For those of you who found us sitting and smiling with blank faces comedy, you can now watch the unedited version of that interview, gaelic, english and all here under "agallamh"...

saturday

Mmmm... I love Glasgow Saturdays! :)

Time to catch up on things and chill and sort myself out and enjoy quiet...

Last night I saw Juno - amaaazing film! Definitely almost on a par with that comedy gem Little Miss Sunshine! As per usual did a shed a tear or two. I tend to get somewhat emotional in films. What surprised me was what happened to me this morning as I was standing waiting at Glasgow International airport before picking up and redirecting 19 Canadians. Was watching all the people drifting in through the International arrivals door from a Toronto flight and it was more moving than watching a film... there was a mum smothering her small boy with kisses and a couple of cuddly couples that blatantly hadn't seen each other in a long time and friends reunited with delighted grins and digital cameras everywhere. It could have been a scene out of Love Actually, though (thankfully) a lot more believable! And before I knew it I found myself getting weepy! Completely took me by surprise and had to stay composed to greet the pile of Canadians that soon followed out of the door.

Oh and all this sunshine after so many months of grey... I feel truly photosynthesised! :)

"do not give way to fear"

On Friday night at the stall, I was listening to a lad (who was highly intoxicated I hasten to add) rant about his ex-gf and how, since they broke up, in order to make herself "feel hot" i.e desired and loved, she apparently goes out in the most revealing of clothing or whatever it takes to "pull". He told me, in very drunken terms, that he respected the fact that I didn't feel the need to do that. But being completely honest with myself, I don't think I'm completely free of those inclinations. I think most girls have a teeny-skirted, overly-flirtatious, sometimes desperate, silly girl somewhere inside of them. We want to feel beautiful and to be desired and wanted. But we often miss the point, thinking that to be desired is to be loved.
This is one of those bits of the Bible that most christian girls know in theory. I know I always gloss over it, thinking I don't need to hear it. But when I looked at it the other day I spotted something I hadn't noticed before. The section ends "...do not give way to fear". What fear? The fear that most of girls have of being single? Of never being loved or desired? Why should we fear that? Perfect love drives out fear... and this year I have become more and more convinced that "perfect love" is the love God shows us. The kind of love that doesn't fail us or disappoint us or is unfaithful. But one that lasts in spite of our weakness and no matter how we look, think or act.

Got to quote this again... says it better than I could.

"I ask him to satisfy my longings and fill my hollow places with his unfailing lavish love, this frees me from craving the approval of others or requiring them to fill my 'cup'. Then if someone does demonstrate love to me that's overflow! I am free to appreciate and enjoy it, but I didn't emotionally require it." Beth Moore

Another kind of fear that I struggle with a great deal more than the inner silly-girl and is definitely not exclusive to females is the fear of doing wrong or messing up and disappointed myself, other people and God. It's a fear that stems from my forgetting grace and think that by doing lots of stuff for God, I can earn His favour, or stop myself from losing it. All nonsense I know. And yet it crops up from time to time. Perhaps what I need to remember is this and not only that but this.
For the last week I've had this kids song in my head, dunno who it's by, and I can't seem to find it on google... think it sums up the concept of grace pretty well though:

There's nothing, nothing I can do or say
to make God love me more.
He cares for me in such a way
that lasts forever more.
The Bible says that it's called grace.
I see it there in Jesus' face.
There's nothing, nothing I can do or say
to make God love me more
to make God love me more.

There's nothing, nothing I can do or say
to make God love me less.
I need forgiveness every day
and Jesus' righteousness
But when I turn to Him and pray,
He gives his mercies right away
There's nothing, nothing I can do or say
to make God love me less
to make God love me less.

What a wonderful Saviour!

The reason why I dropped english lit...

... is because so many writers of literature and even more often, people interpreting literature think this...

"The purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure pure reasoning, and inhibit clarity. With a little practice, writing can be an intimidating and impenetrable fog!"

Ah the wonders and wisdom of Calvin & Hobbes :)

You've got 6 days left to watch this

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/page/item/b008vsxw.shtml

quotidien

I like that word...

Realised I hadn't blogged about the everyday in a while...

- Like the fact that it's been raining constantly for the last couple of weeks but for the first time in 4 years I have waterproof trainers to keep me dry!

-Handed in the last of my run of deadlines so was able to just hang out with folk with a guilt-free conscience, yaaay! :)

- I spent a quality Saturday night/Sunday-day in Edinburgh. Had the best dinner for a wonderful friend's 21st... breadcrumbed brie with yummily dressed salad for starters, steak with pepper sauce and tomatoes and mushrooms and sauteed potatoes for main and profiteroles for desert, all washed down with water, a glass of red wine and a lovely cup o tea, and then a night of dancing and catching up with ol school friends... wonderful... Got to hang out with the family and folk at Bellevue West too on Sunday which was more than an added bonus!

- And there was an evening last week when Jenni and I got a little carried away with Salvaar Kameez

God is good

... tis one of those facts that at least I, as a christian, take for granted!
-> The very idea of a God who cares and has forgives and loves with endless abounding love and grace with mercies that never fail and are new every day sounds positively insane in this messed-up human world. It just sounds almost "too good to be true".

When I look at human constructed gods; the gods who in many religions and cultures are selfish and flawed and unsurpisingly human or the gods who are "infallible" but require laborious effort and often tremendous sacrifice to approach, even the more abstract gods of materialism or sex are in themselves, selfish. When I contrast these gods with Yahweh, I realise that this is exactly what we humans so often think. We think that the existence of a God of grace, a God who is truly good and unselfish and far beyond and above human is nigh impossible. And so we have constructed our own gods or box the living God to fit into what we think is legistical. When, for example, we can't get our heads round this idea of "grace", we become legalistic and laws, sometimes even laws which are trivial and man-made, become the be all and end all. We miss the point and we hurt ourselves and others in the process.

The reality is that we have a God who has sacrificed all for us, who loves us extremely and has a heart for the downtrodden in society, who desires, more than anything else, that we act justly, love mercy and walk with him every day. We only have to look at Jesus to see all this en actualité.

Mind-blowing! And because He is good, there is hope for this aching world...

I guess what I'm re-realising here, is how important it is that we get to know the true and living God. Knowing Him, what He is like, His character does and will change our perceptions/mindsets/hearts in everything.

The very fact He can change anything, to me means hope.

the joys of january

And it's fast becoming a late night in the GU Library writing up the spoon-fed project we did, testing whether Dweck's Entity Theory can be applied to our level 3 psychology class... It's due in tomorrow. I also have 3 hours of exams on Monday and a french essay and translation to hand in on Wednesday...

meh

Films of 2007

Reading and hearing other peoples thoughts on what their favourite films of the year 2007 have been has spurred me on to create my own list... the only thing is a couple of these I saw last year weren't actually released last year. (The joys of french release dates)

In no particular order

Films that I enjoyed the most in 2007

Most moving and thought-provoking
- The Kite Runner (and they stuck very closely to the book :) though they missed out some of the most gruesome bits)
- Life of Others

Funniest
- Little Miss Sunshine easily one of my favourite films of all time! (saw that in france this year although it was released the year before)
- Run Fat Boy Run - Miles better than I thought it would be! Touching and funny!
- Ratatouille - wonderful treatment of stereotypical france, though (a mon avis) tarnished by the inconsistency in and appallingly bad french accents!

Most exciting, kept me at the edge of my seat (also most attractive actors heehee)
- Bourne Ultimatum
- The Departed (ditto with the France thing)

Film that made me most want to sing and dance like a madwoman
- Hairspray (yes I know!)

Weirdest Film I saw this year
- The Golden Door - one of those films that "doesn't do what it says on the packet"

Films that were released last year and I wanted to see but didn't
Once, The Counterfeiters, La Mome, Simpsons Movie, La Science des Reves

Bitterly disappointed by -
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, The Golden Compass (though both were ok films, they just didn't compare to the books), Spiderman 3 (just plain mince)

Bring on Prince Caspian!

seasons cleanings

Tried and failed miserably at "spring cleaning" the blog roll. The only blogs I could bring myself to remove were those that had been removed by the author... that is except The Creasinator's... I'm still holding out that you'll recommence blogging Creasy! :(
I was thinking of reorganising the weblinks into subcategories of

- Has not blogged in over a year
- Has not blogged in 3 months
- Sporadic blogger
- Regular blogger

What do folks reckon?

Eternal optimist that I am, I'm still hoping that the authors of the blog-turned-skeletons will suddenly decide to resurrect them. Do a "michie" so to speak. Saying that Mich, that wasn't much of a resurrection!

Anyhooo... I'm supposed to be studying right now...

I'm excited!

Yes I know... I'm quite often excited! :) But this year I have every reason to be...

2007 was mainly characterised by:

... my last 5 eventful educational months en France, a 3 month long summer of activity, a messy break-up, good times with my family (highlights being this christmas hol, spending a whole summer at home and still appreciating them at the end of it, and getting to be towel-bearer for my little sister's baptism), a very joyful return to Glasgow, much banter spent with old friends and new friends, studying (woopwoop! still enjoying it... well most of it) and getting to know coursemates better, being back with what had developed into a full-fledged band while I was away, international students galore... siiigh... I love Glasgow... repeatedly messing up and repeatedly being forgiven, learning some difficult but valuable lessons about God and about myself (the latter being the less pleasant part).

What I am looking forward to in 2008:

All the newness; learning new things, taking on new challenges, doing new things such as going somewhere a bit further away in the summer (hopefully maybe). Spring in Glasgow (leaves growing on trees etc. etc.), getting to know some people better and meeting new folk that I will undoubtedly meet, my last full academic year of university (eeeep), getting to know God more and growing closer to him, using my new camera and taking pretty pictures (if it ever comes back into stock in Argos)

Oh and I still want to be a tree

why does warm+fuzzy=christmasy?

We do like to dress Christmas up in fairy lights don't we! Let's all feel "Christmasy", jingle some bells, remember a night when all was "calm and bright", hang up our stockings, sniff the cloves and cinnamon, let it snow let it snow let it snow.
Don't get me wrong, I love our ridiculous traditions and the once a year chance to get together with the extended family but in all these wrappings I've started to see the birth of Christ through those warm fuzzy spectacles. Songs like “Silent night” where “all is calm and all is bright” don’t really help things either. Yes, Jesus birth was a miracle. But he was born in the humblest of circumstances, in a messy birth in a dirty smelly stable! Can you imagine giving birth in a stable?! Yeeeeuch… There was no tinsel, no fairy lights. It may not have been an ordinary birth. Angels announced it, and then shepherds turned up to gape, some wise men brought their gifts a little later, leaving his parents somewhat awed and bewildered.
But there’s a distinction between what is “christmasy” or magical and what is miraculous.

Got to bring Sufjan in here... another thing I love about those albums is the fact that interpersed amongst the bells and banjo carols is the occasional song that reminds me that the whole world doesn't just become glowing and "christmasy" at Christmas time. That people still hurt, families don't suddenly become unbroken, fighting doesn't always stop, wars don't just end, people don't suddenly escape poverty or become happy at, or just during the christmas period.

Jesus coming was a way of healing the broken-hearted but think about what it took him to do that... He came to live among us, he came to live as one of us, experiencing weakness as we do, he humbled himself, in life, taking on the very nature of a servant, not just his death on the cross. He taught, healed, reached out...

The miracle is that God came as the light of the world, to bring us peace and joy! It's awe-inspiring and well worth celebrating! But in order to bring us that peace and joy, he had to experience the ordinary and weakness and suffering, whether that was being laid as a newborn in a feeding trough or being crucified alongside common criminals. I wouldn't call that magic.

So I've been trying to remember that Christmas celebrates the fact that Jesus came down in human frailty. He was fully God, just and righteous and love, and yet he became fully human; lived life, experienced weakness, hunger, brokenness, hurt and pain. And so He understands our weakness... Amaaaazing!

Christmas was a miracle! Christ is a miracle! But miracles don't necessarily mean "magic". And somehow I don't think there was any "magic" on that first Christmas.

This is my first year sans advent calender :"(

I roughly estimate that I spent the run up to Christmas doing

countless hours of studying
almost as many hours of celloing
several hours of singing carols at the top of my voice
8 hours of cleaning the flat
7 hours of 12 hour cheesy pop, (of which 2 hours were spent watching It's a Wonderful Life, 3 hours were spent boogying on at the headphone disco (quality concept!) and 2 hours spent chatting to randoms and not so randoms at the stall)
6 beanscene visits (most of which were to "chat about the critical review")
5 hours of mince pies and mulled-wine consumption
4 christmas carol services (to date)
3 and a half ceilidhs
2 exams
and 1 critical review

And after all that and some more that I couldn't fit into 12 verses, I am back in Edinburgh again for a proper break! It's roasting inside (having Sri Lankan parents means the heating is on ALL day!) and baltic outside (frost, unlike anything we ever get in glasgow, woopwoop!) Actually getting a proper break, except from celloing... in exchange for being fed I am playing in 3 church carol services avec les parents. A cellist's work is never done.

Apologies for misinformation in my last blog entry. Turns out we're not being broadcasted till Friday at 7.15pm on the "highland cafe show"
Though for the next week or so it should be possible to stream and listen to the show on the above link
Right, I'm off to bed

blatant procrastination

I had been determined to avoid procrastination blogging until the end of this week (end of deadlines/exams). I just cracked.

But there is soooooo much to blog about!

1. The wonders of carols! In the last few days I have been to a carolling party (lots of musical people jamming and singing carols together all evening), 2 different carol service rehearsals, sang non-stop on the half an hour walk to church with my old flatmate. You'd think I'd be sick of the music, but no. Yesterday I made the purchase of Sufjan Steven's 5 CD christmas wonder! To be honest I would have bought it for the beeeeeyoootiful version of Joy to the World on CD 4 (one of my fav carols) but getting 5 wonderful CDs was more than an added bonus! Siiiigh...

2. Last week, I discovered that - prancing around in a ball dress + quality time with coursemates (i.e not talking about or even thinking about looming deadlines) + silly dancing and good food = remarkably therapeutic stress-free evening

3. The wonders of TEA!! (in response to this post)

Builder's tea... meh... I've lost my liking for the stuff. In the tea corner of our kitchen however, I currently own, an assortment of loose teas with random names like "arctic fire", green tea, white tea, camomile, honey and vanilla tea, lemon and ginger tea, lady grey. Despite the fact that yesterday Potter managed to bleed over a few tea bags and boxes (now hopefully all disinfected away) they still haven't quite lost their appeal. Tea consumption in the flat is an excitement... i.e "hmmm what do I feel like today?" What kind of choice can be had with the likes of coffee?! What I'm saying Quinn is, for the sake of your stomach, why don't you try branching out? ;)

4. This Wednesday lunchtime (methinks about 1pm) ze band is going to be live on BBC radio Scotland! Woop woop! Shame we have to get up at 6am and train it up to Inverness for like 3 hours just for the pleasure!

Reminder to self

Lessons from my time in France to be re-remembered/afin de les reapprendre

- Treat people as equals (even if they struggle with my language)
- A smile is not enough. What they want is my time and friendship not just my friendliness.
- Kindness and genuine friendship go a long long way. I am still strongly affected by the impact of kindness a few french (and non-french) people demonstrated towards me last year when I was a foreigner, relatively powerless and pretty lonely.

En bref - I should be taking my lead from Him

trop vite!

Life's moving too fast right now! I keep starting blog entries and not finishing them and suddenly they're out of date or no longer applicable! Although I missed my hectic lifestyle when I was in France, I can't help but envy the french sometimes and their laid-back attitude to time. Yesterday a few of us from the CU ran ceilidh dancing classes for internationals, (I ended up having to call the dances and be the "backing music" to Auld Lang Syne, which was amusing to say the least!) Anyhoo a french friend turned up an hour and a half late, whilst we were in midst Orcadian StriptheWillow. He was really surprised when I told him this was the last dance. In his own words he thought it would run until at least half 10 or 11, and that he "ad to eat at 8 (as every frenchman does), and euuh it takes 'alf an 'our for me to prepare the food you know euh..." Bear in mind that the class started at half 7.

Aaah I do love the french :)

In other news:
- my camera is dying hence my lack of camerage.
- After 2 weeks of reading ridiculous amounts and getting more and more confused, I have finally decided on a direction for my 4000 word "critical review" in psychology... phew!

Life just keeps on going and the Christmas season is calling! woop woop!

a little hyperbole

Just back from the cinema to see Stardust. I loved it... my pragmatic flatmate (of the emerald isle variety) on the other hand wasn't so convinced by the romanticglowingstarloveconqueringall nonsense. "Too much hyperbole" were her exact words. Personally I like a little hyperbole from time to time, though I'm glad real life isn't like that. Those witches were scary!
We did however enter into the spirit of adventure, rushing down the tallest cinema in the world to catch the last underground and then rushing back up again, rooting under chairs to the soundtrack of the cancan in search of pragmatist's gloves, until we realised that she hadn't actually brought them with her in the first place. So we legged it back down again and made it in time (just) to catch the last underground... Ah we do know how to spice up the mundane antics of normal life! And who needs to put the heating on in the flat when a little exercise is all one needs to keep warm!

stress

A very dear friend gave me a bit o paper in ze uni library today with this written on it:

- "I ask him to satisfy my longings and fill my hollow places with his unfailing lavish love, this frees me from craving the approval of others or requiring them to fill my 'cup'. Then if someone does demonstrate love to me that's overflow! I am free to appreciate and enjoy it, but I didn't emotionally require it." Beth Moore

words of clarity on a frenchopsychologised/psychofrenchified/francopsycho day

I don't know what reading that makes you think of but I found myself drawn to the concept of how being filled with God's utterly satisfying love doesn't just stop there with us and Him. We are left free to appreciate and enjoy other people and the rest of his creation in all its fullness. It is for freedom that Christ set us free.
This period on the university calender should be labelled with a health warning "This is the time of the year when you will start feeling innudated and may well succomb to stress". What with all the essays, exams, lab reports, presentations, generally keeping mein head above the workload. I don't seem to overly stress about these things. When I stress it's more likely to be about my motives behind what I do, whether other people are taking a precedence over my love for God, about what's happening in my mind because I feel as though I can't control it half the time to name a few... But it was for freedom that Christ set us free! Why should I stress about these things? He leads me by still waters, He restores my soul, He fills my cup.
He acted, I accept what He has done and continues to do, I overflow.
Maaaan I wish the formula would be tha simple when trying to put it into reality! And it's not Him that is lacking, it's my unwillingness to accept that's the problem. What is it that can possibly hold me back from handing over the controls of my life to God, towhom nothing is impossible, who knows what's best and truly cares?! Think I might take the advice of Beth Moore there.

I'm just grateful that we have Jesus constantly interceding (overuling our stupidity) and that He fully understands :)

to foveate or not to foveate?

"Humans do not stare at scenes. They foveate. Their eyes dart about the scene at locations of interest during the analysis of the scene. Except for special cases, humans tend to focus on corners and edges of important objects of the scene." Jason Kinser, Institute for BioScience, Bionformatics, Biotechnology

We don't process everything we see. And that's not surprising really since we wouldn't get anywhere or do anything if we were constantly processing everything that's round about us. However that can sometimes result in confusion and/or misinterpretation. I did a presentation on how this kind of misintepretation manifests itself in language illusions on Friday. Let me demonstrate.

How many did each kind of animal did Moses put on the ark?
.........................

Did you get it? Did you say two? Or did you see the anomaly? If so, nice work because most people don't and this is known as the Moses Illusion and it's an example of "shallow processing" (what linguists call foveation). So why am I waffling about this other than to fulfil my geeky inclinations? Well today I was thinking about how much of a conscious foveator I am. How I so often only critically evaluate what I find relatively easy to understand because I am scared of the stuff I find more difficult to understand. How I so often see what I want to see and not what I'd prefer not to see. And that applies to everything, from bits of the bible I can't get my head around and would prefer to avoid, to things going on in another part of the world or even part of my city I prefer to remain blissfully unware of. But I specifically want to talk about the way in which I read the bible.
In order to avoid misinterpretation surely we need the full picture. So many mistakes have been made in the past, and we are still unclear on things because we are unware of the full context of a statement within the bible and in the era it was written in. Shouldn't we need to at least be aware of all these things so that we might understand the bible more fully?

But where does the balance lie between, one the one hand, questioning things, finding reason and understanding behind what we believe and on the other hand, knowing that God is God, that His wisdom is far above and beyond us and that we won't have all the answers in this lifetime? It's one of those "to what extent" questions that seem to crop all the time. I think it's easy to lean either too much to one side or the other. I definitely lean in the foveating direction i.e "I don't have all the answers so why bother too much about it?" but it isn't enough. Especially when I get interrogatively questioned about my faith.
I've leaned the other way in the past too; trying to process too much at once and as a result getting tied up and confused with trivial issues. To the point where it has gotten in the way of my ability to see and do and think straight in other areas of life. I think experiences like that may have scared me off deeply questioning things... but then maybe I've been questioning in the wrong way before.
I've been reading this passage over and over again the last few days, and something is starting to click in my head. We have God's Spirit in us, He gives us understanding, He gives us knowledge and the Spirit is key to that. But what kind of knowledge is that? I do know He enables to know Jesus and that He enables to understand God's plan for salvation so we can accept it and communicate it to others. I do know that He helps us grapple with the kind of knowledge that results in us having everything we need for life and godliness and that knowledge for the sake of knowledge is futile. But is that knowledge and understanding of the more difficult concepts, having a grip on prophecies that scholars have studied for years? Or is it just a grasp on concepts such as grace (not that those are especially simple)? Does the Spirit help us gain academic knowledge; the kind of apologetics that go way over my head or knowledge as in knowing God as a father, lord and friend? Should we as Christians know the bible inside out from cover to cover, or is it ok to skim the bits that we "may never understand" like certain prophecies or parts of Revelation?

That's a lot of questions and this probably makes for muddy reading. But if you do get through this I would appreciate any thoughts you might have on the matter. I'm kinda unsure...

Apologies for lack of bullet points in this post