How to Catch a Python

So by now most of you are familiar with the Hashtag Game i host to provide a bit of light relief and silliment [it’s a word!] in between trying to educate white people on privilege, figure out how to be an ally to my friends of colour and see and become significant transformation in the lives of the poor and more.

Last week 43 941 tweets were produced with the #YouHadMeAt game we played [although Tom Cruise and Rene Zellwegger were surprisingly absent] and this week we are hoping to go one better.

How To Make Church Longer

Cos that is what everyone is thinking on a Sunday, right? How can i make this longer? Ha. i doubt it.

This morning i will be preaching at my buddy Rob’s church, Mercy Vineyard, in Bergvliet.

My biggest hope is that when i end the message, the message doesn’t end.

Breaking Bread [with Trev]: Listening Better

By now you may know the drill, Trevor Swart from the Positive Thoughts and Conversations blog, Swart Donkey, have a five comment, 100ish word each, conversation around a particular topic one of us brings up and then we share the back and forth with you. This one is all about Listening Better and has a lot to make you think:

i used to think ___ and now i think ___

How would you fill those blanks in?

My good friend Sarah Bessey [slash i read her blog and she once tweetered me] has literally just released her latest book, ‘Out of Sorts: Making Peace with an Evolving Faith’ which you can buy over here [and probably should!]

Today Sarah is hosting a synchroblog where she invited close personal friends [slash anyone who stumbled upon her blog] to write a post based on the above title.So i thought i would take her up on it:

When Sickness or Tragedy Strikes too.

Someone you know has just suffered the death of a family member or close friend. Or is struggling through a serious disease. What do you do? What do you say?

Yesterday i wrote a post giving what i suspect were some helpful ideas, especially if you are not the closest person in the situation so take a read of them over here. But i also had some comments from some people who have been or are going through this at the moment, which are invaluable in terms of helping us deal with these situations with the utmost respect and love:

When sickness or tragedy strikes…

Sometimes well-meaning people do bad things. Let’s work together to not be one of those…

i have two good friends who have recently faced different kinds of grief – one is desperately sick at the moment and the other lost his mom a couple of weeks back. They are surrounded by a lot of well-meaning people. Which sounds like a good thing. But sometimes it’s not. Here are a few things i’ve learnt/observed:

A Frikkin Hashtag: #MyLastBucketListItemis…

Two weeks ago @KeshaTedder [aka Binks] and i challenged Hashtag gamers to come up with their best suggestions for the Tag #AndThenTheWorldEnded and there were some great suggestions worth checking out.

Last week it was @TheatreAfrica co-hosting with me as we looked at #MyLastBucketListItemIs which saw 306 people come up with 1289 tweets with an audience of 727, 406 people… We were quite guy heavy as a stat of  78.1% of those playing tells you. Hopefully we will do better this week. Best way to play is to download the @HashtagRoundup app and play from there.