Pictures from Prague

Waking up on the night train from Krakow





Wenceslas - one of them, anyway!



Czech beer proved a -cheap- favourite!

We were really pleased to come across Yves Arthus-Bertrand's famous 'Earth from the Air' exhibition. It's a spectacular set of photos and well worth a trip to see if it comes to a city near you.

The scary washboard man (see the video ) also played it with whisks.


I liked their pretty blue uniforms!


St Vitus' Cathedral


The spires were one of my favourite things about Prague:

Gorgeous at dusk


The sun setting in gorgeous fashion behind the Castle held us captive for a good few minutes!




Frescoes in St Nicholas'
When we spotted the leg dangling above us we were alerted that perhaps the figures weren't the only things 'painted on'. The overall effect was impressive!


The Jewish Quarter is well worth a return visit.

More pictures from Poland

Military Parade in Warsaw - to mark the 1944 Warsaw Uprising

St Mary's Church in Krakow

I love the ceiling! This was one of my favourite churches in terms of colour and style.

'Become!' - in St Francis' Basilica

Krakow's famously schizophrenic Wawel Cathedral - how many architectural styles can you count?!

The beautiful Renaissance courtyard in the grounds of Wawel Castle

Flame girls in the Market Square, Krakow

A night out with fellow travellers

Pictures from Poland

Arriving in Poland. Well, I'm pleased anyway!

Malbork Castle
This was an amazing castle, and very atmospheric in the rain!



The Shipyard Workers Monument, Gdansk
This was the first and, strangely, perhaps the most moving of the monuments we visited on our travels. It remembers the dead, but also marks a place of triumph - of ordinary people over an oppressive state. We mused on the rise of Solidarity and the collapse of Communism, and the way in which this otherwise unremarkable town bookends WWII (the first shots of the war were fired here). Brendan made the observation that while Communism styled itself as the party of the workers, it was the workers here in Gdansk that begun its topple.



Tomb of the Lost Soldier in Warsaw

Our funky hostel in Warsaw - Oki Doki

Sunshine + water =

Everyone knows about rainbows, but have you heard of Sun Dogs and ice halos, moonbows and glories? Atmospheric Optics is a fascinating site, dedicated to the beautiful results of sunshine with water droplets or ice crystals.

The site has some amazing photographs, some simple, some almost unbelievable. And although the optics/mathematics here is very involved, the basic physics of refraction and dispersion is relatively simple. it's incredible to think that such basic ingredients could combine to produce such beautiful and complex displays.

Music Videos for Seymour

Saw this and thought of you...



And this...

Experiment...

Took this at a military parade in Warsaw. It's shaky because the guns were incredibly loud! And we were standing about 2m away...

The new interns!

Er... are you sure you won't break it?

The trampoline proves a hit...


Gaz learns another sung grace... can you guess which one?!

Confused about Open Theism?

If anyone reading this has been confused about all this Greg Boyd and open theism-stuff I've been going on about recently, you might find this letter he wrote to another blogger helpful. It's good as a quick overview - and useful to hear what he thinks first hand.

Boyd's also become much talked-about in the States for suggesting that our kingdom is not of this world and the church shouldn't get too cosy with politics. I would recommend this video of Boyd talking on Charlie Rose. He's excellent - lucid, convincing and clearly Kingdom-chasing! I like what he says about getting 'under' people, rather than 'over' them.

Theological highlights from Revive!

Chris Forster - Revelation, not Information
Andrew tells Peter...'Come and meet the man who is the Christ' (John 1)
But it is not until later that Peter truly recognises Jesus: "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God" and Jesus tells him "this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven." (Matt 16:16,17)

Greg Boyd

God looks like Jesus Christ.
(Anything that doesn't look like Jesus Christ is the result of wills other than God's)

"Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms." (Eph 6:12)
- therefore, no person can be the enemy. If it has flesh and blood, we're not fighting it. On the contrary, people in bondage are those people we're trying to save - this is who we're fighting for, not against!

Regard every sin you see in someone else as a speck of dust, and your own as a two-by-four.

When Jesus was faced with sickness and oppression, he didn't pray 'accepting' prayers...he got angry. He had a theology of revolution, of revolt! In which we lay down our lives...

Faith is the 'substance of things anticipated'. We're rarely certain about anything, but faith is the having enough confidence in order to act on something (e.g. to get on a plane).

All prayer is powerful and effective...you have pushed the world further in a kingdom direction.
No such thing as a wasted prayer.

How you look at something determines what you see...which affects your life.

Millers go camping

Millers go to Beachy Head

Chris P's last cell

Millers on the South Bank