Me – today

Check out the Birthday Calendar for some interesting – and not so interesting – facts and trivia about yourself.

Your date of conception was on or about 23 August 1976 which was a Monday.

You were born on a Monday under the astrological sign Taurus.
Your Life path number is 9.

Your fortune cookie reads:
When you speak honestly and openly, others truly listen to you.

Life Path Compatibility:
You are most compatible with those with the Life Path numbers 3, 6 & 9.
You should get along well with those with the Life Path numbers 1 & 5.
You may or may not get along well with those with the Life Path numbers 2, 7 & 11.
You are least compatible with those with the Life Path numbers 4, 8 & 22.

The Julian calendar date of your birth is 2443279.5.
The golden number for 1977 is 2.
The epact number for 1977 is 10.
The year 1977 was not a leap year.

Your birthday falls into the Chinese year beginning 2/18/1977 and ending 2/6/1978.
You were born in the Chinese year of the Snake.

Your Native American Zodiac sign is Beaver; your plant is Wild Clover.

You were born in the Egyptian month of Epipy, the third month of the season of Shomu (Harvest).

Your date of birth on the Hebrew calendar is 28 Iyyar 5737.
Or if you were born after sundown then the date is 29 Iyyar 5737.

The Mayan Calendar long count date of your birthday is 12.18.3.15.15 which is
12 baktun 18 katun 3 tun 15 uinal 15 kin

The Hijra (Islamic Calendar) date of your birth is Monday, 27 Jumadiyu’l-Avval 1397 (1397-5-27).

The date of Easter on your birth year was Sunday, 10 April 1977.
The date of Orthodox Easter on your birth year was Sunday, 10 April 1977.
The date of Ash Wednesday (the first day of Lent) on your birth year was Wednesday 23 February 1977.
The date of Whitsun (Pentecost Sunday) in the year of your birth was Sunday 29 May 1977.
The date of Whisuntide in the year of your birth was Sunday 5 June 1977.
The date of Rosh Hashanah in the year of your birth was Tuesday, 13 September 1977.
The date of Passover in the year of your birth was Sunday, 3 April 1977.
The date of Mardi Gras on your birth year was Tuesday 22 February 1977.

As of 7/18/2008 5:20:38 PM EDT
You are 31 years old.
You are 374 months old.
You are 1,626 weeks old.
You are 11,386 days old.
You are 273,281 hours old.
You are 16,396,880 minutes old.
You are 983,812,838 seconds old.

Celebrities who share your birthday:

Tori Spelling (1973)	David Boreanaz (1971)	Gabriela Sabatini (1970)
Tracey Gold (1969)	Janet Jackson (1966)	Olga Korbut (1955)
Debra Winger (1955)	Pierce Brosnan (1953)	Bob Edwards (1947)
Liberace (1919)	Henry Fonda (1905)	William Seward (1801)

Top songs of 1977

You Light Up My Life by Debby Boone	Best of My Love by Emotions
I Just Want to Be Your Everything by Andy Gibb	How Deep Is Your Love by Bee Gees
Evergreen (from ‘A Star Is Born’) by Barbra Streisand	Sir Duke by Stevie Wonder
Torn Between Two Lovers by Mary MacGregor	Rich Girl by Daryl Hall & John Oates
Star Wars Theme/Cantina Band by Meco	Got to Give It Up by Marvin Gaye

Your age is the equivalent of a dog that is 4.45636007827789 years old. (You’re still chasing cats!)

Your lucky day is Friday.
Your lucky number is 6.
Your ruling planet(s) is Venus.
Your lucky dates are 6th, 15th, 24th.
Your opposition sign is Scorpio.
Your opposition number(s) is 9 & 11.

Today is not one of your lucky days!

There are 302 days till your next birthday on which your cake will have 32 candles.

Those 32 candles produce 32 BTUs,
or 8,064 calories of heat (that’s only 8.0640 food Calories!) .
You can boil 3.66 US ounces of water with that many candles.

Your birthstone is Emerald

The Mystical properties of Emerald
Though not meant to replace traditional medical treatment, Emerald is used for physical and emotional healing.
Some lists consider these stones to be your birthstone. (Birthstone lists come from Jewelers, Tibet, Ayurvedic Indian medicine, and other sources)
Agate, Chrysoprase

Your birth tree is Chestnut Tree, the Honesty
Of unusual beauty, does not want to impress, well-developed sense of justice, vivacious, interested, a born diplomat, but irritable and sensitive in company, often due to a lack of self-confidence, acts sometimes superior, feels not understood, loves only once, has difficulties in finding a partner.

There are 160 days till Christmas 2008!
There are 173 days till Orthodox Christmas!

The moon’s phase on the day you were born was waning crescent.

Small goals

Some small goals for the next few weeks.

• Go to St John Ambulance meeting on 22 July to see if I want to become a volunteer
• Talk to vicar about approaching Street Pastors to become involved in the new team being set up in my area

I think that’s probably enough for now!

Jim Wallis in London

Jim Wallis was over here in the UK, and I’m very grateful a friend let me know he would be talking a church.co.uk about his new book Seven Ways to Change the World.

A few nuggets. He didn’t tell us the 7 ways, and although I bought the book, I’ve not got that far, having found a bunch of friends there too, so went to the pub after.

• When asked what had been the things that had got him most into trouble: Going the places you’re not supposed to go, particularly as a white, middle class Christian. Walking past those invisible ‘No Trespassing!’ signs.
• The 2 big hungers in this world are for spirituality and social action. And the movement that combines both of this will set the world on fire.
• People will get excited about this different kind of faith.
• We’re not to just ignore bad news. Revival is the good news for bad news.
• Politics is broken.
• The most effective social movements – Great Awakenings – have happened when politics has failed to address a major social injustice, and have always had a spiritual foundation.
• Faith is what moves the mountains that are the seemingly impossible social injustices: poverty, trafficking, climate change, racial injustice, and so on.
• Social change requires commitment from each one of us. We need to start in our own lives, lead in our communities and that will make a difference on a bigger scale.
• It takes time. Wilberforce put his first Bill forward 9 times, and it took another 30 years before the slave trade itself was made illegal.
• Charles Finney ‘invented’ the altar call; and got each new Christian to sign up to the anti-slavery movement there and then.
• God needs to be real and personal to sustain the commitment and faith that moves mountains.
• Hope is a choice. Cynicism comes from unsuccessful attempts to bring about a change, but instead of persisting, cynicism gives up and declares nothing can ever change.
• Hope means believing in spite of the evidence. Then watching the evidence change.
• Bad religion calls out of us our bad stuff. We’ve seen a lot of bad religion. We want to see more good religion, which calls out of us our good stuff: compassion, action and so on..

Oh, and I didn’t realise he was married to the REAL Vicar of Dibley, one of the first women to be ordained in the UK, who went on to advise Richard Curtis and Dawn French on the show.

My life in 6 words

“Some things get better with age.”

Tagged by The Third Province.

Death and sacrifice – the difference

What’s the difference between death and sacrifice?

death
–noun

1. the act of dying; the end of life; the total and permanent cessation of all the vital functions of an organism.
2. an instance of this: a death in the family; letters published after his death.
3. the state of being dead: to lie still in death.
4. extinction; destruction: It will mean the death of our hopes.
5. Also called spiritual death. loss or absence of spiritual life.

—Idioms

1. put to death, to kill; execute.

sacrifice
–noun

1. the offering of animal, plant, or human life or of some material possession to a deity, as in propitiation or homage.
2. the person, animal, or thing so offered.
3. the surrender or destruction of something prized or desirable for the sake of something considered as having a higher or more pressing claim.
4. the thing so surrendered or devoted.

–verb (used with object)

1. to make a sacrifice or offering of.
2. to surrender or give up, or permit injury or disadvantage to, for the sake of something else.

–verb (used without object)

1. to offer or make a sacrifice.

Sacrifice, more often than not, is a choice.

Death, usually isn’t. And often when it is, it’s a sacrifice, a martyrdom (which nowadays has become more associated with terrorism).

In spiritual terms, sacrifice is something we give up in order to ‘better’ ourselves, to develop our spiritual lives, our relationship with God. It is our choice.

In spiritual terms, death of something is out of our hands. God will end something, whether we want it to end or not. As sacrifice is painful, death can be more painful.

Death is obscene. It rips life apart, intruding on vitality and decaying it. Death is not glamorous – it is painful, noisy, messy.

But…

Being her now (a lesson to self)

Wherever you are, be all there. Jim Elliot

It’s easy to live a life of ‘should have’s, ‘wish I had’s – past regrets can taint our lives, stop us being who we are now.

It’s easy to live a life of ‘maybe’s, ‘if only’s, striving, worrying, daydreaming, keeping us from being who we are now.

Are past shapes us, but shouldn’t define us.

Our future is yet to come. Our destiny is out of our hands: sure we can work towards something, make decisions, choices, but we live life in community, and our communities, our relationships shape our future.

To life live in the here-and-now is perhaps one of the hardest things to do. I’m a consumate worrier, a constant daydreamer and have been since… forever, I guess. But all the worrying won’t make a situation any better or any worse. All the daydreaming won’t create my future as I wish it.

Living in the past or the future, and not the present, cheats those you have relationship with in the here and now. You take away from them the chance to have a relationship with a fully present person.

But we’re human. We have to plan, we have to learn from what has gone. But we can’t let this dominate today.

(And the apparent typo in the title is not a typo.)

Taking things one step at a time

I’m a woman. I can multi-task. I think I do it quite well, though I’m prone to taking on too much at a time, over-estimating my capacity. Usually in a bid not to let someone down.

Thing is, I often end up letting people – including myself – down. I can’t (or don’t) start what I’ve finished. I make promises I then can’t keep. There’s a significant part of me that tends towards the Type A personality – quantity over quality – rather than Type B (quality over quantity, but I generalise).

And I do so in my own life. I’m always starting books, starting Bible reading plans, starting things that are supposed to improve me. But I rarely finish them. I can’t remember the last time I read a book cover to cover. I’ve just started The Kite Runner, and intend to finish it.

So, I need to take life slowly. I don’t mean slowly as in speed, but slowly as in one step at a time. Methodical. Complete. With quality.

So 2008 is the year to start taking things one step at a time. I’ve already made a few changes in 2007. I’ve pared down Facebook, taking off all the things that distract me, removing people who aren’t friends – less distractions. I’ve got rid of my superfluous blogs: from 2008 there will just be this one and my poetry blog (which is very under-inspired at the moment).

So 2008 beckons. And I walk towards it. Slowly. Taking it one step at a time.