped around the household stuff, not caring if I got nothing else. I managed to find a duvet, some spare sheets, some tupperware and another desk lamp. I was more than satisfied and walked away delighted with my free stuff. I was gifted a bible and a dvd about Jesus too. Must find out about this Jesus fellow, who organised the garage give away.

So I went back to where my little couch was, I had discovered by now that it was a sofa bed and it really was everything I wanted! And there were three scatter cushions on it too! Wooop WOOP! There in the ground was a little sign saying "Seminary" and I stood by it and then Pete drove up and helped load his truck with all my stuff and we headed back to my dorm. Three fellow students helped move the sofa bed to my room and I say pleased as punch for the rest of the day at the perfectness of it. Just right.

I wake up in the mornings smiling at how lovely it is and how it means people can come and visit and be comfortable. Hooray! The only thing I didn't get was a fridge and I didn't mind because the sofa exceeded every expectation. Then last night when I returned from class there was a little note on Len's door saying a neighbour had a fridge that she didn't need any more. Len, already having a fridge, said it could be mine!! And so in the picture you'll see next to the sofa my little baby fridge.

More than everything I need, I have everything I wanted and more.... Thank you.

New ways of learning

My first class in Cultural Hermeneutics is being team taught - with a difference. The faculty member who used to team teach has moved to another seminary and so the team teaching continues across an experimental video link. It was quite exciting to feel connected to another group of students learning the same thing and sense the nervousness of the teachers as they tried to figure out how best to communicate without being able to make direct eye contact with each other, or hear everyone without it being processed through the power of those with a microphone.

The technician staff on both campuses were in communicado with each other to "add a little more light" and "turn up the sound", so that we could see and hear the faculty and students in each place more clearly.At one point we lost visual contact and it felt a bit like listening to a radio broadcast, then we lost both sight and sound and nobody knew quite what to do!

It seems fitting when discussing how our space and viewing point of the world affect our understanding, to add differing viewing locations to the material. It will be a point in case to see if the added work of not having personal contact with one half of our teaching team makes us work harder to learn better the viewpoint of "the other".

Same song, different faces...

It's been a week since I have arrived in Princeton, New Jersey and it's been a really full week. The constant stream of new people have fairly tired me out (and I was tired enough before I came!), so my little space that is my new home for the year has fast become my bolthole.

This is it...I kind of like it.

At times the bare walls seem a bit much, but overall it's quite exciting to have a blank canvas to create something new.

It's been nice to have familiar faces and accents here, it has made it seem like home very quickly - and has alleviated the trauma of being treated like an idiot during International Orientation. I really couldn't believe it when we had a 20 min introduction to using a cashline card. We were given scenarios in which we might use it, like buying some clothes or some books or going out for a meal. (I was thinking any time that money might be spent would have covered it.) At one point I thought I had arrived in hell - which would be where everyone treated you as if you couldn't think at all. AHHHHH. But on the whole everyone is friendly and welcoming, perhaps a little too friendly and welcoming at times!

Much of the worship has been familiar, using world church music the world over makes church feel like church wherever you go. Same song, different faces.

When two paths cross each other for a while...

I can't tell from this picture whether I am looking forward and from the past and seeing two roads meeting and becoming one, or looking backwards from the future and seeing how paths became separated.

Perhaps it's just tramlines in a field...

What do you think?

Lost places and forgotten roads

Friday was spent far far away on the east coast of this country. I had arranged to meet a lovely man and wanted to take him to a lovely place, but I had forgotten what it's name was and how to find it. So I never mentioned this lost place and the forgotten road. Instead I went the way of his directions and blindly following an unknown road at his command.

A while into the journey I had a flashback to a place once visited in my childhood, one that I had been thinking of only a couple of days previously and I thought that was the reason for this destination. Then we turned down a road that seemed even more familiar. Suddenly I was no longer lost, but on the road I had forgotten. For he was taking me to that exact place.

Lately there seems to have been a lot of lost places in my life and forgotten roads that cannot be found. It seems like a little glimpse of heaven when you meet someone who knows the way, without you asking how and shows you a secret garden as well, where the roses smell so beautiful in the rain.

Are we living in a war zone?

Sometimes I look at places that live under oppression and see that through that they somehow use the difficulty to bring out the positive things and beauty grows in the brokenness. This can make me wonder whether we need a common threat before we start to pull together as a community. Yet, here in our very communities we live under the oppression that substance abuse brings and we do not seem to be good at fight back as a community. What does it mean to be a community that comes together to challenge the oppressors? Who are the oppressors in the first place?

What now?

Last week I was taking a break from the dissertation and so enjoyed a Saturday out and about visiting Connell, Luing, Easdale and Seil. I drove over the Atlantic and went on a tiny ferry. Theo and I sang songs and examined slate and looked at the sparkling sea. (We decided to make a calendar.)

This week the dissertation is finished and I just don't know what to do with myself. Should I go out and about and enjoy the day or start on the mammoth load of tasks that have been accruing during study lock down?

The home straight...

That last bit of the race. You are well past the halfway mark, and you can hear the crowds cheering you on. The last bit of a race is often the fastest and most comfortable bit of the race. You are in a good stride, the adrenaline has kicked in and from nowhere the energy appears to run faster and stronger and with more grace than you have ever before.

Keeping running. The finish line is in sight.

(Then you can start planning the next race you want to train for.)

For every girl and boy

For every girl who is tired of acting weak when she is strong,
there is a boy tired of appearing strong when he is vulnerable.
For every boy who is burdened with the constant expectation of knowing everything,
there is a girl tired of people not trusting her intelligence.
For every girl who is tired of being called over-sensitive,
there is a boy who fears to be gentle, to weep.
For every boy for whom competition is the only way to prove his masculinity,
there is a girl who is called unfeminine when she competes.
For every girl who throws out her E-Z-Bake oven,
there is a boy who wishes to find one.
For every boy struggling not to let advertising dictate his desires,
there is a girl facing the ad industry’s attacks on her self-esteem.
For every girl who takes a step toward her liberation,
there is a boy who finds the way to freedom a little easier.

Adapted from a poem by Nancy R. Smith

Warrior of Light

Paulo Coelho is one of my favourite authors. Here's what he has to say about leadership... I hope it brings some light to you too.

A long time ago, in my unconscious, I changed the word “leader” for the expression “warrior of light”. What is a warrior of light?

Warriors of light keep the spark in their eyes.

They are in the world, are part of other people’s lives, and began their journey without a rucksack and sandals. They are often cowards. They don’t always act right.

Warriors of light suffer over useless things, have some petty attitudes, and at times feel they are incapable of growing. They frequently believe they are unworthy of any blessing or miracle.

Warriors of light are not always sure what they are doing here. Often they stay up all night thinking that their lives have no meaning.

Every warrior of light has felt the fear of joining in battle. Every warrior of light has once lost faith in the future.

Every warrior of light has once trodden a path that was not his. Every warrior of light has once felt that he was not a warrior of light. Every warrior of light has once failed in his spiritual obligations.

That is what makes him a warrior of light; because he has been through all this and has not lost the hope of becoming better than he was.

That is why they are warriors of light. Because they make mistakes. Because they wonder. Because they look for a reason – and they will certainly find one.

Making all things new...

God has a good habit of making all things new. I take advantage of this all the time. When given a fresh wind to blast out the cobwebs I face it and enjoy the thrill of it all. I'm just back from a week on the east coast of America - it felt a bit like that. January had been full of all kinds of strain and uncertainty and a change was what was needed to give my weary self a rest.

It's funny how traveling far away, but doing the same kinds of things can give you a break from yourself - or perhaps reconnect the broken bits. While I was away I spent time with friends, attended classes and did some photography. All things I would usually do at home. But I was doing these with a sense of purpose. Taking time to soak up what was going on and enjoy the chance to rest when it came my way.

I met old friends, acquaintances from Scotland and made some new friends too. A common interest can really provide a strong connection to someone you just met. When God's your connection - anything can happen (if you let it).

Walking the streets of Princeton I found the space to breathe.
Walking the streets of New York I got excited again.
Walking the streets of Washington I felt at home.
Walking the Mound in Edinburgh I felt ready to be home.

Traveling is like stepping in and out of the wardrobe to Narnia. The other world seems just beyond your reach when you're not actually in it. You miss things when you're not there, but you gain other things. My concept of heaven is that all those places and people are joined up. You don't have to be without something in order to have another. Not a "having it all" in the material sense, but a sense of peace about not being apart from the people you love.

Meeting up with old friends is like a little piece of heaven. When you have those real moments of connection, the brokenness is held with someone else and the scars fade a little. Everything is made new.

January and being thirty

Keep going. It's January and everyone is wondering if anything will ever change and if this year is going to be the same as all the others or worse. Well I have it on good authority that this is the year for the best so far. So keep going.

Many of my friends are older (much older than me) and having watched many of them go through the trauma that is turning thirty I was interested to see how that would turn out for me. Well I want to tell anyone who is not yet at that wonderful age, that it's awesome! I spent some time considering whether to mark the occasion or let it just slip by and decided it was time to do it in style.

Some of my friends had had parties, some had had wild weekends camping and others just stayed home. I decided I wanted to have as many of the people that I love and that have contributed to me being me all in one place. I decided my house was not that place. I didn't want to worry about how everyone would fit in, or answering the door, or pouring drinks all night, or cleaning up afterwards. I didn't want to have it in a place that would make anyone feel out of place. I wanted everyone to have a fun time. I wanted music. I wanted dancing. I wanted my family. I wanted my friends from near and far.

I got everything I wanted and a whole lot more.

There were a few heartstrings missing, because of prior commitments, but almost every aspect of my life was represented in some way: family, school, Aberdeen Uni, ICC, Strathclyde Uni, Nebraska, New College, Galgael, St Paul's, Govan, Iona Community, Stepps, After8, the Dennistoun Massive, Vestry Mob/Sunday Night Club, Carberry Festival and beyond...

I loved it. People mixed. People danced and they certainly drank. I hope they had a good time. I had the best night of my life so far. Thanks to everyone who helped me celebrate getting this far.

(And if you're reading - you know who you are, thanks for the dance.)