2 Requiescat in pace

Please join me in offering up a little prayer today for the repose of the soul of my cousin Ohdrán on what would have been his 18th birthday. Sadly, he died on 12th November in a car accident.

Requiem æternam dona ei Domine; et lux perpetua luceat ei. Requiescat in pace. Amen.

1 Happy Christmas

Catholic Analysis has a great post today, which I think it would do no harm to remember...

The Revolutionary Facts

Here they are:

1. Conceived into scandalous circumstances which placed his mother in deep suspicion;

2. The foster father and expectant mother needing to travel a long distance in obedience to foreign oppressors requiring a census;

3. Desperate for overnight accommodations and happily settling for a place reserved for animals;

4. Sharing the joy of His birth with lowly rural workers and exotic foreigners traveling from far away who also had to dodge the power-mad local political boss.

The lesson: don't let your circumstances determine your destiny. Trust in Him. He went through the worst and conquered. He can conquer your circumstances, too. And, in the midst of objectively bad circumstances, you do get consolation and direction as they did: angels and good people appeared, and the Lord protected and guided them every step of the way.

We need to retell the same historical facts but try to see them afresh so that their revolutionary aspect comes back into focus because these facts are the only ones that have ever really turned the world upside down and so are the only events really able to rescue each of us. There has never been a story that can compare with this one, and we are still talking about it today. And, yes, let's put our useless pride in our back pocket and admit that each of us needs to be rescued. The rescue is at hand. This is the real bail-out.

Wishing you and yours a very happy and holy Christmas.

4 We got married....

... 4 weeks and 1 day ago. :-)

3 Come Follow Me ;-)

Thanks to Therese at the Aussie Coffee Shop for bringing this to my attention... I never knew it, but there's a little Blogger widget that you can add to your blog to keep track of all the people who have signed up to be a follower on your blog. It's particularly handy as it automatically adds the blogs you are a follower of to a folder in Google Reader, which I use to keep track of news feeds for all sorts of websites.

Anyway, I've added it on the right hand side of my blog -- please do sign up to be a follower (you can do so publicly or anonymously) so I can see who is visiting... and can maybe start behaving myself a little better as a result! ;-)

1 It's at times like this...

... when you don't know whether to laugh or cry...

From the RTÉ News:

A New Zealand judge has ordered a name change for an embarrassed nine-year-old girl called 'Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii'.

The girl was so embarrassed that she had not revealed the name given by her parents to friends, who simply knew her as K.

Family court judge Rob Murfitt said in a judgement released today that oddball monikers created social hurdles as children grew up.

'She fears being mocked and teased and in that she has a greater level of insight than either of her parents,' he said of the girl.

The judge discovered New Zealand parents had given their children some other unusual names including Number 16 Bus Shelter and Midnight Chardonnay, both of which may relate to the conception of the child.

One child was named Violence and two pairs of twins were called Benson and Hedges and Fish and Chips. The children from another family were all named after six-cylinder Ford cars.

2 A very worthy cause!

Please read the following message from a dear friend of mine (also one of our bridesmaids!)... In a couple of weeks she is going to Thailand and needs to raise a further £800 before then.

As many of you know I am going to Thailand in 2 weeks for 6 weeks on a project organised by SERVE.

The project primarily involves teaching in a women's centre in Pattaya, S. Thailand.....this will be teaching women various trades and how to communicate in English with tourists to ensure successful employment etc... this ability to sell craft provides the women with an alternative to selling themselves!! In Thailand the main spirituality is Buddhism, hence a lot of the men are training as monks and so the job of providing an income falls on the women. As 95% of them are illiterate they are forced into prostitution in order to make ends meet.... SERVE strives to provide them with an alternative and helps them help themselves do so.

Other projects that I will be working on in Thailand include working at an AIDS orphanage and in an AIDS colony. Many people in Thailand are ignorant to AIDS and hence children are abandoned when they are born with it and nobody wants to work in the orphanage for "fear of contracting AIDS by contact"... hence most of the relief, maintenance etc of the orphanage is funded by SERVE projects.

The second part to this project, which I will be assisting on, is building relations between a community in North Thailand in which people within the community with AIDS have been alienated and segregated into a colony. This is a long term project reintegrating everyone into one society, educating the community and developing essential skills within the community.

Evidently, these projects require finance. There are 14 on my team and we have shared out the costs of the projects. I have been fundraising over the last few months, though I alone still require at least £800. I would really appreciate any sponsorship/ donations as raising £800 in two weeks is quite a task as you can probably guess. Obviously raising more than this would also mean providing more relief... though lets walk before we can run eh....

Anyway there is no pressure or obligation but I would be so grateful if you could help out.

If anyone is interested in sponsoring her, please let me know and I will forward on her details! Alternatively, you can donate via PayPal using the button below (no PayPal account is needed). Regardless, please keep her and her team's efforts in your prayers.

0 Kathleen, RIP

Please pray for the repose of the soul of Kathleen, whose 2nd anniversary is today. :-(



(I still love this photo best of all!)

6 And the winner is...

Éamonn!!!!

He predicted I would hit 1000 visitors sometime between 10am and midnight on 30th April... Which was only about 34 hours out (give or take)...

Not only did he guess the closest, but he also was my 1000th visitor! ("Fix!!", I hear you cry!) I guess I'll have to marry him then... (SHMILY...) :-D


However, another special mention must go to Therese, who came second in this wonderful competition... ;-)

1 Copying my dear fiancé...

... and posting some silly nonsense!!!

$5575.00

58% Geek

5 Not long now...

... until I reach 1,000 visitors to my blog! :-)

I just logged into Sitemeter and noticed I've had 926 visitors since I added it to my site about 8 months ago.

Soooo.... does anyone feel like a little competition? Predict when I will reach the 1,000 mark and the person with the closest guess will win a very special mention on my blog. Wow, what an incentive, eh?! ;-)

1 Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine...

... et lux perpetua luceat eis.
Requiescant in pace. Amen.

I was very shocked and saddened to hear of the death of Professor Thomas A. F. Kelly. Please pray for the happy repose of his soul and also for his wife, mother, friends and family, for comfort in this time of grief.

0 A little fundraising appeal...

... from my friend Matt!

He's leading a sponsored 50 mile walk with a group of 12 young people to raise money to attend World Youth Day in Sydney this July. Here is the site where you can sponsor him: www.justgiving.com/mattvand... He's got a way to go yet before he reaches his target, after which he promises to do the whole thing in fancy dress! Knowing that this is a sight I would love to behold (he also promises photographic evidence!), I figured I'd plug his fundraising appeal on my blog... So here we are. Dig deep, guys!! ;-)

Dear Esteemed Friends and Family,

As you may know already, or might have heard from somebody else - I don't like walking. Or exercise in general.

And I particularly don't like walking in excess.

Such is the persuadability-factor that I have, though, for a group of young people, that I have been duped into leading (yea, leading) a sponsored 50-mile walk up the Grand Union Canal from Aylesbury to Northampton on the weekend of the 1st / 2nd March 2008, stopping only to sleep on the salubrious floor of a Milton Keynes Concrete Church.

I'll be walking alongside 12 teenagers and young adults, with my personal intention to raise £1500 to contribute to a life-changing experience for them. In July of this year (provided they've raised enough money), we'll be heading down under to Sydney to represent Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire at the international 'World Youth Day' (which is actually a deceptive name, it being 2 weeks long), where they'll be meeting with over a million other young people from around the world. Here, they'll learn first-hand about what it's like to be from different cultures and different backgrounds, and we'll be leading them through a practical process to become positive advocates for change in their local communities back here in the UK.

As part of the social responsibility that we are exploring with them, they have opted to also give 10% of any money that you donate to a youth empowerment project in Eritrea - one of the poorest and most oppressed regimes in the world. We have a reliable local contact in Keren, Eritrea, who will be ensuring that the money we donate will go directly towards establishing sports and education projects within their diocese, giving young people there a new sense of dignity and interconnectedness. Young people in Eritrea would not be allowed to leave the country to go to something like World Youth Day, but we hope this would be a first step towards a partnering relationship and exchange programme between our UK young people and those in Keren.

I'd be most grateful if you would consider sponsoring me in my quest to support this really valuable and inspirational group of youngsters as they learn what it means to be citizens of the global community. If you would like to do so, you can donate online via my webpage at www.justgiving.com/mattvand, or alternatively, you can send a cheque (made payable to 'NYMO', unfortunately) to: 37 Hivings Park, Chesham, Bucks, HP5 2LF, where I'll be able to get in touch with you with a gift-aid declaration to complete if you pay tax in the UK.

As you will read on my page, if I exceed my target of £1500, I'll do the whole thing in fancy dress, and be sure to post photos for all my supporters to use as leverage in years to come...

Thanks for taking the time to give this some thought, and please don't feel under any obligation to donate - your sympathy and understanding of my pain is just as important!

Any questions or further queries, give me a shout - otherwise, I'll keep you posted in the run-up to (and fallout from) the weekend itself.

Yours, as ever,

Sporty-Matt

7 I should play the guitar

Isn't it just as well I do, then?!

You Should Play the Guitar

You're very independent - both in spirit and in the way you learn. You can teach yourself almost anything, even if it makes your fingers bleed. You're not really the type to sit patiently through a music lesson - or do things by the book. It's more your style to master the fundamentals and see where they take you. Highly creative and a bit eclectic, you need a wide range of music to play. You could emerge as a sensitive songwriter... or a manic rock star. Your dominant personality characteristic: being rebellious Your secondary personality characteristic: tenacity

What Musical Instrument Should You Play?

3 Dorky Light-Weight Nerd...

... That's me!!! But that's okay... Éamonn has his books and I get to keep my computer... ;-)






There ya go... You learn something new every day...

3 Éamonn beat me to it...

... so he did...

3 Cheesy boy band song...

I was reminded a few days ago of this song that was doing the rounds a while back... It's a great formula for, well, pretty much every boy band song out there... Anyway. I went hunting for it, and discovered it on YouTube! (How cool is YouTube?!)



Here are the lyrics...

Declaration of my feelings for you
Elaboration on those feelings
Description of how long these feelings have existed
Belief that no one else could feel the same as I

Reminiscence of the pleasant times we shared
And our relationship’s perfection
Recounting of the steps that led to our love’s dissolution
Mostly involving my unfaithfulness and lies

Penitent admission of wrongdoing
Discovery of the depth of my affection
Regret over the lateness of my epiphany

Title of the song
Naive expression of love
Reluctance to accept that you are gone
Request to turn back time
And rectify my wrongs
Repetition of the title of the song

Enumeration of my various transgressive actions
Of insufficient motivation
Realization that these actions led to your departure
And my resultant lack of sleep and appetite

Renunciation of my past insensitive behavior
Promise of my reformation
Reassurance that you still are foremost in my thoughts now
Need for instructions how to gain your trust again

Request for reconciliation
Listing of the numerous tests that I’d perform
Of physical and emotional compensation

Title of the song
Naïve expression of love
Reluctance to accept that you are gone
Request to turn back time
And rectify my wrongs
Repetition of the title of the song

Acknowledgment that I acted foolishly
Increasingly desperate pleas for your return
Sorrow for my infidelity
Vain hope that my sins are forgivable
Appeal for one more opportunity
Drop to my knees to elicit crowd response
Prayers to my chosen deity
Modulation and I hold a high note

Title of the song
Naïve expression of love
Reluctance to accept that you are gone
Request to turn back time
And rectify my wrongs
Repetition of the title of the song

Mmmmmmm..... yup, it pretty much sums them all up in one fell swoop, doesn't it?!

3 My abseil

Well, I just did that abseil on Saturday, for Marie Curie Cancer Care, down the amazingly scary 205ft building that is the BT Tower...!! Two words.... SCARY BICCIES!!!!!

(I was going to say, ah no, it wasn't really THAT bad... but... well... actually... ummm... yeah... I'll maybe shut up now.....!)

Anyway, I posted about it over on DCF, and included some photos that were emailed to me today by my brother... I should be getting one sent to me in the next week or two, that was taken from the top, so I will be sure to pass that on once it arrives.

Of course, it was amazing having all the support on the day of some great people who came to watch, but thanks to all of you who sponsored me (both online and off), for helping me raise money for such a great charity, and in memory of such a great woman.

Kathleen... Rest in Peace



13th May 1950 - 6th June 2006

3 Okay, so, apparently I'm Catholic...

... Didn't see THAT one coming....!

~~~~~

You scored as Roman Catholic, You are Roman Catholic. Church tradition and ecclesial authority are hugely important, and the most important part of worship for you is mass. As the Mother of God, Mary is important in your theology, and as the communion of saints includes the living and the dead, you can also ask the saints to intercede for you. Roman Catholic 100% Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan 75% Neo orthodox 71% Emergent/Postmodern 57% Classical Liberal 39% Charismatic/Pentecostal 29% Modern Liberal 25% Reformed Evangelical 21% Fundamentalist 18% What's your theological worldview? created with QuizFarm.com

4 Former EpiscoPUSalian gets CATechised....

Pus enjoying some light bedtime reading...

Ah, the fun we get up to in our house!!

6 Dog watching

Apparently our cat has taken to chasing dogs lately...



... this is her doing a spot of dog watching.