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We just spent a few days at the “coast”

A teeny holiday for us at the “John Snow House” in Portrush – we were very grateful to be allowed to stay there.

Tell you what though – climate change whispered/shouted in my ear and baffled us this week!

On Monday it rained intermittently and in sync with us every time we left the house!

On Tuesday it was occasionally wet, baltic cold and windy as………..

Wednesday was a different continent! It was as if we had literally jumped into a different world – sunshine as we strolled along the beach at 10am and for the rest of the day which was great.

This morning we were on the beach at 9.30am for a walk and again it was beautiful so i predict snow for tomorrow!

Typically i decided to not take our camera out this morning and oh how i regretted that! We were walking along in about 3 inches of water when i spotted something about 50ft away from us in the shallow waves.

“There’s something in the water” i said

“Is it a body?” says Cherith

Oh dear!! We didn’t have to call CSI!

It was 3 dolphins! We thought we saw 2 to begin with and then a 3rd appeared – they swam along, rising in and out of the waves not far from us for about 200 yards – it was beautiful to watch. No pictures though – sigh! There is a nice ‘couple’ somewhere who can confirm our sighting though, they watched with us for a few moments and then left when we told them Jesus made the dolphins!

We are home now so it can snow at the coast if “it” wants!

p.s. we didn’t really tell the nice folks that Jesus made the dolphins!

More pics on my Flickr

Today is the 12th of July!

Here in Northern Ireland thousands of people take to the streets to “celebrate” the “Glorious Revolution (1688) and victory of Protestant king William of Orange over Catholic king James II at the Battle of the Boyne (1690).” (from wikipedia)

In recent years an effort to make the whole thing a lot more cultural and a lot less sectarian led to a name change.

We all know that calling it ‘Orangefest’ takes the sectarian edge of it! Perhaps if they gave out free oranges to everyone? Or dressed up as Oranges? Promoted a national culinary delight created from oranges that we could all enjoy during the holiday period? Im clutching at straws…….

I watched “the 12th” once when i was still a child and i vowed to never endure it again!

I may often say i don’t care about it or i’m indifferent to the whole thing but if i am honest, i do care.

I care about something that gets labelled as ‘Christian’ and is clearly not. I care that many ‘Christian leaders’ from many Churches still join in and do not see the terrible influence they are having. I care that thousands of men & women think their parading and “celebrations” have God’s endorsement! I care that these things all add to the undercurrent of sectarianism that is evident in the “Protestant Churches” here in Northern Ireland.

Last year Gary Boal said this;

“Today on the 12th of July i’d ask you to bow your knee & worship the One True and Only Worshipful Master; Jesus Christ the Son of the Living God.” (read the full post here)

Even if you hate everything else i just said, at least know this….

One day you will bow your knee before God, and whether you were ‘Orange’ or ‘Green’ in this life will NOT matter! God does not support your cause no matter how much you name drop Him!

Orange…………..Jesus was and is NOT!

Ida is from Sweden and was here in Northern Ireland for just over months….

She connected with our Church almost straight away and joined our small group.

It’s been great to get to know her better and we are a bit sad that she went back to Sweden today……

Check out the rest of these pics from the marvellous navyblur – here

Photo taken by Ida Mattsson

I’ll try to keep this brief as its the weekend – nobody reads this blog at the weekend – and monday is a holiday so i might change my mind if i do not write now!

Last night we went to the political question time/debate that i’d previously blogged about here.

The DUP representative in this area, Ian Paisley Jnr was unable to attend which apparently left the audience “not impressed by his snub” says Jim Allister (from twitter). Allister was there on the other hand but did not turn out for an initial photograph with the other candidates and our Minister, who was chairing the event. Maybe he was late? I would hazard a guess that photograph’s of him with a Sinn Fein candidate are like hen’s teeth!

I was hopeful that this exchange would aid me a little with my decision on who to vote for but i genuinely expected it to descend into chaos instead – it didn’t do either, perhaps because it was in a church building – our Minister kept a lid on a few moments of heckling from a couple of fundamentalist wing-nuts who pointed fingers and encouraged us to break the law!

I say that because this constituency of North Antrim is deeply buried in fundamentalism and in my opinion we could see a disastrous outcome at this election. A muffled “for God & Ulster” was heard at one point – that says it all for me!

There was other, more subtle evidence of a leaning toward this kind of mentality with applause for the men who may have some practical issues right, but who’s political views are lodged in the backside of the mid 1980′s!

The deliveries from the candidates were far from animated and were dull for the most part but lets be honest, they are a dull bunch anyway! It is hard to be inspired by any of them but Ballymena still likes the fighting talk and the character assassination of others that threatened to rear their ugly heads last night. Ballymena still likes to shake its head and tut and grunt when the Sinn Fein councillor speaks!

This frustrates me – i fear what iv already said, that many will vote with religious allegiance & an ability to slag others off at the forefront of their minds! Flavour that with some old-school ‘Bible believing fundamentalism’ & you have an idea what thousands of people in the North Antrim constituency are like!

And there we have it really – few conclusions & lots of frustration………..

May God help us – really help us