recently i was asked this question. Please write a few words of your personal story describing something of your own spiritual journey.

recently I have been reflecting on my attitude to work and how this has been influenced and shaped.

“One of the best reasons for being a Christian, as with a socialist, is that you don’t like to do any work.”(Terry Eagleton, Reason, Faith & revolution: Reflections on the God Debate. Yale, 2009)

Yet the understanding of work has been changed and taken beyond the way Jesus lived to become more in the image of Paul. I have respect for Paul he was a great organiser, preacher and worker. Yet I find I cannot square the accusations leveled against Jesus of being a glutton & being an layabout, and fraternising with low in society with a work ethic which seems to encourage a drive towards self improvement and a burgeoning middle class aspirationaism.

I believe there is nothing wrong with being middle class.
I believe there is nothing wrong with self improvement.
I believe there is nothing wrong with work.

However there does seem to be a disconnect between an example of the word becoming flesh, which took time to travel with people, and spent time with the people no one else would, and faith community which implicitly, and sometimes explicitly esteems high paid jobs, professionalism, and a ‘protestant’ work ethic.

I see the faith and beliefs I hold as something integral to me and as I reflect and think about who I am, and what that means for myself and how I act, I find more incongruence. As such I have decided to make a change, to live life differently to follow Christ and his example in a different way. And see how that goes.

So I have quit my job.

And work/ faith/life may never be the same again.

(NB On the notion of spiritual Journey, I find it unhelpful. I think that it can lead to a sort of spiritual tourism. I think our theology (belief/understanding of God) is very influenced by our place. Where we are, how we engage with the world and conversely how the world engages with us. Unhelpfully spiritual journey seems to transcend reality and condemn our life experience as a moot point, unless it can be spiritualised.)

Of course I could be wrong on this and reserve the right to be wrong!

(or How to change your life with a letter.)

MY life is changing for the better, of this I am sure. Yet i find it hard to adequately explain whats happening.

the headlines.
I have stopped working for The Salvation Army In Easterhouse.
I have accepted a part time position at Greyfriars Church in Lanark.
I am going to become a stay at home dad for my children.

Who?
me, scott paget I wrote a letter of resignation to The Salvation Army, Easterhouse.

What?
I am stopping work for the Salvation Army. This is good, and hopefully a good thing which will have a knock on effect to the work i can and will do, moving forward the future i hope i will have.

why?
Cause it will be fun.
Over the last few years, in discussions with my wife, I had said it would make sense for me to be the one who stayed at home. Money wise that made sense. But working worked for me. it forced me to interact. It gave me a sense of joy, something to do and do well. I wasn’t able to opt out of life. I have to be careful about who and what I am.

So when this wee job came up, i went for it. I got it and start soon.

When?
In about a weeks time.
About 4 months ago i discovered my boss, who had been joking about moving was actually moving. (we had suspected!)
Then 2 months ago I spoke at Third Sunday, the plan was to have a pretty straight church style service, but it was on one of the 10 commandments, “do not lie”. Sounds pretty straight forward right, do not lie. I couldn’t do it straight forward, How could I stand in front of a group of people I cared about and tell them not to lie when I do lie. As I thought about it I felt honesty would be best.
So I took it as a confessional/analysis talk, where i discussed and looked at why i and others lie. How we can change and the place of grace/Holy Living. It went well, I felt, it provoked questions in those that were there. Some people were complimentary and some wanted to chat further.

As a planning group we met to discuss what had happened and how people had felt about it. By the end of the meeting I was left doubting my approach, where I was and what I was doing even attempting to talk to others about this stuff.

It was clear I needed to review what I believed, why I believed it and what that meant for me as a worker. As a reflective practitioner i took this opportunity gratefully and used it as something helpful and useful. I went through that process I realised that working was a not something I wanted to continue. That changing my life would be beneficial for me, my family and for those I worked with.

How?
Stopping work will be hard, but will give me more time, and space to be, within the family, and myself.

As i write, I wish I had more answers, but I am in a place of reflection and change.
“Isn’t this the place we’re practicing belief
Seems we’re always looking at the door In hopes for so much more
And the stories in my pockets are the best I’ve ever lived”

so I am almost home,
I am excited about the possibilities it can hold.
I am excited about eh new job.
I am sad to leave somewhere i did a good job.
I am sad to leave something i had committed to.
I am hopeful & unsettled.

If you are passing, knock the door, or ring the bell.
It would be good to see you.

Thanks to my lovely wife, i have a beautiful new laptop.
It was a complete surprise and i am still at a loss for why.

I do have to say though, it is lighter, faster, somehow it looks more compact than the previous one.

A big thank you to my wife for such a wonderful surprise. it really was quite amazing.
It is quite wonderful.

all i have to do is save up for a new laptop bag for it to fit in,
one of these would be nice…

I wrote a letter…
It was accepted.

Changes.
They come in some unexpected places.

You came to take us
All things go, all things go
To recreate us
All things grow, all things grow
We had our mindset
(I made a lot of mistakes)
All things know, all things know
(I made a lot of mistakes)
You had to find it
(I made a lot of mistakes)
All things go, all things go
(I made a lot of mistakes)

I lost my password.

Found it now.

More later.

a brief list of some things I am working on (which will never be completed)

1 – writing a book.
2 – writing a panto.
3 – learning to use Drupal.
4 – redesigning my website
5 – possibilities for future Professional Development
6 – listening to Opera
7 – finishing a book (reading 4 currently), before I buy another one.

i have broken the internet.
sorry.

I intent to repair it but frankly i am puzzled.

(For my blog i use the excellent wordpress,downloaded to my own site & hooked up to my own mysql database. I can get to the log in page, enter my details, then it points me to a big white page of nothing. nada, white screen of death.)

Once I have a solution I shall let you know, in the mean time I am using something call deepest sender and the wordpress for Iphone app to add content.

My boss is moving to a new church. I will have a new boss.
His name is Roger.

Solas Festival is happening 25th-27th June. and I, somehow, have managed to be a part of the process of making this entire thing happen. (I knew i should have stopped my addiction to turning up at meetings!)
I am quite pleased to be involved withe the Solas festival bods in trying to do something creative and new and quality within Scotland. It is quite weird and affirming to sit as a equal in a room with people you respect and work with, to work together on a project with internationally exhibiting artists, people who’s songs I sing and have taken on, with people who’s books i have read and been influenced by. I was e-mailing a friend yesterday and writing down what my involvement was an i didn’t realise quite how much i was doing . but by the time June comesI won’t remember all the time I volunteered to it.

So what is Solas? Solas is an arts festival wrestling with the issues around the intersection of faith/arts/justice. It is an attempt to look at what is Scottish, and how these themes play out within a Scottish context. Mr Gay writing for the website says it so much better than i can;

“Solas Festival is an independently funded and managed organisation which works in Scotland to promote the celebration and exploration of relationships between faith, art and justice. Its roots lie in the Christian tradition, ecumenically understood, and it seeks to be actively hospitable to a range of faith traditions.
Our dream is that this all-age weekend will light up the Scottish festival landscape with a vivid mix of music, debate, theatre, comedy, film and visual art and will quickly establish itself as a unique location to celebrate and question our commitments to art, faith and justice within Scotland’s cultural life. Come with us on the journey.”

so get involved please help us make this happen.

come along to the weekend, that’s right, buy a ticket there is a heavy discount until the end of February
http://www.solasfestival.co.uk/tickets.php
volunteer, come and help us actually make the weekend happen.
http://www.solasfestival.co.uk/volunteer.php
become a saint and help fund this vision either regularly or in a one off basis
http://www.solasfestival.co.uk/give.php

As for me I will be the one running about hoping everything will run well.

over the past month or so I have finished two books! hurrah

The first was Miroslav Volf’s “Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace.”
I really enjoyed it but it did take me 3 years to get through it. Partly as I mainly read while traveling on public transport, and partly because every time he said something interesting or I had never thought of before I would pause and try and put it into some semblance of thought within my small brain. I really enjoyed it but i am not sure i find forgiving suhc as easy task now.

I had been developing an inappropriate level of giving. (reckless perhaps rather than inappropriate maybe). Random people benefited from that giving at random times. and while this remains, the forgiving element has begun to get harder. not from the point of saying i forgive you, but fromthe point of view of forgiveness now being and more deliberate and costly affair. I ma not so quick to forgive as I used to be. but I do wonder if the forgiveness I used to deal in was forgiveness at all or just some sort of ritualistic memory wiping trick.

Perhaps I have just realised how much I don’t forgive myself.

buy it here :- http://www.amazon.co.uk/Free-Charge-Forgiving-Culture-Stripped/dp/0310265746

Peter bentley’s the book of Numbers was great. As a popular maths book it did exactly what it said on the tin. it made maths more popular with me.

Maybe it’s just the years of watching “QI” maybe it’s just my age but this book certainly did made maths and numbers suddenly something I could get an in on. I still struggle with lots of aspects of maths, I just don’t think in the way you need to think to be a mathmatician. (thankfully) this book was able through a mix of history, simplifing large concepts and storytelling to show some of the life behind the “do this because we have proved it worked” blind faith stand point which my school maths career seemed to stall on.

The key to the book was starting at the beginning and working through the development of mathematical knowledge from the earliest point to the current day. Suddenly the back story made the discoveries and theory something real rather than something abstract which I could never quite get. As a side point I had the Hardback edition and it is beautifully printed with great photos and illustrations ensuring the text never seemed to heavy or the example boxes to complex.

Buy it here :- http://www.amazon.co.uk/Book-Numbers-Peter-Bentley/dp/1844033961/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1259684820&sr=1-1

so with them read I should finish the Zizek’s “The Fragile absolute” but i lost it on an nondescript morning commute somewhere. Hmmmmm. so reading something competely different instead