I'm pleased to have completed my courses in Spiritual Direction and coaching. The two have fed one another, and I feel more equipped for the work that I am doing.

Starting a new business continues to challenge emotionally, as I need to persevere with what I believe are the right things for some while before seeing results - months rather than days!

This seems really timely: Julie's poetic blessing.

SQ Spiritual Intelligence the Ultimate Intelligence - I'm starting to read the book of this title, by Danah Zohar and Ian Marshall, published in 2000. Moving on from IQ and Emotional Intelligence, businesses - and those who coach in business - have been becoming more interested in SQ over the last few years.

Have any of my readers engaged with this subject?

It is with some sadness that I record that our Team Rector's wife Janet died yesterday morning after being ill for some while. She was gently competent and always keenly interested in people and will be greatly missed.

I find myself leading more worship services in church, to provide cover, and it is a privilege to do so.

Today is the 22nd Anniversary of my adult conversion to Christianity at Mission Newbury - 25th May 1986, and it was a Sunday then too.

Somehow I was attracted to an advert for this event on Newbury Racecourse on that Sunday evening - even though I had no idea what a "Mission Newbury" was, and was not consciously aware that I wanted to do something about my dormant Christian faith.

On arrival I remember the parking attendants telling me that I was going to have a great evening (in my experience they don't usually behave like that, but are more likely to growl or order you around!) and walking into the vast marqee and being caught up by the enthusiastic singing of modern Christian songs such as I had not heard before.

Somewhere in the middle of the talk by Revd. Colin Urquhart I felt as if I had been "hit between the eyes" by God with the thought that God accepted me, but I was not good at accepting other people.

Leaving that meeting, after talking to people who wanted to pray with me, I felt a new energy and enthusiasm which I can only describe as being like a spring lamb.

With hindsight this event changed my life, and has been the start of a whole series of new adventures, supported by a loving God.

I recommit myself to this ongoing journey.

Happily we had bright enough weather on Saturday to enjoy a repeat visit to the festival. We enjoyed the many busking morris dancers on the High Street, and the action in the arena (below). We returned for further great concerts that evening. Click on the photos for more details.

                    

I'm very much enjoying the Change Leadership and Coaching Course that I am doing with the Wilsher Group in Corsham.

It is an eight day course and I have just completed the second set of three days, and there are two more to go.

There is a great balance of theory and practice, to further develop coaching skills. I am also enjoying the content on the ways people learn, which has been a gap in my previous studying.

Naomi Klein, famous for her book No Logo, has written another challenging piece called Shock Doctrine.

Go to her web site to find out more, and watch the short (six minute) film which summarises her important points, graphically.

She notes that following national and international catastrophes immediate changes are often, and that the general public is both amenable to this and expects change. What happens if leaders are unscrupulous, and the changes made have little to do with the event that has just happened, but instead they seek to use the opportunity to advance their own agendas?

This is what she explores, and it is fascinating. I have long felt that "gut-reactions" after major events can seem to "lose the plot" in ignoring the deeper priorities or values of society. For example action taken in fear of terrorism often restricts the freedom of the general population: values such as liberty and free speech should not be given away easily. The hope is that in a healthy society there will be a time of review of "emergency measures" when society reviews the deeper issues and appropriate adjustments can be made.

So Naomi develops this further, even wondering whether theory and practice of free market economics is not so much something that is for the public good as oppressive practice brought in by these methods. While I agree with her principles, or "doctrine," I'm not yet sure whether I fully agree with the way she applies it to the world of economics - but I haven't read the book yet. (It's logical, but are people really that unscrupulous?)

Go to her web site to find out more, and watch the short (six minute) film which summarises her important points, graphically.

Steph is off to Ghana soon, so we took a day out to go scuba diving at Vobster Quay again. This was my first dive since I qualified, and I felt a bit nervous and "rusty." However the water was clear an I enjoyed myself and felt a lot more confident after our three dives. Again I was wearing three layers of wet suit, but the sunny weather meant that I stayed warm in between dives. Good fun!

This is an unusual sight even in Wiltshire!

My rest from being a school governor seems to have drawn to a close.

While Vicar of Neston and Gastard I was governor of two schools in the parish: I enjoyed the camaraderie and sense of contributing to something worthwhile. I stopped these in 2005 as I started my new job with CMS.

I have been invited by Wiltshire County Council to be a governor of Corsham Regis Primary School, in Corsham, and look forward to joining the team.

I am surprised to write that I have joined an evening life drawing class in Bath. Joshua wanted to improve his art skills to help with his future career and university application. I decided that it would be easier to join in than to drive backwards and forwards delivering and collecting him.

Besides, "join an art class" is on my unwritten list of things to do before I'm 90 (no, I'm not nearly there - just a little over half way).

I've never done life drawing before, and not attempted much drawing since I left school when I did not think I was much good at it. I was surprised how much I enjoyed it and that I created somethng recognisable at the first session!

If I were to write that the launch of the new terminal at London's Heathrow Airport seems a sad affair, as much reported in the news, that would not do justice to the inconvenience experienced by the many passengers who became separated from their luggage.

Being an engineer at heart, I felt I had to enquire how extensive the commissioning within the project had been of the luggage handling system. Before opening the terminial, to what extent had they tried to simulate the arrival of aeroplanes full of luggage?

I e-mailed British Airways to ask their "Corporate Responsibility" department. They suggested I contacted British Airports Authority (BAA) who had "responsibility for" the terminal. They did not reply to my e-mail.

Surely there are serious corporate responsibility issues here? On the one hand this is just a private project. On the other hand, quite apart from the cost to someone of reuniting baggage with passengers scattered across the world, the cost to the country of the wasted time of so many passengers stranded at the airport is mind-boggling. If this were due to negligent project management, would the guilty firm get fined for this kind of thing?

This has not been a perfect project (but whatever is?) however hopefully once it is working we shall have some national pride in the finished product. I hope too that there has been some pride among the engineering team - at least before opening day. That is why I am also surprised that I have not been able to find some chronicle of the project plans on the internet.

Today as we went out for a celebration meal we discovered filming going on a few yards from our house. See 3 photos.

I'm impressed with Steph. Having returned from Mexico with a PADI Divemaster qualification, she dropped in to see the manager of our local dive school. He immediately put her on the staff (part time) and gave her some work to do this week. Apparently women divemasters are in hot demand.

The last two weeks have been good, as Toni and I have been on holiday. We spent a week in Lyme Regis, Dorset (see photos), enjoyed Easter, had a day in London including seeing the musical version of Billy Elliot, and last night a great party at home with family and friends to celebrate 50 years of me.

Apart from great food, great company, and great games (as the night wore on), a highlight was an extraordinary photo collage of my life that my family had secretly put together.

Thanks!

What a way to celebrate my birthday: a fitness test at the local gym (First Steps near Corsham). Toni joined some months ago and her subtle persuasion finally worked.

The fitness test went OK, so the next step is that the trainer puts together a personal programme for me.

I've just returned from a week in Austria, organised by Accts MMI (see other articles in this blog) and hosted by the Austrian army chaplaincy.

There were around fifty participants from about ten European countries: mainly from the former communist area plus a lot from Austria. We had gathered to enjoy fellowship and skiing together, as well as to explore what it means to be a Christian in the armed forces. There were impressive speakers giving lectures and Bible studies (I led one of the Bible studies) and participation was enthusiastic.

This is an enjoyable way to do Christian mission, and it was great to see relationships growing during the week.

Today I visited the One Life Live exhibition at Olympia, London. This is an exhibition for people wanting to make the most of their life, and comprised several hundred exhibition stands grouped in zones to do with coaching, spirituality, gap year opportunities, starting a business, etc.

I went along to observe the competition in the coaching market. It was interesting to see that some coaches were obviously clear about what they offer, and others not - and some stands were far too cluttered. I feel challenged to focus my own marketing more effectively.

The spirituality zone was next door to the coaching zone, and some of the stands seemed really wacky, and to be offering escapism rather than a way of excelling at life.. On the other hand, the coaching zone didn't really seem very interested in spirituality, and was thus not really holistic. I found myself wondering what it would look like to offer coaching that takes spirituality seriously as a part of real life.

A BBC report gives details of a revision of the Hadith under way in Turkey.

Pehaps this paragraph summarises the significance.

According to Fadi Hakura, an expert on Turkey from Chatham House in London, Turkey is doing nothing less than recreating Islam - changing it from a religion whose rules must be obeyed, to one designed to serve the needs of people in a modern secular democracy. He says that to achieve it, the state is fashioning a new Islam. "This is kind of akin to the Christian Reformation," he says.

This is a fascinating little book that looks at working as a consultant in an almost spiritual kind of way. How do you thrive as a consultant, contribute to the world, make friends, and become the person you want to be?   more »

I would love to live
Like a river flows
Carried by the surprise
Of its own unfolding

I find this poem, called Fluent, really moving. It entices me to live in an unknowing of what will happen.

It finishes off a kind of obituary to him in the March issue of Third Way magazine, as they quote an extract from a talk that he gave at Greenbelt, from whose web site you can probably download his talk.

Described as an Irish writer and mystic, he talks of how the root of all our fears is death, and the antidote is love.

Two other quotes touched me. In the first he talks of the importance of remaining best friends with ourselves. The second is this:

Meister Eckhard [a medieval German mystic] said: 'There is a place in the soul that neither time nor flesh nor any created thing can touch'. A place inside you that no one has never got to, or hurt or damaged - a place where there is peace, serenity, courage and healing. At your deepest core you don't actually belong to yourself. But you belong to a beauty, an intimacy and a shelter that offers you every freedom that you could ever imagine.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, The Right Reverend Rowan Williams, has kicked up a bit of a storm with his very public suggestion that Sharia law should be made more legitimate in the UK, in civil matters. This is a difficult position for the head of the world-wide Anglican Church to take when much of British law has been intentionally built on Christian principles, and many Christians are being harshly treated because of (as they understand it) Sharia law.There is a fascinating article by Prof. Mona Siddiqui, in the March edition of Third Way magazine, criticising the way in which the Qur'an has been used to propagate oppression.

It is interesting that so many comments have been extreme, and that Muslims in Britain are not united in their support of his ideas - some saying for example "Which Sharia?" Likewise much newspaper coverage has been biased, and I have been impressed with the very balanced one-pager on Sharia Law in the latest edition of The Week.

I perceive that, for example, many of the difficulties that Muslim women face in Britain (for example to do with forced marriages and "honour crimes") stem from attempts to implement Sharia Law - or at least Islamic culture - so I find it difficult to see how extending an Islamic legal system will improve matters. Would women's testimony be given the same weight as that of men? Would women be the judges?

Commenting on the response of politicians, one journalist commented that when politicians are "running scared" of debate it is a sure sign that a debate is needed. Since I too believe in the need for issues to be discussed openly, I have hope that the Archbishop's courage will bear good fruit. We'll have to wait to see what kind of fruit they are.

This last weekend I attended my second annual conference of Accts MMI. The chain of events that has led me, with little military background, to be trustee of this organisation devoted to the mutual support and growth of Christians in the armed forces worldwide still seems to me very curious

This unassuming conference held in rural Wiltshire is the only event I know where in a little over one day one can hear something of what God is doing, and how Christians are faring, pretty much world-wide. This achievement flows from the ability of military people to be concise and to the point, and from high quality speakers who are able both to give a clear report and present moving testimonies - for example generals and former ambassadors.

Testimonies range from stories of soldiers greatly respected because their Christian faith brings with it an independent integrity, to those who have been killed because of their faith. The context ranges from countries where religion is seen as unimportant, to those where Christians are oppressed, to those where societies are rapidly becoming Christian as a result of years of prayer and effective strategic planning. This is humbling.

In countries where much power lies in the hands of the armed forces, a movement which seeks to encourage the fear of God and not just the fear of man has much to commend it.

Links to Accts MMI partner organisations:
Accts (USA)
MSO (Mission Support Organisation, South Korea)

To find out more of my history with Accts MMI, search for "Accts" in this blog.

After pancakes enjoyed last night (with Grand Marnier and ice cream), today Ash Wednesday marks the start of Lent. It is a particularly poignant anniversary for our family.

Many people think that Lent is a time for giving up things, and traditionally it is a time of fasting as a way to draw closer to God. In society at large it seems to me that if people think about wrong-doing they usually think of things that they should stop doing. So it makes sense in Lent to give up the things we think are wrong!

On the other hand, wrong-doing is just as much about things that we have failed to do. To quote an inscription at the Holocaust Museum in Israel: For evil to triumph all that is needed is for good men to do nothing. So how about doing something for Lent as well as giving something up?

My extra bit of doing has come about almost accidentally as I ordered a copy of a book about the Prayer of Jabez, with Bible Study, by Bruce Wilkinson and David Kopp (ISBN 1-57673-979-1), to avoid paying for postage on an Amazon order. I shall read it over the next few weeks. It's all about God's blessing based on a little known man called Jabez who crops up just once in the Bible in 1 Chronicles chapter 4 verses 9 to 10.

Last weekend we enjoyed staying with friends in London (officially Kent). Apart from eating well, we saw the musical Fiddler on the Roof for the first time. It was well-produced, but is a sad tale of persecution of Jews in Russia in the early 20th Century. It is famous (in my mind) for the cry to God something like: We know we're Your chosen people, but couldn't You choose someone else once in a while? I found myself sitting next to a woman from Israel who had wanted to see the musical for some thirty years.

This weekend we were back to scuba diving in swimming pools - to enjoy being part of our local diving club and to stay in practice. It seemed a bit tame after near freezing Portland Harbour, but good fun anyway.

Quick diagnosis and treatment of strokes saves lives.

Remember "STR..." and look for

S   Ask the person to SMILE .
T   TALK. Ask them to SPEAK A SIMPLE SENTENCE coherently (such as "It is sunny today").
R   Ask them to RAISE BOTH ARMS .

If any trouble with these, call an ambulance.

Fuller details here. Memorise them and pass them on!