andy rambles

Hi there, thefools site is temporarily down as nickers needs to do some updating but it should be back soon. Here is the opening post from the site. More to come soon ... I promise “

For the word of the cross is foolishness”
1 Corinthians 18

We have gotten pretty clever over the years. We’ve created a lot of nice
buildings and cities, and we have made plenty of fancy gadgets, we know a lot
about science and medicine. We can find out about what happened in the past,
discover what is going on in space, we even have a good go at predicting the
future. If there is information about something you can now find it at the
click of a button and have a conversation about it with someone anywhere in the
world.

Knowledge is available to most of the developed world but wisdom that is
something different. Most would argue wisdom is something that comes with
experience or age. Cervantes said ‘Time ripens all things, no man is born
wise’. Mankind has been around for a good while now and as a society we have
acquired a lot of wisdom, perhaps this is measurable by our advances in
philosophical and ethical thought, or our development of law.

The human race is strong too, we are probably getting stronger, taller and
faster than ever before. Perhaps we could look to our sportsmen for examples of
this. In the last hundred years we ran 100m 0.89secs faster, the marathon
31secs faster, jumped the high jump 47cm higher and pole vaulted 212cm higher.

To borrow from Spinal Tap, if you got human ability and turned it all the way up
to 11 and God was playing at 1, the gulf between the two would still be
immeasurable.

It says in 1 Corinthians 25

‘Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God
is stronger than men.’

This kinda dampens the bonfire of ‘how great we are’ so to speak but that’s not
the whole picture, read on through it in verse 27

‘but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God
has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong’

So if you recognise that you aren’t really that great, that you aren’t that
clever, that you aren’t that strong then God wants to use you for His glory.

At Foolish Films we are making this our manifesto, being fools for God’s glory.
We believe in our foolish dependance on God, that makes no sense to the wisdom
of man, we can actually be His glory. We have realised that we are not smart,
we don’t have lots of money, or masses of equipment, or endless amounts of
fantastic ideas, but we know that God does. We long to see God’s wisdom
communicated to those around us in fresh ways, we long to see people experience
God through creativity and art. The dream is to start and expand, we don’t want
this to be just about film. We long for others to join us; writers, poets,
musicians, designers, painters, sculptors, a network of fools.

We hope to be a group that goes against conventional wisdom, that doesn’t get
trapped by being ‘realistic’, that isn’t so scared of something failing it
never bothers to start. So if you hear the call answer it.

1 Corinthians 1 (The Message)

“That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own
horn before God…..If you’re going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God.”

God bless.

Andy

1 Corinthians 1 18-31

well after saying a few weeks ago that i would use this space to collect my thoughts on life, i haven't really done so. the reasons for that, i think, are that i tend to over think everything in my head so by the time i get round to writing things down its all very complicated or a just can't be bothered. my other delibration has been this blog itself, but more on that later.
so during this time i have really felt God's hand in what has been happening. people have come along side me at the right time sharing about their lives, or bringing encouragment or words from God. at one point i could have gone for a cushy job earning more money doing a very similar thing but i didn't. i am now working in a new dept with in the same hosp. doing a 3 month project. i think that this is going to give me more time to think the next step through, and i feel God wants me to take a step soon, not just drift through things. or life even.
also after work has died down on tom's music stuff at the moment i haven't been doing that many creative type things and i believe it's time to try and step that up again. God is moving me away from my idea of safety and foundation, He is also raising my idea of what He can do, things outside of my expectation.
so essential i am pressing on, trying to find the new things God has for me.

i am going to be moving blogs as well, as i finally started to set things up properly at the foolish site, so i think this will pretty much be my last post here, it also might take me a while to put a proper post together over there, but please bare with us. check it out here thefools

'For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.'

people are asking me 'what you going to do in march?' or 'what do you want to do with your life?'. i dont really like my job and i get the feeling i am going to hate the next one, how do you answer a question when the only answer you feel happy with doesn't really answer the question. when people say 'what do you want to do with your life?' they mean what job would you really enjoy doing, Romans talks about 'living sacrifices' and thats all i'm interested in. when i clear out all the noise of life and focus on Him thats where i end up. yet the mundanity of life prevents me from living this to the fullest. where is the place i need to be

d'oh! i forgot to mention my excitment at the announcment made by steve jobs last week that the first intel based macs will now be available, the powerbook is dead, long live the mac book pro. it is very exciting for those of us in the mac world and a bit of a relief because we are now actually seeing these macs working and not looking much different from the old ones just better performance. it's also quite good for me now as i can get a feel for new releases and know when to upgrade (hopefully sometime next year).
so what else is happening in my little realm. well i've decided to start a countdown to the end of my contract which is what the 71 refers to in the title of this post. deciding what to do next is a real hard thing. i am trying to approach in the best way possible, exploring options, talking to people, thinking things through and prayer, though i think i need to spend a lot more time in prayer about the situation, so that will be my intention over the next few weeks and i am thinking about using my blog as a way of remaining focused on that.

i have had a lack of inspiration to blog, even though i have gone through the whole holiday period. christmas & new year were there usual sort of 'funness'. lots of risk/rummikub/myword and pictionary. i didn't win risk once this year which was dissappointing but had a rather thrilling game of pictionary, how exciting!
i did really enjoy catching up with everyone that called back home and just spending the time relaxing and eating - and there was a good amount of eating.
i was back to work for a week after new year and then had another week off. tom was off to canada so i need the time off to make sure we had everything recorded that tom could do, so i could be left to complete things in the studio alone. i worked a bit of the christmas week which i hadn't intended to so it was also good to get the time off and relax a bit also. managed to finish series 4 of 24 which was very good and i am looking forward to series 5 which started last night in the U.S.

over christmas i managed to see narnia, king kong and the producers which were all very different and averaged out at a pretty good standard of cinema watching, i really enjoyed king kong and thought the producers was a bit too based around one gag. if it is possible to calculate a graph from those two comments narnina would lie somewhere between the two slighlty closer to king kong.

so it's back to work which finishes 31st march, after that i'll be a jobless, very interesting and exciting.

for those of you that don't know me that well one of my most prized possessions is my Apple Powerbook, quite simply it's great! i have had it now for about 20 months, so as you would expect it's not quite as pristine as when first purchase. i remember
the first little dink it got was caused by some house keys - nrrgh!

well on saturday night i was chatting to my brother on iChat and i moved the screen of the laptop only for my iSight to fall off and hit the machine - crap! - i thought and probably said. i checked the iSight, it's made of good stuff and was actually fine. so i continued to tune my guitar (another one of my prized possessions) and chat to my brother.

a little later i looked back and noticed there was mark on the trackpad of my powerbook. at first i thought it was some gunk so i tried to rub it off, then to my horror i realised it was actually a little scratch in the trackpad, there must be some sort of protective layer on there. the trackpad works fine but now i have a 5mm scratch in the middle of my trackpad. it's the most annoying thing! firstly because it's annoying and i like to keep my things nice but secondly because i am still annoyed about it a good 2 days later, i am more annoyed at my inability to move on. it reminded me of a wallpaper at the howies website that goes a little something like this

Own Less
If you don't own the lastest, it won't go out of date.
If you don't own much, you won't have much to lose.
If you own next to nothing, you won't worry about ending up with nothing.
If you own less than you want, you will still have more than you need.
If you spend less money on things, you can spend more time on you.
If you own less, you will value it more.
If you only own what you can carry, you will carry less baggage around with you.
Travel light.

I'm sure I read somewhere else 'Don't let the things you own own you'. I don't know whether its a guy thing or a gadget geek thing but there is such a draw towards having the latest thing and there are a lot of rational reasons for doing so - I mean technology allows us to do some ace stuff, particularly in the creative spheres. I love using my Mac to record music or make little films or even just write, but it's just a tool it doesn't do any of the imagining or creating.

materialism is such a difficult thing to fight because it exists in so many ways, i can stop myself from buying crap i don't need, but the stuff i enjoy using and that allows me to try and unleash some creativity - i can still get stuck with that, obsessing about it whether i need to get the latest gizmo, whether i should really spend that much money, will i actually use it.

for a long time i have desired a fender telecaster - i mean i've never needed one but they look cool and sound great and of all electric guitars they probably suit my playing style and my favoured sound. earlier this year the exact looking one popped up on eBay and I managed to get it for a fairly good price, but one of my favourite things about it is that it isn't new. it's been played in and it's had a few knocks and the case stinks, but it's ace it's got character and it sounds great.

i don't know what i'm getting at, maybe i'm just sharing my experience and in the words of the beastie boys 'that's it that's all'.