Tag: Patara

Patara Beach

David HerbertLeave a comment

Patara

On this beach sound and sand we lay ourselves to rest:
an annual punctuation, a colon and breathing space,
kindling and basking delighted by overlapping waves
of welcome: a silver thread in tiredness’ tapestry.

Tourists and turtles take their turns digging to cool sand
for new generation; young engineers make their marks
and build playful fortifications without calculation,
fear or hope of castles not withstanding nature’s storms.

Backed by wholesome sun I chase my shadow along the shore.
The load lightens. My trace disappears. Crabs sidle home.
A stranger nods a Merhaba in my direction looking out
another place and pace: life less dash or need for colon.

A far cry comes from the harbour, long silted and stranded
in history and imagination. “Phoenicia bound?”,
the ship’s master’s call to those piering their next purpose
and horizon, and those otherwise beached and bedraggled.

Luke, a passenger, packs a gospel for this new ark
with his two by twos, his hims and hers, his young and old,
his Jew and Greek, and Paul, his complementary pair embark,
Turks off Patara beach, where the sun shines after storms.

PS. References:
Merhaba is the Turkish greeting “hello”.
Luke and Paul changed ships at Patara.

And so, with the tearful good-byes behind us, we were on our way. We made a straight run to Cos, the next day reached Rhodes, and then Patara. There we found a ship going direct to Phoenicia, got on board, and set sail. Cyprus came into view on our left, but was soon out of sight as we kept on course for Syria, and eventually docked in the port of Tyre. While the cargo was being unloaded, we looked up the local disciples and stayed with them seven days. (Acts 21:1ff)

A turnaround

David Herbert2 Comments

And so we set sail from Patara. Well we flew home from our holidays actually.

We arrived in Patara fairly wrecked, but left refreshed and restored, thanks to the place, its people, many friends and a great climate. We thrived on the wonderful welcome and service we had (particular thanks to Nadi and Mehmet at Golden Lighthouse). Nothing is too much trouble for the lovely people of this quiet village. I wonder how deep rooted traditions of hospitality and generosity need to be to be effective. They certainly seem to be part of Patara culture, which traces its history back beyond the days when it was the capital city of the Lycian League. It is a place that does us good at so many levels.

Acts 21:1 refers to Paul’s journey through Patara. Paul and Luke came to Patara via Kos and Rhodes. They changed ship at Patara to sail to Syria. It was good to be following in Paul’s footsteps, coming into Patara one way, and leaving in an altogether better shape for the onward journey.

Çok tesekkur ederim, Patara.

All tweets great and small

David HerbertLeave a comment

bagels
“Best bagel ever this morning” (via Twitter).

That sums up a recent conversation thread I was involved with. There is a lot of chatter about the ratio of noise to significance in our social media.  The criticism behind the bagel reference was there being such little significance and too much noise in that sort of conversation. That was their excuse not to tweet. (Is it their excuse not to talk, as well?) It is strange how one tweet a winter of discontent makes.

Refuseniks are missing the party. Here are some of my (not by me) top tweets. @nancyWhite collected some from the Applied Improvisation Network Conference in a post that make me wish I had been there:

  • #AIN12 @brentdarnell Traditional training is a conspiracy create by sellers of 3 ring binders
  • #ain12 Matt Smith: “do what you can to get into a sense of gratitude before you perform” … or teach, or host, or lead, or ….
  • “You have to find people who are broken and help them heal. Laughter is my weapon of mass construction.” Genie Joseph #AIN12

Others are funny, like this from @theMiltonJones: Roman numerals to be phased out – not on my watch. (Retweeted 1467 times!)

Favourites showing when I wrote this:

  • From @alaindebotton: People who want to be famous generally had parents who took the media a bit too seriously
  • Again from@alaindebotton: How needlessly mean to buy only as many books as one actually has time to read

Without a tweet from @theosoc I would not have been alert to it being World Mental Health Day today, and there being a global crisis of depression affecting >350 million people. Without @first4LCFC I wouldn’t get score updates for my team.

Some tweets are profound and stimulating. They are clever. Other tweets are delivered without such pretension.

The taste of my bagel (in less than 140 characters) is not insignificant. It is a fact of life that some people do record their bagel consumption as a “status update” on Facebook. It is another fact of life that others give them their thumbs up because they care. Many do. They “like” it.

I wonder what it was like when there were other technological breakthroughs in social media. There have been famous letters. Some letters were kept, some thrown straight on the fire. But the triviality of some didn’t prevent people replying with “it was lovely to hear from you” and “please write back”.

We don’t always have something of earth shattering importance. I wonder, with the development of speech (early social media), whether Adam and Eve really did turn to each other and say “Just listen to you. All you go on about is your bagels. Can’t we talk about something more important? Just tell me, do I look big in this? And, how about this big apple?”

Conversations great and small build community and relationships. One of the reasons we go back to Patara for our holidays (maybe you’re not interested in that!) is the way everyone greets us with “gunaydin” (good morning). I would rather walk a street where people say “Hi” than walk a street where there is no expression because people think such apparently meaningless banter is beneath them. I am likely to go back to a cafe with waiting staff anxious to know whether I was pleased with their bagel.

a most inspiring award

David Herbert3 Comments

Well, blow me down. I’ve received a nomination for  a Very Inspiring Blogger Award from Ivon from his Teacher as Transformer blog.

Isn’t that lovely? And isn’t the award a great way of building community? Now, I’ve got to nominate 15 other blogs and their authors as “Very Inspiring”, by which I mean that their blogs are inspirational to me. I know it’s not going to change their life, but it’s proof to them that they are making sense – to me, at least. (And it is reassuring to know that we are making sense to others).

And it’s going to get their oxytocin levels going! Dr Love – aka Paul Zak (can I change my name?) has researched the “moral molecule”, the chemical in the blood called oxytocin. It turns out that “being treated decently causes people’s oxytocin levels to go up, which in turn prompts them to behave more decently, while experimental subjects given an artificial oxytocin boost – by means of an inhaler – behave more generously and trustingly. And it’s not solely because of its effects on humans that oxytocin is known as “the cuddle hormone”: for example, male meadow voles, normally roguishly promiscuous in their interactions with female meadow voles, become passionately monogamous when their oxytocin levels are raised in the lab”.

So, let’s hear it for the male voles, and for social networking. Zak recommends, according to Oliver Burkeman writing in the Guardian

we should all be doing more to boost oxytocin in benign ways. He recommends a minimum of eight hugs a day (pets count, too); massage and even soppy movies seem to work: he has done the blood tests. Interactions on Twitter and Facebook seem to lead to oxytocin spikes, offering a powerful retort to the argument that social media is killing real human interaction: in hormonal terms, it appears, the body processes it as an entirely real kind of interaction

Get pressing that like button! William James claimed that “the deepest craving of human nature is the need to be appreciated”, and a Harvard psychologist speaks of the importance of having a praise-criticism ratio of at least 5:1. Does anyone ever complain that they are praised too much?

Award ceremonies contain suspense, appreciation and thanks. Awards are prized and hard to come by – when we think of the Oscars, Olympics and such like. But there are everyday awards that are not so hard to come by, but are equally prized and create community. I had my own New Year ceremony which you can read about here. But there are awards to be made in our everyday world. These awards are not made with fanfares or fine words, but may consist of a “thank you” or simply a smile.

I’m not going to think too hard about the awards I am going to make today, but among them are my nominations for a Very Inspiring Blogger Award. (I am only including blogs which have recent posts).

And the nominations are (in no particular order and chosen from those who post regularly):

  1. Spirit 21 – Shelina Zahra Janmohamed
  2. Inspired Beeing – Cat Jaffee
  3. The Painted Prayerbook – jan Richardson
  4. Growing up with God – Rachael Elizabeth
  5. Simon Marsh
  6. shinystuff – Jan Dean
  7. Beyond the Edge – Viv McWaters
  8. Another Angle – Stephen Cherry
  9. Lost in the North – Dave Mock
  10. Plaza – Oliver Herbert
  11. People Reading
  12. Do not dance UK – Jose Campos
  13.  On the plus side – Lynn Walsh
  14. Christopher Burkett
  15. The Six Doyles – Katherine Doyle

The rules for accepting the nominations are:

  1. Link back to the person who nominated you
  2. Post the award image to your page
  3. Tell seven facts about yourself
  4. Nominate 15 other blogs
  5. Let them know they are nominated

So here’s the award

And here are seven facts about myself:

  1. I’m part of a lovely family – Jeanette, Adam, Oliver and Leo and their loved ones
  2. I was ordained in Sheffield in 1974
  3. I am still listening to Leonard Cohen and Paul Simon after all these years
  4. I love the beach – Patara and the beaches of Wirral and North Wales
  5. I’m intrigued by ideas of leadership and ministry (nominating here Dee Hock and Meg Wheatley for Very Inspiring Author awards).
  6. I follow the ups and downs of the Foxes – Leicester City – my home town team
  7. I recommended a book by Jay Griffiths to someone yesterday – A Sideways Look at Time

Thank you Ivon for nominating me and for inspiring me to today’s awards and community building. You would have been on that list.