There’s so much happening in the world that sucks the joy out of life that I keep trying to lift people when I preach. But my attempts to encourage through my last 2 sermons were drowned out by the challenges they contained about showing God’s care for people & planet. I long for unadulterated joy…

Greta Thunberg has arrived in Greece following her deportation from Israel,
after the Gaza aid flotilla was intercepted
#GlobalSumudFlotilla
She said:
“I could talk for a very,very long time about our mistreatment and abuses in our imprisonment.
Trust me, but that is not the story.”
#Athens airport

Free stickers suitable for flag-bearing lampposts. Send a large A4 envelope with a 1st class large stamp to me at Bragg Office, PO Box 6830 Bridport DT6 9BH and I’ll send you a sheet. #ReclaimtheFlag 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🇬🇧

It breaks my mind that two British political parties have seen scenes like this and decided to try and replicate it in Britain. Thuggary, lawlessness, state brutality. Farage and Badenoch decided they liked the look of it.

"To my colleagues in mainstream media: your silence is complicity. Your 'boths-sides-ism' is complicty. Your euphemisms for genocide is complicity."

From my speech accepting the 'Path of Truth' award from Palestinian diaspora group KTH.

Full speech: zeteo.com/p/palestine-...

Jean-Michel Jarre’s live album from his London Docklands concert played in my music shuffle this evening bringing back memories of being there. I looked up the date, it was in 1988.

I feel old…

I was listening to Michael Palin’s (1979) diaries earlier and hear him say he was picked up by a jaguar and Terry Gilliam wrote a synopsis on the toilet.

My first thought was not of cars or a deposal device… cue ChatGPT’s imagination of my imagination.

Tonight’s listening pleasure: the reformed The Beta Band, live at the O2 Academy in Bristol, and a masked DJ who would I would be surprised to find out is Steve Mason or another member of The Beta Band.

Vinyl albums create a closer connection to the music than any other format, but not for their tactile nature - CD’s have a similar quality. But the very need to get up and change sides or discs means that vinyl records stop songs blurring into others and losing their individual identities.

Tonight’s album: Mogwai’s As The Love Continues - an excellent addition to their discography that includes their trademark range of sonic intensities and their finest sung song to date (Richie Sacramento).

Tonight’s bedtime listening: Underworld’s dubnobasswithmyheadman.

Yes! Mine came in the post today (release day) having pre-ordered it from Nine Inch Nails’ website back in July. I presume record stores will have it from today, albeit with different cover and black vinyl (the red/black vinyl and cover is only available from their website).

It’s finally out! An evening with Nine Inch Nails’ Tron Ares soundtrack has started.

Conversation today:

“How did the Israelites survive for 40 years in the desert (during the Exodus)?”

Me: “God sent them quails and manna to eat”

“What’s that?”

Me “Think of it like 40 years of KFC and bread, so no wonder they were grumpy”.

Music is my passion and fuel for life, but the sound of silence is equally powerful, the peace bringing both inner peace and energy at the same time. So with an empty house, I’m keeping the records in their sleeves and the stylus docked, and enjoying the silence whilst I can.

As humans we are built to live in relationship and community with others, which is one reason social media is so popular, but it hides or masks the reality of our isolation from each other. We can’t rely on algorithms and digital observations, we need to contact or be contacted, to meet and to talk.

I’m reminded of the illusion of Facebook and its system of friends. Rather than be a tool to share life as friends would so, it encourages people to show only the best of their lives, or spin/manipulate their reality to appear great, with friends watching rather than become part of.

Funny how things coincide…read Michael Palin’a diaries covering the ex-leper scene from The Life of Brian. Few days later hear a sermon on the Grateful Leper. Then reminded of my status as a metaphorical unhealed leper best kept outside the community, avoided & forgotten

Time to laugh with the film

At least with the concert in question not happening until March I’ll likely have forgotten the stress and will enjoy it.

Still, glad most of the artists & venues I go to see sell tickets the simple, straightforward & relatively traditional way.

After multiple attempts before I finally managed to get some tickets in a pre-sale today but can’t shake the feeling I could have got better and/or cheaper seats if it wasn’t for the 5 minute countdown to find seats and purchase the tickets.

The Pre-sale concert ticket process is way too stressful - the virtual queue and clock, the selection of seats disappearing before your eyes, the IT failures chucking you out & needing to repeat the process to get back in, seem purposely designed to panic people into paying more than they’d planned.

Angela Rayner accidentally pays less tax than she should have, resigns, and the media gives her hell.

Nigel Farage deliberately pays less tax than he should have, and the media gives him a free pass.

That, right there, is the problem.

The whole story in three posts.

Does anyone know of a news feed on BlueSky with a global outlook that’s not dominated by news from the USA?

As much as it’s good to know about what’s happening in the US, there’s a lot of things happening elsewhere in the world that I’m not yet getting to read about.