Time to Change Campaign

I have no hesitation in drawing attention to the Time for Change Campaign. Both Gill and I have had experience of mental health issues, personally in the past and more recently with a family member.
Please check out the website at Time fto Change and read the stories of some people who I am sure you will know.

God Bless

A Tale of Two Countries

USA

US President Barack Obama is expected to sign an executive order to start the process of closing down the Guantanamo Bay detention camp within days. http://tinyurl.com/a7n4vd

UK

Plans to exclude relatives, juries and the press from some inquests - on national security grounds - are being brought back by ministers.

They come in a new bill covering coroners, murder laws, witness protection and sentencing. Just months ago, similar plans were shelved.

The government says secret inquests, which many oppose, would prevent intelligence details from leaking out. http://tinyurl.com/8xpyv7

I've often criticised the USA in the past but it seems to me that they have some advantages that we in the UK are denied.

• They elect their President - we have a Prime Minister pushed on us whether we want them of not
• They have a fixed term of Office so that everyone knows where they stand - Government in the UK can call an election on its own whim
• They have a written Constitution outlining the rights of individual citizens - we have laws that can be changed by government whenever they choose

Under New Labour more individual rights have been abolished than by any Government before. We Brits are the most spied on nation in the world (including Communist China).

Come back Tom Paine - all is forgiven!

Life over Christmans

Life has been a little fraught in the Chambers household of recent and I have not got round to updating this blog. Also, being dyslexic I'm always full of ideas but never seem to get round to putting them into print.

Gill and I managed to get away for a few days before Christmas. We visited Ledbury and Leominster before moving down near Raglan Castle, just outside of Monmouth. Both Ledbury and Leominster are places we frequently pass when travelling down to re-enactment events but never visit. Monmouth and the surrounding area was visited by us some nineteen years ago - the same year we joined the White Company which began our long involvement with the re-enactment world. Interestingly, the ex-members of the White Company have just formed a Facebook group and many of the old photographs and video footage have come to light: some of which may best be forgotten!

Christmas was spent at Gill's sister's house in Suffolk. There was something nice about walking across fields to attend the Midnight Communion. The family joined us and were able to have a relaxing time, punctuated with visits to the Butt and Oyster Pub.

On boxing day we watched the Morris Dancing which is a traditional event. I was to read later the Morris Groups are finding it hard to recruit new members and are in real danger of dying out. What a shame after all these years! It seems life is getting blander (just like drink with Real Ale being taken over by chemical lager)

People are forgetting how to celebrate as a community. Perhaps now our pastime of 'retail therapy' is being taken away we shall remember what life is all about.

Celtic Deserts

That was the title of a course which I attended last week at St. Deiniol's Library, Hawarden, North Wales. The course was lead by David Keller, a former Steward of the Episcopal House of Prayer at St. John's Abbey Minnesota and Emily Winter, a Julian Scholar. The course was designed to reflect on the shared wisdom of the Desert Fathers and Mothers and the Celtic Saints, examining the implications for our personal living, for society in general and the Church in the 21st Century. It was, on the surface, a strange mix of academic study, contemplative prayer, and pilgrimage to Celtic sites around North Wales.

St. Deiniol's Library was constructed as a memorial to William Gladstone and is of late Victorian Splendour, far removed from the lives of both the Desert Fathers and the Celtic Saints. It seemed to me that many attending the course were clergy who possessed 'Oxford' English accents. I confess that I soon began to wonder how God could ever work in this environment.

Well, God proved me wrong. I have been on many courses with many groups but I have yet to find one which seemed to gel as this one as we shared together not only the teaching, but the mystical experience we each felt as we visited the 'thin' places on our days out. I rarely cry, but I cried a lot towards the end when I heard others describing the exact same experiences that I had witnessed. Most importantly I began to see Christ in others for whom in the natural way of things I would not have an affinity.

I have deliberately left off writing this blog for a few days because I wanted to make sure that the 'emotion' of the week away had time to subside. However, I am still left with the feeling of a great seed change in my thinking. The people I meet everyday no longer seem to be just another person, but someone in whom God is revealed and is speaking. What I fully feel is hard to put into words at this stage but I am sure God has his plans!

St Seiriol's Well
One of the sites we visited which was of particular blessing