I feel like making this a little bit more account like... I've got a bit more of my essay done, and am just taking a break to write this whilst I look up some random facts like the date of the fall of Constantinople. I found a great new coffee shop. I just didn't feel like Starbucks this morning, and Silbury will be so... crowded! So I found some free parking (in the fog...) behind the hub and am now in Gloria Jeans, drinking Mudslide coffee... I like this, I like this a lot.

The weekend was interesting, lighting fires and keeping them going, not easy when the wind is blowing down the chimney... but it didn't chock me out... which is wonderful! Managed to get that sorted eventually, Saturday I went to see Deneille and got to meet the rest of the family, which was fantastic! After I went to see Colette, which was a great time just curled up on the sofa chatting, decided not to get into the argument about the ordination of women... she thinks its unbiblical. That evening was Roger's party, lots of fun! Enjoyed helping set up, seeing some old friends, and chatting with some great people I had only ever heard of in passing.

Sunday was lovely at church, Harvey asked me to be involved in the Carol Concert next week, which is going to be fun, makes me really feel a part of the church, especially after his email about it! Carol Concert outside in mid-December... going to be fun! Yesterday I spent too much time in Silbury... its a strange place to be... felt all... homely, especially with Laurence trying to put mini plastic blue combs in my hair... WEIRDO!

Now I really should get back to my essay...

I was in fact just accosted by the Divinity Mafia! Ha!

So this head has to start working, I think a major kick in the head is needed here. Hum. "Hey hey that's freedom you hear" lets get this brain into gear.

Marlowe was the greatest playwright that ever lived, from his translations of Ovid to a semi-biography of the great Tamur! Full of reference after reference to mythology, theology and just the most amazing jokes in the world! He brought Helen of Troy back from the dead and played tricks on the Pope! How could anything compare? I mean...seriously, this stuff should be legendary, and yet there are only a select number of people who know his name. Over shadowed by a mere pseudonym, maybe he'd have liked it that way. In a way...it's the work that matters not the name behind it! If it is pure stunning beauty screaming out from a page, then it matters not the name that wrote it, for it will be valued whatever the consequences. 

"This life is alien to me" those are Klara's words on her return from the East. The crawls across Europe to find that the man she loved killed himself, and that only one of her friends doesn't blame her for it. Her life... completely broken, she has no family, no home, the orphan adopted my an Austrian Jewish family in 1930's Austria, who years later was tortured near to death, but only lost her sight, she was fated from the moment she was dragged from her mothers arms.

Part of me ponders where that came from, but... part of me really isn't sure I want to know. I love Klara, has to be one of the most exciting characters I've ever invented, I mean... she's AMAZING, she survives longer than all of them, crafted to the role of Taliesin, her father a prince of Rome (in the pre-papacy sense!), her mother so beautiful, the lady destroyed after her husbands death by the traitor of a kingdom. Then murdered by her uncle, and then... Julian's saviour until her supposed death, and eventually Jenna's friend. Oh I love her!

I should probably write an entire book on her.

Today was amazing, my lecturer was FANTASTIC! I mean... I've been raving about her all day. There are very few people who inspire me, and it looks like there is only good yet to come, it's the sort of thing that I'm not going to lose my enthusiasm for.

There is so much I could go on about, but just got an email from her with the handout I didn't get, so must make a reading list for the morning before things get hectic.

SMdeB ESE x

This morning I took the first step in God's new challenge to me. I'm not expecting this challenge to be easy, or to be able to do it all at once, it'll be a step at a time. There are hundreds of reasons for putting this off, but not least that it scares me, but I say that, yet I'm not that scared.

Ever since I was a little girl I've known what God wanted me to do. He's challenged me again and again, and if I haven't followed through on it, if I haven't listened then I'll discover at some point it's happening that way anyway. So part of me wants to say that I don't want to take this step because my discernment isn't keen enough, but when have I been wrong? When have my ears not heard? My eyes not seen? I went through a stage of not knowing how to find God, yet when was I ever without him? When I was at school I set my eyes to Corpus Christi. Part of it was that beautiful little college at Cambridge where Kit Marlowe studies, and that excited my heart, but really, really it was just the name... the name Corpus Christi. As soon as I found how to turn to Him again He showed me, He told me that I was to work within the Church, that I was to make this world see what Church really is. What church really is.... how it should be..... the Body of Christ.

I may take this one step at a time, and it may be another leap of faith. Yet to be deaf to something He's been telling me for years, to ignore something that He hasn't told me once, or even twice, but far more oft than that. I sit here and I stare at Circumstance, and wonder... how long we have left together, because I'm really not sure how long it will be. I know that if I start to use her to worship Him, then she'll stay... but what a challenge! Step by step.

So, after the amazing awesomness that was Imagine I went to Wales! I've been at a residential library in North Wales since Monday, things have been so awesome! Monday I was getting a train at a local train station that was almost impossible to work out. Walking across train tracks does throw one I have to say. I met this girl and God just let me speak to her, and let her open up to me... she started crying at one point! I can name ten people off the top of my head that He's done that to through me. I just kind of swoop in, tell them and show them that God loves them, and then I never see them again... Maybe one day they'll be a chance to see the change that he's used me to make in their lives, but more and more I have to leave it in His hands and just not know.

The library is amazing, I've been in there quite a bit reading. There are a couple of Bishops here one American and another Australian, they're 'recovering' from the Lambeth conference, but I'm learning lots. Especially from my new church of Wales friend who used to go to a Vinyard church and is now an Anglican Priest, she's great and we've had wonderful discussions. I'm getting a clearer picture of what I'm going to be doing next... I'm pretty sure that I've planned by dissertation, though...erm it would be a thesis if I wrote it how I want to... So some narrowing of the field will need doing! But hey I've got two years.

Anyhow I best be off.

SMdeB xxxx

So (I always start writing with that word, maybe one day I'll stop, but for now, so), my Aunt's in hospital. My mother predicted my reaction admirbly, you can't not tell me! Not something like that... The fact that there are members of my family prepared not to let me know hurts more than the news itself... I don't understand why people think that's okay.

Well, I'm going to do lots of work this afternoon... my desk is already surrounded by boxes and we've already dealt with the fact that we ran out of supplies because I'm doing my job too quickly!