LAST NIGHT WE SAW THE NORTHERN LIGHTS OVER EDINBURGH!!!!
THEY WERE BIG AND RED WITH GREEN BITS!

tonyt am workin, youthwork and then 'Carnival of the Dead' at the bongo. hmm.

"billy connolly came round for tea and the result is I now work for him"
-Laura Beatie

today a Spanish pilgrim arrived and we walked all over Edinburgh including up Arthur's seat in amazing mist and sun effects.
The bands last night were actually really good.
just had battered haggis.
its getting dark now. we're far North.
will and john, your visitor counter is not really a counter is it! its just typed as 00096.

if you pray, cud you say a word for me sis Joy as tear gas stops being fun and random when it's everyday and making you ill and have nightmares. cheers.

today the sun is shining, a gang of thugs accompanied our dodgy upstairs landlord in lookin round our flat for some reason, made some new friends in the chappie, Anneleen is in town, workin at the bongo tonyt.

"Security is mostly a superstition.
It does not occur in nature,
nor do the children of men, as a whole, experience it.
Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure,
Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing."
-Helen Keller

I hope you are all good. Since I last wrote to you, I have had many
random
experiences including visiting Colombia, washing up with a sock, making
oragami shrimp and my first experience of tear gas!!!!!! Fortunately,
I
like random things.

(that was actually written by me wee sis Joy.)

God can be very random so it can be good to go with the flow

I think my random moment of today so far was when i was sat in the back of a van with no windows with a piano and a Jamaican guy and a Greek guy who I didnt know.

4,12,3,12 are the nights sleep in my last 4days

It's a bizzare scenario innit.... life.

AMASSIVEGLOWING humming orb of light brought freedom to the people in the industrial wastelandscape, smoke softnin the living human expression reflection in the sky.
I saw it with my own eyes.

I'm tired. This morning at 5am I was bleary eyed staggerin around Hackney after 3hrs sleep.
Now going to Sighthill indust. estate in Edinburgh to play football.

I intend somtime to write more about the weekend that just was.

Cyberdog in Camden's Stables Market is a good shop.

Wandrin round Europe in camper vans anyone?

i'm smiling.

since i last blogged I have been mostly: sittin in a cafe, sittin in a cloakroom gettin ears battered by teenage rock +hip hop bands with the volume outrageously loud (and I normally like high volume); sleepin; coming up with ideas for a new business venture; contemplating accidents involving nuclear war heads and wandering what to do to help sort out the problem; devising a scheme for organising a library system; eatin pizza; receiving top level psychology advice that would normally be worth hundreds of pounds an hour; eatin stovies and broth.

before i am likely to next blog I may well have: worked with me kids in the youth centre; gone to weird food party; gone on a big weekend life spree in London.

hope you're well,
love Tom

SNOWED YESTERDAY!! but slushy/rain in centre of town. I'm wearing all my clothes.
today have been mostly eatin pancakes showin people round a photo exhibition and building a library colour code system.
all in a days work for an urbanmonk.
Tonyt I am going to meet a business psychologist guy called Jim McNeish who is cool.
and tommorrow myt help decorate a greek orthodox church.
Matthew Reilly is a very clever man.

just been drinkin mountain tea (suspicious looking stalks and flowers in hot water) with Fr. John (the one wit the hat and beard who's not a muslim), possibly my oldest friend at the age of 80somthing. love his culture shock house; just chatted about life and what we were up to. browsing his bookshelf I found a book called "the ideals of asceticism" written by a guy called Hardman.

Last night Anne saved a bongo clubnight by bringing loads of coursemates down when we were lookin a bit empty. Nice one!

Me Joe and KB took it in turns to hand out bottles, chat, and mixit wit da neuroscience massiv. I keep getting payed to have quality time!

Whales spend three times as much energy playing as searching for food (Rohr 1990).

the season's changed, was yesterday at about 10 past 1 in the afternoon in the time between me walking from my room to the kitchen. Now it's really cold and it rains from time to time.

I am glad that there is no obligation to read blogs because it means I can write crap if i want. Feel completely free to come and go as you please.

I dont feel like this blog particularly well represents my life. But like you can learn a lot about people from what they post on their bedroom walls...
(tho I have always felt that a pressure as have never really been bothered what is on my walls although you cant really disown them as they do reflect you, like what clothes you wear (which I feel similarly about) -for ages I lived with posters that i didnt like that were just there from when I moved in because I didnt really mind them and didnt have anything else to put up.)

like what do you have on your bedroom walls? (i have a map of europe, a smattering of photos and postcards, a surfing poster(just fallen down), a sign that says "SINK" pointing to the sink, and a couple of massive amazing valuable portrait paintings that are in my room cos they were in the way where they were in the corridor)

Self expression is a wonderful thing as long as it happens on your own terms when you feel like expressing yourself. Like giving people presents. (tho sometimes particular events that give you a reason to do it might be helpful i guess)

sorry I plan to not let this blog get anymore introspective!! i'll stop now.

feelin better today. rainin sunnin and windin. thanks God, its been a good week.

survived work -in fact the bongo was really good, lots of people I knew were there, getting paid to stand behind a cloak room shelf and chat to friends I havnt seen for a while is fine by me.

today woke up pretty mashed again, have spent the day being ill with other ill people. which makes it so much less bad, did a big bit of artwork and then binned it cos it was cak.

going to work again tonight, the bass earthquake pot smoke rastafari experience that is the Messenger Sound System.

had a great experience of how good the colour orange can be today, it was alive, like water, like a leaf, like magma; and really inspiring that we live in a world where something like that also exists. (try shutting your eyes and looking directly at the sun) (I'm ill)

never underestimate how profound completely non intense situations can be.

I'm wrecked.. head blocked up, throat raw, legs seized up, my workin day today is 5pm-5am.
I have 3more recovery hours.

BUT YES IT WAS WORTH IT -yesterday I saw lots of people I love, breathed lots of plaster dust, went to a pub with live folk music, followed by running around the streets shoutin, followed by a superb night of psychedelic trance at the venue, -high energy freedom with a great crowd.

in clubs people can worship while dancin with and smiling at eachother, healthily non individualistic methinks.
"da glory is in da neighbourhood" -some1 in amsterdam

need to eat more honey

"plants cannot be in a state of euphoria, thats my theory.."
-rebekah

(personally i disagree (you should see the spider plants revelling in the strobe light!))

trying to stay up late to move my body clock back to the night shift. is this good for me?

God can be soo helpful: a load of stuff on my mind really not quite sure what to do with it.. sat in pausing place (an hour's silence with company and candles) and God invited me to change the way i thought about one thing; turns out, after i agreed to that, the rest of the evening processed out the whole thing without trying.. it wasnt big decisions or anything, but now the peace is back. That's good.

I think God is a genius.

But why the God who created the universe should want to talk to me still scares me shitless in an awestruck and very very grateful kind of way whenever I really think about it. But also in a seemingly improbable way I feel safe; actually really secure. God has top social skills on a massive scale. I think it's called love.

Have been reading old journals.. an amazin thing to do, skimmed as far back as movin to Scotland in Aug2002, theres been some highs and lows alright! and some crazy stuff I prayed about and then forgot about which has since happened. Realised in a fresh way that God being faithful means something. Please would you keep showing each of us more about yourself God?

I think I could be good at frisbee if I went to practices.

"There is no way of telling people that they are walking round shining like the sun."
-Henri Nouwen

Today is one of the most beautiful days in the history of the world.

Yesterday had brkfast w Finn and the fireperson and Robin the minstrel. Breakfast is underated, an unhurried sociable breakfast can bring a dramatic improvement to quality of life.

sunbathed on roof and got visited by people passin by in the street who came up to say hello;

had a pizza board meeting to discuss the future of raven post flat (raven is (something like) a partnership between the established church and a load of random people like me in Edinburgh)(we have a flat now but wont in future).

stayed up til4 chattin to Joy, our friend, flatmate, chef, inspiration, punk, Canadian who is at this moment winging her way back to bonny Vancouver to study for a couple of years, she will be missed.

am going to practise my upsidedown frisbee throwing on the meadows.

Today I managed to get back on a computer and have come to the realisation that:
PEOPLE have been reading my blog!!
thanks for the messages, am smilin a lot.

my wee sister Joy is now in Quito, Ecuador - plz look after her God!

This weekend was good.
at youthwork among other things i got read a poim aboot a fesh (things like that are not representative of our kids)
The bongo was rammed, got home at 5.15,
got up left house at 2pm and didnt get back till the next 2pm, och well.. things happen sometimes. (eg mtg a guy who a bank accidently gave loads of money who wanted to buy everyone beer (it was my breakfast) and meeting a fireperson from the underworld of Narnia, and watchin small party creatures dancin inside a chocolate puddin lit by the oven lights, and then hearing official people like the principal of the Uni committing the intellectual and social life of the academic year to God).

what if i got a wee cafe that was not officially a cafe (ie not licensed or open to the public (apart frm when i felt like it) or selling anything, and stuck a matress in the corner to sleep on.. God please can I have a free cafe?
Anyways its everyone else who wants to start a cafe, all I want is a place to dump my stuff and sleep at night.

"I have no special talents, I am only passionately curious" -Albert Einstein

I think from now on in life I might take Thursdays off.
Freaked out last night when som1 invited me for dinner and I didnt have a night completely free for 10nights in a row. I really need to not become an over busy neveravailable person. That would be like trashing a whole pile of lessons I learnt over the last year.
Oh for 9-5jobs with evenings and weekends free!

Work is good. It is part of healthy humanity. That means it needs to happen. And it needs to happen to me.

A fat WELCOME to any new people stumbling across my blog, by some bizzarre technological twist you now have access to a personal present tense autobiography of my life+musings, and I wont even necessarily know that you've been here, feel free to say hi by clickin on the comment thing below..

you can SING here

just been at new job in chaplaincy, i get an annual bursary for chattin to students.
sufi; labyrinth; enneagram; multifaith; mysticism. would all be things I would appreciate advice/comments/wisdom about right now (I dont necessarily place all those terms in a category with eachother)

homeless person told me his dreams.

Frank has started wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase with official documents about WMD in.
says its the only clothes he has clean.

The mice have infiltrated our defences as far as the back corridor.

Ok so now it's late at night, got lonely wandered streets managed to get into 24hrlab, so am blogging, been readin me mate Paul T's blog which is better than mine, in fact I think is very genius and has some free (very good) music that he's made on it, as well as lots of very wise things.

Another link to point out as I am exploring cyberspace is me flatmate Frank's. He rocks.

to fill in a few gaps between the last two entries (as life was too hectic for blogging):...

The new bongo club is fantastic. openin night thurs worked 7-4 love the people love the place love the music. Fri worked in Gracemount (youthwork) badminton and pool. Went to Manga at honeycomb, a classic drum and base night, danced with loads of friends who improbably all got talked into coming clubbin, ate toast chatted, bed 8am, got up at 4pm sat, big party in our flat, a goodbye to a load of people, a goodbye to our flat (tho I think I'll be around a bit) and a thankyou to Paul T for workin 4 CofS, even had communion led by a priest in the middle of it.. I had to run to work -messenger sound system, heavy reggae with the base shaking the whole building, spent time dancin and chatting to me mate KB in the cloakroom, this job is a laff. Ok so I'm going nocturnal again, walked up Arthurs seat at midnight sunday with Lindsay, friend visitin from Glasgow.. calm on way up then ferocious storm happened when we got to the top, prayed a load and then came down to relative calm.
last night in the bongo again, no one came, riding a bike around a smoke filled dance floor livened things up abit.
today I did the enneagram, if anyone knows what that is I'm interested in talking to them aboot it.

I'm sposed to write a report about my summer. hmm.

"In a continent so wrapped up in religiousity and atheism, I think it is important to find and explore God in all things not just the Bible studies and prayer meetings but also in the crushing of chillies, the uprooting of weeds, the throwing of a disc." -matt

And then there are times when somehow blogging just doesnt happen.
Have plenty of stuff to say but internet access can be few and far between when working and have no phone lines connected.
Things going well.
I hope.

I think number of residents in my flat has gone from 7 to 2 in the space of 24 hours. but i dont know for certain.
whole population of our tenement block using our window to get out the building for a bit because front door lock broken.
I HAVE 3 JOBS! just bagged another one, I'm gonna be on the payroll of Edinburgh University as well as Edinburgh council, I have to develop the chaplaincy and make it good.. and they're gonna pay me a good hourly rate to do it!?
Just been hangin out there and met some very interesting people, includin a girl called Betsy who I think we might meet again. She's an American postgrad studying Nationalism. 'gonna bring peace to the world etc'.

Have decided being 'naive' enough to believe that anything is possible is a key to achieving impossible things.

I have church this afternoon, possibly my most valued specific expression of it. Sittin on my roof for a while with a CofS priest in his 50s and a girl who dreams of starting an abbey.

I am working slum village tommorrow night at the new bongo.

sun is shining.