Nunnery Ruins, Iona, Scotland

Things both new and old are worth pursuing.

Provider and Radiance

Things are not always as they appear to be.

Colonies of Heaven

I'm almost finished reading "Emerging Churches" by Eddie Gibbs and Ryan K. Bolger. I recommend it for any who want to be conversant with emerging churches. It is disturbing (to a 58 year old) and yet instructive, prophetic and, I find, encouraging. I want to reflect more upon what I have found within its pages.

Living a life with Jesus, and living that life 'on the Way' with others in a messy, profoundly altered world is my passion and goal, though I confess I'm too easily distracted and diverted by my own too self-centred motives, passions and fears.

Emergents are on to something. I want to learn from them. They are struggling to receive, enter into and live the gift of God's Presence and Reign (the Kingdom).

With many of them, I too am profoundly upset with what purports to be the answers we too quickly 'share' - in our still-modern, contemporary attempts to live out the Good News and in that life Jesus called 'abundant' - when our world has moved beyond being simply 'modern.'

I want to journey with those who, in Len Sweet's words, want to move away from or beyond mere 'answers' to the 'mysteries' - into the Mystery.

Burlington Bay

My Canon Power Shot is only 3.3 megapixels but it’s been great for all I need at present.
(click for larger pic)

Last week I spent several hours at LaSalle Park Marina in Burlington (overlooking Burlington Bay towards Hamilton harbour). Boats bob at their moorings near the northern shoreline at what used to be Oaklands Park. Many 'revival preachers' like Gypsy Smith ministered there in the early part of the last century. Now it is comprised of gorgeous luxury homes.

Near the distant shore my mother was baptized in the 1930's, upon her profession of faith in Jesus, along with a number of others from the (then) Freeman Gospel Tabernacle which later became Brant Bible Church. It joined recently with Park Bible Church to form the ‘Compass Point’ congregation.

The old cabins from Oaklands were taken by my grandfather and uncles, by truck, to Fair Havens Bible Conference on the Trent canal system near Beaverton, where they were put to good use for a number of years.

My Red Violin

This is one of two violins which I own. I've played the piano, tuba and tenor sax for years, but having a go at the violin has been a recent challenge. And most interesting, as this is the most difficult instrument imaginable to play. Yet I love to crank up the CD and play along (when the house is otherwise empty, of course - for otherwise my music brings tears to people's eyes for all the wrong reasons).

The violin varnish is red and the violin, made in 1927, is one of many of beautiful vintage made by James Reynold Carlisle. Carlisle was a noted American violin maker, the brother-in-law of Victor Corsi (born Achilles Vittorio Coggi in 1893 in Supino, Italy).

James Reynold Carlisle worked in Cincinnati Ohio in the early 1900's and is said to have made some of the best American violins of that era.

Carlisle was born in Kentucky in 1886 and in 1920 was married to a woman named Blanche who was born in Ohio. They had a son Francis and a daughter Dorothy. In 1920 the family was living at 112 Chapel Street in Cincinnati. He died in 1962.

Clonmacnoise, County Wicklow, Ireland

On a recent trip to Ireland, I visited the ancient site of the monastery of Clonmacnoise, Ireland. Dating back nearly 1,500 years, it is located in County Offaly. The site was chosen circa 545 AD by St. Ciaran. He was the son of an Ulsterman who had settled in Connaught.

Saint Ciaran, before establishing his own monastery in Clonmacnoise, was with St. Enda, a strict teacher and disciplinarian, on the island of Inís Mór off the coast of Galway.

Ideally situated on the River Shannon, Clonmacnoise was founded at the junction of both road and river travel in what was then the Kingdom of Meath. Many of the kings of Connaught, as well as those of Tara, were buried there. Today the site borders the provinces of Connaught, Leinster and Munster.