Ben’s Musings

At Last! Mary-Lou has been hogging the laptop watching 24 every evening, but tonight she went to see Pride & Prejudice with her Girl mates, so now I can blog!

I thought I\’d share which Books I am (slowly) reading:

The Book Of Five Rings

When I was in East Africa before I came to Uni, I spent 3 weeks in Nairobi, Kenya. I met a guy called Steve Richards from Basingstoke who was working in the school the church ran. He didn\’t know Jesus and in conversation said that this book was his equivelent of the Bible. So I said I\’d borrow it and read it. I did and I really enjoyed it.

It is a bunch of teachings on the philosophy of Martial Arts by an undefeated Samurai called Miyamoto Musashi who wrote it in 1643. It consists of nebulous ideas which don\’t often flow together, so it\’s quite hard to follow, but is very interesting.

The Power Of A Praying Husband

I want to pray for and love Mary-Lou more so a friend recommended it to me. It is good in that it has many short chapters on all sorts of things about a wife such as \”Her Emotions\”, \”Her Motherhood\”, \”Her Fears\” and \”Her Purpose\”. These all have good principles and prayer points at the end of each - it\’s almost like a handy handbook for a husband!

It is written by an American lady called Stormie Omartian, and it can be cringy and cheesy but on the whole, it contains some good advice and great principles.

Well, I hope you enjoyed the Rocky Spoof, it was the first thing you saw for nearly 5 months - 5 months, now thats a while!

So, I\’m back blogging, and it feels good. I was inspired by my friend Matt and his blog to begin blogging again. For a while I was thinking of what i could focus on in my blogs, how i could revamp it and make it more meaningful. But then I thought that I might as well just blog whatever I find on the internet that I like and whatever I\’ve been thinking of, cos that\’s the point, isn\’t it?

Mary-Lou and myself have been hosting some evenings - amongst the people we are church with - dedicated to discussing whatever people want to discuss. We call the effort the SOD (September of Discussion)! The first one was last Thursday evening and we talked about Masculinity, Femininity and Sexuality. It was fascinating, once we have typed up the notes, I may pop them on this blog. Future discussions are going to be on Money, Poverty and Provision; and Developing Prayer, Working with God in Work and Why are we in Manchester? So watch this space!

Mary-Lou has today got well into 24 Series 2. While she was going through Series 1, she had just watched 4 hours worth of it and we decided to watch a film called Jersey Girl which is a rubbish film about a girl and her Dad. Anyway, about 10 mins into it, m-l asked to stop the film cos she was still so tense from 24 that she was expecting something shocking to happen suddenly! I never got into 24 but m-l is hooked!

I tried to give LOST a shot recently. I gave it 5 episodes to grab me, but it failed. It is nowhere near as good as Desperate Housewives!

I\’ll leave you with this: 50,000 blank speech bubbles left around New York, filled in by strangers, enjoy.