Cave of the Yellow Dog

Mel and I and others watched Cave of the Yellow Dog last night. I have never been so scared in my life! during the whole movie my mind was racing and my whole body was tight with anxiety. The movie was a really nice movie about a Mongolian family, however since it wasn't a Hollywood blockbuster, there weren't special effects tarting it up or a twisted killer that abducted small children while looking after the sheep. Hollywood plots are so much a part of me. In the wise words of Garth (Wayne's World. "It's sucking my will to live!") It has taken over my thinking!!!!

Now I just want to re-frame the sentence about it being scary. The movie itself wasn't scary, but I was continually scared, because for most of the movie I was trying to twist in a murder scene etc, and the beautiful simplicity of this young family was going to be destroyed. However I was wrong.
So in closing. If you haven't seen the movie, watch it; it was great to watch a movie about life.

just some thoughts...

Some of the young people I meet seemingly have nothing going for them, but have something within them that knows of life and Jesus that I don’t think I know. There is a Holy place within them. I think. Sometimes I don’t know if I can see it, but other times when they are telling me their story, I feel like I’m on Holy Ground. I don’t ever know what to do with their stories. I never feel like the answers are there for me to pull out. (Maybe that’s good) All I can ever do is listen.
Pictures like this: (thanks Banksy)


Speak 1000 words to me. Words of loss, of hopelessness, but of reality.

I met a man the other day, his name was Richard, he is my friend. He lives in a park. Richard was a man who had a speech impediment, which made him very difficult to understand. Richard said many people pass him on the street and ask him if he is ok. He said that they never really stop to hear or understand his answer.
The part of Richard that I saw was that of a saint. I know that I do not know Richard or what he is capable of, I don’t know what he’s done, but that’s ok. To me Richard is still a saint.

What am I supposed to do if someone tells me about my friend Richard? What do I do if I learn about Richard’s past? What happens to the Richard I saw, Richard the saint?

My friend Daniel sings a song called John Lennon. (His web site is linked to the blog under Mr T)

Daniel Townsend:
“My preacher still teaches that Jesus can be only be found with eyes closed while you pray.
That’s ok for him to say, but I drove through the city today and I saw Jesus begging for change. Out in the rain.”

In the Words of another friend:
You’ve heard it before to love your neighbour and then to hate your enemy. But I say love your enemies! If you only love those who love you, what’s the good of that? Even sinners do that. Instead, I want you to be perfect like your Farther in heaven is perfect.Jesus

The risk of living and giving all that I am for the kingdom is so massive, and I don’t know if have taken it into full account. Often I feel like the young lawyer. I've got all the best intentions, but the call of safety and security don't measure up with the possible losses that I could face.

I’m so scared.

Banksy...

I somehow stumbled upon this guys site, interesting pictures, also an interesting read. Thought I'd share it, (this is straight from his site, so if you check it out you will see this, I guess it's plagurism, hmm... oh well, no offence intended:


An extract from the diary of Lieutenant Colonel Mervin Willett Gonin DSO who was
among the first British soldiers to liberate Bergen-Belsen in 1945.

Camp
I can give no adequate description of the Horror Camp in which my men and myself were to spend the next month of our lives. It was just a barren wilderness, as bare as a chicken run. Corpses lay everywhere, some in huge piles, sometimes they lay singly or in pairs where they had fallen. It took a little time to get used to seeing men women and children collapse as you walked by them and to restrain oneself from going to their assistance. One had to get used early to the idea that the individual just did not count. One knew that five hundred a day were dying and that five hundred a day were going on dying for weeks before anything we could do would have the slightest effect. It was, however, not easy to watch a child choking to death from diptheria when you knew a tracheotomy and nursing would save it, one saw women drowning in their own vomit because they were too weak to turn over, and men eating worms as they clutched a half loaf of bread purely because they had to eat worms to live and now could scarcely tell the difference. Piles of corpses, naked and obscene, with a woman too weak to stand proping herself against them as she cooked the food we had given her over an open fire; men and women crouching down just anywhere in the open relieving themselves of the dysentary which was scouring their bowels, a woman standing stark naked washing herself with some issue soap in water from a tank in which the remains of a child floated. It was shortly after the British Red Cross arrived, though it may have no connection, that a very large quantity of lipstick arrived. This was not at all what we men wanted, we were screaming for hundreds and thousands of other things and I don't know who asked for lipstick. I wish so much that I could discover who did it, it was the action of genius, sheer unadulterated brilliance. I believe nothing did more for these internees than the lipstick. Women lay in bed with no sheets and no nightie but with scarlet red lips, you saw them wandering about with nothing but a blanket over their shoulders, but with scarlet red lips. I saw a woman dead on the post mortem table and clutched in her hand was a piece of lipstick. At last someone had done something to make them individuals again, they were someone, no longer merely the number tatooed on the arm. At last they could take an interest in their appearance. That lipstick started to give them back their humanity.

Source: Imperial War museum

etchings of my day...

Nothing amazing, nothing concreted, just thoughts mixed with feelings about my head space at work.
My desk
19 folders, 19 separate numbers sitting upon my desk.
19 lives, all moving in spaces of their own.
Homelessness, methadone, trauma, depression, guilt
All labels attached to names
19 lives just sitting here, but living… somewhere.

Can I care for 19? Can I care for 1?
Is there space in my life for 19 new stories?
Pain, guilt and loss
What do I do with 19 folders/ stories/ people?
Can I lock them again in my draw tonight, without second thought?
Can I lock them away to silence them?
Can I move into a little space of my own and forget the significance of their story?
Should I?...