A fun but arbitrary list (Part 1)

Do you ever find yourself being asked the question: What's your favourite _____? Only to realise that you don't actually know the answer? It's a conversation starter that comes up all too often, but despite that it's one I've never really been that great at, so I decided it'd be a fun idea to make SomeLists, a spreadsheet with a whole load of completely arbitrary top 25 lists on it. Of course then, being me, I thought, I wonder what would happen if I did this, but for bible books? And so it begins...

Slight disclaimer on this, I'm not meaning to suggest that any bible book is "better" or "worse" or more or less important than any other bible book, the bible in its entirety is God's word, and God's word is good. The criteria I used for ranking these books was entirely based on "how much a particular thing impacted me personally at the particular time I was reading it" and as such I have very little doubt that if I were to do it again, the resulting list would look completely different. The intention is more to be a fun way to look back over the past year at what I've been reading and collect it all together in my mind, and hopefully help someone out in the process. Anyway, without further ado, I present to you, all 66 books of the bible, ranked (kinda...):


Honourable(?) mentions...

66. Job
I don't really know why I put this so low down on the list, Job is an incredible story of persevering through the most horrendous suffering, but the book is 42 chapters long, and for 90% of it I just couldn't follow what was being said, and what I did follow either came across as whiny, or as people trying to lead Job astray, or in a lot of cases both, and as the second old testament book you read in the soul survivor bible in a year, it very nearly killed my motivation to keep on going with it. That said, I'm really glad I did, because like for Job, things got a lot better afterward.

65. Hosea
I don't necessarily have much of a reasoning for the placing of a lot of the minor prophets, but since most of them are essentially saying the same thing they don't tend to rank all that highly on this list.

64. 1 Chronicles
The first 9 chapters consist almost entirely of lists of names, the 10th chapter is a man committing suicide. Later chapters are more interesting, but I'm not really sure what else I can say about this book.

63. Leviticus
"The Book of Law" says it all really.

62. Lamentations
"Everything is terrible"

61. Judges
In summary: Israel does bad stuff, Israel gets conquered by enemies. Israel returns to God, Israel conquers enemies. The cycle repeats. At some point in the book a guy gets killed with a tent peg to the head, but since I couldn't even follow who he was or why he was killed at the time Judges remains at 61.

60. Deuteronomy
"The second law" in parts similar to Leviticus, but ranked higher on this list because of the first part of chapter 31, in particular verse 8: "The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.” 

59. Zechariah

58. Ezekiel
Just plain weird for the most part, I'm not really sure what I can say about this book otherwise.

57. Joel

56. Obadiah

55. Zephaniah

54. 2 Samuel
Not entirely sure why this ended up so much lower than 1 Samuel, but the fact it doesn't really mention Samuel at all was mildly confusing. It's more David's book.

53. Amos

52. Song of Songs
I honestly just found this book kinda weird. I get that it has it's place, but it's not really for me.

51. Exodus
Starts off well, with the escape from Egypt, then turns into a huge drag. Mostly ranked this low because of how it killed my motivation to read the bible in 2017 before I had the structure of BIOY to help me out, but I'm glad I was able to stick with it. My best advice for this is to keep going, because it really is worth it.


"Extended" list:

50. Nehemiah
The last book I read as part of bible in a year covers the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem, and is a good reminder of how God is faithful, and if he has promised something he will keep his promises regardless of the opposition we might face.

49. Jude
A very short book, Jude encourages perseverance in faith, and warns of the dangers of ungodliness.

48. Proverbs
One of the more varied books in the bible, proverbs is essentially a book of good life advice, and as one of two books stretched out over the entire year of BIOY was fairly hard to place as it wasn't tied to a specific point of the year. I'd probably have placed it higher, but on occasion it seemed like a lot of what it was saying was repeating things that had already been said with a slightly different wording, so it's here instead.

47. Haggai

46. Habakkuk
The best way I could describe this book, is that God works in ways we wouldn't expect, and although we don't often get a response quite so direct, we shouldn't lose hope, because he has a plan that is so much greater than we could ever possibly hope to imagine

45. Revelation
A vision of the end times. There are a lot of different interpretations for this book, and as such I'm probably not really qualified to even begin talking about it, but the writer employs some incredibly powerful and vivid imagery, and as such, it has stuck with me.

44. Genesis
Probably the most well known book of the bible, it seems somewhat backwards perhaps that the beginning of all things should directly follow the end on this list, but I have discovered something of a new found appreciation of Genesis re reading it in 2019, and whatever your opinions of this controversial book might be, there's no doubt it presents a truly incredible origin story.

43. Mark
The first of the four gospels to appear on this list, I don't really know why, but I just didn't "click" with Mark when I first read through it as part of BIOY. (I've since led bible studies on it, what a world...). Mark is the shortest of the four gospels by quite a significant margin, but at the same time arguably contains the most "stuff". It's a pretty good starting point for someone who has never read about Jesus life before, but the book doesn't hang around. It's event after event after event after event. Despite this though, it still somehow manages to capture just how human Jesus is. Far too often we think of Jesus as this superhero type character defiantly walking into every situation without fear, but reading Mark 14, where Jesus literally says "My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death" sharply jolts us back to reality. He was a human, just like the rest of us, with very human emotions, and it doesn't bear thinking about what he went through for our sakes.

42. Numbers
The Israelites wander the desert, guided by a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night, they are in the presence of God in a very physical sense. As backwards as it might seem, I was pretty surprised by the number of numbers in this book, quite a lot of it is essentially a census, which I wasn't expecting when I picked it up to read, but in hindsight makes perfect sense...

41. Ezra
The return of the exiles, and the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem

40. Psalms
Like proverbs, this was pretty difficult to place, as it's one of two books that were spread out throughout the entire year rather than a bit of it, but I put Psalms here because it's significantly longer, and as such more varied, and definitely has a lot more stand out moments than proverbs did, in particular with respect to foreshadowing other things.

39/38. 2 and 3 John
I couldn't really separate these two, since they're both very short and pretty similar letters.

37. Philemon
Another new testament letter, a lot of these are ranked where they are purely because they are too short to properly compare with other books.

36. Malachi

35/34. 1 Kings and 2 Kings
The story immediately following the death of king David. Covers the reign of Soloman, as well as events with the prophet Elijah and Elisha

33. Nahum
A prophecy against Nineveh

32. Micah

31/30. 1 and 2 Peter

29/28. 1 and 2 Timothy

27. Titus

26. James

The Bible in a year project

As many of you will be aware, last year I undertook probably one of the biggest challenges I had ever faced. Bible in a year. While this is not necessarily a particularly daunting task for me personally just in terms of length of it (I've been known to read 500 page books in the space of a few days if I get into them, so reading a 1300 page book over the course of a year was not even remotely out of the question), the question was more whether I could develop the habits necessary to actually read a little bit each day, and much to my surprise, I succeeded!

As December 31st - and the end of BOIY - approached however, I had to ask myself a question. What do I do now? Bible in a year has been one of the best things I ever did, but if at the end of it I just stopped, then what would really be the point? That was when I had an idea. During 2018, whenever I was reading my bible in a year for the day, if ever I came across a verse that jumped out at me, for any reason, I would highlight it yellow. My thinking was essentially that if I ever went back over it, I'd be able to see exactly what verses had been significant to me at that point of my life. What if, from January 1st 2019, I started again from day one, doing exactly the same thing as before, but this time, I used a different colour. It was at this point that everything began to fall into place.

You see, the thing about the bible is that it's a book (albeit in this case God's book), and like any book, how you see it and what you get from reading it will change depending on where you're at in life, and how you read it, that's why it's important to approach reading the bible prayerfully, asking God to show you what he wants you to see from any particular passage (something I have really not been that great at if I'm honest, but when I do I almost always get more out of it than I would otherwise). What this means though is that no two readings of a passage will ever be quite the same, and so the significant things will change, and by using a different colour I can track this somewhat.

In addition to all this, I've been looking for something of an excuse to resurrect this blog, and so, without further ado, I present to you, the bible in a year project!

Essentially, every time I'm reading my passage for the day, and I come across something I have highlighted, it goes into a blog post, and I will (hopefully) do a little bit of commentary on what it meant to me then, and what it means now. These will probably not all be in separate posts, since there are rather a lot of highlighted verses, and so I will probably end up grouping them together somewhat, but I thought it might be a fun idea to share with you all the things that have inspired me over the past year.

Slight disclaimer to close though, since I didn't actually have a physical copy of the bible in one year until ~day 40 anything I post until then will be stuff I've found significant now rather than stuff I found significant last year. Don't worry though, because I've got a whole bunch of ideas for stuff to do to fill the gap, so all you avid readers of my blog can be on the look out for that!

I will leave you with a passage from day 8, Matthew 6 (one of my favourite chapters) Verses 6-8, which I have been really encouraged by:

6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. 7 And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

Reflection

Welp, it sure has been a while, and one heck of a year... To say that 2018 has been filled with a few ups and downs (and mostly downs, to be quite honest) would be something of an understatement, and as such I feel I'll be unable to communicate exactly how I feel about it in something as simple as words on a screen, so instead of all that, here's a brief summary of everything I've gotten up to in the past year and a bit.

September 2017 (yes it really has been that long)

• Myself and some friends from Puppet Academy met up in Cardiff to do the Doctor Who experience, and after some shenanigans with tickets resulting in my ending up in a different slot to the others the people on the door let us in together anyway
• Second year of university begins following an almost four month summer break, the new (old now) house is a decent place to live but does smell rather strongly of the kebab shop underneath, although I inadvertently managed to dodge the worst of it by claiming the room at the back - which actually ended up being noisier than the others by quite a significant margin - so much for that plan...

October 2017

Yes this is a giant whale made entirely of balloons...

• Near the end of October I attend the annual European Puppetry and Creative Arts Ministry festival, for the first time as part of the Puppet Academy team, which is without question the highlight of 2017, and presented some of the most amazing and ridiculous things I have ever experienced, including this beauty of a picture. On top of that we performed a set of seven songs in the annual showcase, and because we were celebrating the 10 year anniversary of the puppet academy, back by popular demand, possibly the most iconic song in academy history: Victor's Crown (hyperlink to original video). As if that wasn't enough, my team Extreme Puppets also entered two competitions, with two of the best songs we have ever performed: Ding Dong and I've Lost My Sheep, and came second in both, putting the cherry on top of an already incredible cake. The 2017 festival is not one I am likely to forget for a very long time.
• As if October hadn't already been amazing enough, with about 10 minutes left of the month on October 31st, I officially started dating the wonderful Nizzy, who to this day has brought me nothing but incredible good, and I can only hope that I've done and will continue to do likewise

November 2017

• Post festival crash hits, hard. I'd experienced it before, but the added weight of the adrenaline rush from academy leaving my system, and the knowledge that it will likely be another year before I see most of these people again just served to drag me down and down even further than I'd experienced in the past. Think of it a bit like being on top of the world, and then falling down to the centre of the earth. Despite this though I managed to catch up on my missed lab session and get back on top of assignments, at least as far as handing them in on time. It was at some point during this month though that I began to realise I was in some serious trouble w.r.t. impending exam season, and instead of doing the sensible thing and asking for clarification I employed the only tactic I know how... Avoidance. I shut down. It was at this point things started to go seriously wrong, any semblance of a rhythm to my life I had managed to recover following the huge summer break went completely out the window, and I began falling further and further behind.

December 2017

• At some point while all this was going on, I bought a Toobie. It wasn't really the result of an existential crisis so much as a desire to recreate a little bit of the feelings I experienced as a result of academy, and it worked, to an extent. Christmas eve saw Extreme Puppets perform their second ever blacklight song: Oh what a glorious night, and despite requiring me to stand near still in a toobie for almost half an hour, and still neglecting to remember to fasten the body strap, the reaction to seeing it for the first time made it all worth it. Christmas day was somewhat bittersweet as we brought back Ding Dong one final time for the last ever performance of Extreme Puppets under that name. It really was the end of an era.

January 2018

Not really sure why Josh is trying to strangle me, but I seem to be unusually happy about it...

• Kicking off the new year with a bang, I opted to embark on what is probably my most ambitious new years resolution to date. Bible In One Year (BIOY). The goal of this was not so much to read through the whole bible in a year (although that is a nice perk of doing this) so much as it was to train myself to set aside time for God each day, to listen, and to read his word so that I might get to know him better. Writing this in December I can quite honestly say that it's probably one of the best things I've done, and although it definitely hasn't been easy to find time each day it is definitely totally doable, and I honestly can't recommend it enough, regardless of your faith. More on this soon though hopefully! ;)
• January exams went pretty much as expected unfortunately, which is to say, badly, though I did get a first in my C programming module which was somewhat encouraging
• Ending the month was a puppetry training day in Reading, followed almost immediately by a birthday/leaving party of one of my academy friends in London, which gave Academy a much needed chance to meet up and hang out, and it was nice to be able to see everybody again, even if only for a little bit.

February 2018

This is a picture from January which is completely irrelevant to anything in February but I needed to fill a gap ok?

• I said goodbye to my teenage years, and also celebrated my birthday away from home for the first time, which felt exceptionally unusual, but I suppose is just a part of growing up really.
• Exam results came back confirming what I already knew, I would need to re sit them in summer. Thankfully the summer resit period didn't overlap with anything already planned, but knowing I would have to face those modules again really took something out of me and as backwards as it might seem, my motivation for the second semester plummeted.

March 2018

No, that's not the sun, this picture was taken at 3AM...

• I got snowed in! Following some of the worst snow I've ever seen (and a met office red weather warning) Cardiff was buried under well over half a metre of snow, and consequently for about 2 weeks afterward any shop I went into was completely devoid of basic supplies, such as bread and milk. It even got so bad that the uni cancelled lectures and labs and shut its doors completely because conditions were too treacherous to expect students and staff to even leave their houses. Thankfully I was relatively well stocked at the time the snow hit, and so managed completely fine throughout.
• It was around this time that the Christian Union had official handover for 2018, and thanks to an act of pure insanity around the new year, this meant that I was now officially one of three leaders for the then north, now purple, hall group, a weekly small group committed to equipping Christians to share Christ confidently and creatively in halls (whatever that meant). This was pretty overwhelming to begin with, but it's the first time I can really say that I've genuinely felt like I was a part of something in Cardiff, and even though there have been all sorts of challenges so far, It's been such an amazing opportunity and I have met some of my closest friends at university as a result. 
• Oh, did I mention that the training weekend I was supposed to have for this role was cancelled due to snow? No? Ok then...

April 2018

• After a very tense and long seeming wait, I received an email confirming I had been accepted onto the 2018 Puppet Academy. Naturally this was incredibly exciting news, and as a result I don't actually remember anything else that happened this month... sorry... :p

May 2018

• What a month! May kicked off with an academy reunion or sorts at a fun day in Resolven, home of the puppet team Steps of Faith. Among other things, this weekend included: a reimagining of the 2017 academy song Sin. Puppets becoming firefighters for a day and actually using the fire hose. Dancing along with Sam Tân (Fireman Sam) to YHWH (YMCA parody). Friends dressing up as mickey and mini mouse. An incredibly tense cereal box game (which despite my incredible and astounding technique, I still didn't manage to win, much to my disappointment), and to round it all off, an incredibly powerful and fire filled (literally!) testimony from the wonderful Lesley Grey. It was a weekend that certainly won't be leaving me any time soon...
• As if that wasn't enough, This month also brought a rather spontaneous Academy trip to Big Church Day Out 2018, much to the surprise of the lovely people at One Way UK who put the offer out for people to volunteer to help less than two weeks before the event. 4 Free camping tickets arranged later, and a very very generous parent providing lifts, and we were in the middle of a field doing hourly puppet shows for two days in a tent with no air flow on the hottest week of the year, because why not... Despite the intense heat requiring us to literally pour litres of water over our heads for fear of passing out I think all of us would tell you that we would absolutely do it again if the opportunity arose, it was just such a unique opportunity.

June 2018

Seems like I'm the only one taking this seriously enough to actually wear my team colours, but ok I guess...

• June as a month is pretty well known in student circles, and it's approach is met usually with as much fear as it is longing. For me unfortunately this year was the former. Exams were looming and things were looking even more hopeless for me than the ones in January, if such a thing were possible. I managed to scrape through the first, just about, despite forgetting the day it was on and nearly missing it by only realising the night before that I had an exam the next day. (Yes, I really did forget - I was *that* out of it at the time) But the other two can only be described as complete disasters. This meant I was now facing four resits in August as opposed to just two, but at this point I had just decided not to let it get to me, so it wasn't too big a hit mentally thank goodness.
• To celebrate the end of exam season, for the Eighth year (and the Fifth year with this particular team), I entered the annual National Physical Laboratory Water Rocket Challenge. This is basically exactly what it sounds like, you stick fins and a nose cone on a plastic fizzy drinks bottle, fill it with water, pressurise and eventually release the bottle, and points are awarded based on flight duration, and how far the rocket travels, capping out at 30 points for the 65-75 metre range, and decreasing for distances less, as well as more than this. It's a game of figuring out the optimal launch parameters for the conditions on the day as quickly as possible, and it's a lot of fun, but the cherry on top of the cake was the fact we came second this year, Extreme's fourth top 2 finish in 5 years, and my fifth top 2 finish, and although our team leader wasn't there in person, we were able to get him up on stage anyway via video link to collect the prize, which was a really nice way to end the day.

July 2018

• Perhaps the most unusual thing I did this year came in the form of a film project. Initially titled "I've lost my sheep - the movie" and later renamed "I've lost my sheep - the musical" and then finally "Timmy and the Tyrant" this collaboration between the people of the Puppet Academy and the charity LAMPS Collective saw us spend three days in a field near Oxford working on masterpieces such as "I'm a Bad Wolf" and "The Fight", and while unfortunately there wasn't enough time to get everything done that we really wanted to do, these videos still exist as standalone things you can watch, and the songs and story were eventually used in the 2018 production of Beasts of Bethlehem.
• July's main event came in the form of New Wine, a Christian festival for churches and families, which is always a highlight of my year, however this time was a little bit different. In the past I've always attended this event on week 2, but because of school holidays ending later, week two was moved a week later than usual this year, and as such directly clashed with Puppet Academy. In a clash of titans that's a bit like Superman against Steve from next door, it's not even a close contest, and so I managed to convince the people of Extreme that "We really want to go week one without all those funny adults around" (and yes, I understand the irony in that statement now that the youngest of the people going is 19 - but don't judge me...). Regardless, the week was a lot of fun, if a little unusual without all the regulars, and I would definitely do it again if the option arose.

August 2018

Action shot from our first rehearsal of "The Artist"

• Here it is, the big one. Puppet Academy 2018 was once again almost certainly the best thing I did this year. It might not have lived up to quite the level of hype I had built up for it since the last one, but considering the insane level of hype I had built up for it, that's not even necessarily a bad thing, and the puppetry this year was just on another level to anything I could have predicted, hoped or even dreamed to be a part of. David and Fi put so much work into the whole thing, and into looking after us and making sure we're ok, and the whole academy team just has this incredible sense of support that I've never been able to find in quite the same way with anything else. We're just one massive crazy family. We eat like kings thanks to the amazing Fliss, and the seemingly never-ending supplies of sweet treats and snacks. We sleep less than students with 5000 deadlines in less than a week, (18 hour days are no joke) and consume about as much sugar to keep us awake and motivated, and despite that we love every single second of it!
• Summer resits came shortly afterward, and went terribly as expected, just in time to dampen the mood of my August and set me up badly for the new academic year. Having failed 60 credits worth of module I was now in a position where I needed to organise a repeat year. Something I had expected might be necessary, but with no information anywhere about how to go about it the stress just kept building and building, and a £430 unpaid water bill notice certainly didn't help things It was not looking like a good start to the year.

September 2018

OK, this might have been taken in August, but I'm mentioning it in September because technically I was still at forum when this month started so I'm talking about it here... (and otherwise I had no pictures for this month...)

• Then Forum happened. I honestly can't say I was expecting much from Forum National (A week long event dedicated to training leaders and influencers in Christian Unions) since I don't really feel like much of a leader most of the time, but I was pleasantly surprised by the week. It seemed like there was never a dull moment. Seminars were genuinely very interesting and insightful, and the morning and evening worship each day was something else entirely (apparently I'm a lot more charismatic than my fellow hall group leader from the week would have ever expected from me? Not sure how I'm supposed to take that - I blame my church...). On top of that it was really nice to get to know some of the people from the CU a bit better and to spend some time growing and learning together. Forum probably beats out New Wine in terms of things I did this year, which says a lot given how highly I've rated the latter in past.
• I started year 2 of uni, again... If there is one positive of this it's that I'm now in the same academic year as all my fellow HG leaders and so slightly less odd I guess? not really sure but I'm gonna call it a positive because there aren't many others. Freshers week was pretty interesting this year, I ended up doing Living Water twice with the CU (which for those who aren't aware, means standing outside the SU on club nights giving out hot chocolate to drunk people). It's a late night for sure, but it's a lot of fun, and a really good opportunity to share the good news with the lost, and so definitely worth it. Hall group leaders also hosted a pub quiz, which was pretty interesting, and was a pretty nice introduction to events and such (even if the people I did end up speaking to on that night didn't actually end up in my group).

October 2018

• There are a lot of negative things I could say about October and November, and I mean A LOT, but I don't really think I need to depress you all with that lot, so instead here's something positive! On the night of Halloween (which I don't celebrate but whatever) myself and Nizzy celebrated our official one year anniversary! (Despite it being the one day that week we weren't actually physically together... good planning us...) It honestly amazes me that Nizzy has been willing to stick with me through everything going on this year, and she just means so much to me. I don't know what I did to deserve her, but she really is something incredibly special, and it's been amazing to have been able to know her this past year. I love her so much! (soppy stuff over)

November 2018

So Will I Unwrapped

• The highlight of my year, the European Puppetry and Creative Arts Ministry Festival (my goodness is that a mouthful...) Oh my goodness this year was something else! To say the bar was raised this year would be the understatement of the century (for the blacklight at least). The academy showcase this year was beyond insane, and I didn't think that was possible after Can't stop me now last year. Two of the songs we performed, Rend Collective's "The Artist" and the greatest showman's "Come Alive" employed some of the most intricate and insane (read: potentially dangerous) props I have ever seen as part of an academy showcase, and the artist in particular was so intricate we had never done a perfect run in practice, and had about seven different contingency plans in case something went wrong (not even exaggerating here). The feeling on the night when we absolutely nailed the showcase cannot be reasonably compared to anything I have ever experienced, and I think I jumped about four feet in the air in excitement in my blacklight gear when we pulled off The Artist flawlessly. To top it all off, we ended the showcase with Hillsong's "So Will I". a song that I have wanted to do in blacklight ever since I first heard it. It's not often I watch something back like that and get shivers, but man... Watching that song come together was something seriously special, and It's not one I'm likely to forget any time soon.

December 2018

• A new challenger awaits! Wait no, I mean a new puppet team...? What? Anyway, enough of the confusion. I have a new puppet family! Technically this is not really particularly new, but Christmas season is the busiest time of the year and all that, so this month probably represents the largest percentage of all the stuff I've done with Steps of Faith thus far, and also I have a fancy new sparkly t-shirt now with my name on it, which ever since I first saw them at EPMF 2013 has been something of a life ambition of mine (well not really, I didn't even know these guys back then, but I did kiiiiiiiiinda wanna get a fancy puppet shirt...), second only to owning an academy top (of which I now have two). These guys have been honestly beyond amazing this past year with how much they have supported me through all that has happened, despite everything else going on right now and it wouldn't be right of me to do a year in review blog and not include them. We might be more spread out than usual as a team, but we're no less of a family, and we're there for each other when it matters most. Steps of Faith, you really are something incredibly special, and I'm honoured to be a part of it.
• Being back home from university for Christmas can mean only one thing. Blacklight. This year was a little different from last year, as due to a lack of any significant amount of rehearsal time, it was necessary to do a fair bit more forward planning than usual to make sure we were able to get something finished in the window we had. As a result, mostly because I was probably the most enthusiastic, it fell to me to plan the song. After much deliberation and conferring with the team, it was decided that the song we were going to do was "It's about the cross" by Go Fish. and so storyboarding began. I don't normally go to quite this length when planning floobies, but in this case I was attempting to adapt an old puppet academy song - originally performed by 12 puppeteers with 14 floobies - into a format that would work with just 7. The video we took to put on our youtube channel wasn't by any stretch our best run, that happened in the actual performance, but I think we for the most part did a pretty good job, and the entire team worked incredibly hard to make it happen, so huge thanks to them.
• Somewhere in between our two blacklight rehearsals I got a train to a tiny little request stop in the middle of nowhere in west wales for half 1 in the morning to help at a steps of faith event. Yes that happened.
• I Finished Bible In One Year! Wow, what a way to end 2018... I legitimately thought I was going to quit at about day 30, but here we are I guess. Accountability and structure really does do wonders for motivation, and the further I got through the more excited I was to read the word, and the more motivated I was to finish. So much so that I'm planning on doing it all over again next year, but hopefully more on that to come in the not too distant future!

January 2019 and beyond...

You can do this.

Well here we are! There's no denying that 2019 is going to be one heck of a mountain to climb. It's by no means insurmountable, God is and always will be faithful and it's a climb I can definitely do, but as things currently stand I am walking a line millimetres from losing my place on my degree course. I'm out of second chances, it's pass January exams, or I'm out. No ifs, no buts, that's it. I'm not going to sugar coat it, it's not looking good. If I can get to the end of this month, and my exams, in one piece, then I'm relatively secure until June, but if not then I'm likely to find myself in a pretty awkward spot. Even if I can get to the end of this year without any major mishaps it's not looking likely that I'm going to be able to cope with third year physics, and with that in mind I'm going to have some pretty difficult decisions to make come September. Either way, for the moment the best thing I can do is focus on the present. The here and now. In the words of the apostle Matthew (6:34): "Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will have its own worries. Each day has enough trouble of its own." I know God will never put me in a situation that he hasn't equipped me to face, and he will lead me where he wants me to go if I just learn to listen to what he's saying. I just have to trust that he knows what he's doing.

With that in mind, I want to end this post with a couple of resolutions for the year ahead. These may not seem like much, but I have a feeling they will be what gets me through it all, and putting them here seemed like a good idea for accountability's sake.

1. Pray. The first and almost without question the most important resolution. If I want to have any hope of surviving this year I'm going to need prayer, and lots of it. Prayer is powerful, and it works! It might not seem like much, but in reality it's everything, and I'm lost without it.
2. Read. The second, and argueably almost as important resolution is to continue to set aside time each day to read the bible. Probably through a second run of BIOY, but now that I'm done with that, if I find a better method of consistently doing it I'm not ruling out switching to that instead. As a wise person once said: "Complaining about a silent God when your bible is closed is like complaining about not getting texts when your phone is turned off"
3. Find Joy. The third and final resolution is to always continue to seek the good in every situation, no matter how bad it might seem. This is something the value of which cannot be overstated, and something which I have learned a huge amount about in the past year spending time around Steps of Faith, and it is something I feel will become more and more important as I go through this year, particularly with recent developments, but it's also something I have historically not been very good at, so 2019 is likely to be a huge challenge.

With all that out the way I guess the only thing left is for me to wish you all a very very happy new year! I only hope that 2019 is a better year for all of us...

Thanks guys.

Puppet Academy

Firstly, this picture is the only spoiler you're getting, and only because it's been officially published on the One Way UK Facebook page

As one of only two "first year" members of the puppet academy team this year I was perhaps understandably quite apprehensive coming into this week. Would I get on with the team? What place am I going to have in an already well established group? and the biggest question on my mind: Am I good enough to be here?

Academy has surprised me in many ways. 18 hour days? Psh... saw that coming (apparently most new applicants don't?). Quantity of sweets on offer? Well maybe a little, I heard there were usually a lot of treats involved - especially skittles - but we must have had literally about 40-50 bags of assorted goodies, and that's before you include biscuits (and I am really really sorry about the oreos...). Seeing them all on the table was quite something...

Probably the biggest thing that surprised me about academy though is that we're really all just people. Having attended the European festival now every year since 2013 I'm not sure I could name a year where the Friday night showcase wasn't the highlight of the event, simply because it pushes the boundaries of what you think should be possible. People look up to the academy team because what they do is just so different to what you normally see, and they're usually the first people to show off new things, whether puppets, props or in some cases entirely new and incredibly powerful ways of performing (the obvious one here being dowel rods). Because of this I think it's really easy to look at the academy showcase and think that it's something unattainable, something you could never achieve or even live up to, an impossible standard. I came into the academy week having not done a serious puppet project since Christmas (technically it was blacklight, so not really puppets... video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dM_k2tfGrQI) absolutely terrified I wasn't going to be able to keep up with everything going on and that I couldn't ever reach the level of the bar I had set for academy in my head.

It was incredibly strange then, to discover fairly early on that the thing I had been looking up to for so long was now not only within reach, but remarkably similar to what I had been doing anyway.
There's a quote I really like which seems appropriate here:

"What a treacherous thing to believe that a person is more than a person"

Yep, that one is from Paper Towns (John Green). Almost certainly my favourite book of all time, and I've been trying to get this quote into a blog since I started, so this probably makes me far too happy... Anyway...

If you've not read Paper Towns (well first you should read paper towns...) this particular quote is from the thoughts of main character Q trying to figure out the motivation of Margo Roth Spiegelman, a girl who has gone missing and whom he (and basically everyone else) has been idolising. This one line completely changes your perspective on things, when you realise that we're all just human beings. Unique but ultimately the same, with our own thoughts, dreams, hobbies and lives. (seriously read the book right now it makes a lot more sense... or I suppose you could watch the film but it's not as good...)

The thing about academy is, we are but mere mortals. Even the best of us make mistakes, and sometimes stuff just doesn't work, no matter what you try and throw at it. One particular song we did (and no I'm not telling...) had an ending that went through probably 5 or 6 iterations and took the best part of 3 days to figure out, because it just seemed like nothing we did made sense. Of course having been through that process we now have an absolutely insane ending you guys will love, but without having experienced the joys of creating it it would be really easy to miss just how much effort went into that one move. The academy team aren't superhumans, we're just people who love puppets and want to put on a good show. It's a lot of work, but it's 100% achievable if you've got the passion to follow it through. It's a learning experience. I've done things I never would have believed I was capable of doing this week, and I'm just so incredibly hyped to keep going and raising the bar with my team back home.

The other thing that surprised me about academy though was just how easy it was to come out of my shell and be myself. So much so that I actually had to redefine what I thought I meant by that (it's complicated). I'm about as introverted an introvert as introverts get, someone who avoids social interaction like the plague where possible, and I'm not sure I could name another person or group or people that I'm even anywhere near as comfortable around as the people on the academy team. That's just crazy to me since up until I arrived in Claxby I had only ever even spoken to one of them once (3 years ago when he knocked me out of the lip sync challenge... yeah...) and normally it takes me much longer to get to the point of feeling able to reveal my true self. I suppose a lot of that is really due to the fact that probably for the first time ever, I had found a group of like minded people. I was no longer the Anomaly, I was the Entity. I was me. Wholly and completely, without needing masks or walls to hide behind, and I would be lying if I were to say that it didn't make me seriously reconsider what I wanted to do with my life. The thing with being with a group of people with such specific shared interests is you get the sense that you have so much in common that nothing is too awkward and you can just be yourself . Maybe I'm crazy, but the whole thing feels like we're really just one big slightly insane family, and I LOVE it.

I applied to academy this year largely because I was so inspired by the 2014 showcase and all the awesome and boundary shattering performances the academy has been able to put together every year. 2014 was a special year though because not only did it have probably two of (what I think at least) were probably the greatest songs in the entire history of academy: Victor's Crown and Hope of Glory (Toobies on trampolines). My team "Extreme Puppets" also managed to place third in the open competition that year with our entry "Jonah Jazz" which some of you might remember for this moment:

Pictures from One Way UK EPMF 2014

Maybe it was just the sheer ridiculousness of the fact I literally threw a puppet Jonah overboard, but it became one of our team's most memorable performances, and made what was already an incredible year into an unforgettable one, anyway I digress...

You're probably wondering at this point, why if I was so inspired by the 2014 showcase, I only actually applied for academy in 2017...

I often wonder the same thing...

As of writing this blog, I am currently 19 years old. I could have applied for 2015 academy if I had wanted to, so why didn't I?

I wish I could come up with an elaborate story of why I couldn't have gone for it back then, with fully explained diagrams detailing exactly what I was doing at every second that meant I couldn't possibly have made it to academy that year.

The truth though is I didn't apply because I was afraid. Afraid of going by myself and afraid I wasn't even good enough to be accepted onto the team in the first place. After all, if you have no hope of succeeding, then why bother trying... and so the application form lay on my desk uncompleted as I took the path of least resistance.

That may just have been one of the biggest mistakes I ever made...

I stand here now, in the weeks after academy, and I can honestly and genuinely say that Academy 2017 has been one of the best things I have ever done, second only to my decision to become a Christian at Soul Survivor 2012 (which I took another 3 years to actually act on). I would be lying if I were to say that that it didn't make me seriously reconsider what I wanted to do with my life.

When I applied for academy this year, I had absolutely no idea that it was the tenth year of academy, or that we were going to bring back a song from another year, so when the poll came out and it became clear that we would be bringing back Victor's Crown. *THE* song that inspired me to apply in the first place, I was incredibly excited, but also extremely nervous. Living up to the original seemed like an impossible task, because the song itself is just so incredibly powerful and it touched so many people when it was first performed in a way that is difficult to simply recreate. What we've got looks incredible, but only time will tell us whether we have succeeded in what we set out to do...

I joked with a couple of people while writing this that I wasn't sure how I was going to make it not be an essay, and I think I've completely failed in that respect, so to close, here are a few dos and don'ts worth considering if you're looking to potentially apply to join academy in the future:

DOs and DO NOTs

DO NOT apply for academy if you...:

1. Are seriously concerned you won't be able to function on what from my personal experience is typically 6 to 7 hours sleep (I managed fine but probably coped better than most as a uni student who has a weird sleeping pattern anyway)
2. Are in any way averse to puppets

On the other hand, most definitely DO apply for academy if you...:

1. Want an absolutely amazing week 
2. Are reasonably confident with lip sync and arm rods 
3. Are looking to develop your skills and grow as a person and as a puppeteer
4. Enjoy performing as part of a group, whether behind a screen or otherwise
5. Like the idea of trying new things and are excited by the thought of pushing the boundaries of what is and isn't possible
6. Want to work in a close team to produce something seriously AWESOME!
7. Want to build lifelong friendships and connect with like minded people
8. Want to develop your faith and most importantly...
9. Love puppets!

I really wish I could tell you guys more, but the showcase is top secret and to reveal anything more than I have written here would be to breach confidentiality, so I'll end by saying It's been one heck of a week but oh my goodness it's going to be EPIC!

Hope to see you there!

Day 46 - The Exoskeleton

Two years ago to this day, the one now called The Entity began a journey... Unlike so many journeys however, this journey was never meant to be to a specific place. Or maybe it was, and at the time he didn't realise it. It was a journey that would force him to confront some of his greatest fears, but also allow him to discover his greatest strengths. One not confined to a generic timeline, but rather spread out across past, present and future. It has been said that sometimes, in order for us to find who we really are, we must first take a step into the dark before we can see the light. Sometimes we have to get lost before we find ourselves.

This journey was the retelling of almost seven years of trials, both physical and mental. Moments on the moutaintop and moments from the deepest darkest pits. Highs, lows and everything in between. Most of all though, this was to be a story of how a young boy somehow managed to find a way to keep going, despite the raging storms around him and everything telling him to turn back, to give up and to lose hope. It was a story of the impenetrable defence he built around himself, and how that very defence - those very barriers - became his prison.

It was a story of isolation.

Beyond that though, it was also a story of self discovery, how he wasn't happy with the life he had built for himself within these walls, how being forced to conform outwardly to fit in had turned him into the very thing he hated, and how he wanted out, whatever the cost to himself.

It was a story of escape.

The trouble was, how do you break down an unbreakable wall? Conventional means had proven ineffective, so what was left? Well... the answer seemed obvious...

The Key.

The Key was the way out, The Key was the truth of what he had, and The Key was the only way for him to get his life back.

Finding the key proved to be the easy part, since by the time he realised he needed it he had already found it, the hard part for The Entity was finding the courage to use it in the lock, as he knew that the moment he did, everyone he ever met would know that that was what he had done. In a world where everyone was living within their own bubble, he would stand out, and he would not be able to hide it, like a city on a hill or a lamp on a stand in a dark room. He would be forever different, and more than that, he would be vulnerable, with the whole world against him...

So he accepted it and did it anyway, in the biggest way possible... Watched by 9,000 people...

This was the story of the exoskeleton.

It seems somewhat appropriate that Easter is tomorrow, since that's really where it all began, a story of death and rebirth that gave us the keys so that we can really live. Free of barriers and everything holding us back. We just need to find them and step out.

With that in mind. I end with a song  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lky7U8ygU78 :

Run Wild - For King and Country:

Are the walls to lock you in or to keep others away?

And if the doors were to be opened would you leave or would you stay?

The comfort of your misery you cherish dearly

And you haven't started dreaming 'cause you're still fast asleep

But don't you wanna

Run wild. Live free. Love strong. You and me?

You're a lion full of power who forgot how to roar.

You're an eagle full of beauty but you can't seem to soar.

Will you return to the garden where you were first made whole?

Will you turn to the one who can liberate your soul?

Don't you wanna

Run wild. Live free. Love strong. You and me?

Run wild. Live free. Love strong?

To every soul locked in a cage

In the prison of your past mistakes

No there's no time left to waste

Yeah you can make your great escape

We're made to...

Run wild, run wild, run wild

We're made to...

Run wild, run wild, run wild

We're made to...

Run, Forrest, all depends what direction. Some people run from fear some from their own reflection. Some people run their mouth, some people run their house ruling with the heart of a tyrant. Some people run their block, bust shots with a 4-4-5, and that's the environment, how we were raised, living like lions but trapped in a cage, back to a mine gold day with the blood of a king but the heart of a slave, don't you wanna run...

Run wild. Live free. Love strong. You and me?

Run wild. Live free. Love strong?

To every soul locked in a cage

In the prison of your past mistakes

No there's no time left to waste

Yeah you can make your great escape

We're made to...

Run wild, run wild, run wild

We're made to...

Run wild, run wild, run wild

If your soul's locked in a cage, you can make a great escape

We're made to...

Run wild, live free, love strong, you and me...

Day 26 - Freefall, Assertiveness and a series of (un)fortunate events?

Isn't it funny, how sometimes the worst things in life can lead to the best. I was thinking about this recently, walking back in the rain from YP the other night. It was through missing my offer grades that I ended up at this university, and if it wasn't for a series of unfortunate events, I'd not have found my church here, and I certainly wouldn't have been walking back to my flat  in the rain at 10 oclock in the evening that night. Not only would I not have found my church, but I'd also not have found the CU, or any of the amazing people I have met in the past couple of weeks through hall group and Story week, and my weekend away. Aside from the grades thing, everything else I've mentioned can be traced back to one point, one event, and ultimately, one person. My friend Jordan.

A bit of context here: After results day, and when I knew where I was going, I spent a significant amount of time on social media finding and attempting to connect with different freshers groups. I ended up in a group chat for year 1 physics, and through this group chat I met Jordan, who isn't actually a year 1 physicist (but is year 0 so close enough). To cut a long story short, we arranged to meet up for a church walk hosted by the CU in an attempt to try and find churches here. Of course this happened after Ruth had already decided to visit, and so I ended up going to the church walk but not meeting Jordan that week (we actually met, and then established we were going in different directions, so yeah...). The next week they ran the event again, and once again I didn't manage to meet Jordan, but because of this I was forced to make a decision on impulse, which led me to the church I'm now settled in. Because of Jordan I met Ruth, and because of Ruth I met pretty much everybody else I know in Cardiff outside of my degree. Through what was a bad situation, I found probably the best thing about being here so far.

I was talking to a couple of the people from my church about assertiveness, and how we need to have more confidence in ourselves and our faith, because having this confidence is the only way we can ever make things happen. If we ever want our faith to mean something we need not just to think it means something, but to *know* it means something.

That can be initially quite hard to get your head around. Faith is about more than blind hope. If all we have is blind hope, then that really is all we have. It is only when we are able to say with absolute certainty that this is real that we begin to see change, because we were not made to be passive beings or to sit on the sidelines, we were called to be the light in the darkness, great warriors in the daily battles of life, and we can't be either of those things by being indecisive, shy or unconfident.

We also can't expect things to be easy.

Being a Christian means placing your absolute faith in God, and his plan for your life, and that is an incredibly difficult thing to do. Being a Christian costs, and you have to be prepared to give up everything you ever wanted, everything you ever hoped for, everyone you ever loved. It's incredibly hard, but if you are able to let go, then that is when you will truly feel alive.

I leave you today with a song: Au5 - Freefall



Shining faces lining up, everybody's filled with hope and disbelief
How could something so broken take us up beyond the reach of gravity?
Every second building up until we come back down like tears on this brave new world
this brave new world...

I know that I'm supposed to be afraid, but I'm not
I know that I will find my hand in yours when we drop
I am only alive in the freefall
I am only alive in the freefall
I am only alive...

Shining faces lining up,
Everybody's filled with hope
Everybody's filled with hope, and disbelief
(I am only alive in the freefall)
That time...
That time that we fell...
And we kept going, we kept going
(I am only alive)

I know that I'm supposed to be afraid, but I'm not
I know that I will find my hand in yours when we drop
I am only alive in the freefall
I am only alive in the freefall

I am only alive...

I am only alive in the freefall.

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OK it's been a while... I'll be honest, I gave up even trying to keep going for 40 days, I simply just don't have the motivation, or the time, to write a decent post every day. And so it is that days 9 through 25 simply ceased to exist and things move back to normal. Sorry... :c

Day 9 - Neon Rainbow

Call me crazy, but I was listening to this song the other day, "Rameses B - Neon Rainbow"
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWXWA3b5Zes) and I had the strangest experience. I was walking along, and suddenly I just felt ridiculously happy. It had been an absolutely wild day, I had had absolutely no sleep, and had spent most of the last 24 hours working solidly to try and finish assignments or lab write up that, yes, I had neglected to do (because future me has to deal with that... >_>), and I'll be honest, I didn't even manage to finish it all by the time the deadline came around, which is entirely my fault, but hey.

So you get the idea, I was incredibly stressed, and frustrated at myself and my lack of any kind of self organisation whatsoever, and thus what I'm about to say came as a bit of a shock.

Basically, I just came to an incredible realisation. Standing there listening to that song, I realised that probably for the first time ever, I was free from depending on specific people, things or circumstances to be truly happy. Despite all the bad things I might have said about Cardiff, it's my home now, and it's a place where I am the master of my own destiny. Even though I'm now in a location that a year ago I wouldn't have even known existed, in a weird way I'm more confident here than I ever was back home, because I see it as my city, and a place where I can truly be me, and that's amazing.

I leave you today with some words from the song:

"There's a place I know that always feels like home
Pixels and soundbites, warm digital sunlight
There's a place where I belong that feels just like a perfect song
There's a place where I can go, just follow the Neon Rainbow"


Thanks guys





P.S:

Sorry I've missed so many days, I've just had so much going on and everything has kinda just fallen apart. I do intend to finish the 40 day series, but it might be over more than 40 days. I don't intend to stick to my initial plan any more either (see day 7), but I do intend to go into more detail about certain things in this post at some point, it just didn't feel appropriate to include them here. By all means ask me questions though, I might answer them but I might just tell you to wait for a later blog post when I've worked out what I'm trying to say ;)