Sound of silence.

Oh, dear. Another lengthy hiatus: it seems I’m not quite getting this blog thing, am I?

In my defence, I have been busy, including a trip down to Spring Harvest to serve on the Word Alive youth team at Skeggy. That was a laugh, if extraordinarily tiring. If you were there, consider gorgeous girls and sex with animals. If you weren’t there, don’t worry - it’s not what it sounds like!

I was relaxing during the drive back from college this evening (being driven, for once), and my mind drifted a little towards a fab wee movie called Gross Pointe Blank. It wierdly tied in with some of the stuff we were thinking about in class today: how far do we allow what we do to define who we are? In the film, a hitman attends his high-school reunion, and goes through a major re-evaluation of his chosen profession while his soul-searching is played against a very, very dark but very, very funny backdrop. Are we secure first and foremost in our relationship with Jesus, or do we need to look for more to tell us who we are? I know what the answer should be, but I’m wondering what it actually is. Some people may know that I massively enjoy fooling around with issues of identity. This is just more of the same…

For example, I am a son, a husband, a brother, a cousin, a youthworker, a guitarist, a Christian, an eater of much Chinese food, an Ulsterman, an Ireland fan, a friend, a student, a driver, a geek… All these things are a part of my identity, but where in there do I find me? I believe the right answer is fund in my unique nature under God - I am a child of God, created by him as a unique individual. But what about all the other bits? I cannot ignore them; I am intrigued by how many of them are defined by other people; I wonder which free me to be more, and which restrict me; and I’m just scratching the surface of a vast and mind-bending topic.

How much of the strife we face can be attributed to our hunt for identity? Our hunt for community? The two are closely connected…

Just thinking ‘out loud’. I get to join a couple of my colleagues to explore this with a bunch of church-types at a one day thing called ‘The Church Without Walls and Young People’ next Saturday. Should be fun…