ENOUGH ROPE

Andrew Denton is a brilliantly intelligent and generous interviewer who usually nails an interview when the subject is willing to answer questions honestly and thoughtfully. With some people he skillfully draws this out of them or just gives the opportunity should they choose to take it!!

Andrews interview with Bob Geldof last week was a shining example... brilliant, surprising, emotional and insightful.... I will find that tape useful in all sorts of settings: leadership formation; worship; speaking at Camps....

Check out a transcript at http://www.abc.net.au/tv/enoughrope/transcripts/s1343226.htm
And hopefully it'll be on the DVD for this series!!

It was also a lot darker than it looks in most photos 

The Chapel with its understated decor 

The Sistine Chapel

It's so funny to think back to 1989 when we travelled thru Europe and visited Rome... I'm not sure what I expected in the Vatican but I hadn't quite prepared myself for the Sistine Chapel... with four or five hundred other people... as you walked around it was hardly the silent smells and sounds of history... perhaps they were drowned out by the hum of chatter or the click of Canon EOS cameras.... It was amazing but it wasn;t the solemn and solitary place I had imagined. A bit like the Trevi Fountain with a thousand tourists all sitting around it... not quite the postcard view.
I imagine the Cardinals will have a unique view of the ceiling this week though!!

The Presidents daughters probably gave Dubbya a standard white and silver model 

Youth Ministry Notes

Catch YMN #1 at the website www.nsw.uca.org.au by following the links! These will eventually become a Folder [when there's 50-100 sheets perhaps!!

All the President's tunes - on his iPod
April 13, 2005

Los Angeles: As he ponders the future of the free world, the fate of social security or the state of his Texas ranch, President George Bush can turn to one source for solace: his iPod.
A birthday present from his daughters last year, the Bush iPod contains just 250 songs, from the knockabout comedy of Joni Mitchell's (You're So Square) Baby, I Don't Care to the straight ahead country blues of Stevie Ray Vaughan's The House Is Rockin'.
Mr Bush, an avid cyclist, takes his trusty music player whenever he can. On Saturday he took the opportunity of a 30-kilometre bike ride with his indispensable iPod to wind down after the Pope's funeral in Rome and before hosting the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon.
Although Mr Bush does not do anything so vulgar as download the songs himself - that duty is performed by an aide - the selection of music has analysts scrambling to deconstruct the contents of the presidential iPod.
What, for example, to make of the inclusion of The Knack's chirpy yet sleazy My Sharona, a staple of American college life for the past 20 years? But that is about as risky as it gets.
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As for an analysis of Mr Bush's playlist, Joe Levy of Rolling Stone magazine said: "One thing that's interesting is that the President likes artists who don't like him."
Mark McKinnon, Mr Bush's chief media strategist last year, cycling buddy and fellow iPod enthusiast, defended the presidential playlist. "If any president limited his music selection to pro-establishment musicians it would be a pretty slim collection," he said.
His selection, Levy said, "tells you that the President knows a thing or two about country music and is serious about his love of country music".
"This is basically boomer rock'n'roll and more recent music out of Nashville made for boomers. It's safe, it's reliable, it's loving ... It's feelgood music. The Sex Pistols it's not."
Mr McKinnon said that sometimes a playlist was just a playlist, nothing more. "It's music to get over the next hill."

MUSIC TO HIS EARS
John Fogerty Centerfield
Van Morrison New Biography; Brown Eyed Girl
Joni Mitchell (You're So Square) Baby, I Don't Care
Blackie and the Rodeo Kings Swinging From the Chains of Love
The Knack My Sharona
The Guardian, The New York Times

WHAT SHOULD GEORGE DUBBYA HAVE ON THE IPOD?

Worship Unplugged # 30 Community Meal Response

Some more Easter Ideas will follow bu the first was used at the Hunter UC Regional Easter Camp this year with the theme "Hope is..."

As part of the input and response time on Easter Sunday the worship/speaker input finished with an introduction to a shared Community Meal with echoes of Eucharist but a broader focus...

Four serving points for 160 punters had items, food and drink to share:
Cola, Lemon and OJ
Pita Bread and Dips
Pretzels
Rice Cakes
Croissants
M&Ms
Jelly Beans
Little foam rubber shapes symbolising something about HOPE
Black cards and white pencils for Confession
Phone Block Paper and pens for Thanks/Thoughts/Response/?
Tealight Candles to light and place near the Camp candles as a remembering of ?

Punters who wished to pray with, talk to or spend time with a pastoral carer moved to a space in the Hall near one of the serving points...

Background to this activity was the DVD footage [Geoff Boyce, Flinders Uni Chaplain SA] of "The White Lady" with looped soundtrack of "One Step Closer" by U2 and its lyrics on a second screen

"One Step Closer" U2
I'm 'round the corner from anything that's real
I'm across the road from hope
I'm under a bridge in a rip tide
That's taken everything I call my own
One step closer to knowing
One step closer to knowing
I'm on an island at a busy intersection
I can't go forward, I can't turn back
Can't see the future It's getting away from me
I just watch the tail lights glowing
One step closer to knowing
One step closer to knowing
One step closer to knowing
Knowing, knowing
I'm hanging out to dry
With my old clothes
Finger still red with the prick of an old rose
Well the heart that hurts
Is a heart that beats
Can you hear the drummer slowing?
One step closer to knowing
One step closer to knowing
One step closer to knowing
To knowing, to knowing, to knowing

3M Repositioning Glue Spray 

Worship Unplugged # 29 Repositioning Adhesive

Saw this one at a recent Workshop where the Consultants used a piece of cloth for people to stick paper to and then group like responses...

3M Repositioning Adhesive Spray [OfficeWorks and other outlets]
Spay the glue on a piece of material and you can stick, move and restick paper time and again...

I imagine prayers, responses, notes, pictures etc being able to be stuck on a cloth on the wall with scope to move things around and no need for tape, blue tack etc except to mount the material in the first place...

Simple ideas done well!!