Communicating with bloggin wimin

I like communicating with bloggin wimin. I think I'm getting more of the hang of it. I often speak to my friends on the phone but bloggin is a bit different. Yesterday I went to St Mark's Wynthenshaw (I will find out how to put that link up on my blog) where my friend Kate and I talked about 'remembering the Bible' and all the exciting workshops we're going to do later this year. This morning I read the blogs on the WIM blog and got excited about the fact that in just a few weeks so many more of us are bloggin. When we put bloggin in the plan for WIM I thought it would be good to have Jane get us started and so it has been. Now loads of us are bloggin. I already feel more connected to Sarah - who I see in Sheffield ocassionally, and Jacky - who I see once in a blue moon - because I can read their blogs and send them comments. So bloggin is workin. It is helping us to connect up our stories. Keep at it bloggin wimin. If you're reading this and not yet bloggin, why not start?

A hopelessly zoological word

Seems everyone's commenting on Obama so I think I should too. It seems that he used the word 'forebears' in his inaugural speech (my spelling is particularly creative I think you will find if you follow this blog long enough). Anyway, forebears is one of my favourite words. It was once used at a Synod somewhere (I think I may have slept through the actual event) as a more inclusive term than forefathers. The use of the word was reported as 'hopelessly zoological'. Of course I have tried to use it often ever since and always with the tag 'hopelessly zoological': are we not all hopelessly zoological? Now there's a thought for the umpteenth anniversary of Darwin.

Word of Mouth

This is my book 'Word of Mouth' which is about using the Remembering the Bible (RB) strategy with ordinary people. It is published by Wild Goose and available at www.ionabooks.com.

It includes: basic information about doing RB, ideas, activities and stories based on RB, books that influenced my development of RB, liturgy that was developed with people and situations in which RB has been used.

The ideas in the book have all been road tested and developed with ordinary people in real situations, mostly in NE Sheffield, but also around the UK. I am excited about RB so if you want to know more do contact me. I run training events about RB around the country.

Women who blog

Last week at Windermere I meet some other women who blog and that got me started again. Actually I already knew these women. Jane and I trained for ministry together, and Kate and I have been colleagues for some time but this was a special week and it got the blogging thing going again.
We were working on Remembering the Bible (or RB) which is a way of working with the Bible with ordinary people that I have been developing for over 12 years now. There is some more stuff about it on the women in ministries blog, which you will find listed on my blog list on this page (note to self: well done for creating blog list).
We were about 20 women in different ministries and it was good to work together on connecting stories in different ways: biblical, individual and communal stories. Our methods included RB, scrapbooking and blogging.
Over the next few months I have to prepare to work with some other groups of ministers using RB. I think this got the year off to a good start and next time I want to concentrate on the role of RB in building community.

A long time

It's been a long time since I did any blogging. In fact I had of course forgotten my password. I wonder if any bloggers have good tips for this contemporary problem.
I have got excited about blogging again since a conference with Women in Ministry this week in the Lake District. We created a blog for this meeting. Please visit it
http://womenministrynetwork.blogspot.com/
My new year's resolutions are:
I will try to blog more often and get more into the blogging community.

2nd draft

I got my second draft done on time on 23rd May, before I went on holiday as I had planned. At 90,000 words without appendices it's still a bit long, but it's in. Unfortunately I was so chuffed by this acehivement I forgot to renew my library books before heading off to the rather damp south-west corner of the country that I got fined (!).

Now I have various other writing projects to complete whilst waiting for comments on my draft.
Hannah has also been hard at work on her exams, this time with the added feature of a recently dislocated shoulder. I'm putting her rainbow prayer here, as we had to change it for the prayer handbook which couldn't seem to cope with the colour fonts.

Lent 1 Old Testament: Genesis 9:16-17

Rainbow

Rainbow
cOvenant:
You
God
rememBer
all thIngs
liVing

Help us to be as colourful.
Help us to be as careful.


Hannah Warwicker

Getting back to it

I don't think I'm cut out to be a professional blogger because I keep forgetting to blog. On the other hand my PhD is making progress. I not sure I've really got the hang of blogging. For a start you need something distinctive to say. Whilst I have a lot to say I mostly just get on and say it. Blogging in front of a computer is not my natural form of communication, yet. Speech Therapist Theologicus, the name I made up to describe my joint vocation a decade ago, usually does it face to face, although I also appear in print in a number of more traditional formats. Blogging is big: there are more and more out there. But I've not really found the thing I want to blog about.

I could blog about Firth Park Road. I'm in my usual window seat, looking over the park as the trees come into leaf and the crows make sucessive attempts at nest building. Perhaps that would be eco-blogger or park-blogger. I voted Green yesterday, not because I've given up on socialism but because the Labour Party appears to have done, or has, at the very least, become very complascent about the support of ordinary people.



Green is the colour,

the colour of the grass

where the local people pass.

Green is the colour,

the colour of the leaves

where a nest crow weaves.

Green is the colour,

the colour of today,

as each voter had their say.

Green is the colour,

the colour that may last

if we get our act together, fast.