November


I'm all sorts of behind schedule at the moment because November seems to have disappeared in a single click of the fingers and caught me a little off guard. It's been a month of Mondays started off full of plans and good intentions and Friday nights realising I haven't got anything done. I feel a bit like I've been chasing my tail for the past 30 days and I'm not likely to catch up anytime in the coming month.. But that's alright.

November was a pretty decent, though slightly exhausting month. It started off with a fairly intense (by my standards) speaking engagement in front of four congregations and the Moderator of the General Assembly which I nearly chickened out of at the very last minute, but got on with (albeit pretty badly) and lived to tell the tale. It involved endless writing of letters and emails and invitations and funding applications, and the submitting and subsequent passing (praise God!) of my first assignment in my current Open Uni module. It was infiltrated with muddy afternoons and too-dark nights spent Geocaching with friends. It concluded with my commissioning - along with 15 others - as part of our town's first Street Pastors team. And most excitingly of all, somewhere in between, it included a teeny little puppy making our house its new home!

(Centre picture not mine.)


Elsewhere this month I read:
'Evolving In Monkey Town' by Rachel Held Evans
An autobiographical account of "how a girl who knew all the answers learned to ask the questions", I found this to be both a witty and engaging look at faith in light of post-modernity and a very enjoyable read.

'Honouring the Self: Self-Esteem and Personal Transformation' by Nathaniel Branden
This is the kind of book where you find yourself with more paragraphs highlighted than left white. It's a challenging read, emotionally, but not in a bad sense. Does what it says on the tin.
I'd very much recommend this book, though with the disclaimer that it gets very political towards the end and expresses some pretty negative views on Christianity throughout.


And I watched:
'The Bling Ring', which was as well pieced together as you'd expect any Sofia Coppola work to be, but not something I'd rush to watch again; 'Bedlam' on channel 4, which I thought was a very sensitive and well-presented insight into both the patient and practitioner's perspective of life in a mental health hospital; BBC One's 'The Escape Artist', which was fabulous; and 'Gogglebox', which is still my guilty pleasure of the moment.

***
All in all November was a pretty good month, though I still can't quite figure out where most of it has gone!

Here's to a hectic but hopefully fun December..

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1 Comments

  1. Dear Laura,
    I wanted to wish you a very blessed Christmas.
    love,
    Christine

    ReplyDelete