Posts from — September 2005

Aaaargh! The forms you have to fill out to sell a house now. It took Erica and me most of the morning to complete the various forms that our solicitor sent us - property information, fixtures and fittings, instructions to sell, terms of business, Land Registry. And you have to present passports and a gas bill to prove that you are who you claim to be and that you live where you claim to live.

It shows how long it is since we’ve sold a house - I’m sure we never had to do all this stuff 20 years ago.

Off to Hertfordshire again today. We saw three houses:

• the first we did not like at all - this was one we had noted as being on the market when we (together with Hari and Doug) did a preliminary recce in the county on 7 May; it was somehow unkempt and unloved; there was stuff dumped all over the place and the bedroom used as an office looked like it had been trashed by burglars;
• the second we quite liked; the location was lovely and would have suited us very well indeed; the house, though, was rather too large; definitely an odd house - a 1940s/50s bungalow that had an ugly lump put on the roof with rooms; it had three bathrooms and was quite interesting; it felt friendly and I think we could have lived there, but the price was really above what we wanted to pay (?445);
• the third, a beautifully modernized bungalow in Oaklands, immediately took our fancy - large sitting room and kitchen, 4 decent sized bedrooms, two of which will do as offices for Erica and me), family bathroom and en suite bathroom to the master bedroom (complete with remote controlled dimming lights); on the market for ?410k - we offered ?400k but that was turned down - the price had already been lowered - so we offered the full asking price and it was accepted; well worth it, I think.

Lunch at the Cowpers Arms in Digswell - which will be closed from 3-7 October for refurbishment.

Went to see Hari. Fetched her from uni and had a cup of tea in her flat.

I met this morning with Simon Keyes, Director of the St Ethelburga’s Centre for Peace and Reconciliation (in Bishopsgate) and with Justine Huxley and Salim Nakhjavani, who share the job of Inter-faith projects co-ordinator. Salim had set up the meeting.

Simon reminded me that he is married to Alison Murdoch, a connection that I had forgotten. Alison did tell me about Simon and about his becoming Director of St Ethelburga’s quite some time ago.

Our discussion was free flowing and wide ranging. They told me about their various projects: the E project (the Bedouin tent to go in the waste ground just behind their Garden of Peace); The Business of Faith (advising businesses, particularly in the City, about how to respond to faith diversity issues and to implement the Equality in Employment Regulations); Scriptural reasoning (scripturally literate scholars from the three Abrahamic faiths come together to talk about issues about which there may be either difference, even conflict, between the three faiths or similarity; they use a particular process that they have learned from the US; and they work from their respective scriptures.)

The scriptural reasoning project is a very interesting one, led by William Taylor, a Cambridge-educated theologian. Salim has been conversing with William (whom I met briefly) and has persuaded him that the Faith is an Abrahamic faith and should also be engaged in this kind of dialogue.

The whole project is really quite experimental at the moment and they are trying to find what works, what people need, what people will take part in. Simon made it clear that they want to promote frank dialogue that acknowledges differences and conflicts as well as commonalities. They want to look at faith as the cause of conflict as well as faith as a resource for the transformation of conflict.

We talked about the arts and about the piece by John Latham called God is Great that has been withdrawn by Tate Britain from a retrospective of Latham’s work ‘in case it would cause offence to Muslims’ - not that anyone had complained. The artist was furious. This had been done without his consent. In our discussion at St Ethelburga’s we thought that the point of art was to provoke and to stimulate people to think. The team immediately wondered if they could display the work in their space.

Somehow we got on to comedy. I mentioned Omid Djalili and Inder Manocha. There was talk of other comedians with a particular religious identity or who use material about religion in their acts and very soon the team were thinking about a comedy evening as a way of stimulating discussion.

The space itself is very attractive. The church, of which J M Rodwell (one of the first translators into English of the Qur’an) was Rector, was destroyed by the IRA’s Bishopsgate bombing in 1993. It was rebuilt - there’s actually very little of the original fabric left, some stonework and an arcade running down one side of the building - at the behest of the Bishop of London, who determined that it should become a centre for peace and reconciliation. It’s what I would call a ‘live space’, one that has life, bare stonework, a history, a sense of peace and calm. I love that kind of space.

I find myself very attracted to what St Ethelburga’s is trying to do, particularly to their emphasis on honesty in dialogue. I am fed up with the papering over of cracks that goes on in much inter-faith work; underneath there are seismic movements the whole time between the tectonic plates of the religions. We need to face this and talk about these things and find ways to reconcile people more deeply than just being insincerely nice to/about them can achieve.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, education, inter-faith, religion, spiritual, spirituality

I’ve just been really inspired by reading Creating Passionate Users. This blog has some mind-blowing, wise and well-researched things to say about learning. It’s a mine of useful information and, far more important than information, inspiration and teaching.

I’ve been on a major blog crawl today - when I should have been preparing for the Home Office on Monday, but it was all worth it to find Creating Passionate Users. It’s such an ass-kicking site (to use one of its favourite phrases). It may be focused on the software industry, but what it says about teaching and learning is spot on. It took me to Beyond Bullets another useful site about the use and abuse of PowerPoint (or, in my case, the much cooler Mac app known as Keynote). But what I love about Creating Passionate Users above all is its out-and-out commitment to the importance of effective learning and teaching.

Because what you believe in, you can teach. And teaching is the “killer app” for a newer, more ethical approach to marketing. While in the past, those who out-spent (on ads, and big promotions) would often win, that’s becoming less and less true today for a lot of things–especially the things designed for a younger, more-likely-to-be-online user community.

Kind of a markets-are-classrooms notion. Those who teach stand the best chance of getting people to become passionate. And those with the most passionate users don’t need an ad campaign when they’ve got user evangelists doing what evangelists do… talking about their passion.

As an ex-teacher, I can really go with this.

Nobody becomes passionate until they’ve reached the stage where they want to grow in a way they deem meaningful. Whether it’s getting better at a game or helping to save the world, there must be a goal (ideally, a continuously progressive goal) and a clear path to getting there. It’s our job, if we’re trying to encourage others to become passionate, to enable it. And the only way to do that is by teaching.

So, how do I teach Home Office officials about the Baha’i Faith in a way that won’t bore them rigid and will answer their questions, give them what they need, improves their day?

It sounds like one of those really over-the-top self-improvement ideas. But it’s not like that at all. It’s a witty and wise set of observations about people’s strengths and weaknesses.

I enjoyed this set of pages called My Superpower.

It set me wondering what my superpower is. How about procrastination? I’m actually procrastinating now; I should be preparing a presentation on the Bahai Faith that I’m giving at the Home Office on Monday as part of the HO’s diversity week.

Or there’s my ability to collect snippets of useless information and bore people rigid with them. Did you know that the Great Western Railway’s broad gauge (the distance between the rails) until 1872 was 7 feet and a quarter of an inch (please don’t ask what that is in metric). Why the quarter of an inch? Who cares?

Then again, I have a hopeless memory. I can tell that you I read something “somewhere”. But where? Some people have an uncanny knack for remembering book titles and page numbers and even the line on the page, but I can’t even tell you the title of the books I’m reading right now.

But my all-time superpower is my ability to “wing it”. I can join in discussion and give wonderful talks and presentations and make you believe that I know what I’m talking about - usually based on my half remembered collection of useless information that I just KNOW I read somewhere.

Now, how can I capitalize on this wondrous superpower?

Portsmouth Harbour

Originally uploaded by John Barnabas.

I like photos that are taken against the light. This picture has an interesting sky and the sun glinting on the sea beyond the yacht.

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

I was hailed by Wendy O’Dell and her husband as I walked from Waitrose car park into the centre of Abingdon this afternoon. We were level with the District Council offices. It turns out that their house sale has fallen through. Their purchaser was in a chain of 5 the chain has collapsed. Wendy’s frustrated because they had made an offer on a house in a village where she wants to live and not many houses come on the market. The house they want is back on the market. The O’Dells are also kicking themselves for having waited a fortnight before putting their house back on the market, in the hope that their purchase might be able to come through with the money.

I told them that we’d accepted ?400,000 for our house, having started at ?430k. She said they’d done the same.

Mr O’Dell commented how stressful buying and selling houses is. Yea, verily!

I gave the following presentation yesterday at a meeting of the National Spirituality and Mental Health Forum. The meeting took place at the London Central Mosque, Regents Park.

The Bah??? Faith is a religion born in the modern age. Bah???s follow the teachings of Bah??u?ll?h (meaning ?the Glory of God?), whom Bah???s recognize as a ?Manifestation? of God. Bah??u?ll?h, born in Persia in the 19th century, taught that all the great faiths come from one Divine Source ? what we call God ? and that humankind?s great spiritual adventure has been guided throughout history by prophets, teachers, Manifestations of God, such as Abraham, Moses, Christ, Muhammad, and Bah??u?ll?h Himself. Bah??u?ll?h refers to these great prophets as Divine Physicians. Of course, Bah???s recognize that there is a great diversity of religious expression, and that is only to be expected, given the different times and places in which the faiths have originated.

Service in love for mankind is unity with God. He who serves has already entered the Kingdom and is seated at the right hand of his Lord.

The Bah??? Faith places great emphasis on the importance of the family as the foundation of society and on building welcoming and nurturing communities.

A while ago I was at a chaplaincy conference at which part of the chaplaincy team (a Buddhist, a Christian and a Muslim) and a service user (a Hindu lady) from the Maudesly spoke about their experiences. We were allowed to be part of a conversation that this group had been having for some time about spirituality and mental health. The service user said she was quite happy to talk to any of the chaplaincy team, regardless of their specific faith, about her spiritual questions. In fact, she found it easier to talk to the chaplains than to the psychiatrists. It showed that service users (like all of us) need to deal with existential questions, questions that often transcend particular religious traditions. I found this conversation a particularly moving, almost spiritual, experience.

This is my diary entry for World Peace Day for a book that Victoria Leith is putting together. The book will include ‘diary entries’ from a wide range of people, reflecting what they did on World Peace Day and what activities they did on that day to promote world peace.

Can what I do in one day make a difference? Can I help make the world a more peaceful place? When I look at the conflicts that are going on in the world I sometimes want to bury my head in the sand and deny all responsibility. I can?t personally stop the terrible destruction that is going on in Iraq. I can?t bring the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians to a halt - not single-handedly, anyway. I can?t bring peace between the religions in just one day. It is all too easy to feel helpless and to give up any possibility of a peaceful world.

Most fundamental to a culture of peace, however, is a deep-rooted understanding of the reality of human oneness. Not just in words, not just in legislation, but deep down in all our hearts we have to know that we are one with all other human beings, and we have to live that knowledge in our daily lives.

Aaargh! We’ve looked at more houses and it turned out that the owner of the one house we liked had already accepted an offer!

I drove over to Woodstock to have breakfast with Steve Vickers at 8 this morning. The aim was to begin to flesh out some ideas for the Bah?’? Educational Institute (or whatever it will eventually be called). We also caught up with what our respective offspring are doing, what Becky is doing and Steve?s plans to reduce his work at Nebosh while retaining his salary! The discussion about the Bah?’? Educational Institute was very productive. Becky put in some useful ideas as well.

Then on to Hertfordshire with Erica to view a couple of houses. We had lunch at the large pub in Oaklands (can?t remember its name) before going on to the first house, in Chestnut Walk. I fell in love with 20 Chestnut Walk pretty well instantly. Chestnut Walk is a private road, narrow and leafy with an extraordinary variety of houses large and small along it. No. 20 was a ?chalet? house - formerly a bungalow with large rooms in the roof. It was different, interesting but not too quirky, and it felt like home. Erica also liked it but was not quite as ecstatic as I was.

The other house we looked at, in Mardley Wood, was about the same age as 24GC, but there was something repulsive about it. Neither Erica nor I felt that we could make this our home, even though it had plenty of space. It was the atmosphere, or something.

After we?d seen that house (Linda from Putterill?s in Knebworth took us around both houses and there was a Mrs Bell who was looking at the Mardley Wood property at the same time as us) we fetched Hari from her uni office (Bella, who was delivering her MSc thesis, was with her - we dropped Bella at the beginning of the road into the business park) and took her to the flat. While we were drinking tea and singing the praises of Chestnut Walk, my mobile rang. It was Linda. She had discovered that the vendor had already accepted an offer slightly below the asking price. I felt gutted. I had set my heart on 20 Chestnut Walk and we had been preparing to make an offer.

So now we?re in some difficulty, since there just are not the houses on the market that we would like.