I'm so sorry I've been avoiding you

It seems like I start every one of these things with an apology so here's another. I'm sorry. I am a terrible blogger. And its true my internet darlings that I have been avoiding you but for a good reason. It is really difficult/mildly painful to write one of these updates for me because I am not capable of carrying on a daily existence here and maintaining a mindset focus on back home. Its painful because every time I sit down to write on this thing it opens the flood gates for all the homesickness and loneliness that I can usually handle provided I don't think about it too much. But since the whole point of a blog is to think about things like that... So that's my reason for not doing very good at updating you lovely electronic people. But here are a few highlights from the past couple of months.

Oh and by the way if you go on Facebook and look at pictures of me, most of them were taken by my housemate Jess. She's a really diligent photographer to the point that I don't really take my camera anywhere anymore because she takes pictures of anything that I'd want to take pictures of and more. It also looks like all we do is drink... that really isn't the case... sorta... we just happen to take the most pictures while we're drinking so I dunno make your own conclusions I guess.

Ok so what have I been up to?

Well a few weeks back we (Jessica, Melissa, and myself) planned and executed a successful youth rally. Melissa did the music and the energizers, I spoke and did the Jesus/God bit. And Jessica planned the rest of everything which was a lot. The theme of the whole shebang was "We're all in this together" from High School Musical. I didn't pick this theme but it worked well. I spoke about unity in the body of Christ and I used a bicycle wheel as an example of perfect unity. We are just flimsy spokes, easily broken, by ourselves. But if we are anchored by a hub (Jesus) that we can center ourselves around, then we are much stronger together. It went really well and we had well over a hundred show up so it was good fun.

We also went on our final retreat as a YAV team to the Island of Iona in Scotland. It was quite trip. Our Ferry leaving Belfast was 40 minutes delayed which meant that we missed every connection for the rest of the day and what should have been a long 12 hour travel day turned into a really really long 36 hour travel. But after bumming about Glasgow for 4 hours, spending a night in Oban at an awesome hostel, begging a ride from the newspaper/vegetable delivery man on the Isle of Mull, and general travel awesomeness we arrived on Iona. Iona itself is beautiful. You could point your camera in just about any direction there and it would turn out looking like a postcard. We were staying in the Macleod Center which is the Iona Community's non-retreat center (they don't like calling it a retreat center even though it kind of is). Its a interesting way of having strangers live together. Every one does chores together everyday as an act of worshiping God which I am all for but I think that some of The Community's Ideas are a bit too systematic for organic community to really form. If you follow their guidelines then, yeah you get a sense of community which is good because not that many people get to experience community living these days. But we'd been living in (and struggling through) community this whole time so we sort of had our own brand of community making that didn't quite fit with the Iona system.

We attended the "Out and About" themed week. which was cool. One of the days we went to a local sheep farm that raised only black sheep. The rest of our group where only there for a short while before moving on the the next activity but myself and Daniel from Finland stayed behind and helped them tag and *gasp* castrate their new lambs. We also got to use the sheep-o-matic A machine in which you load a sheep and then flip it upside down to better clip their hooves. We also got to cuddle and feed the lambs who had been rejected by their mothers. You don't know what joy is until you are mobbed by ten little beings that are cuter and clumsier than every other baby animal rolled into one. That day spent working on the farm was by far the highlight of my week.

A bunch of other cool stuff happened two but I don't feel like typing it all out. I went on half of a really boggy pilgrimage around the island and then got sick and slept for 20 hours straight. I lead worship in the rebuilt 12th century benedictine abbey. I jumped all the way into the north atlantic ocean in just my underwear. BTW only some of these things were officially sanctioned by the Iona Community.

I have been bitching a lot since leaving Iona about religious tourism. I won't re-express the whole argument but I will say that I think it is dangerous to construct places like Iona as some how more holy than anywhere else. This sets us up with the mindset that we can't have profound religious experiences any where else but in these places. A few of the people who were rude to us in Iona had this attitude about them that they had paid their money and were impatient that God hadn't "moved" them or whatever and that made them be short with us because we were somehow interrupting their holy experience. I dunno it just seems a bit arrogant. If that didnt' make any sense let me know and I'll explain it to you.

I also ran 7 miles the other day in a marathon relay. Who knew? I HATE running. But I did it with only one stop in the middle to go to the toilet. yeah me.

Know that I am well and that I think of you often
Alex