Weblog

Tuesday, 22 November 2011

  • www.awakeningsardis.blogspot.com

    Dear Xanga readers.. you have been very good to me for many years. Thank you Laura and Hannah for your collaboration and cheekiness to make me a blog and send me the password... and write my first couple posts for me because I was so in protest of blogging. They were funny beginnings for a stubborn me but in the end I found blogging cathartic. :) A journal to rant in that people will actually read. 

     

    I would keep xanga going but it has decided to blog me out of this site every time I sign on (today it took 3 password reset to get me in and then when I clicked on one other site it locked me out again and I had to start over!) So I am moving on to a blog that is a bit more readily available for my typing. You can find me here:

     

    www.awakeningsardis.blogspot.com 

     

    I don't always like change.. but this change will mean I can keep blogging.. so see you over there! :) 

Friday, 16 September 2011

  • Xanga has had me blocked from signing in the last month... so trying it from Ellis' computer. Let's see if this works.. or else.. I will be blogging from blogspot from now on!

Friday, 12 August 2011

  • Lookin after your 'hood...

    http://redeemercitytocity.com/blog/view.jsp?Blog_param=375

     

    I read stuff out of Redeemer City to City once a month. Love that website and all the resources it has! Here is an excerpt from the above blog. You might need to create a password and user name to read the whole thing.. I forget! But great article on looking after your 'hood.

     

    "That ethos looks like this. Celebrate your place: its unique glories, its funky idiosyncrasies, its sad stories, and its festive rituals. You know your place like a lover knows the gossamer hairs on the small of his beloved's back. And you know intuitively that no honeymooning newcomer could possibly love the neighbourhood with the wisdom you do—that some only use it for cheap satisfaction. So make your life a loud and living poem that trumpets your love. Invite others into it and give them time to grow from naïveté or indifference into the depths of mature love. As a proud host, welcome these strangers into your home and set the feast. Your greatest temptation is parochial tribalism, so be not too proud or intractable to exercise hospitality, to incorporate creative change, to allow your vigour to be renewed by your neighbour's presence in your shared place.

    To the newcomer I have more to say. The burden is ours to be attentive to the radical and rapid manner in which our presence is able to make over a place. We often share in social movements with the power to profoundly effect change, for good and for ill. It will not do to be unthoughtful about our responsibility with this power to others—we start out as guests in someone else's home, after all. Your presence might not feel to you like hostility, but as we learn from the Parable of the Good Samaritan, indifference while pursuing your personal agenda is its own form of violence. Our greatest temptation is to mindlessly remake a place in the image of whatever our universal affinities may be, regardless of their relationship to the local. And while your open loft may be a blank canvas, a neighbourhood never is."

Tuesday, 09 August 2011

  • Selfish Riots

    I am sitting in the Cleveland airport getting ready to fly back into the UK into what seems like utter mayhem. I have been glued to Twitter and BBC and Facebook for updates the last couple of days as the UK has exploded into riots in what seems like now perhaps 5-7 cities. 

    I read the newspaper comments from rioters at the beginning of it all. Frustrated youth and young people. Feelings of hopelessness. Lack of jobs. Anger at poverty, racial profiling, the anger of the killing of a 29 year old in London, lack of hope, lack of a future. 

    I think those newsreporters were being very kind. 4 days in and I have just one thought to it all. Utter selfishness. My friend just came home from work in Liverpool to find 15 youth coming out of the news agent. They had beat a man called Ali up who owned it. For what end? 

    Violence, destruction, theft and anarchy has burnt homes, businesses, cars, buses, tires (yes a pile of tires were also being burnt in Liverpool too) and for what?

     

    Pure selfishness.

     

    Rioters you have no point. You have no perspective. No understanding to how good we have it in the UK and on what suffering is in the world. It is just plain selfishness. It is lack of respect for other people. It is lack of respect for authority and lack of appreciation for what we have in the UK. You are not fighting the rich. You are hurting other peoples ways of feeding their kids and paying the bills. People's livelihoods are being destroyed. You are driving fear into your country and for what? Our UK riots are coordinated on expensive smartphones. I wonder how long the cost of your smartphone could feed people for in poverty stricken Ethiopia that is in another terrible food crisis right now? In one article I saw people saying it was because of the Tory government and spending cuts. We still have free health care when 1 in 7 babies dies before their first birthday in Afghanistan because of a lack of basic healthcare. Children in Haiti are still living in tents 1.5 years on from the destructive earthquake and the hurricane season is coming. I am guessing most rioters will go home to a roof over their head. Protesters starting in Egypt and then across the region a few months ago were protesting for the right to be free from dictators. They were overthrowing a lack of freedom to have their votes count. In some of the countries horrible violence was inflicted on those protesting for freedom from their own governments. The UK has been trying to control the riots without such tactics despite the violence coming back at them. Oh and by the way, I know many of the Revolutions that happened a few months ago starting in Tunisia and Egypt were using Gene Sharp's From Dictatorship to Democracy which is all about NON violent protest. 

     

    The UK has seen a sad day. A sad week when the reality of human selfishness has brought destruction on our nation. Pray with me for it to end and for justice to be brought and restoration to the many people affected in our country. 

Friday, 05 August 2011

  • The joys of forms

    Filling out my UK long term residency permit form. It is doing my head in to say the least. I got to this question and don't know whether to sink my head in the sand glumly and give up. Or laugh. 
     
    6.1 When did you FIRST enter the UK? This refers to the date of your first entry into the UK at the beginning period of stay on which this application is based.
     
     
    6.2 Since then have you had any absences from the UK? If yes give the dates you left and returned to the UK and the reason for the absence in the spaces below. List all absences however short and in date order. If you need more space, continue on a separate sheet and enclose it with your application

    Are you joking me?! I can't remember how many planes I have flown on in the last 18 months. 

criscris007

  • Visit criscris007's Xanga Site
    • Name: Christy
    • Gender: Female
    • Member Since: 3/28/2005

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  • ellisSol
    Hi Christy, I just registered with xango, and you're the only one I know thats on here! :) Hope all is well. I've been up all night working while listening to some Michael Jackson music. Time to go to sleep I guess Ellis