Diverscity

May began, as usual with our church weekend away, which I believe to have been one of the best ever! A highlight was having both Hannah and Lisa braving the stage to perform in the talent show, and Lisa getting a joint first place, Hannah's lot getting second! Ok, ok, so it's not Britain's Got Talent standards (sometimes it's better) but it takes a bit of guts to get up in front of 40 people and perform. Lisa and Tatiana did some jazz dancing (they repeated the routine they do every Thursday) and Hannah was a dying girl in a funny play.

A Garden in total submission!

Then back to Café Forever and Tom, Bill, Anna and I began the project of removing the shed from the garden - Bill and Anna now have the bits of the shed in their allotment. Before pulling the shed down the contents needed to be extracted and what a lot of stuff there was. Some of it was actually quite useful - a strimmer, a wallpaper remover, a clip on lamp, about 30meters of electrical cabling, lots of tarpaulins and many other bits of things and canisters etc... Individually they are useful but in the shed they became a problem because you never knew what was in the shed. I used the shed as an illustration in a talk I gave to a group of churches in Torquay. Jesus says we must lose our life if we are to save it - now I think it is a bit like this shed - it has some useful bits inside it and so we could justify many times the reasons for keeping the shed, but we were never able to do anything with the shed because it was all so tangled up with the useless and the messy and the broken within. The only solution was to get rid of everything and start fresh. The contents and the shed is now gone. We now have a massive empty space in the back garden at Café Forever, which, I believe in the very near future, will be developed into a wonderful outdoor space with a door leading out from the Café. The same can be true for our lives, God can do so much with us if we are prepared to give Him everything - to lose our lives to Him.

Fuuuuuuuuun Day.

We also had a team from Boston out here in the beginning of June who put on a wonderful fun day in St John's park. I was only able to attend for a very short time but I think it is the biggest fun day I have ever seen, and certainly by what I have heard from other parents, very successful.

Last night Natalie and I went to a leaving do for some friends who have been with us for a long time. They aren't moving all that far away, Tunbridge Wells, but it is sad to see them go as we really love them. Ivonne, Devim, Melissa and Lara, if God wills we will be visiting you soon. I had an interesting discussion with Devim, one that left me thinking. We had been speaking about the benefits of life on the Isle of Dogs - Devim was saying how much he loved the diversity and freedom that that diversity brings. We spoke about how certain parts of the world there's so much tension caused by racial and ethnic divisions and how wonderful it is that London overcomes it. For a moment an old voice came to mind, an unfriendly one, a nationalistic one, that said it doesn't like the influx of people that displace and churn up the community. But today, on reflection, I really appreciate the volume of different cultures that surround us, the ability that Londoners have to welcome one another - all recognising that here everyone is foreign, and everyone is in need of a little grace. Perhaps it is a plan of God, to turn over the rough ground, to break up the hard, entrenched nationalistic community. Devim, I agree with you, London is wonderful.

Pointless existence

Ted Baker Shirt

I often get leaflets and magazines through my door for humanitarian aid and wonderful organisations that are doing things for suffering people all over the world. I wish I could work for them but my CV is no good. I would like to work for them because I am distressed with the people they are looking after and I recognize their hunger and need and identify with their weakness, their powerlessness. Today I was in Ted Baker shop in Canary Wharf and looked at a simple short sleeved button shirt - the price tag was £75! I hope that that is shocking to you. If it is not, know this... for the price of 2 Ted Baker shirts your money could keep 4 young girls from being trafficked in Laos through TEARFUND

TEARFUND

Who is the most influential person you know? Could it be David Cameron, Barrack Obama, Bill Gates? Most of us know OF these people and have heard a bit about them, but what would it be like to actually KNOW them, like a friend? Imagine you could, as a friend of Barrack Obama, through him persuade the change in US foreign policy that would affect the protection of thousands of children in South Sudan! That must be a really amazing position to be in. Powerful. Secure. Purposeful. A while back I ran an April Fools Day image that I photoshopped to look like Prince William walked with me on the Isle of Dogs outside Café Forever ... as if - I did manage to trick a number of people. 

'Genuine' image

I think it must be amazing to work alongside such movers and shakers, but I don't see them as having ultimate authority. As I read the bible I see more and more of little, insignificant people being really important to God. These insignificant types become, through a relationship with God, more and more significant and their lives more and more purposeful. For example, a few names - Gideon, Mary Magdalene, Peter, Esther, Ruth, Ezekiel, Jeremiah. In fact almost all of them began insignificant in the eyes of men - just look at how Moses started out and what Pharoah thought of the Jews when he was born!

I recognized the power of God when I turned 30. At that time I was working for Sky News and earning a lot of money and then blowing it regularly on alcohol, drugs, holidays, and preening my feathers. It was a purposeless existence. I was however aware of an imbalance between rich and poor, between races and classes of people, and a rapid decline in the state of our world in general, and it bothered me. I saw the problem but I couldn't see a solution. Love always seemed like something you fell into with a girl. Love was a very strange concept to me - I needed it and thought I had the ability to give it, but looking back I know that all I could give was pain.

I am now, I believe, through my time I spend with people on the Isle of Dogs, in church, and in the community, converting people from an ideology of selfishness to selflessness - to learn to love people properly. I am not in anyway qualified to do this having been a selfish man all of my life. I do however know somebody who does know absolutely every aspect of love. Hopefully those I spend time with will in turn learn to love their neighbour as themselves. I guess I am, in some way, working to relieving the suffering of people in other parts of the world too. God doesn't need movers and shakers, he needs obedient servants.