Build this house

Lou Fellingham's new CD Treasure is very well worth getting. This song is typically beautifully sung, but more, is a challenging prayer: [mp3 sample]

All I have and all I am is Yours
There's nothing that I have on earth
that doesn't come from You
I lay aside my pride and wordly worth
To serve You is the greatest thing
that I could ever do

For unless you build this house
I am building it in vain
Unless the work is Yours
There is nothing to be gained
I want something that will stand
When your Holy fire comes
Something that will last
And to hear You say well done
Giving Glory to You Lord
Glory to You Lord

So easy to desire what others have
Instead of seeing all the gifts that
You have given me
So help me fan the flame which You began
And burn in me a love for You
that all will clearly see

"What do you do?"

There are many strange perceptions out there about what a CU Staff Worker might do.

I do not do this [HT: Fearners] I'm not aware that anyone does think I do that, but just to set the record straight.

There's nothing like a good communications strategy...

CU member: Who are you?
étrangère: I'm the new Andy Weatherly, only shorter, blonder, more Northern Irish, and female.
CU member: Nothing like Andy then.
étrangère: Well, no, not really.

So why not let the CU members define the job?

CU member: Who are you then?
étrangère: I'm the CU Staff Worker :-)
CU member: Oh, you're the one who takes them for coffee? [With a nod towards the 2 leaders]
étrangère: Something like that [2 leaders smile brightly]

Or the university multi-faith centre chaplains?

étrangère: Hi...
Friendly Chaplain: Yes, I know you!
étrangère: Em, I don't think so...
[FC has a moment of insisting he knows me, followed by the realisation that he doesn't. Then...]
FC: Good to meet you - you'll know all about me! [Aside to students:] They get briefed on Chaplains, you see. [Back to me:] Andy will have sent you all my emails!
étrangère: Er...

Well, why don't we see what non-Christians think?

Orchestra member: So what do you do?
étrangère: I help students study the Bible to check out who Jesus is and what they're going to do about it.
[After a while, he calls me back, indicating the lady beside him]
Orchestra member: She's a vicar's wife!
'Vicar's wife': Hi. He says you're 'some sort of Christian' & that you do Bible studies?

Driving instructor: What's your job?
étrangère [concentrating hard and going into 3rd gear]: I work with students...
Driving instructor: We'll be turning right at the next junction
étrangère: ...I help them [check mirrors, signal] investigate the Bible, and [mirrors, slow down] who Jesus is, so [down into 2nd] that they'll trust in him...
Driving instructor: SLOW DOWN - how much of the road can you see?
étrangère: [slow down, take corner]
Driving instructor: Well done.
étrangère: ...and know how to follow him.
Driving instructor: Ah, ok. ... Well I won't be asking you any more questions as you clearly can't concentrate on the road at the same time.

I gather the explanation doesn't get any easier as time goes on. There's something on it here, but there's only so much you can...

Profoundly tagged

Jonathan flung tagliatelle my way across the blogosphere (I know, how rude). It means I'm supposed to answer the following questions (and he expects me to be profound!) Here goes...

Why do you blog?
It helps me think through things more carefully (in putting them in writing) and introduces the accountability of making the thoughts public - so I can check that I'm analysing things in a gospel way and for the building up of the church and God's glory. I also find it helpful to keep track myself - if I haven't posted in a while, it forces me to question, 'Have I not learnt anything? Been challenged by anything?...' Then hopefully sharing such things does build up others and leads to helpful interaction which does me good too. Oh, and it's fun.

How long have you been blogging?
It looks like I started on 7th July 2005. Which I did. So that's... oh you work it out; I did a maths degree.

Self portrait.
A self portrait doesn't have to be of the artistic variety, does it?
Why do readers read your blog?
Well? You're reading this - why? I'm not a mind-reader! Anyway, not all readers read my blog. The vast majority of readers read books and have no idea my blog is here. Good for them.

What was the last search phrase someone used to find your site?
If I found out site stats I'd be captive to them. I know me - I'd start trying to get more, or I'd feel proud of what I have (or probably both). So I've deliberately no idea if anyone ever used a search phrase to find my blog. I rather doubt it.

Which of the entries gets unjustly too little attention?
Justice has very little to do with the attention given a blog post. I mean, how often do you hear of someone falling down on the ground with a despairing cry of, "If there was any justice in the world, people would comment on my post on the price of cheese!" Deary me.

Your current favourite blog?
Tough one. I do visit Dave's often for his gospel-full posts, and Ref21 is always helpful & interesting, and sometimes has me in fits of laughter also (usually at Carl Trueman's alter egos). But that's judging blogs partly on frequency of visiting, and there are others I love for other things.

Which blog did you read most recently?
JB's obviously, only to see I was tagged! Who made up these questions?

Which feeds do you subscribe to? Breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Which 4 blogs are you tagging with this meme and why?
I really don't like tagging people. OK, if you're reading this and want to do it, consider yourself tagged - comment to say so, if you like.

Flag waving

Dave Bish made me the banner you see above. Thank you, Dave! He has admitted to having a cunning plan to make the blogosphere look a bit nicer on the eye, and so far, so nice.

As you can see, his banner inspired me to a whole new colour scheme for étrangère. I like to think that it hints at the various cultural influences in my strange foreigner composition. I'm in England (see profile), with a penchant for things Belgian or at least francophone (see title), and hail from Nor'n Iron (er, stretch the politics to geography for a minute and see colour scheme). I'm also an stranger on the earth because I'm no longer estranged from God (see content - I hope). But if waffle isn't your thing (hmm, waffles), ignore that.

Yes, I know it's not long since my last redesign. Ah, such a transient world.

Confessions of a bibliophile

I confess...

I'm finding English novels boring. Correction, contemporary English novels. I can delight in a C.S.Lewis (and do - I can go on about Till we have faces, Perelandra, The Great Divorce or Narnia for a considerable length of time). I started devouring Milton the other day and am eagerly awaiting when my copy of Paradise Lost will drop through the letterbox (admittedly poetry not novel). And I lost count of how many hours sleep I lost in teenagehood reading and re-reading Tolkien. But Shriver, who has won so many awards? And Coupland, who has had such insights into our culture? I couldn't get into them.

I'm not disparaging those who do: we have different characters (praise the Lord!) and find different things interesting!

With me? Well, I can be intrigued by a plot, and want to know what happens, but if the use of language isn't brilliant, the technique fascinating (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night time), the characterisation so well done that you think you know them in real life (La Neige en deuil), the world so well-crafted that there isn't a hole in its whole history, culture or linguistics (The Lord of the Rings), or the ideas philosophically meaty (Perelandra; not the self-obsessed psychobabble that pop novels come out with), I'm bored. I'll vaguely want to know what happens, but I'll be bored while I find out.

I have laugh out loud with delight moments at a beautiful sentence or phrase, a brilliant philosophical idea, or a grace-ful character.

Generalising again, I love French novel style. I think it's because francophones care for their language. And not just in the particular Academie Française way, but they love it. They romance it. They enjoy it. The writing of a novel is not in the plot - it is the art and science of écriture. There's also an element of classical education. The French novelist commonly assumes the reader is familiar with Judeo-Christian, Greek, Roman and French philosophical & cultural references. Philosophy, politics & anthropology is often played with like the mention of the weather in an anglophone novel. Now obviously that can be dull, but in those I've read, it adds deep colours to the palate which make the painting dance with richness beyond the contemporary.

I'm not just francophilising. I know there are so many great English novels out there that I haven't read yet (this isn't difficult to fathom, as I've read relatively few of the classics). I never thought otherwise - I read very few novels at all. I enjoyed relaxing last year to reading Vanhoozer's 'Is there a meaning in this text?' (it's a delight to read). Only, I had thought to engage more with pop culture by reading a contemporary English novel every so often. And I'm now not sure I can do it: time is too short for boredom. So I'm on a hunt - tell me your favourite 'greats' (go on, surprise me with contemporary greats!), and why. You may think me a moron and have different taste, but tell me why I should enjoy your 'greats'.

The 'Pope', the 'Prophet' & the 'Peaceful'

Well, it was all over the news, and here are a few blog posts about it:

Piper offers 10 points on 'How Christians Should Respond to Muslim Outrage at the Pope's Regensburg Message About Violence and Reason'. His post does what it says on the tin (I do like that: his messages always tell you in the title what they're about!) - he outlines some of what was actually said by the Pope (something we don't hear in the Muslim critics' war cries), discusses it and gives some suggestions for how we should respond.

Rick Phillips, over at Ref21, posted a couple of interesting secular American opinion articles, notable of which was Anne Applebaum's after which Rick named his post: Enough Apologies! (I do feel like it's missing an 'already' - as in, 'Enough apologies, already!'. Yeah, like, watevver.) Good piece. Rick concludes, 'See - there still are real men in America, even if most of them are women.'

The first of these to post was I think Challies, with his aptly titled, "Who's reinforcing negative stereotypes?" which is about the non-reaction of those thousands of 'good peaceful' Muslims of which we're told, who complain that it is politically insensitive comments which reinforce violent stereotypes of Islamic culture/politics /Islam, but who don't complain as much about reality of violence within Islam. Which probably brings us back again to some of Piper's 10 suggestions on how we should respond.

Grace & peace.

Be a dolphin

Dave's got some great tips for freshers (and I'd say not only freshers) over here.