Best Laid Plans

Things are in a state of flux for me at the moment. I am about to move back to South Wales, back in with my parents, back to being in a long distance relationship. When I first made that decision, I felt like I had failed. I moved away to uni five years ago. I move back home three years ago with a degree. I moved out again a year later to start a new job, expecting that to be it. Although it was a one year contract, I assumed I would find another job and never move back home.

But I haven't got another job, and I am moving home.

I have failed.

Or have I?

It is a blip that I couldn't have really changed.

I have done quite a bit of events planning (I am in the middle of doing one now), and no matter how good your plans are, there is always the things that don't go how you thought, the things that fall though, the ideas that just don't work. And I find them frustrating, because they ruin how I imagine things, how I want things to be. But I rethink, adapt, reorganise, and things soon fall back into place. And the events have always seemed to have come off without too many people noticing anything was wrong at all. (OK, Tresaith 2010 is the exception that proves the rule.)

And maybe that is what is going on in my life at the moment. My original plan has fallen though, so I need to just take a stock, rethink, and work out where to go from here.

I don't want to live in a world where (Poem)

I don't want to live in a world
Where nuclear weapons are valued higher
Than young people out of work.
Or where papers attack a son
By twisting the words of his dad.

I don't want to live in a world,
Where politicians bow down before
Bankers and Newspaper barons,
Or where freedom of speech
Only applies if you agree.

I don't want to live in a world,
Where poverty can be 'deserved'
and 'strivers' pitted against 'skivers'
Or where foodbank use growing
and for some it is heat or eat.

I don't want to live in a world
Where it's always the fault of the 'other'
Be they foreigner, poor or the government before.
Or where the suffering of anyone
Should be none of my concern.

I want to live in a world
Where people are people
Not just numbers and figures.
And where people are at the centre
Not money and power.

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This wasn't the blog post I thought I was going to write today... I have one bouncing around in my head that I just can't articulate about my idea of what Church should be. I guess that will come when it is ready. But instead I found myself writing a bit of a protest poem.

Every Greenbelt I rediscover my love for Grace Petrie, a wonderful singer-songwriter with some amazingly passionate songs, and I have been listening to They Shall Not Pass a lot recently (You can listen to it here, but be aware, there is a little bit of ripe language at the start), and the last lines of verse four this poem is taken from the line in They Shall Not Past which really chimes with me.