Best of the Mash

So my other blog, The Weekly Mash [and Peace!] has been running for close to 3 months now and it’s interesting to note what the most popular posts have been so far – as each day has a different theme i thought it would be good to look at the top performer for each day in terms of visits, reads and shares and so here they are:

Monday = Fun Day – Humour: It amuses me completely that Cloud man is the most popular post i have had on the new blog out of all of them because this is one of those strange random things that for some reason never fails to put a smile on my face, no matter how often i look at it: I give you Cloud Ambition Man

Tuesday = News Day – Local/International news stories that grab my attention. It was quite interesting that it was the two marriage articles dealing with Will and Jada Pinkett Smith and also Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner that got the most interest in this category although maybe that just says something about our draw towards celebrity. I am hoping more people will engage with Tuesdays and share their interesting/bizarre/life-giving stories so that is can be a sharing of reads worth checking out but here is that post in the meantime.

Wednesday = Wed Day – Relationships and not just dating or marriage but friendship and all other types as well – there were two that were pretty close at the top here so i will include them both, namely the one on leaving the door open when a friendship has gone bad/difficult and then this more children/parent focused one, although it can apply to all relationships in terms of being present and available.

Thursdays = Thirsty – Spiritual matters and this has been quite a popular day and i’ve looked at a variety of quite diverse topics, but it was this post that got created and influenced by Twitter as i was writing it on the John Piper saga [and the importance of understanding messages in context] that unfolded in the wake of the recent tornado.

Friday = My day and really just the opportunity to write about whatever i choose to which again lends itself to quite a variety of posts which have received different interest depending on the topic but it was this post called ‘Blessed are the Geeks’ on the effects of labelling people that really got people’s attention and feedback.

Favourable mention must got to yesterday’s video clip with the woman with the nail in her head [on listening in relationships and not just giving the answers, even when they seem obvious; the human dummy ventriloquist and boy with tape on his face; this post on loving people especially when you don’t feel like it; and  Jesus’ response to a young man who was about to reject His message.

If you missed any of those, this is a good way to catch up on some of the very best… hope there is something you will enjoy.

Weekly Photo Challenge: (From above)

i love the themes that are open to great interpretation or variety and ‘From Above’ is no different… really hard to just stick to one picture and so here is a selection of some images which capture this for me in different ways and contexts:

firstly two shots from the Petronas Twin Towers in Malaysia, the first simply giving a sense of the height and the second for me stood out for the uniformity of the scene below which gives a sense of calm and order:

View from Petronas towers, Malaysia

The uniformity captured below.

the next shot was one picture from my trip to Niagara Falls which was way too short and completely moved me just in terms of the power of the water and the beauty of the scene [as someone who appreciates nature but not usually to that extent] – i like the minimalism of this picture with the boat squished into the bottom corner heading towards this wall of water:

View from the top of the Niagra Falls

and lastly an old photo shot with some mates who i stayed with in Old Oak Road, Shepherd’s Bush, London… unity and harmony, friendship and fun, creating our own tower linking back to the first pictures:

[For the previous Photo Challenge on the theme of ‘Up’ click here]

faith, hope and love… and the greatest of these is Love. [unless you’re gay]

i read these two powerful blog posts while i was eating breakfast before work today and really felt the need to pass them on [the third blog post where the author shares two of the negative responses from so-called christians i just don’t even want to post a link to – you can find it – because i just get so crazily annoyed that people can think of themselves as Christ-following Bible-reading people and still think that way] – i too have a series of blogs that have been shelved or deleted or sit unfinished in my drafts box simply because i know of the sensitivity of the topic and how close to home it is for me… and so for now, these will have to do and while i don’t necessarily agree with everything Dan Pearce has to say, i agree with enough of it to believe that these are two powerful messages for us to be reading and dialoguing about…

the first is the original blog post which was titled “i’m Christian unless you’re gay”

and the follow up was ‘A Few More Powerful Responses to ‘I’m Christian, Unless You’re Gay’’

may some words i write have such a powerful impact on somebody or many somebodies some day – way good reason and encouragement to keep on blogging and to search for truth while always pursuing Love through it all…

hope you enjoy. would love to hear your thoughts.

read to

so yesterday i posted a very simple blog as a response to the wordpress challenge of the week which was a splash of colour [or ‘color’ if you’re americanese]

i found a picture of a splash of blue and posted that as the solitary post of the blog and then i gave it the title ‘red’ and then posted it at various times of the day with the following intros:

do you believe everything you see, or everything you read?

please do me a quick favour – i have just produced a blog on the theme of colour – in one word i would like you to go to my blog and in the comment section tell me which colour my blog is about… and go!

whatever your initial or thought out comment is, i would love for you to go to this blog and give a comment on the question “what colour do you see?” because there is a bunch of stuff happening here if you take a moment but just write what you see or don’t.

and as per usual, almost everyone posted on facebook and not on the blog [gotta figure that one out still] but here are some comments which stood out:

Ronnie Davis: Ah… setting up challenges for those of us of the color blind persuasion…

Ronnie Davis: I thought it a good blog about perception and labels… reality and expectation… or from an existential point of view–what is color (one I often debate as one who has a hindered visual palette)

Ronnie Davis: Just thought of something… if I take the “sucking the marrow out of life” into consideration, my thoughts move to color and blood (oxygenated vs de-oxygenated) and what type of social commentary that brings…. just saying

Byron Mountfort: my initial response is black, but this is to simplistic and one-dimensional. It’s about so much more. Red, Blue, white, purple… Neither are right or wrong. We don’t see things the way they are; we see things the way we are.

and then Georgina Beazeley who was convinced there was no colour in the blog: I think you know what I think already. I already said. The blog post is not about any colour

it was both a really simple blog [me just trying to mess with people and get a response] and a very deep blog [because there was some hidden meaning intended and i hoped people would take a bit more time to try and find some meaning, even besides that which i intended] and there are very many layers to it i think, but one thing i was thinking when i posted it was this:

what informs your opinions? so, for example, if i asked you to go and look at my blog called ‘red’ and you went and took a look and were confronted with the blue picture you might think the blue is a mistake. but if you just stumbled upon my blog and saw the blue picture and then looked at the title and saw it was called ‘red’ you might think that was the mistake.

the deeper question of perception and reality – is it the written word [red] or the visual word [blue] that informs your opinion? or can they be both right? or does one even have to be right? can they both be enjoyed despite apparent contradiction?

i have found that the older i get the more thing in the Bible and in life i have to hold in tension, not because they are as contradictionary as these two colours appear to be here but just because they seem so different and unrelated and it excites me when God opens my eyes to see how time and time again they work so perfectly together – an example being the Love of God and the Justice of God. and maybe i will look at those two later but for now, enjoy the colours, and the words…

the little cow that could…

i came across this blog today and i want you to read the bio with me and try and conjure up in your mind an image of the person who might possibly be writing it:

“A few years ago, I stumbled upon the Vaquita, a tiny endangered porpoise. I was heartbroken when I read about its story, so I decided to start this blog, along with many other efforts to help this species. I post poems, facts, and updates about the Vaquita weekly, and have other pages to help inform you about the Vaquita and its helpers. I hope this blog will help save a species in need.”

if this is all the info you have, [and take another minute and read it once more to really try and figure this out], what picture comes to your mind? is it a male or a female? someone with many years of life experience to draw upon, or a young child? someone who speaks with an English accent? or are we talking European? Australian or New Zealand perhaps? or is it someone from my continent of Africa or my present home of Americaland?

who do you picture writing this?

but wait, here is one more set of clues as to the authorship of said blog:

“I love playing tennis, birdwatching, hiking, even school, but my main focus is animal conservation through writing.”

for me, ‘animal conservation through writing,’ and i instantly have a woman in mind… ‘playing tennis’ and ‘birdwatching’ makes her fifty plus years of age… hiking throws a potential hint of a curveball… but it’s the word ‘school’ that seems out of place…?

it is in fact the line i omitted, that starts off this blog bio, which fills in a lot more of the gaps:

“I am an 11-year-old boy living in Bethlehem, PA.”

well slap-my-face-to-the-side-of-a-pig-and-roll-me-in-the-mud. It’s called V-Log and it is largely about the saving of a species of porpoise called the Vaquita [of which there are only about 250 left in the world] and you can check it out here, and it does contain poetry like this, and it really just moved and excited me to see an 11 year old confident young man with poetic gifts and more really being passionate about something and then actively living out/chasing his passion in the best way he knows how… [where is Oprah or Ellen when you need them?]

his blog profile name is goldenliontamarin and it describes him well. we can learn a lot from him and i hope we do.

if you don’t have a passion and a purpose or aren’t pursuing it, then there is a really strong chance that you aren’t living, you are just existing. let’s learn from this young 11 year old guy [who seems a lot older than a lot of older people i know] and really start sucking the marrow out of life. in a good way.

choose living.

he’s not heavy, he’s my [klein] brother…

i have a cool friend called kleinfrans [he’s not] who is a really rad man, and he has a brain and thinkx about things and i think has some good stuff to say [and him and his rad wife michelle took us to play mashie golf, twice!] and so i wanted to stick up some links to the last three cool things he blogged about:

http://ishouldwritemore.wordpress.com/2011/03/04/is-hell-real

http://ishouldwritemore.wordpress.com/2011/03/02/zuckerberg-zombies

http://ishouldwritemore.wordpress.com/2011/03/01/the-book-you-believe-in

enjoy, comment, engage…

i think i have the beginnings of a podcast

check it out and let me know if it works… this could be the start of a beautiful relationship… thankx sean tucker…

click on this bit here…