(I love this photo!!! Becky isn’t so keen on it though. heh heh heh)
Drank lots of coffee:
(I figure if I put a funny one of me, I’ll get less flak for putting a crazy one of Becky…)
The house had a log fire, where we made smores:
And generally had a wonderful time. Thanks to everyone who came to the wedding, helped us in so many ways, and gave us gifts and all that cool stuff. Getting married is awesome! Being married is even better.
So now we’re back, we’ve been playing with some new kitchen toys (real chef knives, a blender, breadmaker, new plates and bowls and pans and pots and a yoghurt maker… wow! I feel really thankful and very embarrassed in a good way…). Thus the food pictures:
(making pancakes using a blender to make the batter - is this the ultimate in laziness? Whatever - it’s fun! :-) )
Yes - we’re having fun. Not having to walk half an hour home each night is VERY nice too. I may well post more pictures too, as I slowly sort them out. We haven’t actually got all the pictures back from the wedding, we’ve seen some of them, but I’ll post some of those too, later.
So, returning to my original quote: love isn’t a feeling, it’s a decision.
And I said, there’s some truth to it. However - I don’t think that’s the whole story.
We all long for love, and when we think of it, imagine the amazing soaring heights: long walks in the woods; laughter; passion; kisses in the moonlight; being held by someone who just wants to be with you; that secret, hidden spark; being known and knowing, intimately, deeply, unjudgingly; the look that’s meant just for you…
And Josh Harris et al. are right in saying it’s more than just the feeling we get from these things (incredible, inexplicable, wonderful and rewarding though it is…), and we must have something more, a decision, an act of the will, which keeps us going through the dark times. Though thick and thin, health and sickness, better or worse, richer or poorer. The thing which keeps us going though we’re angry and tired, and the one we love drives us mad. When everything goes wrong and we want to give up - that “not-giving-up-ness”, is also love. And without it, all of the first list are just a crashing cymbal, or breath of wind, cool, sweet, beautiful, but perishable, and of no lasting significance.
But the thing is, I don’t think that just the decision is love.
And I think we can - by looking at it, or teaching it this way - miss the fact that 90% of the time*, life isn’t passionate highlights, nor terrible lows, but plodding along in the day-to-day mundane boring normality.
[*Yes, I know. Fictional statistic for the sake of rhetorical prose. Forgive me.]
Does that sound bad?
If you get married, and have kids, then by the time they are old enough to leave home, you’ll have spent two thousand HOURS … doing the dishes.
Is that bad?
No. It’s an integral part of love. Without the details, picking up the trash and the dishes, vacuuming the carpets, driving to work, none of the “perks” of love can exist - nor would they mean anything if they did.
What we need, I think, is not to say “I have decided to love”, but “I am love”. Following God’s description of Himself in John’s gospel as love. The famous passage in 1 Corinthians comes to mind, of course, as well. So instead of thinking, “I’ve decided to love Becky”, or “I feel in love with Becky”, I must say, “I am love Becky.” (grammarians, have fun)
Then the things I do, the things I think, the things I say, will all come from that. The who I am.
And it must become part of the who.
So then, how does this all reflect back to theology, and the my thoughts about our perspective on God?
Well, I struggle to connect a lot of the bits and pieces of Christianity.
The theology, on one hand, with the practical out-working on the other, loving people on the third hand, loving God on the fourth, loving myself with the fifth hand, spiritual experience with the sixth, and by this stage, I’ve more than run out of arms.
We’ve booked our tickets to leave Cyprus in a month-ish. This time has gone SO fast … it did last time too.
I’ve started thinking about “stuff”. Very vague, I know. More, possessions type stuff. Here’s a picture of my cupboard:
as you can see, crammed full of all kinds of bits and pieces. From recorders (blockflöten) to juggling balls to old marmite jars with elastic bands to rope to old telephones to candles to old CD players to scissors…
I know I’m naturally something of a hoarder, and don’t want to throw stuff away… but on Doulos I think I either learned to be more balanced, or else some how got even more messed up! :-)
By the time I left AV, I had picked up quite a bit of “are we using it? No? Is it working? No? OK, then throw it away.” - I know Ant and Adam will claim somewhat otherwise *cough*oldA&Hsound-desks*cough* - but I know I’ve actually changed a lot. So now, looking at all this stuff in my cupboard, things I haven’t used in over 4 years now… I find it really hard to want to keep it.
How is it helping me to have this here? How is it helping anyone? Am I using it? No. Is it working? Well, some of it, kind of. Will I use it again?
Probably not… well… some of it? Maybe?
Sentimental value seems to be something I no longer really care about much.
I’ve thrown out the old hand-made juggling clubs (plastic milk bottles, newspaper and kitchen-roll centers :-) ) and broken telephones (for a juggling routine to do with communication), and some other odds and ends, but amn’t sure what to do with the rest.
Does it actually behoove me ( I’ve been wanting to use that word for AGES! ha! Done it! ) to throw stuff away?
Now I’m going back to Carlisle for a few years, and getting married next year, I need to think more about such stuff, I guess. I will no longer be a batchelor, able to just keep random clutter in a cupboard. I’m fine with that. (I’m pretty sure I’ll end up picking up more…)
I do have a lot of projects on the go at once. Juggling stuff - one day I will get back into it more; Obscure music stuff - I will take up the bagpipes one day; art stuff - I love painting, I just haven’t done any for a while; computer programming - a hobby. I don’t want a job of this! But a little is fun; graphic design… etc… etc…
But it’s not very efficient. I know I need to prioritise, cut away the cruft. I don’t NEED this stuff! But maybe not? Maybe actually having lots of clutter and things on the go is actually how I function best? Or maybe not?
Isn’t it great being decisive? Well, perhaps? Or perhaps not? Some times? Er…
Which is less pretentious? Which is less gauche? (I am enjoying using all these fancy words, but I have to use the flippin’ spell checker to make sure I get them right, which rather spoils the whole sophisticated air of the thing. Oh well.)
I kind of feel I should respect my British heritage, and get all worked up about the tiniest things (such as toasters, knots, AV, coffee machines, and so on) and drop big announcements as if they’re specks of dust being flicked from ones mess-jacket (not that I have a mess jacket, but it sounds right, Bertie Woosterish).
Enough of this blithering.
I’m engaged to be married to the most wonderful girl in the world! Life is a happy thing, full of kittens and sunshine and gentle summer breezes, and stuff!
Hopefully that somewhat fell between the lines of fanfare and faux pas, hint and hyperbole, I shall now go and dance for a bit.
Back from Spain. It went really well. Really great people, and it was cool helping to support technically all these guys who are so excited by what they’re doing.
Quite a surprise that some friends from Cyprus were particpants at the conference! So it was quite cool meeting up with them!
We’ve been back a week now. Becky was with some friends down south, and I was up in Carlisle finishing off some projects, and then we met up again on Friday, here at the Quinta.
Last time I was here, was for a few days break after my first 2 years on Doulos. I’m now here with Becky for a couple of days debrief with our home-office, and talking to some of the new people who are joining the company in september about life on board the ships.
It’s again quiet, relaxing, and also very good hanging out with some of my friends from the Doulos who are living and working here now.
I managed to spend catch lunch with my brother and some friends in Birmingham on the way down.
Here’s a crazy story:
Trying to buy tickets to get here, straight from Carlisle to Quinta would cost 40 pounds+… but if I booked Carlisle to Birmingham, and then Birmingham to Quinta, it cost 26.
I do NOT understand why. I blaim computers. They’re evil. It’s all a conspiracy.
We only have a few weeks more at Carlisle, for now, and hope to fly to Cyprus in about a month. Probably.
Then, hopefully, God willing, etc, to come back here for a few years starting some time in the summer.
A whole bunch of people left, and a whole bunch of new ‘uns joined.
The crazy Swedish dude left my AV team and headed home, after two years on board, and now I’ve got a new American the team. It’s fun training him, although kind of strange. I’ve taught AV stuff to so many people now. It’s hard to remember what I’ve taught to whom. I’ve got a basic Doulos AV curriculum, finally, but it’s difficult to get it all together. Theres so many little bits of randomness.
So now the team is one Korean, one Brit, one American, and one confused-not-quite-sure-ean(me).
Amongst the new recruits is one of my friends from the UK, which is very cool. She seems to be enjoying the ship so far, and is working in the “Accomedation” team, cleaning the inside of the ship, doing the laundry, running the bookshop cafe, etc.
Anyway. So. This was intended to be a short post, and mostly informational…
Yeah.
It’s my girlfriend’s birthday tomorrow. The whole present-buying-birthday-celebration-rituals-cultures-thing terrifies me. Like, I dunno. Something about my INFP/TCK nature, I guess. I want everything I do to be meaningful, and genuine. Especially with those who are really dear to me. That’s the INFP side… But also, I feel like so many things (such as buying presents on birthdays, putting up signs, cards, etc) are very superficial, and just a crass part of some culture.
I want to buy presents that are really real - not just bought “because” of the birthday. Yet I don’t know if buying presents *for* the birthday, like, “doing the birthday thing” is also a way of being real, within a culture?
I don’t totally relate personally to any culture, really, and find almost all cultures have things which offend me, and which I don’t fit into.
Also, on the other hand, more practically, I know that there is an element I also probably ought to have of simply “Daniel, just grow up, accept the fact that you’re not all that great at buying presents, so get over it, stop making all these stupid theoretical excuses and work harder than everyone else to actually do it well, and on time. Stop being so lazy.”
Long time no update, I blame I.T. and specifically I blame Blip, who works in I.T. I don’t blame her because it’s probably her fault, but because she deserves it. I can’t access blogspot, so have to go back to the old email-mum-with-stuff-to-blog method.
Anyway.
So. Many changes in the last few months.
I went on break for a week last port in Manila. Yes, Manila again. So I’ve been there 3 times now, total of 3 months. Quite cool. Anyway, we only managed to actually get to where we wanted to go for 2 days of the week of shore-leave, but it was so peaceful there. We went up to the mountains, near a place called Taal where there’s a volcano and so on.
Back on the ship, AV wise, I’ve been doing a bit more guerrilla carpentry.
Here’s our laptop/workstation. Things to note: the amazing wall-mount for the screen. Made from 100% recyclable natural products. Also, the big screen is showing mac OS. This is from Ant’s mac mini which is also hidden in the shot. The laptop is the A/V laptop, and running windows. The big screen can also show the A/V second screen quite happily, just by pressing a button on the screen. So. Two computers, but only one mouse and keyboard? Yep! Thanks to the amazing “Synergy” software, you can scroll the mouse off the left of the laptop screen and it jumps onto the mac, and vice versa! Very cool.
We had a Jazz recording session last monday, our amazing sax player just left the ship, so before he went we spent a whole afternoon recording with the band, and then had an evening for the ship’s company to come and hang out while the band jammed in a quiet atmosphere. This is the old 4 channel data minidisk recorder that we found in a closet and used for recording each channel individually as well as the main mix on the computer.
And team changes. Here’s one of the mainstays of the AV team, who just left yesterday. She’s finished her commitment on Doulos, and has gone back to Europe. I’ll miss her a lot. She’s American. On the team currently we have a Swedish guy, two German lunatic men, an American videographer dude, or cat, or whatever historical term of endearment he currently is using, one strapping British lad who’s currently in the UK for 2 months cross-training/work with the team there (like I did last year) and me.
Notice anything? Yep. All Westerners, and all guys. In a sense, that’s pretty understandable. Of the kinds of people who join the ship, the western guys tend to be the group who are into tech/arts. But, it’s also quite unbalanced. So in a week’s time, we’ll have a new member of the team, a Korean lady! She’s worked as videographer in a big church in Korea for several years, so that’s quite exciting. Both of the Germans will be leaving at the end of this port, around the 30th, and the Brit will be coming back. So we’ll be somewhat smaller again, hopefully we’ll get someone else soon, but who knows.
One of the things I love about the “Peanuts” cartoons are the tiny little things that I love. If that makes sense. For instance, this one thing I love about the Peanuts cartoon, is Snoopy’s book that he writes occasionally “Has it ever occurred to you that you might be wrong?” as part of the whole debate thing with Lucy. I love those books.
Anyway.
Has it ever occurred to you that you might be mad?
It’s been of late the rather disagreeable experience of mine to have occurring to me with disturbingly increasing regularity the possibility that I myself might be in a somewhat insanitous state.
I challenge anyone to diagram that sentence, and send me the picture…
Insanitous sounds rather unhygienic, but it’s not. I just mean “mad”, in a slightly more complex way of speaking.
To take simpler mode of address, I’ll quote Freddie Mercury:
“It’s finally happened, I’m slightly mad.”
Anyway, the current evidence I have towards this conclusion is The Strange Affair Of The Coffee Maker In The Daytime.
I feel remarkably Adrian Plassish as I type this, in a “this is dead serious to me, but I get the feeling people will laugh at me about it, because it’s so stupid…” sort of way. Like his paper-clip story.
Settle back, gentle reader, and prepare thyself for an epic journey into the mind of one convinced that he is no longer all quite there.
It all began like this…
This house is great. I’m really enjoying living here. right now, I’m sprawled across one of the *three* sofas in the living room, with my laptop, and a pot of Earl Grey tea.
Seriously, how can life get more chilled out than this?
What could there possibly be to complain about?
Well, there’s no internet at home. Is this a bad thing? Well, kind of. But also, it does stop me spending inordinate amounts of time online, which I did over the whole furlough, to my shame. 3 months to rest and do anything, and most of the time I spent online. Silly. So, it’s probably a good thing that I’m not online here, and can just write emails that I need to write, and then send them from the Shed. And spend the rest of my time at home cooking, reading, playing clarinet, and exercising. Oh, and sleeping, of course.
Secondly. And far more seriously. There is no coffee maker here.
I say it again, for emphasis.
There. Is. NO. Coffee. Maker. Here!!!
Shocking! But true!
There is a kettle, and a teapot, and plenty of instant coffee, of the “Fair Trade” and the “Nescafe” varieties - both of which are vile - but a brewed mug of the real stuff? Not a chance.
So, how can I solve this crisis, I wondered, then had the brainwave: I can buy a coffee maker.
In the UK they have this really weird store called Argos, where everything is in this funny HUGE catalogue that you can get, and then you write down the item order numbers, or SKU or something, give it to the clerk, and it gets brought in to you via conveyor belt, or so. No browsing around the store, just the catalogue.
