Newsong: Broken As I Am

 Broken As I Am by Thomas Dean

Rubbish recording but quite like the song! Hope to do it properly very soon.
Words are viewable here. Enjoy.

2011 - Some Things Must Die

Christmas is now out of the way, I don't need to transpose any more tenor saxophone parts, compile any more carol services, host any more cavalcade road shows or conduct any more scratch choirs for another eleven months. Hurrah. I loved every second and feel like I know how we can improve next year, brilliant. Now...

I have two jobs, I have time to play with, I have ideas to pursue and brand new books and records to get stuck into. I'm excited about developing as a musician, as a friend, as someone who knows God and someone who considers the things of God. But what to prioritise? I'm getting to know all too well that if you spend life spinning plate after plate you will never become chief trapeze artist! (Incredible circus analogy)

I've been compiling a mental list of all the things I'd love to commit to getting better at this year.

• Prayer Journalling
• Getting back into Classical Music listening.
• Keeping up with my BibleinOneYear.
• Spending more time worshipping in my room, with guitar and without.
• Practising to be a better worship leader
• Prioritising certain relationships and bringing the LORD right into them.
• Songwriting and encouraging others in that.
• Getting back into the habit of reading things that shape me and those around me.
• Blog now and then!

I'm already exhausted at the prospect. Painfully aware that if any of these things are going to 'bear fruit' then there is going to have to be a serious cull in previous activities to allow the things I view as priorities to take shape.

Looking around my room its clear that I love to hoard stuff. Or at least, I find it very difficult to let things go. I own about 20 football shirts, I still use two pairs of trainers I wore at school, phone chargers from ancient and deceased models are stashed away - the list goes on. In life I love to try and maintain about 16 times the recommended amount of meaningful relationships, watch every major sporting event and say yes to and end up heavily involved in every event I'm asked to participate in.

On top of this, the real-time revolution has somehow hooked me into needing to react to every tweet, read every status update and stare at my gmail inbox until the replies roll in. Ridiculous. It cripples our productivity and fills ours heads with stuff we don't really need to know.

We can't expect our priorities to flourish unless we are prepared to be ruthless with all the crap. I'm carried by the grace of a loving Father but I'm also burdened with the responsibility of being faithful with the gifts He's blessed me with. If I was genuinely radical I'd look at this observation I've made and I'd give it all up, make a couple of phone calls and rock up at a monastery tomorrow morning ready for a lifetime of contemplation and solitude. I'm not a true radical though and I don't really believe that these are all bad things to be involved in. I'm just very aware that I binge on them and I'm missing out on becoming the person I could be. I look at the people I admire and their pursuit of God is what marks them out as special. I want to pursue God desperately, to live a distinctive existence that points to Him and I need to constantly strategize and evaluate how I do that.

So to compliment the other bullet points I need to have the self-control to...

• Switch the computer off, you don't need live text updates of Man City vs Stoke - you can read the match report after the game!
• Not spend the whole of Tuesday mornings contributing hilarious puns of Premiership footballers names that sound like vegatables.
• Make hard decisions about which events and people I can really commit too and not feel guilty about that.
• Learn to have my default setting changed from 'check my phone' to 'talk to my heavenly father'.
• Go to bed earlier.
• Have a proper day off

I love living in this age but I won't let it strangle and define me. That's the war cry I feel I have to make if I want to be serious about living for Jesus. It needs to happen in community and in grace.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

Found in the Desert Place

Totally humbled to lead worship in an army barracks tonight. Some of the young men were leaving in less than 2 days to do their first overseas tours, getting thrown into their first ever experience of war. I can't begin to imagine how terrifying that must be. The fear was palpable. I need to remember them in prayer.

Why is it that whenever I visit a different social environment the wisdom of God, the songs that we sing and the words we read in scripture seem so much more imminently real? It's beginning to frustrate me.

In India I'm amazed at the transformation from life to death, from moribund idols to the true and living God, to looking after orphans and widows - faith with fruit.

Tonight some of the lines we sung took upon an entirely new meaning for me. Feeling slightly frustrated that I don't live in a place where there is more at stake than where your earnings fall between £10,000 or £60,000 . Maybe that's a bit unfair and I'm just not involved in the right things, I'm chuffed my church is trying to provide a family for these soldiers, and I want to be a support too where I can. Western consumerism has just become so effective at convincing itself it has no need to worry about life, death and the things of God. There needs to be an urgency about my faith that refuses to recline into the comfortability of the likelihood that I will live until I'm 80 and nothing really matters that much. With all the naivety in the world, the more real these words are to me, the more likely it is that I am fully relying on my God for everything I have, a position I want and need to be in.

"Blessed be your name when I'm found in the desert place, when I walk through the wilderness, Blessed be your name"

"And though I walk the darkest path, I will not fear the evil one, for YOU are with me and your rod and staff are the comfort I need to know"

"Through many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come; 'Tis grace has brought me safe this far, And grace will lead me home"

"Blessed be your name, On the road marked with suffering, though there's pain in the offering, Blessed be your name"

Wise

For the Lord gives wisdom

and from His mouth comes knowledge and understanding

He holds victory in store for the upright

He is a shield to those whose walk is blameless.

For he guards the course of the just

and protects the way of his faithful ones.

Proverbs 2: 6-8

I love the simplicity of the wisdom on offer here. We all face difficult situations where it's a struggle between desire (not necessarily sinful) and 'doing the right thing' in terms of honouring God in my thoughts and my actions, even when nobody would ever find me out.

What does Godly wisdom say?

I need to be upright

I need to be blameless

I need to act justly

I need to be one of His faithful ones

then He will let me share in his Victory

He will protect me, the unshakable shield.

No brainer? Bring on the hard stuff.

New song

With your whole life you chose to show

Your Spirit in us can change the world

Loving and gracious You still are

You light up the way, and limping behind, we follow on.

Chorus:

Oh take this heart of stone away

In me no longer let it stay

The mind that was in Christ impart

Give me a new a perfect heart

Verse 2:

Gave no defence when you were accused

As you overcame our sin for us

Though you were tempted You refused

To give up on those, who nailed up your hands and took your life

Bridge:

Jesus what a mystery

That as your life takes root in me

I’m sharing in Your victory

When the Elder speaks, y'all better listen

And so, four weeks into our trip the sweaty trains of Mumbai have been exchanged for the fresh smelling serenity of Pune. Population 22 million exchanged for just 5 million (I know thats more people than in Scotland, but it feels like a peaceful retreat by comparison).

Things I miss about Mumbai:

working with some incredible people in the biggest slum in Asia, being able to get a rickshaw anywhere at anytime without even asking, being relatively mosquito easy, Kebab Corner and the great projects and friends made at all the projects I visited...

Things I don't miss:

overcrowded steel sweat-boxes- a poor excuse for public transport, the sheer number of what I will politely call 'starers', the humidity and rain which gets you wet and keeps you wet...

After arriving here on Tuesday night we have had a fairly relaxed introduction but here are a just a few of our recent activities...

The first thing to say is that the food here is incredible... we are staying in a bed and board Bible college and we have an excellent chef. Meals are now a treat rather than a chore and I can finally say that curry is acceptable at any time of day. The highlight for me is the home made peanut butter served with freshly made bread for breakfast - incredible!

Secondly, last night the team visited the O.M slum base to join half a dozen men our age for their daily worship and prayer meeting. It was incredible to pray and worship in two (or three) languages as we prayed for the area and the work O.M do there. Hopefully we can continue to get to know and encourage these guys as we work together for the next two weeks.

We have just started our work here in Pune, so have little to tell but lots to think about, upcoming events include working with a children's kindergarten, teaching English to those who have dropped out of formal education, leading prayer meetings and Bible study groups, youth work and daily prayer hours, as well as the opportunity to do some teaching and Church preaching as well. Should be a fantastic week and if you fancy it, why not throw some prayer our way for all of the above!

that is all, unless Mr Dean has anything funny and undermining to add to this particular entry!

Aaron

Jai Ho! A month on and we still believe.

I suffer from a lack of literary prowess. I can't avoid the temptation of starting each of these with either "Right" "so" or "ok", because I don't know any better. Confession time over.

Ok, right, so the boys have been here a month now. I'm a good way through my third week now, its flown by, and we've had such a positive time. We've now left Mumbai for Pune, and have been here a couple of days. It's a small city, only a mere 6 million odd people live here, and we've landed some sweet accommodation in a little retreat centre beside the military base.

We're here for two weeks with Operation Mobilisation. It's still early days yet, but we'll be spending a lot of time with the members of a small church, about 10 years old, that is totally committed to seeing transformation in their slum community. Its already been challenging just spending time with them. Yesterday 4 of us joined 7 boys in a tiny room they'd built with their hands to facilitate a school for 'drop outs' and a place to pray for the area and the world. I assure you, you have never heard anybody pray like these guys pray. I could spend years with a specialist vocal coach and not speak/shout as loudly, as passionately as fervently as these young men from about 14- 22. Every day, no matter what is going on, they meet for an hour to pray, how many of us show this sort of commitment at home? They've also memorised a fair bit of scripture and they're not ashamed to show it!

So we're going to be visiting and helping youth groups, schools, education centres, house groups and doing a bit of training and speaking/leading in the next 10 or so days, but a whole lot of learning too.

Meeting together this morning we had a chance to reflect on some of the things we've learnt and its pretty cool hearing from the other boys some invaluable lessons are being taught. Maybe I'll drop in some gems as I write now. If you're lucky.

Leaving Mumbai was sad. We really made some great friends in the classes at Blue Edge, in the staff at Oasis India and with people in the churches and families we spent time with. Last week was quite a bitty week. As I wrote last time, we went to speak to some pimps in the red light district of Mumbai. This is one of the weirdest things I've ever been asked to do, and I'm still figuring out what really happened. Myself and Aaron visited a couple of brothels to invite the young men to the project we would be speaking at, and I've never been in such a desperate place, ever. It was horrible. There was such a lack of hope in that place, a resignation that nothing good was going to happen today or any other day. The problem is, a lot of these 18, 19 year old men, who work bringing in punters to the brothel on the street, have never known anything else, and have been trained for this purpose since they were little kids. It's desperate. So we invited them in and talked with them for about an hour on what it meant to respect each other, with our own parables and examples. They were well up for dialogue through the translator and appeared to take quite a lot from the session, or so they said! One of the main things that I've been challenged on in this trip has been to value everybody we meet as a person made in the Image of God, and someone with value. It was tricky last week I must admit, especially when your mind tries to comprehend how the thousands of women in the red light district, some of them just girls, live their lives. It sucks. But there are lots of brilliant people working hard to end human trafficking, to show people in this work that there are other ways to live and there is a living God that actually loves them a lot.

After our long farewells at Blue Edge (where we were teaching) we visited a slum project in the biggest slum in Mumbai. Just under a million Indians live there, and conditions were pretty rubbish. There is no sanitation infrastructure so in the monsoon season everything gets flooded. Slowly they are trying to raise the height of the houses to protect them from flood water. But all the water and rubbish everywhere leads to quite a lot of disease. The place that we visited was a 'balwati', a nursery for 3-5 year olds, and it was great. The children were amazing and we had good fun with them. One story we heard though was that last week someone had visited and held a young 4 year old girl in her arms, and when she returned on Monday, the girl had died. She'd just caught some infection and through lack of education, or awareness by the time the doctor had reached that girl there was nothing they could do. India can seem quite similar sometimes and is, but its stories like that that hit home the huge gulf in quality of life sometimes, especially in the slums.

Finally , on Sunday we had a whale of a time playing football all day in the filthiest conditions you've ever seen. This was much needed and plenty enjoyed! We'd visited a new church on the Sunday morning and had been invited for the day to spend some time with them. The church was in Bandra West, one of the most affluent areas in Mumbai, where Bankers and Bollywood stars alike dwell in luxury apartments. We had been working for the last few weeks in Bandra East, just 10 minutes drive away. The same place you might think! The differences are scary. Different languages, different clothes, a different smell, different sewage systems. They feel like different worlds let alone different countries. Those of us who live in affluent areas have a huge responsibility to the poor that we have to take seriously. Of this I was truly reminded.

We had a great chat with one of the Oasis project leaders last week. He just reminded us how when he reads his bible in the morning, sometimes he struggles to see how it makes sense. But when he arrives to work in the slums, there is no doubt what he has been asked to do. Following Jesus is pretty simple sometimes!

²⁷Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

⁴⁴"They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?'

⁴⁵"He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.'

Oh yeah, the team are doing ok. Intermittent Diarrhea affects all apart from Aaron who has the most righteous excrement the history of Poona. He refuses to pass on his secret. Two weeks today I will be in Kent!