I'm sitting huddled up in many woolly layers at my comptuer. To be honest, I still haven't properly thawed from a week tramping around an snow-covered tent (which incidently collapsed on the final day under the weight of snow). Thankfully only paperwork got squashed. The advantage of such weather was that people were glad to get into the tent and out of the cold, the tent boasting a couple of heaters and a tea urn...

I'm sure I'm not the only person to blog about the incredible amount of snow that has fallen in the last couple of days. It's beautiful, and it just keeps falling! I saw several man-sized snowballs when passing the park yesterday and some and some impressive three-tiered snowmen. The university campus was transformed into an arena for the biggest snowball fight ever, and everyone's shoes got very soggy.

Here are some pics I took early in the morning... 

This week is Birmingham University mission week - a chance for students at the university to find out a bit more about who Christians think that Jesus is. Consequently much of my time will be spent being cold in a big blue and white tent in the middle of campus. I will be craving tea and wishing that my toes were warm. I will be getting MUDDY and wearing a bright yellow safety jacket. I will hopefully be meeting new people, chatting to them and finding out a little bit about them and what they believe. Hopefully this will be over a cup of tea (or real coffee, although as blog-readers will already know, this cannot be found within a mile radius of Birmingham University...). Consequently blogging this week will be on the sparse side this week.

I'm not a criminal. Although I'm convinced of this fact, I still have to fill in a special form to prove that I'm not a criminal, or at least that I'm a reformed one, in order to serve on the Word Alive student team. Thus begins the drama. I went to the post office yesterday to submit my completed CRB disclosure form; tired and fed up after spending the entire afternoon ploughing the process. I waited in a queue for a while before taking my turn at the little window. I explained to the lady that I had a CRB form for her to check over. Blank expression. A CRB police check disclosure form. Frown. You know, one of those CRB forms you have to fill in to prove that you're ok to work with children - the handbook tells me that I should take it to my local post office. Grunt. Where's she gone? Another lady appears. Same again. She finally looks at my forms. Looks confused. Asks me why I haven't filled one of them in. I say that I thought you were supposed to do that. Minutes pass. She asks for my three forms of ID. I hand over a birth certificate, marriage certificate, bank statement. Problem: they are not in the same name. The birth certificate says Anna Cresswell, but the marriage certificate says Anna Bennett. You need three documents with the same name on. I ask doesn't my marriage certificate prove that Anna Cresswell and Anna Bennett are the same person? Apparently not. She asks, do you have any bills? No, my husband pays them. Car insurance? Er no I'm not insured on the car. Pay slips? No I don't work (going red). Everyone is looking at me.

So I gather up my many pieces of paper and shuffle out again feeling silly. So not only could I pass for a 17-year-old and look far too young to be married but I have no job (that's paid, that is), no car insurance and I don't even properly exist. I felt very silly and went into Woolworths and cried on the phone to Jonathan in the boy's toys section. 

I consoled myself by buying a new flask. It's shiny, sleek and silver and will carry proper coffee to places that are instant coffee strongholds, like Birmingham University campus. 

I love a good rose. Especially one from the south of France. The taste of it brings to mind lavender fields, patchwork fields, blazing sun and vineyards. Jonathan and I spent a lovely evening with some friends on Sunday night when we went round for dinner. Edward and Gisele are a newly engaged couple who we met at church, and are two of our newest friends here in our part of the world. Gisele is french and Edward speaks french like a native, and apart from being a really fun evening with good company and good food, it reminded me of my rather tempestuous gap year, a month of which was spent in France. It was the rose that particularly reminded me of my time in Provence. And as I like being reminded of things, it made for a nice bit of relfection on my part. I mark my time in France - which I spent staying with my uncle and auntie - as a turning point in my life. It was a turning point spiritually, when I stopped running from God and ran to him instead. Several instrumental conversations with my auntie really enouraged me to carry on and not to give up on my relationship with God. It was a really painful, beautiful time. Especially beautiful were the days we spent in a little Provencal village. I remember there was a bird's nest on the bacony of my room, and the baby birds (bald and ugly!) poked their heads out and squeaked at me. We also walked through some lavender fields and got chased by several hundred bees. We sat out in the garden to eat dinner and watched the pack of wild kittens chase things. I was coming to terms with some serious things, scary things. Yet I came home with real hope. Isn't it funny how places are so significant? Maybe that's just me, and I do tend to let my reflective side run riot a little too often. There's something quite cathartic about doing it though...

I had so many lovely responses to my last post that I thought I would expand my beetroot field sililoque. I have had so many thoughts over the past week that I hardly know what to articulate. Mainly, I think I've seen glimses of God as he actually is. As God. No frills. Without religion, denomination, or spin. Whether I like it or not. He can't be boxed or summarised. He can't be tamed, relativised or claimed exclusively. He defies being limited to country, race, language, social strata, personality or culture; He's God of the world.

Ali will know that I feel a special bond with King Nebuchadnezzar ('Neb'), King of the ancient empire of Babylon when it was at the height of it's powers. It might sound a bit pretentious, but read the first 4 chapters of the book of Daniel and see whether you identify with his story. What I like about Neb is that he's an 'all or nothing' kind of character. He goes at things with 100% enthusiasm. It's either black or white. God takes him on a pretty interesting journey - he witnesses miraculous escapes from death and pretty amazing dream interpretation. But despite these things he always manages to forget that God is, well, God and everything he has was given to him by God in the first place. So God brings him low. He spends years as an insane man, living like an animal and driven from his court, before he will acknowledge this. And what he says at the end of it all is just incredible:

“After this time had passed, I, Nebuchadnezzar, looked up to heaven. My sanity returned, and I praised and worshiped the Most High and honored the one who lives forever.

   His rule is everlasting,
      and his kingdom is eternal.
 35 All the people of the earth
      are nothing compared to him.
   He does as he pleases
      among the angels of heaven
      and among the people of the earth.
   No one can stop him or say to him,
      ‘What do you mean by doing these things?’

 36 “When my sanity returned to me, so did my honor and glory and kingdom. My advisers and nobles sought me out, and I was restored as head of my kingdom, with even greater honor than before.
 37 “Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and glorify and honor the King of heaven. All his acts are just and true, and he is able to humble the proud.”

This is real worship, forged through pain and suffering. And I keep coming back to it again and again. I identify strongly with Neb - and our esperiences are similar, bar ruling over one of the world's greatest civilisations and going crazy for a couple of years. It's amazing how a story that is thousands of years old can speak so strongly to me today.

Well I'm back from a week away in the Malvern hills on my second relay training course. I feel so old, like a couple of years has past since I left. I feel about ten years older. Do you ever have that feeling? Like when something happens that totally changes your perspective on life, and things suddenly make sense. I had some brilliant converastions with some wonderful people, notably the lovely Kath about life, God, feelings, issues and personality stuff. I feel human again. I feel alive. I feel like me. I feel like I'm not the only one who has problematic thoughts sometimes, who fails and who feels weak. It's been a really profoundly challenging week and I don't want to forget anything I've learned.

Notable event of the week: I went into the middle of a beetroot field to tell God how angry I was about certain things that have happened over the past year or so. It was the perfect place to do like David in the Psalms and have a good honest rant. However, as I strode off into vegatable land, I felt all the anger leave me, and I just wanted to praise him instead. It was rather baffling, but I just went with it, and praised God for an entire lap of the vegatable field. And still I didn't feel angry. It's times like these that make me think that God has a brilliant sense of humour. Beetroot is such a funny vegatable.

More on this...

I'm not ashamed to admit that I like a good bit of relaxing/'minimum effort' TV from time to time. After a long day, it's nice to sit down in front of something relatively brainless and unwind. Recently, the hubbie and I have been watching bit and pieces of 'celebrity big brother'. I'm also not ashamed ot admit that I enjoyed watching 'I'm a celebrity get me out of here' when it was on last year - good, pretty funny entertainment with Ant and Dec and various bug and reptiles. But this time I've been seriously disturbed by what I've been seeing on 'celebrity big brother'. It's seen a 'gang' of 3 'celebrities', including the former big brother contestant Jade Goody, verbally abuse and bully Shilpa - a Bollywood star. The girls have left nothing uncriticised - from her accent, to her cooking, to her mannerisms. It's like being back in the playground - and maybe it's due to my own experience of it that I was so upset by what I saw. Obviously CBB and indeed BB are shows that thrive off the disfunctional relationships between the housemates, and the rifts or friendships that form within this very closed environment. And there's clearly the issue of the editing work that has been done to the show before it is aired, by which the producers can in some sense 'play god' in the portrayal of events to the viewing public. In addition to this, there is the fact that 'bullying', whether emotional or physical, exists on a spectrum. At some point simply 'not getting along' with someone becomes 'disliking', 'rejecting', 'hating'... There has been a big hoo-ha in the media about whether the behaviour of the gang of girls in the house can be classed as bullying or racism, or merely cultural ignorance. Obviously, the girls are culturally ignorant - and Shilpa comes from an Indian culture that they clearly do not understand. So, it seems, rather than attempting to find out about a culture that is different to theirs, and rather than embracing diversity and the richness and insight it offers, they rejected it (or her) and refeuse to understand it. They gossip about her, they criticise, they find fault. Is this racism? I would say so. As for the 'culturally ignorant' person, surely ignorance doesn't automatically equate lack of respect.

The thing that bothers me is that, on a show like BB where 'anything goes' and is indeed encouraged, whether we actually have the power to call certain behaviour unacceptable or not. A show that was created to show interactions in a very confined space, that obviously provokes the kind of behaviour that constitutes 'compulsive viewing'. Apparently numerous complaints have been launched relating to the Shilpa- bullying issue, so we can assume that at least some of the population find this discriminatory behaviour unacceptable, which is at least something.

It's so disappointing that what is evident in the house is probably a reflection of attitudes that remain unchanged in this country. I've just read 'To Kill a Mockingbird', which makes the whole thing rather depressing.