(I felt the need to remind myself of the things I am good at. It seems much easier to think of those things I am not so good at. Why is that, I wonder?)
This year my chosen charity is Smile Train UK, a charity which focuses on cleft lip and palate repairs.
Clefts are a major problem in developing countries where there are millions of children who are suffering with unrepaired clefts. Most cannot eat or speak properly. Aren’t allowed to attend school or hold a job. And face very difficult lives filled with shame and isolation, pain and heartache.
The good news is every single child with a cleft can be helped with surgery that costs as little as £150 and takes as little as 45 minutes.
Smile Train describes their mission like this:
-To provide free cleft surgery for millions of poor children in developing countries.
-To provide free cleft-related training for doctors and medical professionals.
Until there are no more children who need help and we have completely
eradicated the problem of clefts.
Just look at the difference a cleft lip and palate repair can make:
Gabriel, before the op... 
... and after 
Maria, before ... 
and after ... 
Please consider supporting this charity. It costs £150 to repair a cleft lip and palate.
Today we have been married for 11 years. Add to that the 13 years we lived together before we married, and we have been together for 24 years!
It has not always been easy, and we do have our differences - but even in times of difficulties I know that we are good together and that we complement each other!
I am not a great one for writing poems, but on this occasion I have tried to put my feelings into words.
Walking together
sometimes pulling away
sometimes walking in unison
Maturing together
sharing life's experiences
united
Enjoying the sense of myself
but finding completeness with you
Our wedding anniversary is tomorrow, but today is the day the children are at school and we have the day to ourselves - so we spent it exploring Bedford. It's a place we normally drive through to go elsewhere, but we have never spent any time visiting.
We visited St Paul's church and the John Bunyan Museum, where we received a brilliant guided tour by a delightful elderly man.
We also spent a little while looking at our old friend, the river Great Ouse - looking wider and grander than it does further West.
Unfortunately the weather wasn't great, but it was lovely spending a quiet day together.
Today we walked past the old mill at the river Great Ouse. It is long disused, and has been converted into apartments.
The weir, which used to supply the mill is still there.
The great thing about going for walks is how you notice the small things along the way. Such as peering inside a hollow tree along the edge of the river.
And spotting the newly emerging buds on the trees.
To many British people, Christianity seems like a weird but unexciting theme park. Personally, I like our ever-dwindling status. I even like our ever-dwindling numbers. There was a time when social pressure made people go to church. If anything the reverse is now true. Most adults you see in church nowadays are there because they want to be there. That’s not decline, it’s progress. The wheat has been separated from the chaff. We get quality, not quantity, in the churches and the chaff can enjoy a nice lie-in.
[...]
Lord Carey feels that Christians have been too soft. He said that if you behave like a doormat, you get treated like one. I’m a little wary of muscular Christianity. It’s been used to justify everything from the Crusades to the shooting of abortion doctors. It seems to be in direct contradiction to “Resist not evil, but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also”.
This is the doormat as positive role model — a doormat who’s more concerned about the “welcome” than the muddy feet. Surely the central image of Christianity is someone who can shoot fireballs out of his fingertips allowing himself to be nailed to a wooden cross — submission as the ultimate show of strength — love as impenetrable armour. Most British Christians are badly dressed, unattractive people. We’re not pushy and aggressive members of society. We’re a bit like Goths — no one can remember us being fashionable and we talk about death a lot. I love the glorious un-coolness of that.
[...]
I went to a debate this week. The motion was “England should be a Catholic country again”. I ended up voting against. The marriage of Church, any church, and State seems alien to the teachings of Christ. Power corrupts and British Christians should be happy to continue relinquishing it. The Catholic Church lost more than it gained when it got into bed with the Emperor Constantine.
Christians tend to save their best work for the “voice in the wilderness” genre. We are most impressive when operating as a secret sect, kneeling in small, candle-lit rooms and scrawling fishes on walls. I’m enjoying this current dose of persecution. It’s definitely good for the soul.
