I wonder as I wander

Wondering... As a child, I loved the film, Paint Your Wagon, especially two of its songs: I was born under a Wanderin' Star; and I talk to the trees. Now, rooted in Belfast, my journey is in my mind and outwards to learn to love others - fairly carbon-neutral. I don't know if trees read blogs, but they never listened anyway.

I loved Christmas too, and Christmas carols. I wonder as I wander... I never quite got the hang of "We Three Kings", but kept coming back to look at the Star of Wonder. These ramblings may reflect some of the sparkle of my journey, a pinpoint testimony to a real time and place somewhere in the universe, from which a particular ray of light reached earth, and was noticed by a traveller.

Inspired by the brilliant Truth in Translation at the Lyric theatre in Belfast on Friday night, it's time to put down markers, say where we've been, what we've done, what's been done to us... my own little Truth and Reconciliation Commission, to keep me moving forward and not back, while we find ways of Healing Through Remembering. Maybe when Northern Ireland has done its remembering, we will learn to forgive and receive permission to forget. (Much of this was discussed at the CCCI conference, Divided Past, Shared Future on Saturday.) When we sort ourselves out, we might even start looking at what we're doing to children in Iraq...

Talking of which... I also met Shane Claiborne in Belfast this week, and read The Irresistible Revolution. This guy and his Gospel ring true. There's an integrity and love which resonates with the Gospels' accounts of Jesus. He embodies simplicity, humility, willingness to suffer and take risks in order to follow Jesus. It makes the rest of us uncomfortable. Too much to lose. And too little imagination or faith to see what we might gain... The journey continues...