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Vana Ford is the creative behind Vasnas Designs, located at Jacaranda House in Cameron Street, Wauchope. Vana's most recent tour of India, where she explored textiles and various women's programs with some fellow travellers, has led to an exhibition at Jacaranda House – which will be on show until April 13.
Hi Vana. Describe how the concept for your recent trip to India evolved …
Last month I fulfilled one of my dreams – coordinating a textile tour of incredible India!
The trip was about six months of planning, and I worked together with a tour operator in India.
Our group was 10 in the end, including me and my husband, Greg, who was the only male!
Of the group, five of us were local, two from Brisbane, two from the far North Coast and one from Sydney. Six of the ten had not previously visited India.
Had you visited India previously?
For me, it was the fourth trip.
The first time I went to India was in 2006, as a participant in a teachers' tour. There were 18 of us.
We flew into Kolkata, and then went by bus north to Darjeeling and Sikim and then across India, ending in Delhi. I had always been interested in India – there was a mystique surrounding it, and especially as a young girl growing up in the late sixties/early seventies, India was the place. I studied Indian art and architecture for my HSC!
Trip two was in 2009. I was the recipient of the North Coast Leadership Fellowship. The Department of Education awarded a fellowship to each education region in NSW each year. My field of inquiry was Internationalisation of Curriculum in and through the Arts.
How did your business, Vasnas Designs, come about … and how does it function?
I retired from schools in 2014 and started my own business. Vasnas Designs grew out of my passion for Asian arts and crafts and in particular, textiles! I had always wanted to be a fashion designer, so I decided to give it a go. My third trip to India – to visit my good friend, Jyoti (met when she came to work with me at Byabarra Public School as part of a teacher exchange program) in Delhi and to take part in an artist residency program in Jaipur at the Art Inn with Devena Singh, where I was to learn about block printing and also about dyeing with indigo.
In the second year of operation, I moved the business into Jacaranda House in Wauchope and started the Jacaranda House Creative Hub. I have my shop there and my sewing studio, and Angela Marr-Grogan, Marrang Art, has her studio there also. We have a small gallery in the building and exhibit works from local artists there, changing the exhibition each three weeks.
I also take works from local artists and artisans in my shop on a commission basis. Kerry Wheeldon (pottery), Mark Riddle (wood), Bob Munroe (wood turning) Rebecca Randall (jewellery), Auntie Isabel (painted jewellery) and Nancy O'Brien (pottery) are represented.
I hand make a lot of beaded jewellery and some clothing, which I also sell in the shop. Most of my stock has been carefully selected by me and brought back from my travels, or it's local.
Angela and I have been working together on a beautiful range of sterling silver jewellery and silk scarves.
Women Gathering connects cultures: featuring Angela's imagery, my designs, and block printed with Indian wooden blocks or the silver crafted in Celuk, Bali. It's unique Aboriginal art.
Jacaranda House also provides a Creative Education Fund. Please tell us more about this …
The Jacaranda House Creative Education fund was started last year. The fund aims to encourage young artists by providing financial assistance and other opportunities, including mentoring.
We will have the first event this year – an art competition for school aged children for NAIDOC Week. Limited to 50 entries, 30 x 30 canvases will be given to fifty children to produce an artwork around the theme: Our Languages Matter. The artworks will be displayed at Jacaranda House during NAIDOC week, and 1st, 2nd and 3rd prizes will be awarded in primary age and secondary age sections – six prizes altogether. We will be conducting some fundraising for this event.
Describe you most recent tour of India in more detail …
The textile tour started in Delhi, where we attended the Indian Republic Day parade on 26th January. We had our own bus, with two seats each. Next was Agra, to see the Taj Mahal and then to Rajasthan Jaipur, where we did a block printing workshop at Art Inn. We had sent our designs for wooden blocks to Devena, and the master block maker, Raju, had all our blocks ready for us to use. Gopalji, a block printer with over 20 years' experience, was our tutor.
We had taken an overlocker and a sewing machine, which we left at an art inn, to be used by the local women as we introduced the Days for Girls program to local women and their daughters. Emma Heath, who lives in Ellenborough, initiated our support for this program. Basically, it involves teaching the girls to make and use reusable menstrual pads, with the idea being that they can continue with their normal routine for the whole month. There is a lot of shyness around open discussion about menstruation in India, so the whole introduction of the program and distribution of kits (pads and underpants) was very well received.
We took the remaining kits to Udaipur, to Sadhna (a group supporting women by providing them with work in the form of sewing – they can attend the workrooms or do piecework at home.)
Only 20 – 30 minutes from Jaipur is Sangener. Here we were treated to an indigo dyeing with shibori tie and dye techniques, with award winning Indigo artist Brij Ballabh Udaiwal. Our bus could barely squeeze down the narrow dirt path on the way there and at one point we had to stop, as the power lines were too low. Luckily, one of the local residents had a ladder, and our guide was able to hold up the power lines by pushing up the ladder, so the bus could safely pass! And yes, the same procedure was used on the way back!
After Jaipur (pink city) and Sangener we went to Jodhpur (blue city), to the magnificent fort there, via Pushkar, where we visited The Stitching Project – another social enterprise to employ local women in stitching etc. and this one started by Fiona Wright (an Australian) – experienced haggling in the local market and visited Bishnoi village, to see the potters and durry (rug) weavers.
Then to Udaipur – the white city, where we participated in a tie and dye (bandhani) workshop using three natural colours – indigo/lapis for blue, turmeric for yellow and cochineal for red.
That saw the end of Rajasthan. We went on to Gujarat – first to Ahmedabad, where we went to a textile factory – Arvind Mills. Mostly we were in the denim section – firstly the design room, and later the noisy weaving room and dyeing rooms. We also went to another dyeing plant, where workplace safety was not yet discovered!
We went on to Bhuj, and the Kutch region of Gujarat after one night at Dasada, where we went on safari and saw the wild ass and thousands of pink flamingos!
Before heading to bustling Mumbai and the end of our trip, we spent a few days in Bhuj.
In 2001 there was a powerful earthquake in Bhuj, and there is still evidence of the destruction. Bhuj is the centre of the Kutch region of Gujarat. There are many small villages in the area, where traditional handicrafts are still practiced – beautiful embroideries, block printed and naturally dyed fabrics – a huge range. We went to Ajrakhpur (this place had been completely destroyed during the earthquake and rebuilt). The Ajrakh style of printing takes around 23 steps from preparing the fabric to the finished product. Our workshop was around block printing.
As a result of your most recent amazing tour of India, there will be an exhibition at Jacaranda House in Wauchope. What dates can we view this exhibition?
Reflections – Stamping around India – A Textile Trail, will open at Jacaranda House at 5:30pm, 24th March and continue until Thursday, 13th April (the gallery is closed Monday). Along with collected paintings, photos and textiles from India will be some work from most of the participants showing what they did in India, or how India has influenced their own art.
And upcoming exhibitions?
The next exhibition at Jacaranda House will feature paintings by local Aboriginal artist Wayne Anderson. I'm very excited about his work being at JH. But that's another story …
Thanks Vana.
Interview by Jo Robinson.


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[photo walk] fort desoto/
Allan and Mike were complaining about the lack of good locations for Friday photo walks. They prefer natural sights with lots of birds. Jeff plans those kind of walks on Sunday mornings. I scheduled a Friday walk for Fort DeSoto.
I hadn't been to the park since we first moved to Florida. Gail took us but the boys were too young to enjoy it much. The waves are too strong. We didn't even visit the fort. I probably would not have appreciated it then as I was not doing much photography but snapshots of the boys.
There isn't much left but the the shell of the building. There are 3 guns left of the original 8. They are fixed in various positions and the cannons are empty. I played with Chip in the barrel and Doyle said it looked like I was being executed. Jason offered his bandana as a blind fold. Doyle told me to wait until everyone was done shooting. I peeked and saw them leaving. Ha ha.
Ryan's teacher called and I was on the phone when Doyle climbed into window to pose for me. I had to shoot one handed and didn't even get a chance to check my settings. Luckily I was sitting on a bench at the time.
There aren't too many choices for lunch in the park. There is a concession stand in the gift shop but... We decided to leave the park and headed to Billy's Crab. Now I know it is because they serve beer. Jeff only drinks coffee or beer. I took Chip along and he had fun posing for me.

subset: commoncrawl


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well ive been needing alot of help lately and everyone has been trying ot help but my vavle still wont hold a seal.
so here are some pictures of my gun and my ammo i made.
thanks for al lthe help.
me with my gun that i need to get working.
my valve
my cool arrow and golf ball ammo
so does anyone see a reason why my fresh-out-the-box vavle wont hold air?
again thank you
Registered users: Bing [Bot], Majestic-12 [Bot]


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9 March 2011
Over the last three years, many people have enjoyed building very small Maharishi Vastu (Vedic architecture) homes and special-use structures. These are often built for a specific purpose—such as meditation, work, or sleep—near the owners' non-Vastu homes, so that residents can enjoy the benefits of Vastu for a significant portion of their day.
'The effect of Vastu is to align individual intelligence with cosmic intelligence, individual life with cosmic life. This happens when the environment that we are inhabiting is organized according to Natural Law,' said Jon Lipman, describing Vastu principles brought to light by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
There is a growing trend to live modestly, compactly, and one enjoys the same influence of Natural Law in a tiny Vastu structure as one does in a large home, said Jon Lipman, AIA, US Director of Maharishi Vedic Architecture.
About 50 small structures have been built according to Vedic architecture around the world, of which about 30 are in the United States.
In Belgium, a man living in a 35 square metre house (about 380 square feet) says: 'Living in Vastu big or small, for me is like living in another world. My house, as small as it is, nonetheless gives me the effect.'
The homeowner experiences the benefits of Vastu all the time, Dr Lipman said, summarizing his description. The effects are sometimes subtle, sometimes very clear—and the effect is especially evident during his practice of the Transcendental Meditation Programme. (read more)


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Violence and Representation conference – Part 1: Gabriela Salgado, Simon Baker
Violence and Representation: 2010 conference at Tate Modern. Video coverage of Welcome by Gabriela Salgado, Curator of Public Programmes, Tate Modern. Introduction by Simon Baker, Curator of Photography and International Art, Tate Modern
Violence and Representation conference – Part 2: John Roberts
Part 2: John Roberts: Violence, Photography and the Inhuman
In representing the body subject to violence, we are always at some point confronted with what the representation of violence shares with the drive-to-visibility in pornography: the psychological barrier of showing everything-as-truth. That is, as soon as the limits of representability are transgressed, we lose focus on the thing that the transgression is designed to achieve (the powerful and truthful encounter with the real) and turn away. Hence the desire and need to look in order to discover the truth of violence is countered by the desire and need to look away in order to retain our composure and equanimity. This paper will focus on this conflicted and destabilising interrelationship as the very ethics of a politics of representation. John Roberts is Professor of Art & Aesthetics at the University of Wolverhampton. He is the author of a number of books, including The Art of Interruption: Realism, Photography and the Everyday (Manchester University Press, 1998), and The Intangibilities of Form: Skill and Deskilling in Art After the Readymade (Verso, 2007). His new book, The Necessity of Errors is to be published by Verso next year. He is also a contributor to the Oxford Art Journal, Third Text, Philosophy of Photography, Historical Materialism and Radical Philosophy.
Violence and Representation conference – Part 3: Susan Meiselas
Part 3: Susan Meiselas: The Life of One Image over Time, in the Context of its Making and Reframing
Susan Meiselas joined Magnum Photos in 1976 and has worked as a freelance photographer since then. She is best known for her coverage of the insurrection in Nicaragua and her documentation of human rights issues in Latin America both in photography and film. Her first major photographic essay focused on the lives of women doing striptease at New England country fairs and features in the Exposed exhibition. She was editor and contributor to the book El Salvador: The Work of Thirty Photographers (Writers & Readers, 1983) and edited Chile From Within (W.W. Norton, 1991). In 1997, she completed a six year project curating a 100 year photographic history of Kurdistan, resulting in the book Kurdistan: In the Shadow of History (Random House, 1997; reprinted by the University of Chicago Press, 2008). Honorary awards of recognition include the Robert Capa Gold Medal for 'outstanding courage and reporting' by the Overseas Press Club for her work in Nicaragua (1979) and most recently the Cornell Capa Infinity Award (2005). In 2009 she won the LUMA book award at Rencontres de Arles for Susan Meiselas, In History (ICP/Steidl, 2008). She was named a MacArthur fellow in 1992.
Violence and Representation conference – Part 4: Panel Discussion
Violence and Representation: 2010 conference at Tate Modern. video coverage of Panel Discussion, chaired by Simon Baker
Violence and Representation conference – Part 5: Alberto Toscano
Part 5: Alberto Toscano: Iconoclasm Today: The Tactics and Ethics of Negative Presentation
Whether we look to the supposed return of religious 'image wars' in the geopolitical arena or to strategies for representing violence in the arts, contemporary iconoclasm – and its critique – is in need of theoretical attention. Can we distinguish between piety and politics in the occultation and destruction of images?
Alberto Toscano is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is the author of Fanaticism: On the Uses of an Idea (Verso, 2010) and The Theatre of Production: Philosophy and Individuation Between Kant and Deleuze (Palgrave, 2006). He is the translator of Alain Badiou's Logics of Worlds (Continuum, 2009) and The Century (Polity, 2007). He is an editor of the journal Historical Materialism: Research in Critical Marxist Theory.
Violence and Representation conference – Part 6: Shahidul Alam
Part 6: Shahidul Alam: When the Lions Find their Storytellers
Who tells the story, often determines what story gets told. Selected versions of history, often propagated by gatekeepers of the status quo, have been established and reinforced, and largely gone unchallenged. For majority world practitioners, negotiating dangerous political spaces requires not only adapting modes of visual expression, but also modes of intervention. The majority world (sometimes capitalised as Majority World ) is a term used in preference to the largely inaccurate, out-of-date and/or non-descriptive terms developing countries, third world and the 'South'. The expression, coined by Shahidul Alam, highlights the fact that these countries are indeed the majority of humankind. It also brings to sharp attention the anomaly that the Group of 8 countries – whose decisions affect majority of the world's peoples – represent a tiny fraction of humankind. Majority world defines the community in terms of what it is, rather than what it lacks.
Shahidul Alam obtained a PhD in chemistry from London University. As an activist trying to remove General Ershad, he took up photojournalism. Former president of the Bangladesh Photographic Society, Alam set up the Drik agency, Pathshala school of Photography, Chobi Mela festival, Majority World agency and South Asian Media Academy. Honorary fellow of the Royal Photographic Society and visiting professor at Sunderland University, Alam chaired the World Press Photo jury in 2003.
Violence and Representation conference – Part 7: Panel Discussion 2
Part 7: Panel discussion chaired by Steve Edwards including Rupert Grey
Steve Edwards teaches art history at the Open University. He is an editor of the Oxford Art Journal and of Historical Materialism. Author of The Making of English Photography: Allegories (2006) and Photography: a Very Short Introduction (2006); his latest book Martha Rosler, The Bowery in Two Inadequate Descriptive Systems will be published by Afterall Books in 2011.
Rupert Grey is a practicing libel and copyright lawyer with a background in photography. He has represented national newspapers, photographers and agencies and is on the board of a number of photography foundations.
Violence and Representation conference – Part 8: Julian Stallabrass
Part 8: Julian Stallabrass: The Array of Representations of Violence.
Beginning with an examination of Thomas Hirschhorn's installations and other works which use images of mutilated human bodies, this lecture attempts to place those images in a field of varied image production (including photojournalism, museum photography and amateur photography), and to provide some idea of historical development in this area. It will argue that Hirschhorn's work is a tactical intervention, designed to pull the extreme images he employs out of their usual areas of circulation.
Julian Stallabrass is a writer, curator, photographer and lecturer. He is Reader in Art History at the Courtauld Institute of Art, and is the author of Art Incorporated (Oxford University Press, 2004); Internet Art: The Online Clash Between Culture and Commerce (Tate Publishing, London 2003); Paris Pictured (Royal Academy of Arts, London 2002); High Art Lite: British Art in the 1990s (Verso, London 1999) and Gargantua: Manufactured Mass Culture (Verso, London 1996). He curated the 2008 Brighton Photo Biennial, 'Memory of Fire: Images of War and the War of Images'.
Violence and Representation conference – Part 9: Panel Discussion 3
Part 9: Panel discussion with the all symposium speakers chaired by John Roberts and Q&A
John Roberts is Professor of Art & Aesthetics at the University of Wolverhampton. He is the author of a number of books, including The Art of Interruption: Realism, Photography and the Everyday (Manchester University Press, 1998), and The Intangibilities of Form: Skill and Deskilling in Art After the Readymade (Verso, 2007). His new book, The Necessity of Errors is to be published by Verso next year. He is also a contributor to the Oxford Art Journal, Third Text, Philosophy of Photography, Historical Materialism and Radical Philosophy.
To coincide with the exhibition Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera, this symposium explores violence as a subject in relation to representations in the broadest range of historical and geographical contexts.
It includes international artists, photojournalists and theorists who from their distinctive perspectives will attempt to unveil notions of spectatorship and consumption of violent images in contemporary culture. Key questions will encompass the notion of the political, apolitical or depoliticised spectator of representations of violence; the consequences of these kinds of practice and the difference between photo reportage and art photography. Speakers include Shahidul Alam, Steve Edwards, Susan Meiselas, Simon Norfolk, John Roberts, Julian Stallabrass and Alberto Toscano. Supported by Oxford Art Journal, Oxford University Press, the Open University and the British Council.


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A solar eclipse is an inherently spatial event: It's caused by the alignment of the sun, moon and Earth, and it moves across our planet on a predictable path. This makes it an irresistible subject for cartographers.
The 2017 total solar eclipse has inspired many American mapmakers to create a wide variety of maps, from practical guides for eclipse chasers to whimsical mashups of the eclipse path with unrelated phenomena. It's the first major eclipse to cross the continent since digital mapping became as popular, accessible and ubiquitous as it is. We've gathered some of the prettiest, most informative, and most fun maps we've come across for the August 21 eclipse.
Joshua Stevens of the NASA Earth Observatory made a map (first map above) to show where viewers will likely have the best chance of an unobstructed view of the eclipse. Stevens' predictive map is based on images from NASA's Aqua and Terra satellites showing how cloudy it was on August 21 for each of the previous 17 years.
Two hundred years of solar eclipse paths over the contiguous United States.
Graphics reporter Denise Lu of the Washington Post put together a beautiful collection of maps, including the one above showing the path of every eclipse that has crossed the contiguous United States in the past 100 years, and every one that will during the next 100 years. You can also check out her interactive version that will show you every eclipse on Earth you'll have the chance to see for the rest of your life.
We also enjoyed a fun, if obvious, map of where people are searching Google for "solar eclipse 2017" on the newspaper's Wonkblog.
Why not put two elusive phenomena together on August 21? Here are the best spots to see sasquatch in the shadow of the total solar eclipse.
Mapmakers also got creative. Joshua Stevens challenged the idea that the event had been mapped so relentlessly that "there are no more eclipse maps to make" by creating (in his free time) a map he calls "Sunsquatch." His map shows the best spots to see the eclipse and Sasquatch at the same time (above), by juxtaposing reported Bigfoot sightings with the eclipse's path.
Sunsquatch inspired a whole slew of clever mashups, as cartographers mapped the best spots to: see the eclipse and UFOs at the same time; watch the eclipse while eating at Waffle House; see confused lightning bugs react to the shadow; and experience the eclipse in places with heart-like names, a nod to Bonnie Tyler's hit song, "Total Eclipse of the Heart." You can also see how eerily close the eclipse's path is to the Oregon Trail, or how many towns can celebrate the eclipse Air-Jordan style.
Average drive times to the path of totality for the 2017 eclipse.
If you've got a car and a last-minute urge to see the totality of the Monday's eclipse, cartographer and eclipse chaser Michael Zeiler has you covered. One of his many eclipse maps (above) will tell you how soon you need to start driving to hit the path of totality in time for the eclipse, but beware, there's likely to be an unusual amount of traffic—so maybe just leave now.
The event will last just over two and a half minutes, but if you miss it and you're in North America, you'll only have to wait seven years for the next one. Zeiler's map below shows the path of the 2024 eclipse.
If you won't be able to chase this year's eclipse in North America, you'll get another chance in 2024.
The last time a total solar eclipse traversed the contiguous United States was in 1918, with a path quite similar to this year's eclipse, stretching from Washington State to Florida.
Eclipse maps first appeared in the 17th century, made possible by Nicolaus Copernicus' theory that Earth was rotating around the sun (and not the other way around), and Johannes Kepler's laws of planetary motion. Today's eclipse maps are far more accurate and detailed, thanks to rapid scientific advancement and precise satellite measurements.
In 1918 a total solar eclipse took a similar path across North America. This map from the American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac for the Year 1918 shows the timing of the shadow.
Follow All Over the Map on Twitter and Instagram.
Header Image: Satellite imagery from August 21 every year since 2000 shows how cloudy it is likely to be during the eclipse this year. ILLUSTRATION BY NASA EARTH OBSERVATORY


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Hospital/Homebound services are provided upon receipt of a homebound referral form in which the medical certification of need is signed by a licensed physician and/or licensed psychiatrist who is attending the student.
These are the following procedures for obtaining homebound services:
1.Parent notifies the school that hospital/homebound services are needed.
2.School personnel instruct parent/guardian to contact the Social Work Department at the Central Office.


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Sharin' The love: Some really cool Spokane Blogs
monte tareski Spokane Blogs spokane grapevine
0 thoughts on "Sharin' The love: Some really cool Spokane Blogs"
Wow, thanks for the feature spot!
For more great Spokane-area blogs check out the list at http://bit.ly/SpokaneBlogs (which is a post on my blog). I also have a Facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/SpokaneBlogs, and a Twitter account, @SpokaneBlogs. I'm working my way through the list adding feeds so that new posts will automatically show up in both places.
The list is closing in on 300. Check it out and let me know what's missing! (There's a form on the site to submit the info.)
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Life is at a crazy peak again.
Between kid and family drama, finals week with highly weighted comprehensive tests, and financial crunches threatening to cancel my next semester… I'm really feeling it. In the pit of my stomach, in tight muscles, in energy level, in short fuses.
And as much as they seem like normal responses to stress, I feel like I'm not supposed to be. I'm supposed to have this all surrendered and have it all wash right off without shaking me.
I feel like I'm supposed to be able to just pray more and try and pretend that it doesn't bug me in the name of having faith because I know it all works out in the end in God's plan, and that's supposed to work and I'm supposed to be the unstressed victorious one walking around in a furnace and not even sweaty.
I'm supposed to have learned this lesson over and over and over recently, and not be bugged by it anymore when issues start appearing on the horizon.
Well, no surprise to anyone around here, but I'm not. It's just not where I am, and trying to pretend otherwise just gives something extra to stress over.
But the picture came to me of a roller coaster.
Actually, a specific one I rode once, and very nearly vomited right in front of a friend and the big group of his close friends that we were with. While trying to pretend I was ok rather than admitting I have a weak stomach when it comes to motion. Not exactly a memory I tend to visit much.
But you know what? I had faith that I would be ok at the end of the ride. Even if lunch revisited, it might not be comfortable, but I would be ok.
I got on that coaster knowing that it was safe.
If I'd had any doubts about it, I wouldn't have been crazy enough to get on it anyway, or would have been absolutely terrified if I felt my life was possibly in danger.
I knew the safety records were good… I saw many many people coming safely off the coaster while none were getting off injured… I had faith in the roller coaster and that the ride would be ok in the end.
And ya know what?
Not a bit of that faith mattered to my tummy.
At all.
My faith in walking off the coaster safely at the end did nothing at all to stop the adrenaline rush when suddenly gravity went all crazy on me and I was shooting what seemed like straight down at a very high rate of speed from what seemed like miles above the park.
Nor did it make my knuckles any less sore from how tightly I was clenching the safety bar.
If confidence in safety and a positive outcome were enough to resolve the scary feelings and physical reactions to the ride, who in the world would ride one?
What would be the point? Even the little bitty roller coasters for kids that only go 4 foot off the ground rely on the sensation from the feeling of dropping to have any effect at all.
Feeling the feelings… the rush… and coming through safely is what creates the experience and the thrill.
And so, I'm not so sure that life is all that different.
Yes, I have faith in walking off safely at the end of the journey, and maybe even that I'll consider it to have been a positive experience.
But that doesn't make my stomach tightening make any less sense or be any less of a normal reaction when I see a potential big drop rapidly approaching.
And I'm not so sure that it's supposed to.
Yes, it takes the edge of terror off… by removing the "sting" of death. This isn't a coaster that's going to end with a fall into the pit of fire anymore.
But it's still a ride. It still has drops and twists and flips.
Granted, the feelings that come from these are coming from natural flesh reactions.
But does that dismiss them entirely in the name of walking in the spirit not the flesh?
I think it's fair to say that if Jesus was sweating blood knowing what was coming shortly before he was betrayed, that he's clearly been very stressed… and to the point that he's had physical reactions to it to an extent that I seriously doubt any of us will ever see.
If he can sweat blood approaching the final big drops of his roller coaster of human flesh experience, is it ok for me to have a pit in my stomach over much much smaller bumps in mine?
One of the stories that sort of annoys me sometimes at how easily it gets tossed out there as a token "get over it" is the story of the boat in the storm.
Jesus is napping, disciples are terrified for their lives… he reminds them who is in charge, stops the storm….
And somehow this means that since I know I'll survive the boat ride, I should just be going on with life as usual and ignoring the fact that my storm isn't stopping and that everything flying around the room on my boat doesn't make it more difficult to, say, make a cup of tea.
Yes, I realize that I'm not going to die from the storms I face. Thus probably why I'm not terrified in fear like they were. It's more a frustrated and seasick thing.
Yes, we aren't supposed to live in terror when storms hit… even if they keep pounding even as we keep trying to pray them over.
But are we really supposed to just feel like everything is fine right now just because eventually we will be on dry and stable land?
Maybe it's just my way of coming up with excuses for my moodiness right now… but I'm just not all that convinced that having more faith is always the pat answer for discomfort and disappointment and other such gloominess in spells of less than happy times.


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Quick Contacts
Once you have passed your Standard Riding Test you may want to move to a larger and faster motorcycle. You may be returning to motorcycle riding after many years away from riding. Today's motorcycles are very high powered and constant media reports remind us of the costly nature of motorcycle accidents.
Becoming an advanced rider however is all about giving you the edge, you will be taught how to corner properly at speed (within national speed limits on British roads of course). We will teach you to improve your overall handling and riding skills as well as improving your observation skills.
Riding motorcycles is about fun and our advanced rider training course is very enjoyable and conducted by a qualified advanced instructor.