Contemplative Youth Ministry

I don't normally like posting quotes in my blog and I especially don't feel comfortable with quoting a book that I am only 40 pages of the way through. However, I really wanted to post the following quote of a book I'm reading now because (a) I think it's so spot on it hurts and (b) if I wait until I've finished the book...well I will probably never finish the book because I never do. Anyway, this is from Mike Yaconelli's "Contemplative Youth Ministry":

Most ministries with youth in the West are ministries of anxiety. In fact, most Christian communities don't even consider the spiritual needs of young people until there's a critical mass of anxious adults. Look behind most youth ministry programmes and you'll find pastors and church boards nervous about declining memberships, parents afraid their kids lack morals, congregations worried that the Christian faith has become irrelevant to younger generations, and the persistent frustration among adults that something ('anything!') needs to be done with 'those kids'! To be unaware of adult anxiety toward youth is often to misperceive what drives most youth ministries.

...

Young people are about energy; they have bodies they want to move, they have emotions they want to express, and they have developing relationships that are incredibly interesting and important to them. Adults - especially in a faith community - want young people to listen, to behave, to be still, to stop talking, to soothe adult fears, to fulfil mission statements and support programmes. This makes young people wary and anxious.

Confessions of a 10-Year-Old - Part 4

Monday 27th September 1993:

On Friday I went to Aaron's house and it was fun, first of all we looked at Aarons magazine and then we wathed some t.v. and had some tea. Then we played on the super nintendo and then watched the generation game.

Ok, I know this isn't my most profound (or even vaguely interesting) entry but it warrants a special mention because of my super awesome accompanying picture. Check out Blanka's deadly electric shock move from Street Fighter. One word - awesome!!

(I'm also quite proud of my depiction of Aaron's hair but I appreciate that not many people who read this blog will be able to verify that)

Once Upon a Time...

...Glyn Harries blessed the world with his music.

Once upon a time, Glyn Harries sported a rather smashing nineties haircut.

I went to see my parents last night and they showed me a Christmas card they'd been sent with this photo in it. It made me smile and I thought I would share.

In Need of a Cure

After being called out of the shower by Matt this morning for taking too long, I was prompted to reflect once again upon the fact that I'm pretty certain I have a disease. It's a condition which I've suffered with from a very young age. A severe and very specific psychological defect. You see, ladies and gentlemen, I suffer from Showerlingeristus.

Showerlingeristus (noun) - A condition of the mind which blocks memory, anxiety and concern of external matters when the body is brought into contact with streams of steaming hot water. Those affected by Showerlingeristus will likely experience symptoms of severe punctuality deficiency, social tension and wrinkled fingertips.

Here's how it works: I wake up in the morning and find that, due to an overzealous affection towards the snooze button, I am running ever so slightly late (this might be for a meeting or a lesson or just to get into the office at a reasonable time). I spring out of my bed and set a time limit to everything. I need to pack my bag with everything I need for the day, leave it lying by the door with my coat, pick up my clothes, run into the bathroom, jump in and out of the shower, brushing my teeth and shaving while I'm in there, get out, throw my clothes on, pick up my bag and coat, and then, if all has gone according to plan, I should be able to get out the door within 15 minutes. But everything has to be quick. Ok? Ok. So go.

I grab everything I need for the day, stuff it into my bag, leave it lying by the door with my coat, pick up my clothes, run into the bathroom, get the shower gel, shampoo, toothpaste, toothbrush and razor ready, turn on the hot water, jump into the shower...and then it all goes wrong from there. I physically and mentally cannot have a quick shower. As soon as I step under that water, that's it. You've lost me. I could be rushing to the hospital with a cure that will save millions from an epidemic (a breakout of acute showerlingeristus for example). But as soon as I get in that shower, it all fades away. My mind drifts to all sorts of philosophical quandaries and imaginative daydreams and I completely lose track of time and awareness that I'm running late. Fortunately, it rarely becomes an issue in the Whitehouse as everyone tends to get up at different times but it's a real pain when I'm trying to get somewhere on time.

Does anyone else suffer from this debilitating illness? Is there a cure?

New Hair

What do you think?

In Which Glyn Does Some Serious Coveting and Some Serious Thinking

In Need of a Drive Transplant

So my blogging as of late has been on the slow side. And by slow I mean, of course, simply not happening. I've been blaming this on various things. Facebook has featured quite highly in my list of reasons. I was also about to name my lack of inspiration as a culprit but as I was doing so I realised that I worked in a bookstore for a year and during that time I was the Blog King (officially named at the 2006 blogspot awards in Stockholm). I am out and about so much more these days that I should have inspiration oozing from my sweat glands. But inspiration has not been oozing from my sweat glands. Sweat has been oozing from sweat glands. But no inspiration. And anyway, even without my sweaty inspiration I still have plenty of ten-year-old diary entries to regale you all with and I know how much you love those (when I say "you" I am, of course, referring to the one person who has not given up on this blog - hello Glyn. Sorry. Still no comments. Try again in 5 minutes).

So if it's not inspiration lackage that is to blame, where can I point the finger? Unfortunately, it would seem that my lacklustre blogging efforts (and by "lacklustre" I mean, of course "non-existent") is part of a much larger problem. I am suffering from drive failure. I am losing my drive. You know the way Austin Powers lost his mojo? That's kinda like how I've lost my drive. Except I'm not going to go on a time-travelling adventure to reclaim it from the hands of my arch-nemesis because, well, I can't be bothered.

I've lost drive in most things. I've lost drive in my church. I've lost drive in my writing. I've lost drive in doing a lot of the things that I really want to do. I wouldn't say that I've lost my drive in my job so much but I'm certainly starting to feel it slip. And the reason I'm losing my drive in these things. Well it's lots of reasons but I think mainly just because I'm fed up. I'm fed up with the way things are and I want to do something about it but I don't know where to begin and nothing's changing and no matter what I try to do, someone will convince me I'm wrong or naive or incapable and a lot of the time I'll convince myself that I'm wrong or naive or incapable and I don't know what I want to do or which of my hairbrained schemes to persue or where to start with any of them and I end up not working towards any of them and get really frustrated and then start using words like hairbrained and it all goes to pot.

This weekend a group of us went to Eastbourne for the youth worker's conference and while the others seemed to come away from it feeling really inspired and strengthened I came away feeling really bogged down by all the things I want to do but can't. I felt like I was hearing from a lot of great Christian youth workers who were doing great Christian youth work and that was great for them but how would I start putting that into practice. And where do I start? Do I start up the theatre company that I've wanted since I was 16? Do I spend more time fighting the traditionalism in my church? Is that even an issue worth worrying about? Do I do more detached work in my job? Do I do more assemblies in my job? Do I spend more time with fewer young people or less time with more young people? Do I work to feed myself or do I stay where I am so that I can serve no matter how frustrating and draining it gets? Do I do this or do I focus on that and how can I do it all and whinge whinge whinge whinge whinge...

And with all this confusion and fumbling around and whinging my drive has decided to take a vacation until my brain gets back into gear and I can begin to focus. I think I need to come to the realisation that "Here Lies the Man who Saved the World" will probably never appear on my gravestone.

But the reason I'm blogging now is that I feel that maybe there's an answer and as much as I hate to admit it (so I won't - not yet) I think it's an answer that I've known for a while. I've had a couple of really positive conversations over the past few days that have helped me realise that the answer to my lack of drive and general feeling of peace may well lie with something I've been putting off for the past couple of years. It's really scary but at the same time I'm feeling a certain peace and excitement about it that I haven't felt in a long while.

So I guess what I'm saying is: I need more drive and watch this space....

Just So I Don't Have a Blog Free Month

Sorry.

I know this is cheating.

Have been really busy lately.

Will try and make November a better month for blogging.

Thank you for sticking with me.

I don't deserve you.

Lots of Love

Glyn

Confessions of a 10-Year-Old - Part 3

Monday 20th September 1993:

On Friday Aaron came to my house. It was fun. We played on the megadrive first of all. Then we read some magazines. After that we had some tea. Then we played on the megadrive again and then we played on the game gear. then we watched genaration game. Theen we took Aaron back home.

Gabriel's Oboe - Ennio Morricone

My sister is a massive movie-music fan. She loves it. I can't usually watch anything with her without being told who wrote the soundtrack and being given a brief synopsis of the composer's career. Daniel (my brother) and I, in our musically uncultured manner, usually laugh and call her pretentious. So it is with a large amount of word-swallowing that I admit that I have completely fallen in love with this piece of music from The Mission. I have literally just finished watching the movie (at 1:30am) for the first time and am still up, downloading the music and finding clips on YouTube. I guess it's one of those pieces that I've aways sort of recognised from somewhere or other but never really fully appreciated till now.

So Lisa, I am deeply and humbly sorry and I know you will appreciate this as much as (if not far more) than I do:

Confessions of a 10-Year-Old - Part 2

Monday 13th September 1993:

On Friday when I came home from school I wathed the T.V. Knightmare was on and it was a new serise and there were new things in it. It was fun. After tea I played on the megadrive. After I played on the megadrive I had my supper. When I went to bed I dremt that I was in knightmare but it was much more fun. I didn't have a helmet on but I had to dodge lot of things which you wouldn't have to do because it would be to hard with a helmet.

Office

Confessions of a 10-Year-Old - Part 1

Long long ago, before the creation of blog, people had to find other, computerless ways to make a note of their thoughts, feelings and experiences. They would do this in something called - a diary. A diary was something whereby people would take a piece of paper (or an exercise book which was made up of lots of pieces of folded paper) and a pen (a small, handheld, thin, cylindrical object that would dispense ink through a tube) and they would use the pen to make markings and letters on the paper - something they called "handwriting". As I was rummaging through Mum and Dad's loft looking for a passport (which I never found and, as such, had to pay £108 for a new one - grrr!), I came across some diaries that I wrote when I was at primary school. Not having the means to share my thoughts and observations with the world as a child (apart from myself, my best friend Aaron and Mrs Luff - my Year 6 teacher) I thought I would use this blog, now, as a platform to share my confessions as a 10-year-old philosopher. This is the first installment:

Wednesday 8th September 1993:

In my holidays I went to Sheffield and I went to my cousins house but they were'nt there though because they were at some sort of camp. When we were there we went on load's of walks. We did at least twenty miles by the time we went to are gran's. It was fun there. My gran gave me two pounds. When we had meals my gran gave us all are favorite food. On Saturday my uncle came round. He's called Glyn to. My dad named me after him. He brought some 3-d posters but you had to see the pithures and make them stick out at you with your own eye. It's very very hard.

Once we had a lovely tea made by my gran my uncle Glyn said he was going bunji jumping the day after which was Sunday.

Pretty deep stuff uh? As my knowledge and experience expands, my wisdom and witty observations become even more profound (if you can believe that from one so young). I'll keep you posted with more installments.

In Which Glyn Ushers in a New Era of Blogging

Ceeeeelebrate Good Times - COME ON!!

Ok, admittedly I probably don't deserve any of this cake after a whole month of not blogging (something of which I am deeply ashamed) but this is to celebrate my 100th post. Yay!!

To celebrate, as well as uploading this cake, I thought I would make a list of all the challenges I have set myself over the past 100 posts regardless of whether or not I've actually achieved them. So here goes:

1) Glyn Reads

Ever the visionary, when I set up my blog, I decided to start not one, not two but three (oh yes that's right - three) different blogs. As well as the infamous "Confessions of an Innocent Man" which has been well read and loved by dozens all around the world (a statment which bore a certain degree of truth before Lucy Aitken-Read moved back to England and thus ended my internationally appreciated blog status), the eager and willing blog reader could also find the Glyn Harries anthology (containing all my finest works of sketches, poetry and other such writings) and then the Glyn Harries Book Review blog in which I would read a book and then give my opinions on said book before rating it. As such the blog reader, rather than having to read the book themselves, would simply read my review of the book and then would know what to think (this saves on the ghastly chore of formulating one's own opinion). Whilst both of these secondary blogs have not been updated as much as I had originally intended, it is the book review blog that has been the most resounding failure. With a total of two posts in which I reviewed Rob Bell's Velvet Elvis and Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code (both of which I'd read before setting the blog up and the last post being posted on the 16th April 2006) the idea soon fizzled into cyber oblivion. It would have perhaps worked better had the idea for a book review blog not coincided with the time in my life that I grew bored of reading books. So not the best of starts. Well...as you mean to go on.

2) Glynn Harris
My first challenge. I discovered a man who had taken my whole name and violated it beyond recognition. He worked as a golf instructor and tutored one of my, then, youth members. I set myself the challenge to meet this man and try to convince him that he was spelling it all wrong. Didn't happen. Didn't even come close. Didn't even start in fact. I made absolutely no attempt to get in touch with this man. I'd call it a failed attempt but there was no attempt. So I guess it's just a failed.

3) The Challenge!
Perhaps the finest moment in this blog's illustrious history. I set myself the challenge to have a lie published in a national paper. This I achieved when the nation believed that Condoleeza Rice's first name was aramaic for "love of the unknown" thanks largely to the Metro's letters page. Unfortunately, despite the success of this achievement, this challenge also, ultimately, ended in failure. Not satisfied with a mere mention in the letters page, I promised to keep going with the challenge. The challenge was going to be extended. I was going to have more. More lies. More publicity. More mischieviousnesses. Unfortunately, I realised that I had no tricks up my sleeve other than writing into the Metro letters page and promptly retired. If I'd left it alone, this could have been a brilliant success. But alas, once again my ambition far out-weighed my drive and I am left with another failure. Ho-hum.

4) Dirty Stinking Pedestrian

At last, success. On the 27th July 2006 I set myself the challenge that by 27th July 2007 I would be driving. Here is me in my Corsa as a symbol of my completion of said challenge:

(Note: For the sake of integrity, I should tell you that I am actually posing for this photo. The car was completely stationary and I was not, at the point that this photo was taken, doing anything that I could not have done one year ago - or indeed 15 years ago. You're just going to have to take my word for it - I can actually drive now).

5) Anday!

About the same time as promising to learn to drive, my friend Andy was spending his working hours commenting on other peoples blogs. These comments were usually abusive and attempted to derive something that resembled humour (Andy is, by my own admission, not funny). The most annoying thing is that old man Andy (if you're wandering how old, think of your own age and then add a few years) refused to set up his own blog so that others may comment on his life and musings. I therefore determined that I would make Sunday "Anday" and post a story about Andy every week so that the masses may know of his meanderings. This too was destined for failure. After two weekly posts in which I revealed a photo of Andy sleeping with his cat and regaled you all with the tale of Andy being caught naked with the cleaner, this feature (like so many before it) fell by the wayside. However, it wasn't a complete loss as Andy now has his very own blog which is really rather good and I would recommend it to anyone who is still reading this post (I'm guessing if you've got this far it's because you should be doing something more important and are looking for other ways to procrastinate - in that case, read Andy's blog).

6) Campaign to Boycott HMV!

Ummm, once again, it just didn't happen.

7) Procrastination Hall of Fame

Much like the Glyn Harries Book Reviews blog, the Procrastination Hall of Fame did not take off quite as well as I had hoped. After a single, solitary post the idea just kind of stopped dead. It's a shame because I'm still desperately in love with it. I just wasn't sure where to take it (how do you research and measure other people's procrastination?). Maybe one day I'll be inspired and driven to pick it up again and run with it (although that sounds worryingly like another failed challenge in the making) but in the mean time it just lies there, beautiful, expectant and lifeless.

So there you go. 100 posts and a rich tapestry of unachievements. I'm almost proud to have such a fine legacy of failed challenges and abandoned features. Maybe one day I'll come up with something that sticks.

Sorry it's been so long since I blogged. And sorry I've been so infrequent. August sees a Summer School and a holiday so it's shaping up to be another dry month blog-wise but I have a few new ideas up my sleeve come September (something to keep me regular as it were) so we'll see what happens.

Thanks for reading.

Before it's too Late.

Having noticed that I've only blogged thricely during this fair month of June, I thought I'd get a quick post in before July arrives.

The blog world seems to have dried up somewhat in recent weeks and months. Posts seem to be getting more and more sparse and bloggers seem less willing to share their tales and comments. I was sad to see Lloyd retire his weekly Thursday Thought as it seemed to poignantly reflect the decline in blog interest. Maybe it's the rising popularity of other web-based phenomenons such as Facebook. Maybe the novelty is wearing off. Maybe blogspot has just had its day.

Alternatively, maybe it's just me and my friends who are being lazy whilst the rest of the blogging world is alive and cyber-kicking.

Who knows?

In other news, I won an award for my blog. Yay! The coveted Mitchie Award for best blog post. Truly a great day for everyone here on the Confessions team and proof that it doesn't matter how pretentious it is to create your own awards, giving them out will always be well received. Thanks John.

Kiwi!

Possibly the saddest and most beautiful thing I have ever seen:

Now I Remember...

So last night I decided to finally get back with the programme and went and signed up for a couple of 21st century cyber necessities that I've been putting off for a while:

1) I joined facebook

2) I downloaded msn messenger

Facebook, obviously, is fairly new in the grand scheme of things but messenger is something that I don't think I've done since I was at uni. I know it's a really popular form of communication but I couldn't quite remember why I've been avoiding it for so long. Well now, at 10.45 the next morning, I remember exactly why I was so reluctant to jump on the bandwagon. Two pretty major reasons:

1) It is almost 11 o'clock. I've been in the office for a good couple of hours and all I've been doing is frantically chasing round all my facebook buddies who have added me to their friends lists and have left me messages and I've been catching up with people I haven't seen in donkey's years and I've been leaving them messages and inviting other people to add me as one of their friends and at the same time, I've been chatting to mates on msn and all the while I have got absolutely no work done. Now I am not the most productive person in the office at the best of times. Why you could put me in a room with nothing but a computer, a power drill and the andrex puppy and I'd still find the one thing to do that wasn't work. Throw facebook and msn into the mix and I'm pretty stuffed.

2) Then there's reason number 2 (and this is the big one). No sooner had I logged on to msn this morning than I got a message from a girl whose email address I didn't really recognise, asking me how I was. After a while it transpired that neither of us were totally convinced that we knew each other at all and she wasn't sure how my email address had gotten onto her account. So we typed back and forth for a while (trying to work out where we might have met) before things started getting a little weird. First of all, she was very concerned that I might be bored in my office and she wanted to know what she might be able to do to alleviate that bordom (this was coupled with a little yellow round face giving me a saucy wink). Well it was really nice of her to be so concerned but I assured her I wasn't particularly bored and actually had quite a bit to do. She then asked me if I was single. I stopped writing back at this point. Who the heck was this girl?! What kind of person says stuff like this to someone they're not sure they've ever even met? I decided to sign out before she started giving details of what it was exactly she wanted to do to me.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I am staying well away from msn messenger from now on. I think I'll stick to forms of communication that don't involve me being pounced on by nymphomaniacs.

And the Rest!

So here's a video I made of the rest of our time at Wigley last weekend. Please bear in mind that:

a) This was my first attempt at editing anything and

b) Most of the footage I had of the weekend was from the music video (see last post) so a lot of it will be the same as the "Lollipop" music vid.

But other than that, I'm pretty pleased with it. Enjoy.

Mika Breaks Wigley!

Just got home from an awesome weekend spent in Wigley. Matt White, Matt Leeder, Christina, Michelle and I went to see Roland and Joan (Michelle's mum and dad) in their beautiful house up North (Christina took the opportunity to practice her Northern accent - it probably has to be heard to be believed). It was a really nice weekend and although weather conditions left many of our plans scuppered, we were still able to produce this work of absolute genius on the Sunday (credit to Matt L for his editing skills):

All in all, a pretty productive weekend methinks.