I know if you could speak to me you'd say "Please don't cry" I'm no longer in pain Free am I On the pathway beyond life's gateway.... On the Path way beyond life's gateway
Words written in memory of a special one...someone gone and yet not forgotten. A beloved and much missed cat...or a dog.
Yes in response to last night's post on virtual chaplaincy someone kindly introduced me to virtual cemeteries. Not any old cemeteries either...pet cemeteries. In Memory of Pets is one of the America's oldest online pet memorials.
Now as we're talking why don't you right click this link and open in a new window...listen to that tune...admire the sentiment of the words...let's just take a moment together...
If only I could see you now it would show in your eyes how happy you must be there in the land of love divine On the pathway beyond life's gateway.... On the Path way beyond life's gateway
If that wasn't enough if you click here you can enjoy kitchy unchained melody in all its glory.
What is the question every pet owner lays awake at night asking?
That's right "Will Mr Pooper go to Heaven?" and the answers right here
"On the pathway beeeeyond life's gateway..."
Look! This is serious. We are talking about someone's loss here.
"You've stopped blogging" said Tom today, or words to that effect (note to self if your going to quote people on a blog make sure that you get it right).
Anyway I said not. I have been busy of late because it seems that after a year of working here that students are turning up and as a result I'm a bit busy. That and helping out at my local church.
The other evening I sat at home on my day off. Working. Wondering in fact why I was doing that again! There I had open on my computer, my e-mails, the Tunnel Soc mailing list, my blog and MSN, and I was chatting to students...like I'm doing at the moment. Jo is MSNing me even as I type this.
See
Anyway I thought to myself "this is virtual chaplaincy" two words that were mentioned this year on the chaplains' conference and struck me immediately as utter bollocks. I asked a friend who works in IT and he said it was bollocks too but he did suggest that maybe the chaplaincy could use the internet to be more interactive.
It could be another way of travelling light. You know like I said before Chaplaincy happens whereever. The good thing about this sort of thing is that I can be anywhere, but the bad thing is although I can assemble an instant chapliancy in cyber space, what I can't do is get people talking to each other. I've had 7 conversations on the go at once before now but a chatroom would be more of a chaplaincy.
Maybe that's why we need a building. Having said that we mustn't focus too much on the four walls maybe we need something more like this...
Which has already been tried in church circles...
These are far too churchy...maybe instant chaplaincy should look more like this
The world's first inflaitable pub.
One thing is certain I'm really need to find a way to get out from these four walls...probably not into cyberspace.
I was chatting to a student about a hypocrite the other day.
Hang on, I hear you say, that's a bit harsh! Well yes and no.
You see this was a student who had just found out something about someone and was really shocked. Another Christian exposed for not standing up for what they believe.
Funny thing is that I have heard Christians going on about all sorts of things which Christians want to change about the world but I don't think I've ever heard a top ranking Church official take a hard line stance on hypocrisy. Yet this is the one thing Jesus went on and on about. He mentions the word hypocrite more often than he mentions the word fornication...or sexual immorality as it is in the modern translation.
The trouble with hypocrisy is that we're all up to it. That's how I know the person the student and I were talking about was a hypocrite, he was breathing in and out.
There are two ways you can avoid hypocrisy. One is to be utterly perfect. The other is to be brutally honest.
So...just for the record I am a totally immoral and sinful as well as a completely flawed human being. The list of things that I have done wrong is long and extensive. I have no room to lecture anyone on how to live their life. I have hurt far too many people, in fact my ex describes me as "A totally selfish individual who does not spare a seconds thought for anyone else but him." You can read that on her blog by following this link...which I'm not going to give you.
Oh yeah Ben Glover I think...what can I do for him...?
Well it turns out what I can do for him is tell him how to dress up like a Vicar - on air. Which I did. Turns out that Ben is off to a party on Saturday and wants to go as a Vicar but doesn't know quite how to do it. I recommended a Biretta (I didn't call it that obviously I had use words people understand so I called it 'a hat with corners and a fluffy bit') and an Ipod and some 'bling'.
Which I recon should do the trick. Turns out Big Boy Ben is 6 foot 7 so I suggested he find a tall clergyman and borrow his cassock. The only tall ordained person I could think of was my boss the Right Reverend Bishop of Winchester, so hopefully Ben will be giving him a call.
Hindu Soc invited me to the annual party they hold to celebrate the festival of Diwali. There was singing and entertainment lots of dancing.
Imagine a club with two live drummers...yeah it really was that cool.
I have eaten and eaten and eaten some more. It was fabulous meal. I drunk quite a bit. And I danced the night away. Well I say dance what I mean is I did that awkward school disco shuffle from one foot to the other. But hey eventually after a couple of shots I managed to actually move my arms.
My feet ache! I left them to it at 1am and came back here. Thought I'd just say my prayers and record the evening in the blog before going home I've definately had a great night out...happy new year!
You can say what you like about multiculturalism Trevor Phillips, it does mean a hell of a lot of parties!
In the name of Jesus…the words I use at the end of every prayer. I used them the other day and that provoked some thought.
You see we had the chaplaincy student council, a group that was originally made up of just Christians. Jewish Soc turned up this week. Anyway we start every evening with prayer and I didn’t know how to handle this one…should I edit my prayers?
As it was I decided to ask J-soc and they said no go ahead do what you always do. So I did and as I did so I thought I heard a splutter to my left- it was after all quite a contreversial moment and it left me with a quandary. I didn’t feel comfortable praying as normal because I wanted to include J-soc but I didn’t feel comfortable leaving Jesus out because I want to be true to my faith.
Here is the problem I don’t want to say to anyone "you shouldn’t pray how you always do because I’m in the room" so surely I should also pray like that.
So am I just standing up for what I believe or getting in touch with my inner fascist?
I really hate the idea of enforced religious harmony where we all are mutually absent, where no one weirs veils or skull caps or crosses and don’t give out Bible’s because that is offensive to people of other faiths.
No I want Bible’s given out to new students and Qurans and anything really, hey it was Diwali the other day so I went to get my neighbours some sweets. They send us a Christmas card.
So do I stick with the habit of a lifetime or should I be more magnanimous, because in all honesty I don’t know the answer to this one, but I wish I did.
Maybe I should get a Jew to comment on this. Or a Muslim. Or a Hindu. Or some Christians.
“Learn the gift of silence” the person in the comments said.
Well yes but actually if I can’t go off on one in a blog then when can I go off on one and anyway this blog wasn’t actually my idea it was Nick Bailey who wanted me to send shorter e-mails and the whole idea was that if I just went on and on and on and on and on in a blog then that would be ok because people could decide whether to read it or not and then I wouldn’t be clogging up everyone’s inbox with loads of stuff well words really and then maybe if I got it all out then I wouldn’t talk like to people and then there would be silence and that would also be a good thing and actually that was never going to happen because actually I just talk and that’s ok because you know what the problem today is just that people have too many expectations on them and after being a university chaplain for just over a year I think that is the biggest ‘problem’ I deal with people not being able to live up to what they perceive as other people’s expectations which is why I know so many self harmers because there are quite a few self harmers actually quite a lot of self harmers who come down to Chaplaincy and if you ask my opinion which I’m going to give you anyway I think that self harm is the saddest thing because people are so squashed by the expectations of others that they wont even allow themselves to feel the pain and that is something that seems to be a factor in modern living with a high proportion of young people now self harming and I think that maybe just maybe I should be myself and maybe me is someone who talks a lot and that’s not actually a bad thing and maybe in this university when you have deadlines and debt and expectations and coursework and just so much riding on your education not to mention parental and peer expectations that maybe just a bit of fun and randomness is ok in fact just a good thing really and maybe someone will look at me and go “Oh look there goes the chaplain and he’s very random, well I say random I mean weird really but weird in a good way so it must actually be ok to be me because I’m not weird and even if I was I’d just be like him and that seems to be OK and so I wont cut myself today” and if just one person does that they I have achieved what I set out to do which is to care and to help people be themselves actually that is the centre of the Christian message too which is God made you and then for reasons to do with all sorts of thing mostly sin (not necessarily yours but including yours) you are not yourself but he came to Earth to put that right and now he wants you to be yourself and you should because you know what your actually a wonderful human being and I value silence but actually I don’t need to learn it and you don’t know me from reading my blog which I write in silence just in case you’re wondering and since you don’t know me but you are sure that I am somehow lacking in someway and I need to learn this mystical gift of silence that’s actually a little bit judgmental if you don’t mind me saying and and and and just ‘and’.
I have just realised that I've eaten an entire tub of coleslaw and not one of the little tubs, I'm talking a 1 kg industrial size tub of coleslaw.
We got one the other day for the Bar-B-Q and no one ate any, and I discovered it the next day and opened it when I was peckish. Then I nibbled it periodically. Eventually I ate the whole sodding pot.
That can't be good for you, can it? Not that much coleslaw. Not all together. Surely not. I need help here. One of those eating experts. You know the ones who tell you what to eat. What do you call them? Foodologists?
This is the University of Southampton, we must be training these people. There must be a department of foodimetrics round here somewhere. Someone doing a PhD entitled "Coleslaw - Not just a food group, more a life choice" Find them for me and send them to chaplaincy. I need their advice. Does that much coleslaw do anything wierd or bad to your body? Am I pickling something vital?
Still its not all bad news. Today I discovered the Doritos left over from the cath-soc quiz night. So a more balanced diet today then.
The good news is that I'm getting lots done of late, e-mails answered, people being seen, but I'm not getting out of chaplaincy much. As you can see its slowly driving me mad.
Still I need to find some way of getting out into the university. Maybe I should join a student society. Or 20 of them.
Mind you that's what everyone does...and then never turns up! I tell you what all societies should just share their lists and then remove anyone who has signed up for more than 5 societies...clearly no one has that much free time.
I mean except for chaplains.
Oh....dieticians...I knew it would to me eventually.
And when the University have finished with it, it's going to make a rubbish car park.
There are times when the University of Southampton seems not just secular but brutally secular. I feel sometimes when talking to the establishment that there is little support for chaplaincy. Of course I'm probably wrong there. Which is funny because I do feel that the Student's Union is quite supportive of what I do.
Still I'm digressing. Basically several students are getting a petition together to 'save the chaplaincy garden' if you live within walking distance you could come down and sign it...
You can find chaplaincy if you use the directions here
G F# G Am7 Have you ever heard a duck praise the Lord? D G A duck praise the Lord, a duck praise the Lord Am7 Have you ever heard a duck praise the Lord? D G This is what he says...
G Quack quack quack quack quack quack Am7 quack quack quack D G quack quack quack praise the Lord
2. kitten (meow) 3. Fish (blub) 4. Bell (ding) 5. All (ding, blub, meow, quack)
Now I know what you're thinking...How does that go in Afrikaans?
Het jy al gehoor `n eend prys die Heer? `n eend prys die Heer `n eend prys die Heer, `n eend prys die \Heer, Het jy al gehoor `n eend prys die Heer? En dit is wat hy se...
When David Cameron starts doing something it really is time to stop!
I really liked this it was just so amateur it made me smile...then I thought, oh hang on this is deliberate of course! How many takes did they have to do to come up with this home-spun not very professional half finished look. I bet they had an army of people working on that one.
Of course what has happened here is that someone has told Dave that Blogging is like youthy and not very Tory like. Blogging is the very anti-thesis of a coffee morning, so it'll convince people the Tory party has changed.
Over the summer I spoke to a number of chaplains at our little conference. Blogging, funnily enough came up in conversation.
"Oh I don't blog" said one chaplain "I stopped blogging when everyone else started" This made me smile a bit as he was doing a Cameron. If blogging was 'in' then because he was a University Chaplain he felt duty bound to do it. When it was 'out' he stopped. I explained to him that I had just started blogging but that blogging was actually crap.
You see what David Cameron and the other Chaplain have missed is that blogging to be trendy is even crappier. I don't want a Prime Minister who is trendy I want a PM who can do the job.
You see the key thing here is content. It doesn't matter whether it's a blog or a parish news letter people are only going to read it if it's worth reading.
It seems to me around the church we focus much too much energy on style and not enough on substance. Like when someone was asked about the Archbishop of Canterbury and he said "I hear too much of the modern world in what he says" The person interviewing him said "Isn't that a good thing to be in touch with the modern world?" he said "No, we use modern communication to get the message out but we don't allow it to pollute the message"
Now that is simplistic at best.
Its like Fresh Expressions this is something that came out of a report written by the Church entitled "Mission Shaped Church". I have long been critical of this book because it just misses out Chaplaincy.
In chaplaincy there is no church. Church happens in corridors in canteens in conversation. Its a fresh expression every second. As a chaplain I am shaped by the world in which I move I cannot be any other way. I am constantly re-thinking re-doing the faith. Constantly finding new ways to express good news. I completely lack any of the things that are associated with Church. I have absolutely no support mechanism and the only way I can be part of a Church is with God's help to bring one into existence. Which I do every day and every night it ceases to exist and must completely re-made the next day. The Community I am part of is never the same twice, people float in and out of it. Some times it exists on the internet in MSN occasionally it exists within the four walls of chaplaincy.
It is that, rather than the fact that I have blog, that makes me cutting edge. I can't be anything else.
But somewhere there will be a church all covered in drapes and with power-point projection of a rotating crucifix and that is the sort of thing that fresh expressions love. The trouble is it isn't new.
In fact worse than that, you can spend so much energy and effort into getting your projector set up and finding that video clip and getting the ambience of the service right that actually this ends up being more churchy not less.
Something that's really fresh happens whenever Christians just got on with living in their world. Fresh expressions happen spontaneously. Like the Charismatic movement in the 60s. No one sat down and said "Lets have a fresh expression of church" it just happened "The wind blows where it will"
Fresh Expressions has a very nice looking web site but despite the fact that I like to keep an open mind I have never seen anything before with absolutely nothing to teach me.
Blogging ladies and Gentlemen is shite. But its not nearly as shite as Fresh Expressions.
Today I spent time fiddling with the internet and discovered shite internet based quizes.
You see how bored I am and its only the second week of term. These are sooo crap. "What disney Character are you?", "What season are you?" Honestly do people actually need these things to become personally integrated.
I mean what does it tell you about yourself? Take this test..."What colour are you?" Turns out I'm yellow...Well I could have told them that....bloody studpied test!
Only 94% though.
You scored as Yellow. Out of all the colours, yellow is the one to cheer everyone up, and this tends to be your job. You are the one cracking jokes, making light of the situation and always trying to make people like you. And you know what, they do. You are never without a smile and love hot sunny days because they reflect your sunny personality. You are optimistic, bright and childlike.
It was Friday night, at the end of freshers week. The weather had turned cold I headed for pub...It was a dark night and the pub seemed warm and inviting....
And there (not by accident for I had gone looking for them) I found them, alone. The Christian Union.
There they were. Some propping up the bar. A good few of them gathered round the pub quiz machine playing monopoly and getting most of the questions wrong.
"Do you want to join our team?" said one young lady to me in obvious desperation. As they stood there. I watched them and was struck by one thing.
They looked like a bunch of students.
OK students wearing t-shirts with a cryptic message about the blood of the lamb, but students just the same. Just there doing what students do. (Minus the heavy drinking, throwing up and going home with someone they just met to have meaningless sex.) They were just basically there having a laugh. It was all very normal and just like going out with any group of students except they were genuinely pleased to see me, which made me feel good. They asked how I was. The VP Wanted to know how my week had been. It was like going out with any group of students only more caring. In fact CU have been good to me this week. One of them (the one who wears shorts all year - shorts Si he calls himself) came up to the office at 12:30 one night and told me to home. Which was very caring, if slightly authoritarian.
It made me think about the fact that an awful lot of people don't seem to like CU. (A fact I worte about once before) and why is that, I hear you ask? Well when I did a little deeper most of them say, oh they're always preaching at you. Yet actually they are not really like that at all.
Down the pub they weren't sitting there saying "Quick there are some non-Christians go and explain that the propitiating atonement of Christ is the only way out of the certain hell-fire to which there are bound" or "Do we have enough leafletts to give out to the whole pub?" no they were standing there saying "Oh crap what is the capital of Turkey?" and "It's your round, Dan!"
I think the basic problem is that most people only notice CU when they are having a mission. That is when they are at their most obvious on campus. Maybe someone should advertise the fact that they hang out in 'The Style' from about 9pm on a Friday evening and maybe if people turned up they might actually discover that they are actually quite a likeable bunch of people who are remarkably similar to everyone else on campus.
So the end of my busiest week of the year. There will be no week quite like this again. I reckon I've probably worked about 80 hours this week. With the exception of sleep I have had about 5 hours off.
The High point of the week was Fresher's fair when everyone tries to get freshers to sign up for every thing going a game that Chaplaincy joins in at.
Here is Games Soc who clearly have a battle plan.
People handing out leaflets.
J-Soc 'working it'
And lots of jolly student japes. This one involved a coffin.
There are so many societies it would be great to do something with every one. I mean not just to get know students but just so much you can do. I wonder if that old adage about University being an opportunity to try knew things applies to Chaplains too?
Anyway as well as Fresher's fayre I have been involved in the induction of about 500 different students. This lot are Electronics and Computer Science.
Going to inductions gave me the chance to see the video that local plod show to new students. It was fab! The best bit was the unintentional laugh that the line "Do you always have you're phone set to vibrate?" (spoken by a male student to a female student he'd just met) created.
I've had good fun this week now I want my bed. Then after some sleep I might consider the possibilities of the fun that could be had with Extreme Ironing.
My life has become a bit webby of late! I have just sorted out and uploaded the newly professionally designed Tunnel Soc Web site. That has now gone live. Then I have designed a web site. This is now my personal web site we're going to keep the chaplaincy website but I wanted something with a bit more personality in.
The trouble is now with three different web sites how do I keep track of them all at the same time as doing this thing I laughingly call a job?
Peter Bowyer suggested setting some statts up to monitor the web site. So I did and its all very Orwellian if you ask me. In fact its so Orwellian I probably wont look again.
The weirdest stat was actually where the people lived who had looked at my site. Hardly any were from Southampton.
Which I think you'll agree is quite strange given that I am Chaplain of Southampton University and all. Now this made me think if a couple of people from outside Southampton are reading this then...they probably aren't members of tunnel soc. GOSH! Well they should probably join shouldn't they?
Ok so if that’s you !!!!!J O I N !!!!! JOIN NOW, BEAT THE RUSH. I know it says on the web site you have to be a student at Southampton but I was just lying so just send an e-mail and request your membership. NOW
Where was I? Oh yes, stats. Yes not many people who viewed this site yesterday came from Southampton. However astonishingly 33.33% of them came from a place called Beechingstoke. Yep Breechingstoke. I'd never heard of it either. It turns out that Beechingstoke is a village in Wiltshire with only 50 houses. Now this pleased me quite a lot actually. I believe I have expressed my love of small places that I don't have to live in within these pages once before and clearly Beechingstoke more than qualifies as a small place.
But the more I thought about this the more it pleased me as I realised that if a third of my followers readers live there, then I must be officially famous in Breechingham. Every bastard who lives there must have heard of me. Famous in Breechingham, yeah I know you never thought I'd achieve that either. Surely a fact worthy of being included in the Breechingham wikipedia entry.
So if you live in Breechingham and you're reading this in Breechingham, pop out for a walk and take in the pleasent Wiltshire surroundings, strol up and down the high street. If you see your neighbours smile at them...and then give 'em a knowing wink.
That'll be your special moment.
Unless of course its just one bloke reading my blog hundreds of times. In which case.... STOP OBSESSING TURN OFF THE COMPUTER AND JUST GET A BLOODY LIFE FOR GOODNESS SAKE.
So we're off. Another academic year at the University of Southampton. We start every year at chaplaincy with two bar-b-qs. This is to introduce anyone who wants to know to the chaplaincy.
I’m not convinced that this is the best way of saying "Hello we're here" bit too much dead cow involved for my liking anyway we have always had two of these, one of Monday of fresher's week and one on Tuesday.
On Monday it absolutely pissed down...
On Tuesday we had sun shine still I don't think this made a lot of difference see what you think....
So quite clearly the whole 'lets have a Bar-B-Q in the rain' idea was bollocks!
This is how it starts with me wondering for another year how I can make some kind of real contact with the students. Here I am once again Vicar to 20,000 people who definitely didn't ask for a Vicar and I have to find a way to reach out to them.
And they are bloody sceptical of religion, you know. That's my biggest problem.
Actually my biggest problem is my scepticism about religion...But their scepticism probably doesn't help!
A bloke wrote to me and said "Hello I'm a professional web designer and I want to completely redesign your web site" I said yes he spent days on it. He sent it to me and ISS (the people who run the computers at Southampton University - not the computer department) deleted it.
We finally got it on to the system only for the entire network to go down today. So I may have a new web site, I have no idea.
At 8:32pm I watched the news. Now once upon a time a bloke called Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. He uttered what are now immortal words which he had written down before. He decided to say:
"That's one small step for a man...one giant leap for mankind."
Many people used to believe he actually said "that's one small step for man...one giant leap etc"
Now a computer scientist in Australia has analysed the recordings and has found that actually he did say the word "a".
I heard that on the news at 8:32. I got in my car I drove to chaplaincy. I switched on my computer it was 8:43 and wikipedia had already been updated.
WHY??!?!?! WHY?!?!? WHHHHYYYYYYYY?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
does a perfectly happy sunny day have to end with wikipedia destroying MY WILL TO LIVE. Who does that??? Who sits in front of 24 hour TV with their laptop set up so they can instantly update wikipedia? I mean how much do you have to care about computers and facts to want wikipedia to be that instantaneous? And why do they always have to be Star Wars and Space related???
Where is the Burgess Road entry? "The Traffic along Burgess Road has long been a souse of controversial with the City council making it illegal to turn left onto the Avenue when travelling east and the installation of a new pedestrian crossing for the elderly residents of a newly constructed block of sheltered accommodation. It is hoped that the new signage (with the words 'City of Southampton' in attractive scarlet) will improve the image of the road."
Here are some improvements I would like to make on the 'Southampton Uni' page. Under students union "The Students union has recently purchased three new table and seat combos for outside the SU bar. These are clearly better quality wood than the previous seating."
Indeed why is the whole apostrophe/ not apostrophe Stag's Head controversy that dominated last years SUSU AGM completely unrecorded.
What about the sign at chaplaincy. It now has all the adverts grouped together in (wait for it) A PURPOSE BUILD DISPLAY AREA INCORPERATED INTO THE VERY DESIGN OF THE NEW SIGN.
These are facts and they matter to me. And I know they matter to you, because you care and that's why you need to be vandalising editing wikipedia.
I can't do this on my own, they will just delete my work, like when I loving and carefully changed 'Singing Career' to '"Singing" Career' on the Hoff’s page. That made it more factual. But wikipedia just changed it back. Which is why we can only to this together.
We can make wikipedia a place of facts. Facts of love...our facts.
