Good afternoon lovely blog readers!
Today is very black. Its not surpising to say that there are many non-white women here, but today is more black as almost everyone is also wearing black. You may or may not know that I’ve done this every Thursday for nearly 4 years now. It is really moving to see the lack of colour as we all stand in solidarity with women who struggle in violent situations. We stand against rape, domestic violence, trafficking we do this because we believe everyone should be safe and free.
This blog may come across as very random, I’m short on time, not only cos I can’t currently plug my laptop in, and the internet costs –though yesterday I sent emails, updated the blog and shared it with twitter in just 4 minutes!! But also I have a meeting in 43 minutes! Must also say it may take a day to reply to comments – as I write this online before logging on to post it. Also, don’t have time to check news, any updates appreciated... (Rob you still ok?)
For those of you who worried about my bedroom I’m only sharing with 1 other HKS (Helen Kim Scholar) so its not too bad. She is lovely and is from Hong Kong, though has been in SA for a couple of weeks with the other Methodist events!
The rest of the HKS crew are lovely, 14 girls from all over the world, really looking forward to getting to know them better and working with them this week and beyond. SO far been thinking about confidence and speaking – focus on what the listener gets out of it rather than how I’m doing. And listening for (what can I get out of this) and listening from (perspective, if i think it will be interesting I will be interested) ...
Does anyone know what the red R is on my phone when I turn it on?
Last night we had the opening ceremony that was trying to be as long as our circuit final worship – though they didn’t beat you Andrew. The singing hasn’t been great as many people don’t know the songs – difficult to do a service for so many cultures. This had led to ponderings about specialist worship – if this is for all women and its difficult, and we’ve had similar thoughts about youth worship at national events, how do we get a balance...no answers just thoughts...
There has been a lot of changes to the programme and a lot of confusion, yesterday we only found there was a HKS session cos we went to find the room at the right time, unfortunately there was only 7 of us yesterday but we are all together today, though the main programme changed to confuse us. And stuff needs to be slicker – where is affinity when you need them?!
One last pondering, church of today, church of the future... I really hope I am both, but I hope when I am defined as the now, I’m not past it. I wonder when you from being young and the future to the old and past-its...
And most importantly the food is good! Bread and butter pudding today!
Rach
Glad you're enjoying it out there - it's not a trivial point about the food as well, it's amazing how much of a difference how happy you are with food makes.
ReplyDeleteEngland is mostly in one piece, it's all gotten a lot quieter last night and tonight. Tuesday night was the most brutal, but the country will still be here when you get back :)
The red R on your phone is probably for Roaming - just a reminder that you're not using your home network and therefore everything is gonna be expensive.
I'd hope that one of the reasons that you're there at all is to make the point that you're as much the church now as anyone else - and the power structures that even make that a question are the ones that we need to challenge. Or, circumvent. Either way, they're invalid!
Have fun the rest of your trip :) xxx