the art of holding a friend’s head under the water…

yesterday i attended a baptism and family picnic that our church family, Re:Generation, holds twice a year…

it is one of the highlights for us [and not just because of the quantity of fine meat they prepare – these okes know how to barbecue braai!] because of the feeling of family celebration and togetherness that tends to come out of it… and just a much less rushed time of being able to hang with church folks than the normal sunday in-out vibe that often occurs in the busyness of the day…

this one was a special day as my mate Nate Chamberlain [or Nate Dawg as we call him in this particular piece of blog] was getting baptised and also because he asked me [last minute so good thing i wasn’t wearing jeans as David ‘the Bartaman’ was] to accompany him into the water and be part of his baptism.

baptising my friends is one of my favourite things to do, and something i highly recommend to any and all followers of Jesus.

one thing i really liked was Albert [main pastor and my church bossman]’s approach to the baptism, inviting anyone who wanted to, not just to come out and be a part of the baptism, but to ‘perform the baptism’ if they wanted – “After all there is nothing more spiritual or special about me doing it”. 

that feels like the kind of vibe Jesus had – being accused by the spiritual leaders of the day of not being spiritual enough, but simply choosing the route of being practical and simple and clear to those around him.

the temple was full of a lot of ritual and law and spectacle – Jesus sat around a table with some friends, broke some bread and drank some wine and said, ‘Do this as you remember Me.’

the disciples around Him and other adults tried to keep the meetings orderly and focused on the important teachings of the rabbi – but Jesus stopped ‘the meeting’ and called the children forward and hung out with them – He took time to speak to the women and the lepers and other sick people normally kept to the fringes [out of the way of the important ‘man of God’]

He was accused of hanging out with the prostitutes and the tax collectors…

KEEPING IT REAL

i can’t imagine Jesus baptising someone in a baptismal font [no offence to any of you who use baptismal fonts – it is a practical way to get something necessary done] over a river or a beach that they happened to be walking by – ‘the thing’ always seemed to trump ‘the procedure of the thing’ and ‘the look of the thing’. i think there is something we can learn from that.

i remember baptising my buddy Mark in his mom’s FREEZING swimming pool on a farmland outside the city.

i remember baptising my friend Kirsten on the beach with a small bunch of her friends gathered round to embrace us as we got out of the water.

i remember baptising my friend Megan in knee deep water [shallowest baptism ever!] at Camp Wortelgat [literally ‘Carrot Hole’ or maybe more accurately ‘Carrot Bumhole’] after walking and walking and walking trying to find deep enough water and then eventually [as the crowd gathered on the edge of the lake started resembling ants] issuing the command of ‘Kneel, we’re gonna do this here!’

i remember baptising my friend Lindri in the narrowest of ICE COLD streams [i see a pattern here] as we also walked and searched a long time to try and find deep enough water, having climbed over a fence and stumbled around bushes and over rocks with a dedicated group of friends to try and find the perfect spot in Stellenbosch.

baptismal font baptisms are fine, but there is something that feels that slight bit more real or authentic to me about doing it ‘in the wild’ or simply in the place where the water is.

GO AND DO LIKEWISE

the reason i encourage people to baptise their friends is because Jesus did that.

at the end of Matthew, just before He leaves to go and join His Father again, Jesus tells His followers to go and make disciples of all nations and to baptise them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and to teach them everything I have taught you.

that command was never to the priests [excepting when in Hebrews we realise that each and every one of us who follows Jesus is now a priest] or to the religious leaders of the day – it was to all of us – nothing excites me more than seeing someone baptise their friend who they led to Jesus Christ. this should be happening with all of us on a more regular basis.

Who is the person in your life that you would most like to baptist?

And how are you living out your Jesus story to them in a way that might make that seem like an enticing prospect one day?

her life as a ‘plus-size’ model.

my friend Megan Donald linked me to this article on the ‘book and i really enjoyed it and felt like it was a message that needed to get more out there and so i emailed Jennie and also BBC newsonline to see if i could get permission to use it and received the confirmation this morning, so here reproduced is the story as shared by:

Jennie Runk: My life as a ‘plus-size’ model

When H&M hired a “plus-size” model to show off the range of sizes for its beachwear, the ad campaign caused much discussion. Model Jennie Runk says it’s time we stopped obsessing about size.

I had no idea that my H&M beachwear campaign would receive so much publicity. I’m the quiet type who reads books, plays video games, and might be a little too obsessed with her cat.

So, suddenly having a large amount of publicity was an awkward surprise at first. I found it strange that people made such a fuss about how my body looks in a bikini, since I don’t usually give it much thought.

When my Facebook fan page gained about 2,000 new likes in 24 hours, I decided to use the attention as an opportunity to make the world a little nicer by promoting confidence. I’ve since been receiving lots of messages from fans, expressing gratitude.

Some even told me that my confidence has inspired them to try on a bikini for the first time in years. This is exactly the kind of thing I’ve always wanted to accomplish, showing women that it’s OK to be confident even if you’re not the popular notion of “perfect”.

This message is especially important for teenage girls. Being a teenage girl is incredibly difficult. They need all the help and support they can get.

When our bodies change and we all start to look totally different, we simultaneously begin feeling pressured to look exactly the same. This is an impossible goal to achieve and I wish I had known that when I was 13. At 5ft 9in and a US size eight (usually either a UK 10 or 12), I envied the girls whose boyfriends could pick them up and carry them on their shoulders.

Gym class was a nightmare. While the thin girls were wearing shorts, I was wearing sweat pants because my thighs were the size of their waists, and those pants were embarrassingly short because I was taller than the average adult, but still shopped at (pre-teen clothing store) Limited Too.

I also had thick, curly hair that only drew more attention to me, hiding behind my braces and beige, wire-rimmed glasses. On top of all this I’ve always been rather clumsy, so to say that my adolescence was awkward is an understatement.

Having finally survived it, I feel compelled to show girls who are going through the same thing that it’s acceptable to be different. You will grow out of this awkwardness fabulously. Just focus on being the best possible version of yourself and quit worrying about your thighs, there’s nothing wrong with them.

After all, I never thought of myself as model material but then I was discovered at a Petsmart, while volunteering in my too-short sweat pants no less.

I was given the option to lose weight and try to maintain a size four (a UK six or eight), or to gain a little – maintain a size 10 (a UK 12 or 14) – and start a career as a plus-size model. I knew my body was never meant to be a size four, so I went with plus.

People assume “plus” equates to fat, which in turn equates to ugly. This is completely absurd because many women who are considered plus-sized are actually in line with the American national average, or a US size 12/14 (somewhere between a UK size 14-18).

I can’t argue that some styles look better on one size than another.

While the idea of separating women into size categories seems stigmatising, clothing companies do this in order to offer their customers exactly what they’re looking for, making it easier for people of all sizes to find clothes that fit their bodies as well as their own unique stylistic expression.

The only problem is the negative connotations that remain stubbornly attached to the term “plus-size”. There shouldn’t be anything negative about being the same size as the average American woman, or even being a little bigger. Some women are perfectly healthy at a size 16 (a UK 18 or 20).

There are also negative connotations associated with thinness. Just as bigger women get called fat or chunky, thin women get called gangly or bony.

There’s no need to glamorise one body type and slam another. We need to stop this absurd hatred towards bodies for being different sizes. It doesn’t help anyone and it’s getting old.

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About the author:

Jennie Runk, 24, spent her childhood in Georgia and her adolescence in Missouri. She was discovered in 2000 and had her first photo shoot in 2001.

After studying writing at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, she relocated to New York – with her cat – to pursue her modelling career in 2011.

At a US size 14 (or a UK size 16), she is considered “plus-size” for fashion work.

You can follow Jennie on Twitter at @jennierunk

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[this article shared courtesy of BBC Newsonline, 14 May 2013]

the name above all other names.

watched this clip this morning via my good friend megan ‘pacifier’ donald and found it really simple yet powerfully profound…

by movingworks.org