Just watched an amazing short film on YouTube offering a wonderful insight into what life was like in my city in the very recent past...
You HAVE to check it out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQJrovKgrTw&NR
"Man...I must be miles into Protestant territory..."
Friday, February 23, 2007
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
Ramblings...
Snow Patrol played on the bus’s cheap radio and I sat on the top deck looking out the window at a Belfast night, enjoying the view far too much for a 23 year old who travels the same route to and from the city’s centre almost every day. On the walk home snow crunched under my feet for the first time this year.
I got a lil criticism the other day for having a poorly updated blog…and well…the criticism was fair, the comments accurate. Truth is I haven’t wanted to write for some time. Tonight though as I rode the bus home I had one of those quiet moments of contentment…not necessarily a feeling that all is well with the world, or indeed my world, but rather a flicker of something like hope…the feeling that really life can be beautiful despite, even some times amidst, its brutal moments and that the future, stretching out in front of us as it does, promises the potential for much... It’s during fleeting moments like this that I feel compelled to write, doubtless an attempt to savour a feeling that rarely sticks around as long as I would like… (Not that I spend the rest of the time under a dark cloud of depression...far from it...but every now and again I get struck with these little flickers when everything feels that much lighter...)
I watched An Inconvenient Truth recently and have been turning off lights and feeling smug every time I get the bus ever since. It should be compulsory viewing for all. One of the comments that Gore makes, quoting Winston Churchill, has stayed with me:
The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to a close. In its place, we are entering a period of consequences.
It’s a quote which could be applied I am sure to a plethora of issues – here of course Gore is using it as a call to arms for all those who might give a damn about the planet which they live in, which their children will inherit and which their Father made. I was in a naval gazing mood when watching this particular documentary and so, although being absolutely impacted by Gore’s environmental message and convinced by his argument (Not that I took much convincing…I earned a Green Blue Peter badge at the age of 7 and was a firm follower of Captain Planet…my brother, the bonefide master of ecology, has also been a strong influence regarding all things conservation-esque), I was left pondering the period of consequences I feel I have entered as I have grown older. Douglas Coupland talks of how, “we are the sum of our decisions”. I am now the man which the decisions of my life have seen me become. Quite rightly that is who I will be judged on by those I meet...but at the same time I am far from finished deciding who I will be...
I have been thinking a great deal about what it is to be a man…about the man I am…the man I want to be…feel I have the potential to be…am determined to become. My Christian faith tells me that that should be a man whose life mirrors that of Jesus…one of, amongst other things, extravagant love and grace, servanthood and sacrifice... I am keenly aware that these are qualities which I fail to live up to, but they continue to be ideals which I must strive for. The tragedy of course is that I often do nothing of the sort.
I have a friend who has a thing about people’s greatest fears. If you ever have the good fortune to meet her she may even enquire after yours. This leads me to think of a movie which will change the life of all who watch it given the deep insights it offers into the human condition…or not…Coach Carter. In a scene thoroughly laced with cheddar, the movie contains dialogue along the lines of the following quote:
Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate, but that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us…We are all meant to shine as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us. It is not just in some; it is in everyone. And, as we let our light shine, we consciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
I find my greatest fear hard to identify…but, and I realize that this is not exactly what the above quote is getting at, I think it might be connected to this idea of being “powerful beyond measure” – The fear that despite having the potential to do something or be someone that I might dream to do or to be…I might fail to do so or be so. The fear of not reaching whatever potential I have within me. But I am unsure of whether I am genuinely afraid of this or not… I am wary of the danger certainly but, at this point at least, that knowledge motivates me to search out my potential rather than fear that I will betray it.
A friend recently mused that boys become men on going to war. The question they posed was why those of us who would be men find it so difficult to do so in the absence of such an experience. I am yet to formulate an opinion I am happy with. It does see me wondering about the draw I feel to Africa however…not that I think that such a journey would necessarily make a man of me (Sometimes I even toy with the concept of being one of those already...although I never doubt that I could be a better one) but nonetheless I am left wondering what impact such an experience would have on who I am. I consider the mere two and a half months I have spent in Africa to date to have been pretty much life-changing… Who knows what I will end up doing post-Masters but Africa has definitely been calling...
There's a character in Full Metal Jacket called Raptor Man, a photographer quite new to Vietnam. Despite Joker's efforts Raptor Man's desire to "Get into the shit" sees him volunteering to do so. I wonder what it is that makes people want to do such things, see such things...but at the minute I can't help thinking about how much I want to get into the shit. For years I have been hearing about the problems of Africa, reading about them, even experiencing a little of them and…well...the desire to go is powerful…to see if a change could be affected in some way...in any way...or at the very least to see if the problems could be better understood... Listening to an aid worker speak last year I was impacted by her desire to remove the romance from the notion. She talked about how lonely it is and how difficult... But how can that stop you? It clearly hasn't stopped her - currently in Sudan if I remember rightly. But of course you wonder then is there anything you could actually DO to help on the ground...I'm not exactly a doctor or a farmer or a builder or whatever... But for now I will dream about it all the same…
"I'm a man who discovered the wheel and built the Eiffel Tower out of metal and brawn. That's what kind of man I am."
We shall see...
I got a lil criticism the other day for having a poorly updated blog…and well…the criticism was fair, the comments accurate. Truth is I haven’t wanted to write for some time. Tonight though as I rode the bus home I had one of those quiet moments of contentment…not necessarily a feeling that all is well with the world, or indeed my world, but rather a flicker of something like hope…the feeling that really life can be beautiful despite, even some times amidst, its brutal moments and that the future, stretching out in front of us as it does, promises the potential for much... It’s during fleeting moments like this that I feel compelled to write, doubtless an attempt to savour a feeling that rarely sticks around as long as I would like… (Not that I spend the rest of the time under a dark cloud of depression...far from it...but every now and again I get struck with these little flickers when everything feels that much lighter...)
I watched An Inconvenient Truth recently and have been turning off lights and feeling smug every time I get the bus ever since. It should be compulsory viewing for all. One of the comments that Gore makes, quoting Winston Churchill, has stayed with me:
The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to a close. In its place, we are entering a period of consequences.
It’s a quote which could be applied I am sure to a plethora of issues – here of course Gore is using it as a call to arms for all those who might give a damn about the planet which they live in, which their children will inherit and which their Father made. I was in a naval gazing mood when watching this particular documentary and so, although being absolutely impacted by Gore’s environmental message and convinced by his argument (Not that I took much convincing…I earned a Green Blue Peter badge at the age of 7 and was a firm follower of Captain Planet…my brother, the bonefide master of ecology, has also been a strong influence regarding all things conservation-esque), I was left pondering the period of consequences I feel I have entered as I have grown older. Douglas Coupland talks of how, “we are the sum of our decisions”. I am now the man which the decisions of my life have seen me become. Quite rightly that is who I will be judged on by those I meet...but at the same time I am far from finished deciding who I will be...
I have been thinking a great deal about what it is to be a man…about the man I am…the man I want to be…feel I have the potential to be…am determined to become. My Christian faith tells me that that should be a man whose life mirrors that of Jesus…one of, amongst other things, extravagant love and grace, servanthood and sacrifice... I am keenly aware that these are qualities which I fail to live up to, but they continue to be ideals which I must strive for. The tragedy of course is that I often do nothing of the sort.
I have a friend who has a thing about people’s greatest fears. If you ever have the good fortune to meet her she may even enquire after yours. This leads me to think of a movie which will change the life of all who watch it given the deep insights it offers into the human condition…or not…Coach Carter. In a scene thoroughly laced with cheddar, the movie contains dialogue along the lines of the following quote:
Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate, but that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us…We are all meant to shine as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us. It is not just in some; it is in everyone. And, as we let our light shine, we consciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
I find my greatest fear hard to identify…but, and I realize that this is not exactly what the above quote is getting at, I think it might be connected to this idea of being “powerful beyond measure” – The fear that despite having the potential to do something or be someone that I might dream to do or to be…I might fail to do so or be so. The fear of not reaching whatever potential I have within me. But I am unsure of whether I am genuinely afraid of this or not… I am wary of the danger certainly but, at this point at least, that knowledge motivates me to search out my potential rather than fear that I will betray it.
A friend recently mused that boys become men on going to war. The question they posed was why those of us who would be men find it so difficult to do so in the absence of such an experience. I am yet to formulate an opinion I am happy with. It does see me wondering about the draw I feel to Africa however…not that I think that such a journey would necessarily make a man of me (Sometimes I even toy with the concept of being one of those already...although I never doubt that I could be a better one) but nonetheless I am left wondering what impact such an experience would have on who I am. I consider the mere two and a half months I have spent in Africa to date to have been pretty much life-changing… Who knows what I will end up doing post-Masters but Africa has definitely been calling...
There's a character in Full Metal Jacket called Raptor Man, a photographer quite new to Vietnam. Despite Joker's efforts Raptor Man's desire to "Get into the shit" sees him volunteering to do so. I wonder what it is that makes people want to do such things, see such things...but at the minute I can't help thinking about how much I want to get into the shit. For years I have been hearing about the problems of Africa, reading about them, even experiencing a little of them and…well...the desire to go is powerful…to see if a change could be affected in some way...in any way...or at the very least to see if the problems could be better understood... Listening to an aid worker speak last year I was impacted by her desire to remove the romance from the notion. She talked about how lonely it is and how difficult... But how can that stop you? It clearly hasn't stopped her - currently in Sudan if I remember rightly. But of course you wonder then is there anything you could actually DO to help on the ground...I'm not exactly a doctor or a farmer or a builder or whatever... But for now I will dream about it all the same…
"I'm a man who discovered the wheel and built the Eiffel Tower out of metal and brawn. That's what kind of man I am."
We shall see...
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