I always plan these great theological treatises to post here: great discussions of the faults of the church, or of our entire world order. Then I get distracted by the simplest of things. A few days ago I was watching two collar doves flirting. It was the funniest and most beautiful thing I’d seen in ages. The two of them were sitting on the garden fence a couple of meters apart. One would sidle up to the other and start pushing her: just gentle nudges at first, then head butting her under the chin (if birds have chins). When I left the window they were flapping about, jumping over and on top of each other. I thought they’d like the privacy.

This afternoon I took a walk down to Knole, wanting to appreciate the green in Sevenoaks before I leave it all behind again. Half way up Blackhall Lane I met a blackbird foraging in the leaves on the grassy roadside bank. Sticking his head under the leaves, picking a few up, throwing them about then moving on; there didn’t seem much method to his search. We continued walking up the hill together. He never came closer to me than about a meter, and I never tried to make him. We parted company by the turning for the park. I was going in, hoping to get a good view of the sunset. He was going back down the hill.

As it turned out the sunset was obscured by clouds.

“Have you ever given orders to the morning,

or shown the dawn its place,

that it might take the earth by the edges

and shake the wicked out of it?”

Job 38 (NIV)

As a result of being given Matthew 6:25-27 today I was inspired to re read some chunks of my prayer diary. Reading my prayers from this time last year it was incredible how many either have been answered or are in the process of being answered. Just at the moment, the question of whether to re-stand is weighing somewhat heavy on my mind. I should probably be spending a little more time in prayer over it. From last year it was amazing how every time I considered anything else for this year God would raise Union Exec. I hope I haven’t wasted it.

Belle & Sebastian. I got Dear Catastrophe Waitress for Christmas (along with World Service by Delirious and () by Sigur Rós). I never quite understand where they stand, theologically speaking. I’ve had some interesting discussions recently around the subject of music, and the power it has over the human mind. I understand that Belle and Sebastian have in the past done something at Greenbelt. I’m not altogether sure what. From what I understand it certainly wasn’t a whole-band performance.

Now, playing at Greenbelt (in whatever manner you do so) doesn’t in any way make you a Christian, but it could be argued that lyrics like If you find yourself caught in love, Say a prayer to the man above, You should thank him for every day you pass do. The thing is that I can never help the feeling that Belle and Sebastian are in some way being ironic. I never feel that they are singing words like that with a genuine heart for the Lord. So the question is: are they singing what they mean, and if not, should I be listening?

I was just testing the links I was going to use for this post, and visited the Greenbelt website. I discovered that Mike Yaconelli was killed in a car accedent back in October. I know I’m somewhat late with this news, but it’s no less a tragedy for the delay.

OK, so I went to visit the venue for 24-7 on Tuesday. I confess I had difficulty visualising it at first, but we could not have hoped for a better location. We’ll be using a vast early 20th century mission hall on North Wing. The painted facade and the barbed wire on the roof rather give it the look of a dilapidated warehouse, but once you step inside the hints of church building are everywhere. It’s being converted into some kind of Christian education/arts project. I’m not sure I really understood, but I’m sure there’ll be plenty of opportunity to find out about that once the praying gets underway.

The view over the city is amazing. It’s only from one small window, away from the main room but there will be some kind of signage as to how to get there. I’m having ideas for a walkway made of draped fabric, but I probably won’t be there for the setting up on Monday. I was also planning to put on line a list of churches that are covering time, so people would know who to contact to book a slot, but I’ve done something really stupid and I don’t know if the details have been e-mailed to me.

Having told everyone to contact me on my address at this domain rather than my work address over the holiday, I'd come home leaving Outlook running on the house server. Now all my personal e-mail is being downloaded every five minutes to a location 250 miles away, whilst I can access my work account just fine over the web. I downloaded the Remote Desktop Client for my parents’ computer but it seems that, in some rare moment of security consciousness, I disabled the facility to connect to the server.

One man considers one day more sacred than another; another man considers every day alike.

Romans 14

Merry Christmas

I’ve decided I don’t want to be a Christian any more. I want to be a follower of the Way. I know the Bible makes no real distinction, but the difference between what we now call Christianity and the model of what it meant to be church in the time Acts was written seems quite phenomenal. I was clearing out a backlog of old e-mail yesterday and came across a link to emergingchurch.info. Following a variety of links, and by way of an interesting article about Revive, I eventually came across 15 Theses by someone named Wolfgang Simson. I’d never heard of him before, but apparently he’s written a book called Houses That Change the World, which I’m now planning to read at the first opportunity.

The basic pretext for this article seems to be that the structure around which all modern church is based is fundamentally flawed. We rely on a system modeled on Old Testament or Pagan religions, not on the system of New Testament Christianity. We need a new reformation, bringing the church back to it's roots as a network of small communities, meeting in houses where real people go. We should be talking about the priesthood of all believers as a real thing. The job of a Pastor should not be to sit between man and God, that’s what Jesus is for; instead a Pastor should work together with Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists and Teachers to grow and network the whole church. And (I particularly like this bit) the Lord’s Supper should be a real supper with real food. Eating together is such a powerful act of community, and one which we are losing in modern society. And it’s the true, biblical way to take communion.

The only problem is, I’m a sucker for tradition—especially at this time of year. All the candlelit services, and the carols. At Christmas I even love the pews and the organ. And the church is full of people like me. We enjoy our regular Sunday praise and worship slot. We like the bring a friend events when it doesn't really matter if you don’t, ’cause someone else will. But the fact is, Jesus came and died for us. He showed us a better way to live, and then he died so that we might enjoy it. And if we know that, and we still keep ignoring it, something’s very wrong indeed.

Way back in the summer, when Jeffery John was all over the news, there was a lengthy debate on the d-fans mailing list about the rights and wrongs of allowing openly gay men to become bishops. Because of a whole bundle of circumstances (Glastonbury, moving house, starting a new job) I never found the time to participate in the discussion and, indeed, fell rather behind with all my correspondence.

In mid-August I went on holiday for the best part of two weeks. Ignoring for the moment the sense of utter panic I felt when I discovered my mobile phone wasn’t working, I made a determined effort to cut myself off from my usual world. Whilst there, however, I did take the time to write a fairly lengthy piece outlining my thoughts on human sexuality. I had intended to post the complete document both here and on the mailing list, but I never quite managed to work up the courage. Though I stayed well away from the actual issue of the morality of homosexuality, I did feel that, in certain things I said, I was rather putting myself on the line. After moving it from computer to computer and never actually doing anything with it, I finally deleted the last copy a few weeks ago. You can probably tell from the fact I’m writing this now that I wish I hadn’t.

The basic premise of what I wrote came from Matthew 5—Jesus talk on adultery during the Sermon on the Mount. I argued that there are actually three major human sexual orientations, not two as usually assumed. For the purposes of my argument I ignored bi, and the various Ts, citing instead heterosexuality, homosexuality and celibacy. Following on from much discussion on the d-fans list as to whether it was OK to be homosexual if one wasn’t practicing I argued that sexuality is characterised only by practice; it is our definition of practice that is at fault. Matthew 5:27 tells us that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. For a man to look at a woman lustfully would be sexual practice, characterising heterosexuality. For a woman to look at another woman lustfully would also be sexual practice, characterising homosexuality. Both would be equally wrong.

It would be impossible to be a non practising homosexual, just as it would be impossible to be a non practicing heterosexual. The only sexual orientation characterised by inaction is celibacy.

I went on to argue that humans are not born either heterosexual or homosexual, as is often supposed. We are born celibate; anything else is only temptation. And we have no place giving in to that, only submission to the Lord’s will at a time of his choosing.

So, basically, until we entirely rethink both the teaching of the church and the whole of our modern culture we have no place condemning anyone. At the time I wrote this I resolutely believed that to fancy girls was wrong, and that holy relationships could only grow from a mutual love for God. I still do.

Though I sometimes wish I didn’t.

OK, so after yesterday I did eventually go back to that playlist. I’d forgotten I’d put it together intending it to be encouraging, so it turned out to be a pleasant surprise. I’m now listening to Angel of Harlem by U2. I’m not sure if it was meant to be a Christmas song, but to me it’ll always be one of the best around. I was going to stick on the 24-7 Vision Mix CD after this, but for some reason I seem to have Anyone Can Play Guitar stuck in my head all of a sudden. Maybe I'll listen to that first.

I’m sure I had other things to say, but I’ve no idea what they were. They were probably to do with 24-7, but I went to CJ’s with Adam after church, and I’ve not had time to do anything about it. Adam’s got some pretty cool ideas for a prayer installation on homelessness though.

I was too slow swapping discs and All I Want Is You just started. I can’t skip that.

You say you’ll give me a highway with no one on it

Treasure just to look upon it

All the riches in the night

You say you’ll give me eyes on a moon of blindness

A river in a time of dryness

A harbour in the tempest

All the promises we make

From the cradle to the grave

When all I want is you

It’s dark. It’s wet. It’s windy. Everyone else’s gone home, the Union bars are all closed, and someone’s beating out a blues from the basement of the pub on the corner.

God is great. I was contemplating going back to my iTunes playlist from the other week, but instead I’m listening to the first disc of Access:d (I don’t have World Service yet). There is now a venue for the Bradford-wide week of 24-7 Prayer. It’ll be at the North Wing Building off Otley Road. I don’t know it, but apparently it has a fantastic view—perfect for praying over the city. I’m going to take a look on Tuesday. There will be continuous prayer from 11pm on the 31^st until midnight on the 7^th. The plan is to set up on the 29^th. I don’t know yet whether I’ll be back in Bradford that early, but I’ll most likely be here for the start. It’s going to be incredible.

P.S. That was an example of a blues track, not what they were actually playing

A friend recently introduced me to a strangely addictive game called Fly The Copter. Fancying a game while at work the other day, but unable to remember the address, I typed fly the copter into Google and was presented with a “genuine” weblog called South Coast Diaries. It’s all about two years old, so I’m somewhat behind the times, but it’s somewhat freaky. The blog only runs for a few months so it’s easy to read the whole thing. Suffice to say, that by the end I was somewhat freaked out, and the game doesn’t seem quite as fun once one learns what it was meant to be all about.

I’m not usually one to harp on about the “true meaning of Christmas”, largely because as far as I can make out it’s all about pagan rituals and capitulating to effigies of Coca-Cola personified, however this article from 24-7 Prayer, “Anyone for an ‘Advert’ Calendar?”, is well worth a read.

Today’s iTunes playlist: Till We're Old–Coastal Dune, Hallelujah–Jeff Buckley, Walk On–U2, Beautiful–Coastal Dune, The Wrong Girl–Belle & Sebastian, Closing Time–Semisonic, Tuyo Es Mi Corazont–Delirious?

Almost Famous is a beautiful movie, fantastically life-affirming and thankfully more positive than Chasing Amy which, on watching today, I had to leave at the point when Banky produces the yearbook ’cause I couldn’t bare to watch the happy ending fall apart.

I’ve left this far too long again. Adam Syrop has posted a load of his work online. Dandelion & Burdock is definitely worth a watch.

I finally managed to get down to the “Bradford Masterplan” exhibition. Some of the ideas are very exciting, though it took me three tries before I actually managed to go and look round the place. I heard that it would be open 10-12am on Saturdays, so I struggled down there after the FND a couple of weeks ago and arrived about 11:55. I went back the following week to try again, this time making sure as to arrive in plenty of time only to find they’d changed the opening times. The majority of the public doubt in the whole project seems to centre on Bradford Council’s ability to pull it off, and to maintain it once it's built. The first time I was in there one of the attendants was telling some visitors about a place in Sheffield that was done up and which apparently proves that the same could happen here. All we need is a team to go round every day scraping gum off the streets. It seems to me that what we really need is public confidence — something that’s going to be hard to come by if they can’t even open the exhibition at a time when people want to see it. I refuse to believe that I’m the only person in Bradford who works during the week. Oh, and there still doesn’t seem to be a web site for the project.

Oh, and while I remember, Richard’s got himself interviewed by Wired News.

I’ve gone far too long without posting again, and there are too many things I could write about. I could write about the SPEAK Northern Forum, like I promised nearly two weeks ago. I could write about the NUS Stop Fees Now campaign which, in the run up to Sunday’s demo, has been quite a feature of work these last few days. I could write about what I found in the Bradford regeneration exhibition or I could write about the progress that’s being made with the city-wide 24-7 prayer week. As it is, I don’t really have time to write much at all, but I’ll just say that I think this is a really exciting time for this city. We’re going to go prayer walking in the city centre at an unearthly hour of Friday morning, asking God to show us a venue for the prayer week in January. It’s amazing to see the way His Spirit is at work here in just the smallest of ways. Together those small things make the most incredible difference, and I just pray we’ll continue to see them in still greater numbers.

OK, so I’ve spent most of the day in London at a House of Lords reception hosted by the university Chancellor, Baroness Lockwood (read: the Department of Marketing and Corporate Communications). It was actually quite impressive; from what I can gather they have an event every year, with a rotating focus on different departments, somewhat nullifying my expectations of a corrupt jolly for School of Social and International Studies staff and a host of international diplomats. Baroness Amos, the keynote speaker, said nice things both about Bradford and about foreign policy — which I’m sure can’t quite match the government’s official line. Unfortunately I didn’t get the opportunity to give her a grilling about what happened in Cancun, but it was kind of fun.

Anyway, the main reason for the urgency of this post: While I was in London I apparently missed a good deal of local media coverage of the unveiling of Bradford’s new town centre redevelopment plan. I’ve heard speculation that it’s a hoax, but it’s scarily real. There’s coverage at the Telegraph and Argus, the BBC and the Guardian. I’ve not had time to read much of it yet, but I’m not sure of the way the whole focus of the project seems to be Leeds, not Bradford. I’ll have to take a trip to the exhibition on Market Street on Saturday.

Who ever would have thought that operating a candy-floss machine would be so difficult? It’s clearly a job for a trained professional. Last night was the Bras on Bars FND for breast cancer awareness, so the idea was that candy-floss would go quite well with the pink theme. Ours didn’t come out very pink at all, though we were kind of saved by the pink light. There’s definitely a skill in catching the stuff on the stick, and not on one’s arm, hair, beard and nearby walls.

Still more exciting things that that happened yesterday, though; I was at a meeting in the morning with youth leaders from all over Bradford. The meeting normally happens every two weeks, which is pretty cool in itself but the agenda for this particular one was a week of 24-7 prayer in January. The idea is that all the churches in Bradford come together for a week of continuous prayer as a start for the New Year. It’s so exciting seeing this come together, as it’s just showing how we only need to do so little and God will make great things happen. This in itself is an answer to prayer, and a total witness to God’s power, but just thinking about what could happen if it goes well is a bit much to cope with.

I’ve also just come back from the SPEAK Northern Forum, which was very good, and I feel a renewed inspiration because of it, but I’ll talk about that more later. I don't want to overshadow the great news of ecumenical 24-7.

I’ve had an e-mail from a friend pointing me to http://www.freepalestine.com/ and suggesting that I link to the site as a follow up to my post of August 21^st. I didn't have that issue in mind specifically at the time, but it’s certainly relevant to the passage.

We’ve spent today interviewing for a new General Manager for UBU and, unlike last time, have actually found someone we want to appoint. I’m praying he accepts the job, ’cause I’m not sure I could face going through the whole procedure again. Big thanks are due to my church, who very kindly lent us a data projector for the day at extremely short notice; after I’m sure I phoned half the university looking for one.

Oh, and bad news for those that care, and don’t already know. I’m impressed that this made the front page of BBC News Online.

Delirious? released a new song on mp3 the other day. MP3.com has been down for what seems like ages, but it’s back now and Majesty [Here I Am] is available to download. I’ve listened to it a few times now, and I’m definitely liking it more than the last album. The official web site is also providing sheet music, so they’re obviously trying to write stuff that can be used in church again. I can’t remember off the top of my head if there’s a release date for the album yet. It’s called World Service and I’m sure Dave Wood has all the details.

Something else I've been meaning to comment on for a while: There’s an advert on the back cover of the current issue of Adbusters. They’d probably call it an uncommercial or a subvertisement or something, and it’s actually self promotion for their blackSpot sneaker. I’ll let you decide for yourself whether that redeems it.

I'd not realised it'd been quite this long since I updated. Today marked the end of week two, so welcome week is fast becoming a distant memory. Thinking back now it's hard to pick out the highlights, though I guess for me personally the moment I returned a large bag to a student who'd lost it several hours earlier would rank pretty highly. Probably unusually for someone in my job, freshers' week was not by any means the reason I stood for election, and it seemed so strange after the whole summer to suddenly have a campus full of students again. Moments like that however, just make you remember why we do it. There were many things that didn't run as smoothly as they might have, and much that could be learnt from the experience, so I'm trying to find the time to write it all down while it's still fresh in my mind. I was hoping that time would stop moving so fast about now, but it hasn't really.

I must just mention the redesign at lordrich.com. It's table free, so many congrats to Richard for that, he just needs a doctype and it'd be perfect. Chris is nearly ready to go table free on his Kings Hockey site as well, I thought he'd launched it already, but it seems not. As I mentioned in my last post, all that time ago, at some time I will get round to designing this site.

I've been browsing CSS Zen Garden again, and been struck by just how much this site could do with some proper design. Rather than actually doing any, though, I went and contemplated buying a graphics tablet and thought of all the wonderful ways having one might help. If anyone wants to buy me stuff, an A3 Intuos 2 would be nice. Meanwhile, maybe I'll have time to properly work on this site after Welcome Week.

Apparently I'm the 524,010,283rd richest person in the world. It's probably a little out, as I wasn't all that exact when telling it my income.

Today is a good day. Campbell’s gone, The University of Bradford intranet has been redesigned in table-free CSS and I’ve just bought a High Output Automatic Ice Maker in Lemonade Tycoon Deluxe. I’ve done a fair few useful things as well, but you’re probably not interested in those.

But as for me, I am filled with power,

with the Spirit of the Lord ,

and with justice and might,

to declare to Jacob his transgression,

to Israel his sin.

Hear this, you leaders of the house of Jacob,

you rulers of the house of Israel,

who despise justice

and distort all that is right;

who build Zion with bloodshed,

and Jerusalem with wickedness.

Her leaders judge for a bribe,

her priests teach for a price,

and her prophets tell fortunes for money.

Yet they lean upon the Lord and say,

"Is not the Lord among us?

No disaster will come upon us."

Therefore because of you,

Zion will be plowed like a field,

Jerusalem will become a heap of rubble,

the temple hill a mound overgrown with thickets.

Micah 3:8-12 (NIV)

It's extremely early. I went to bed far too late. I was trying to use Windows Update to install 18.2Mb of critical updates on my parents' machine, as it seems no-one else ever bothers. It did 18Mb in 2 hours before the download failed. Oh the joys of 56k. Anyway, I'm off to France and will be doing my very best to be cut off from the world. Back in 10 days.

I've been reading the Charity Commission web site (yes, I know how to have a wild Friday night) and I've come across some things which I found interesting:

• Apparently charitable students' unions (such as UBU) should not comment publicly on issues which do not affect the welfare of students as students. The web site gives the following examples:

  • planning proposals for new roads or motorways which have no direct affect on the university campus or the students;
  • campaigns to outlaw the killing of whales; and
  • the treatment of political prisoners in a foreign country.

  To my mind that would make a fair amount of our policy illegal. We have current policy giving public comment on the war, the fire service strike, the situation in Palestine etc. Now I know that all these issues do, in fact, have a great personal affect on many of our students but simply in line with those examples, they look illegal.

  However, to my mind, issues like the Nestle and Bacardi boycotts would be legal, because while they may not directly affect students as students, the range of products sold in our bars and shops certainly does affect students as members of our association. Possibly, however, the policies should be phrased so as to be a reflection of students' concerns, rather than a statement of the Union's position.

• Also, while a charitable students' union may not support a political party or use its money for political ends, it may:

  encourage students to develop their political awareness and acquire knowledge of or debate political issues. To achieve this it may make grants to political clubs or societies on the campus.

  Now, again, to my mind that seems to say that we could donate money to societies and they could spend it to whatever political ends they like, provided they were constitutionally separate bodies from the Union to which we gave money; and not actually a part of the union itself. I also see no reason (so far) that that necessarily precludes us from having a Societies Federation for discussion of said grants and other general Union issues to which societies could (or could be required to) affiliate, without technically becoming a part of the Union.

Bare in mind though, that I am not a lawyer, and I have not been reading the law itself, just government guidance. I do intend to read the full 1993 Charities Act when I have time.

I downloaded all the files for the British System 7.5.3 (you seem to only be only able to get 7.5.5 as an upgrade) and copied them all over to the Classic on Mac formatted floppies, but they all just came up as documents. The Mac just kept telling me it couldn't find the application that created them. So I found an old PC version of Stuffit, uncompressed them with that and copied them all over again, but got the same error. That all took a very long time, as the Classic's floppy drive is extremely slow. I've managed download the system 7.5 network access boot disk and get that working (though it's slow), so I'm thinking I might just have to get the hardware and download the OS from the Classic itself.

24-7 Prayer are asking for lots of prayer for the media coverage they'll be getting as a result of this week's documentary about the Ibiza missions. Check it out, and be sure to watch the program; 20:15, Saturday, Channel 4. Apparently several of this weekend's Sunday papers chose it as their pick of the day.

This is the first document I've created on my Mac. It's still not networked, so in order to post this I'm going to have to save it to disk and copy it to my Windows machine. I've managed to DOS format a disk in the Mac, though when I tried to Mac format it, the computer gave up and ejected the disk. Hopefully I can save this to that, and hopefully Word on the PC will read Mac Word from 1992. I've been reading on-line, and I'm hoping I might be able to reformat this computer's hard drive and install a new OS, though that might loose this copy of Word and I don't know if the Mac OS includes any word processing tools.

My shiny new computer arrived this morning. I've not persuaded it to do much yet, as I don't have the hardware to connect it to my Windows network. In the meantime, here are some pictures:

Mark preached at church this morning on Ephesians 5:18-33. For a passage that causes great confusion and is often miss-quoted, he gave probably the most illuminating exposition I've ever heard. He began by stressing the link between verses 18-21 and 22-33, which are broken up by a heading in most Bibles. When you actually pause to think about verse 21 the link is quite obvious, but I've never heard it mentioned in a sermon before. He then explained the concept of being filled with the Holy Spirit, drawing comparisons with a room filled with people or a wall filled with pictures. In each case it is that which fills which becomes the most obvious thing, i.e. the most obvious thing about the room is the people. A drunk, as in verse 18, is instantly recognisable through not only their behaviour but also their look, sound, even their smell. And it is their drunkenness which is their most obvious characteristic.

In talking about verses 22-33 he pointed out that 22-24 are addressed "Wives" and 25 to the end of the chapter "Husbands". There is really no need for husbands to read the first part or vice-versa. The responsibility for fulfilling each part of this passage lies with those to whom they are addressed, and they need be of no concern to the rest of us. The most important part for us all lies in being filled with the Holy Spirit. Looking at it this way one gets rather more of an insight into just what a royal priesthood should look like.

I've seen on a few blogs. Dan blogged it today, so I've checked it out and added myself. If it's fun I'll add it to the sidebar when I get round to doing some proper design.

Bruce Almighty (spoilers!) is a film with theology that I agree with, which surprised me quite a bit. It was recommended to me by a friend who told me that it wasn't as dodgy as it looked. I didn't believe him, and I've never really been a fan of Jim Carrey anyway, but after enjoying Hulk I was up for going to the cinema again. Cinematically I couldn't say it was great, though I guess if you liked Liar Liar then this is probably your thing. The plot is predictable, and a lot of the characters and jokes extremely obvious. Where the film shines, though, is in it's portrayal of a man coming to know God and the realisation that his will is not the most important in his life. The ChildCare Action Project still manages to find things to slate, but the moments when Carrey's character surrenders himself to the Lord and says his first prayer are genuinely touching.

A friend of Dan's has commented on a documentary called Did Jesus Die? The part of the show that I saw contended that Jesus was actually a Buddhist monk, taught by the wise men from east during the time between his presentation in the temple and his baptism. It seems to me that the BBC devotes an inordinate amount of time to trying to discredit Christianity.

I've just seen Hulk. It seems to be getting quite a bit of bad press, but I'm going to stick with my initial reaction and say that I'll be surprised if we see a better summer blockbuster this year. The plot was somewhat confused, but next to The Matrix Reloaded it seems to make perfect sense. Ang Lee demonstrates that he has 1000 times more style than McG could ever dream of, and, well, I'll believe the good press about Terminator 3 when I see it.

It's not what we've come to expect from a comic book adaptation, and neither is what we might expect from Ang Lee, but I'm not sure it was ever going to be, and I'm not sure that's necessarily a bad thing. The CG character is, for the most part, convincing; the performances are great, and draw out the comic style in all the right places. And the use of split screens, framing and fast zooms to imitate the pages of a comic book succeeds in a way I've never seen before.

Chris had started a web site where he's publishing some film reviews that he's written. He didn't like Hulk, but he doesn't seem to have said that on there yet.

I've been off-line for ages again, so I just took a look at my Nationstate. Apparently my economy has imploded. I guess that means I've successfully killed off business. Go me!

While I've been away Dan and Paul have been abusing me again. I don't want to get personal, but come on Paul, show us your efforts. Also, Richard has put a link to my blog in his side bar. I should probably do something similar, but I don't have enough friends with blogs. Paul, get yourself a web site. I guess he does have half a point though. I'd sort of like to have a go at playing with the CSS Zen Garden but I should probably sort out this site first. Some people pad out their side bar with links to the A-list, but I don't really want to look like some kind of wannabe. Actually, what I wanna do is say insightful things about prayer movements in Bradford; but I'm not doing terribly well there, am I?

At my graduation ceremony on Friday Brian Blessed was made an Honorary Doctor of Letters. I'm not entirely sure what that means, but he seemed genuinely excited by it, even saying it was the best thing that ever happened to him. Better still, he said Gordon's Alive! and did that lip-shaking noise thing from The Phantom Menace.

I finally gave in to temptation and bought Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. As a result I've not read much for the Baku-Ceyhan campaign, but I'm really going to now as I finished it this morning. It was all very good apart from the huge continuity error I'm sure I noticed fairly close to the end. I'll have to go back later and check that I didn't just miss something, which I guess is quite likely. Sometime maybe I'll write about why I don't think Harry Potter is Satanic, but I can't really be bothered now.

I've got far to much going on write on everything just at the moment, but the man from Telewest finally came and set up our cable, so now I'll be able to update a bit more regularly. I've spent today at the Granada Studios in Manchester watching the filming of University Challenge. They didn't ask us to keep the results secret, so I think it's safe to say that it wasn't Bradford's finest performance. It's the first time we've had a team for years and years, and it was great fun though, so congratulations to them all. The job's been fun so far, but I think I'm wearing myself out. Last night I failed to finish my curry and then had to come home about half midnight! I've also had a look at the new union web site. I think there's probably quite a lot of work to do. It's not at a permanent address yet, so I'll link to it once it is.

While I was at Glastonbury I committed to reading some of a huge BP document an behalf of the Baku-Ceyhan campaign. BP are trying to build a pipeline across Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey 70% funded by tax-payers money. Now I have an Internet connection again I'll be able to download parts of the document and look for the holes in it. I'm not really sure what I'm looking for, but I'm hoping that someone'll be able to give me a little guidance.

I'm now at home in Sevenoaks. On my way home from Glastonbury the other day I got a call from Andrew, who told me that Jon had asked him to invite people to his wedding. Jon used to run a great web site about Renegade, but I'm pretty sure it's long gone now, so I don't have anything of his to link to. The wedding was lovely, so congratulations to Jon and Tessa Senior. It's a little weird, as Jon is the first of my school friends to get married, but provided they don't go off and spawn a peculiar Danish pop family I guess we'll be OK.

I've spent the last few days on a training residential in an extremely remote village outside of Skipton. I'll be back in Bradford tomorrow, though Telewest still haven't sorted out the transfer of our phone and Internet connections, so it'll probably be a few days before I'm back to doing this every day.

I realised that I didn't post a link to any information about Sigur Ros the other day, so if you've never heard them visit the official Sigur Ros web site and download some tracks.

Oh, and I got a 2/1 for my degree. I was pleased. Very, in fact. I'd use exclamation marks, were I not so tired.

OK, I've been back from Glastonbury for three days, but Telewest haven't yet called me back to say when they're going to install the Internet conection in our new house, so updates could be sparse for a while. I also started my job yesterday and we're off on a three day training residential starting today.

Glastonbury musical highlight is Sigur Ros, who were stunning. Comedy highlight is the moment God answered Tim's prayer that he would meet festival organisers Michael and Emily Eavis. He and I were standing in the queue for Oxfam's free candy floss when a girl approached us and asked us to sign the Make Trade Fair pettition. Tim explained that we'd already signed it, and we didn't realise until we spotted the the camera crew as she was leaving that it was Emily Eavis. God is great, but we are stupid.

I'm back in Sevenoaks, and this really will be the last update before Glastonbury. Last night I got to meet a few friends for a pint in The Farmers before moving on to Tonbridge. We went to a small pub, which was friendly and sold good beer, but then we left and went to Wetherspoon's where the staff are rude and the chances of a lock in are much lower. Walking back through Tonbridge park Richard got scared and refused to walk down a path, saying he'd heard tales of drug abuse and other unpleasant things that went on in the area. Now to me this sounds unlikely, but a good way to see the needy side of my home, which I normally ignore to an even greater extent than that in Bradford. We did see a group of youths with a light, but as Declan pointed out that is not in itself a reason to be scared, and certainly shouldn't discourage others from enjoying public parks and footpaths.

This afternoon Sam and I went to check out what actually lay down the path. We found a few abandoned concrete bunkers, full of litter and covered in graffiti; signs of a couple of small fires; open fields and a network of pleasant riverside paths. The paths bought us back into town on the other side of the park, and by the time we'd walked for about an hour we'd found signs of nothing more sinister than under-age drinking. We'd also managed to thoroughly exhaust Sam's dog.

On a totally different note, I see that A List Apart is up and running again. They've not yet covered anything of more than a passing interest to me, but at least they're back.

My computer is now the only thing left in my room. I'm sat on the floor with my keyboard on my lap. We don't have a car, so we've been carrying stuff down the road to the new house since about four o'clock this-afternoon. We're just waiting for a taxi to shift all the computers.

I'm leaving for Glastonbury at 7:30 tomorrow morning. There's a plan to work out a prayer chain to back us up while where there. If you'd like to be involved contact SPEAK and mention Emma Cowen, as I think she's loosely organising it.

They've found a director for the Hitchhiker movie. It's blatantly going to suck, not so much because of the unknown director, but because Adams won't be involved. The man was a genius.

All my housemates are obsessed with Celebdaq. My first attempt at doing anything with it is rather half-hearted, but I've been going a little longer with NationStates.

We're moving house tomorrow, and I've still barely started with packing. I'm off home of Saturday morning, then to Glastonbury on Monday so updates over the next week and a half could be scarce. I'll try and get at least one update in over the weekend, but after that I won't be back until the 30^th and I start work on the 1^st. I got an e-mail today telling me that my business cards are ready. How weird's that?

This is quite amusing. It does really well, right up until the end, when the closing line causes it to fall into the "another cheesy Christian ad" category. I'm moderately impressed with their site though, it seems surprisingly genuine for something like this. I'm somewhat inclined to agree with the posts saying they shouldn't post hate mail from other Christians though. It brings them rather close to the kind of territory normally occupied by the likes of capalert and Corrupt Christian Music.

I saw Donnie Darko last night. It's very good, and I highly recommend it. I'm not entirely sold on its theology, but I think it's pretty much agnostic so I'll let it pass. Richard Kelly seems to say in the DVD commentaries that it's got no hidden meaning, but I don't believe him. If I'd just spent so much effort making a film as mysterious as Donnie Darko I wouldn't be just telling everyone what it meant. To me it seems to be an interesting exploration of the themes of predestination, but my housemates disagree.

It suddenly hit me today that I will have to go home this weekend in order to get down to Glastonbury on the Tuesday. That means it's been almost a year since I started trying to take on board God's challenge to leave my comfort zones and really make a difference. I'm looking forward to Glastonbury, as it means that we'll finally get to go there with all our ideas about faith in action and taking on the whole of SPEAK's vision in one weekend. And there are some good bands on. Beyond that I'm facing the prospect of coming back to Bradford and starting my job on 1^st July. It's easy to think that over the year nothing has changed, but I know that to be a lie. The most phenomenal things have happened, so many just in the last couple of weeks. We've seen the CU and the churches take on and complete weeks and days of 24-7 Prayer; we've seen the church united in prayer for the city; we've been on prayer walks and seen the results. I personally have learnt a great deal about the city, and am following through on the call to stay here at least for the year. And as a result of Friday's crazy prayer I'm already noticing a greater trust in God's will.

There's still an unbelievable amount to do, but looking at the small things we have planned I can see how mountains really can be moved. We're looking at a week of 24-7 by not just a church, but the Church in Bradford; we're planning a guided prayer walk, which Richard Kirkcaldy has blogged about; the CU has some exciting plans for the beginning of the next academic year. I'm looking for contacts with an interest in community, and ways in which we can build radical Christianity into city life. I have total confidence that God will enable serious change in Bradford if only we let him.

Whatever it takes they will give: Breaking the rules. Shaking mediocrity from its cosy little hide. Laying down their rights and their precious little wrongs, laughing at labels, fasting essentials. The advertisers cannot mould them. Hollywood cannot hold them. Peer-pressure is powerless to shake their resolve at late night parties before the cockerel cries.

The Vision (The Vision MP3)

Let's "make demons scream in shopping centres."

So, I'm fiddling with the style sheets and I can't work out why nothing's changing. It turns out I've forgotten to link to them in my template. It's fixed now, and as a result you should see the navigation links now appearing on the right side of the screen. According to Jakob Nielsen in Homepage Usability it's standard (and therefore better) to place navigation bars on the left hand side. A quick survey of a few blogs I read reveals that most of them have their navigation on the right. I think it's mainly down to fashion, and I've decided I like the right better.

James Preece runs a blog which Dan recommended to me. Today he has blogged a news story about compulsory Belgian euthanasia which seems to me to rather defeat the point of having a faith based hospital. Obviously the NHS means that this situation could not really currently occur in this country, but I went to a Catholic school of which Catholic values were an integral part. Or, at least, at which RE GCSE was compulsory. If I choose to send my kids to faith based school it will be because I want them in a Christ-centred environment, if I didn't want that I'd send them elsewhere. I don't pretend to be an expert on the Belgian heath-care system, but it does seem rather odd.

OK, this'll be exciting. I've just been fiddling with the blogger template, and I've changed a whole load of stuff that I didn't really understand. If all goes to plan then when I publish this entry the links to the amd faq pages should be back, linking to a more recent version of the faq (though possibly not the most recent version I've posted to the newsgroup, I'll deal with that later); all style should be gone from the site, with just h2 headers dividing up the content and navigation; the menu systems should be consistently imported across the site via SSI and the entire site should validate as XHTML 1.0 Strict. This way I can write some style sheets later and play with the design of the site forever without touching the content again. Or at least until I get board with this and move to another blogging platform.

In other news today Dan Barnett says that Andrew and the Andrews is an early version of me. Perhaps that's like James version 1.0. Or looking at the site it's probably nearer 3.2. More likely it's an old web site that I made years ago, and not actually me at all.

Also, I went into town with a friend this-afternoon with the vague intention of telling her a little about the fantastic things that have been happening over the last few days and some of the ideas I have about praying for Bradford. She ended up praying for me on a bench outside the law court, and the Holy Spirit was there in a way that I've not really experienced before. Being on your knees before God right in the middle of town is quite an unusual feeling, but it's totally amazing in ways I can't even begin to explain, and won't try to here and now.

I’ve got all kinds of exciting plans for this site. The idea is that I use it as a kind of on-line prayer diary and post prayers and prayer requests for the city of Bradford and life therein. I’m not really organised enough to have thought this through properly though, so today all I have is a prayer request for the SPEAK stall at Glastonbury. We need electricity, and this means finding a generator from somewhere with solar panels or a wind turbine or something.

I’ve completely failed to make any update to the SSI, the broken links or the style of this site. This is because of the many other things I mentioned having to do, including looking into electricity for SPEAK. The main event of today was the final year do down in the student union Basement. I wish that I was a poet so that maybe I could describe this properly. Or at least that I could write vaguely lucid prose. It was a great event, and all those who organised it deserve much credit.

So, thanks to God for probably the most productive day I’ve had in a long while. Senate was even interesting, possibly exciting. There's a peculiar thrill to knowing that you've just been told something no-one else knows. I think I’m going to struggle when it comes to being tactful with information.

I had dinner, I played GTA3, I went to the pub. Then I went to Pop Sox down in Escape, and now it's rather later than I intended. Thus everything I'd planned to do when I came in is going to have to wait. I've lots to do tomorrow, but the most of relevance is restoring all the old content to this site and beginning to play around with some of the templates and SSI. I figure content is king, so maybe if I type enough rubbish I'll be motivated to work on the style.

Meanwhile, here’s the update I posted the other day, between the old site and this one:

Well, I finally decided to go ahead and sign up for Blogger. Somehow this seems like cheating, so maybe once I'm getting paid I'll invest in some hosting I can run Moveable Type off. For the moment this will do. I've been meaning to do this for ages, so I have lots I want to say, but for the moment I just want to get some dinner, play GTA3 and go to the pub. I'll finish this later.