so i posted about the protest action we were involved in with regards to the outdoors sharing of food with homeless people on my ‘the simple weigh’ blog but i know a lot of people susbscribe to this one so thort i would stick the links here as well.
click here for part I dealing with what i was pertaining to.
so i have just posted the last [for now at least] post in the marriage series which ended up being a great 18 blog posts written by a whole bunch of my friends who are married well and passed along some really great marriage-enhancing advice and tips and wisdom. the beautiful Valerie ad myself might add some thorts of our own later but we’re about to head for Texas to visit my sister and her family…
anyways, looking at blog stats, this has been the second hugest blog visitation i have had with the largest being the series i did on dating and so i thort it would be good to repost links to some of those that were really popular in case you missed them and want to check out some insights on that area of life:
i think this was the intro blog to the series and links to future blogs…
a two parter written by the beautiful Val which is a must read as with most of what she writes…
and of course for the men – ‘i kissed dating, part Step up! [Both of you!] – for the Men?’
and then if you find any of those really helpful, there was a whole series of them that you could discover on my blogsite but just thort these would touch a different group than those who the marriage ones have been for… hope you find them helpful and if so please pass on…
so my irresistibly fish blog has been a little bit quiet since we left south africa because i have not had a lot of inet time and when i have i have been blogging my experiences on my new thesimpleweigh.wordpress.com blog so if you are wanting to follow our adventures at the simple way community i suggest you subscribe to that blog where most of my writing will likely happen while we’re over here…
if you have not been following then here are three of the blogs i’ve written to help you get some idea of what we’re up to – absolutely loving it but it is a completely different experience to anything i’ve ever done before and so still getting used to it and settling in here…
http://thesimpleweigh.wordpress.com/2011/06/06/the-way-of-the-simple-way
http://thesimpleweigh.wordpress.com/2011/06/15/day-1-pretty-in-tents-carpet-burns-and-street-buzz
http://thesimpleweigh.wordpress.com/2011/06/18/being-part-of-the-blind-side
i have started a separate blog for posting ‘the simple way’ adventure related stuff so that people who are wanting to follow our journeys and have an idea of what’s going on can simply sign up there and read whatever i get to write about things that are part of our philly trip – if that’s you, you may want to bookmark this link where i have written a basic idea of what it’s all about for those of you who don’t know but more will be written as we arrive there and start to live on the other side… http://thesimpleweigh.wordpress.com
years ago a book called ‘Velvet Elvis’ came out by this new kid on the block, rob bell, and everyone was reading it and telling me it was the greatest book ever and blah blah blah… i eventually got hold of it [was going thru my phase of taking my time to rush to trending books] and read it and didn’t particularly dig it all that much – it was ok and there were some moments but it didn’t really grab me…
then i heard Rob Bell was quite closely linked to brian mclaren and i read one of his books and didn’t dig it much at all and heard some stuff about him and his views on hell and some other stuff and really didn’t like what i heard and so kinda wrote him off a bit and included mister bell in that…
but then i saw a Nooma video or two and i got hold of his follow up book ‘Sex God’ which i really did enjoy and especially the chapter on women and submission [which i still hold today is one of the best explanations and understandings of it and my beautiful wife Val who was totally unamped with that bit in the Bible really dug what rob bell had to say and 'got' it a lot more] and i watched two of his movie preaches – ‘The Gods aren’t angry’ and ‘Everything is Spiritual’ and really enjoyed those and so gradually i have become a lot more open to rob bell’s stuff and enjoy a lot of what he has to say.
so i woke up this morning to find that he is trending and for all the wrong reasons. he has a new book coming out [note not out yet, so yes people are writing hardcore opinions about a book they for the most part haven't read!] called ‘Love Wins: Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived’ and it comes with a promotional video which you can watch here which seems to be gathering a storm of controversiality and comment from christians the world over [slash americaland]
i haven’t read the book yet [as haven't most of the people who are making definitive statements on why the book is so evil] but i enjnoyed the video and completely get why it would make people concerned about what Rob might say in the book, but still read the book before making definitive statements. Apparently John Piper’s response was a ‘Farewell Rob Bell’ Tweet with a link to the article, whereas Josh Harris [well-known author of "I kissed reading books before i commented on them goodbye"] also had some words to say [for some reason the link is not working or loading on my computer but try www.joshharris.com and see if it works for you]
another quite negative review is by a guy called Justin Taylor (no, not our Justin Taylor) which you can read here
and then finally i found a more positive review from someone who had actually read the book [as a book seller they got an advance copy] and their thorts you can find here.
i think the bottom line is that sometimes being well-meaning is not enuff – i remember a few years ago when a pastor in the eastern cape sent emails to a bunch of people warning them about some local pastors who had read and preached positive stuff about ‘the Shack’ another controversial’ish book that had come out – turns out he had not read it either but was a self-proclaimed expert on its content [which, having read the book and then his email rant i can tell he was completely not except perhaps in the area of missing-the-pointness]
so what is the bottom line? looks like rob bell got some great advertising for his new book and it’s something i will definitely look out for – but the bottom line is a little gem hidden in thessalonians which reminds us to ‘test the spirits. hold on to the good. avoid every kind of evil’ [1 thessalonians 5.21] – whether it’s rob bell or me or your pastor or the book you’re reading or sermon you’re downloading, we are urged to test what it says against the bible and if it holds up, the embrace it and if it doesn’t, then discard it… do the same with this one… but the whole public rob-bashing that is going on [in the name of love, hm] may be just another example of christians publically slating christians while non-christians are sitting back and watching and asking, “so you’re wanting us to join this party?”
go team.
basically you should just subscribe to her blog cos anytime she says/writes something it’s generally worth hearing…
http://valanderson.wordpress.com/2011/02/22/on-bearing-one-anothers-burdens
so yes, this week has finally arrived [in the haze of the bigger picture of "what are you doing this year brett?" having resigned from my job at vineyard church end of last year after 6 years of student/youth ministry due to it being the end of a good season and being in a place of waiting on God for the next plan of action...]
and the plan for this week is to try and finish my book – that’s right, i am busy writing a book about church called ‘i kissed hating (the church) good bye’ – in terms of finishing the majority of my content for the book – there will still be quite a bit to do but i want to get the bulk of it done and so i will be hiding out at a friend’s flat in simonstown – aka the cave – to gun through sans distraction (or sans much distraction – have some evening things on and speaking at a camp the following weekend) so at least hoping for some all nighter opportunities of being in the zone and hopefully getting a lot done. if you are a praying person please pray for guidance, wisdom, listening, direction…
but tomorrow is of course saint valentine’s day (‘saint’ if you have a girl or boy type person – [insert bad word] if you don’t) and so i will be spending at least part of the day picnic’ing with the beautiful val in an undisclosed location…
and then sleeping over with her (i’m allowed to, sh!) in the cave and then she will be leaving early tuesday so the caving can begin…
i’m anticipating a great week. join me. but not physically cos you’d probably be a distraction unless you were just dropping off a solid cup of coffeine.
this morning i gave a brief talk at somerset college on the difference between God’s love and our (worldly) love and it went really well – but then the beautiful val sent me this link to this article on the relevant magazine site which i really think is so toyoda’ly written in terms of really capturing a lot of what it is about…
check it out here… and please pass it on – so, so, good.
there are lots and lots of reasons but i’ve decided every now and then to celebrate by highlighting one of them…
so today my beautiful wife [aka valerie slash tbV] decided she needed to go thru cupboards and stuff and get rid of crap.
my response, “yes, let’s get rid of crap, yay.”
her response was “hey, can we offer this stuff to Churien, the lady who comes and helps us clean our house once a fortnightday, who might have a use for a bunch of it?”
and Churien took most of the stuff, and i know that if she doesn’t use it she will pass it on to someone who will…
small thing in one sense, but where i saw getting rid of stuff we didn’t need or use [a lot of it easn't really crap - some duvets and sleeping bag and clothes and kitchen stuff that we just don't use or we have too much of] she saw an opportunity to meet a need in someone else’s life…
and she is like that a lot – she looks into situations and at people with tremendous vision… i hope i am learning this from her…
thank you lady, i love you…
okay i’ve posted quite a bit today already so those 5 of you who subscribe and are getting notification emails must really be hating… but this one i couldn’t resist, and i have been fairly quiet in recent days (i think)
let’s get this straight to begin with – this is a hypothetical blog – we don’t have a baby and in fact we don’t particularly want one right now and with the beautiful val’s thesis being handed in today that just leaves you with “so do you know what you’re doing this year yet?”
but having seen a friend of mine’s status on facebook today i couldn’t help but have some thorts on this one. what is it that gives perfect strangers the feeling that they have the right to go up to a complete stranger and touch, carry, hold, kiss their baby?
as i said i don’t have a baby, but if i did and i saw a stranger try and touch my baby i would probly mace them [okay i probly wouldn't for two reasons, 1 - i don't have any mace, and 2 - i'm a wuss, but i would strongly imagine it in my mind!] i don’t come up to you in a restaurant and go, “ooh a blackberry, let me see” and start phoning one of my friends to check it out. if you have a new car i don’t – as a perfect stranger – climb into the passenger seat at a traffic light and say, “let’s see what she’s got”
and those are inanimate things. we’re talking about a baby here. a human life. it has to be one of the rudest, most invasive acts you can pull on a new mother and one that is pretty freaky i imagine. i don’t know what disease you may be carrying, what dodgy intentions you might have, where those hands have been etc etc
how about it mothers of small kids? is it just me or has this gone too far? and those of you who are perpetrators of this? what makes you think it’s okay? give us your thorts. [oh, and come on brits, i'm sure you have some gems too]
