Call to action - World Toilet Day

All this term we've been talking about stepping out and being more radical. In that spirit, on Saturday 17th November, we are going to put our dignity aside for the sake of the 2.5 billion people who still don't have access to adequate sanitation (that's nearly two fifths of the world's population) to mark World Toilet Day. But don't worry, our indignity will be nothing compared with those who don't have toilets - we will just be wearing them!

We'll have a fair amount of freedom in the shopping centre and will be eye-catching in our costumes. Hopefully our enthusiasm for the cause will make it possible to engage people in conversation or at the very least, raise a smile and get them digging in their pockets. We will supply you with t shirts, balloons, stickers etc and also be able to give you some useful, thought provoking facts.

The day will start at 10am and we'd be thrilled if you could join us and support this venture, even if it's only for a short time. According to the Brent Cross management it's possible to raise really good sums of money and the more on team the better.

Please contact me (Elaine) on 07932 646 496 to let me know when you can come so I can arrange where to meet you.

Go on - be brave and join us standing against poor sanitation.

Looking Out

While our cafe sessions this term are exploring what it means to be an ordinary radical, our autumn pub sessions will look at how we can develop and improve the network itself.

Wednesday 7th November, 8pm
JM has grown from an idea to a community of 20-30 people that meet regularly and another 20-30 that follow us on social media or receive our weekly emails updates. That's very exciting, but we want more. We dream of filling Coffee Republic with 40 people every month, of being able to make a tangible impact on issues we get behind and empowering even more people to find out how to act on their passion to see more social justice in our world.

At this pub session we'll be at the Bohemia sharing tips on how we talk to friends and colleagues about being part of Justice Matters and other ideas for reaching a wider audience.

It promises be another awesome evening - see you there!

Lecture: Terrorism, National Security & Civil Liberties

The East Barnet Anglican-Methodist Partnership Annual Social Justice Lecture
"Terrorism, National Security and Civil Liberties"
Speaker: Lord Carlile of Berriew QC (former government advisor on anti-terrorism legislation)

Tuesday, 6th November 2012 - 7.30pm at Brookside Methodist Church, 2 Cat Hill, East Barnet EN4 8JB.

For further information, contact Revd Colin Smith.
020 8449 8386 / CASMITH1898@aol.com

Boom! Whizz! Crackle!

Join us for this unofficial JM gathering - the annual bonfire and fireworks display at Totteridge Cricket Club.

Friday 2nd November
Gates open at 5pm, entertainment and stalls from 6pm, bonfire lit at 6:30pm and fantastic fireworks display at 7:15pm. Fully licensed bar, hot dogs, burgers, mulled wine, soup, and much more. Adult tickets ate £7 in advance or £10 on the gate.

Call 020-3519-2779 or go to Cricket Club for tickets.

Hope to see you there!

Caroline Burns on being an Ordinary Radical

In Part Two of our series, The Rough Guide to being an Ordinary Radical, we heard from Caroline Burns, Bolivia coordinator for Food for the Hungry. Caroline spoke passionately about her experience of following a call to Bolivia, where she spent several years working outside her comfort zone to promote nutrition and basic health, while at the same time overhauling the management and finances of the project she was leading there.

She made no apology for speaking boldly about her faith and the part it has played in her journey into becoming an Ordinary Radical. For Caroline, believing and trusting in God played a vital role in her decision to embark on such an adventure. As she described it, "to be ordinary is to operate in your own ability; to be an ordinary radical, is to reach beyond what we can achieve by our own strength and operate instead by faith".

Like Wendy in last month's cafe session, Caroline urged listeners to discover their passion through talking to others and then to embrace opportunities to get involved with that passion. In other words, learning to say "yes". You may not know where that yes will lead, but Caroline encouraged us with a verse from Proverbs: "Trust in the LORD with all our heart and lean not on your own understanding."

In this way, she also encouraged us with the words of Oswald Chambers, not to dwell on the scale of the challenge ahead but rather to draw inspiration from what has already come to pass:

"The needs are so enormous, and the conditions so difficult, that every power of the mind falters and fails. We tend to forget that the one great reason underneath all [efforts to foster peace and justice] is not primarily the elevation of the people, their education, nor their needs, but is first and foremost [a response to the saving sacrifice] of Jesus Christ."

Join us next month for the third and final session in this brilliant series, when we'll have the fantastic Mr Ash Chafe sharing his experiences of life as an ordinary radical living on a local estate. That's Wednesday 21st November at Coffee Republic in N Finchley from 7:30pm.

Do also join us for our pub session on the 7th November, when we'll be discussion how we Look Out to invite and include new members into the network. We have a vision to be a community of thirty to forty people regularly coming together to be inspired and equipped to change the world (plus plenty more connected into us via email, Facebook and the website). Come along to share your ideas for expanding our reach and get some tips on how to talk to others about JM. Full details to follow shortly.

Practical steps to change the world

During this term, we have been collecting simple actions that each of us can do to make a difference to the world we live in. Ryan has kindly typed these up, so here we have a top 25 Everyday Tips for Ordinary Radicals.

1. Switch your energy provider to one that uses more renewables.
2. “Soap-up” before running shower.
3. Cut down on petrol ‘fill-ups’ (conserve fuel).
4. Allotment sharing, or collective sharing of your fruit and veg harvest.
5. Do some gardening for the elderly in exchange for growing fruit and veg in their garden.
6. Use E-Cloths.
7. Buy ecover washing up liquid and clothes washing liquid. You can even get refills from local natural food and health stores - so it saves plastic too.
8. Send less to landfill less - get a compost bin.
9. Turn off unnecessary lights at home.
10. Turn off plug sockets that aren't in use (eg. mobile phone chargers).
11. Don’t leave TV on standby – switch it off when you're not using it.
12. Eat meat sparingly (say, once or twice a week). Its very energy and water intensive to farm.
13. Go vegetarian, vegan or pescetarian.
14. Make your own cleaning products for bathroom / kitchen / glass / floors (lemons and limes have natural cleaning properties).
15. Buy organic food.
16. Recycle.
17. Walk or cycle to places rather than driving.
18. Don’t waste paper - use portable electronics rather than printing things out that you only need once.
19. Reuse old paper by tearing it into quarters and using it for shopping lists and fridge notes.
20. Research the ethics of your supermarket. Consider switching to Waitrose, M&S or Sainsburys.
21. Make your own clothes.
22. Get involved in clothes swaps.
23. Shop at charity shops - supports people in need and extends the life of discarded clothing. The ones that in affluent areas often have top fashion labels and barely worn items!
24. Convert car engines into being fuelled by recycled vegetable oil from restaurants (bit more effort but great idea!)
25. Don’t get a lawn mower – get a goat! You get a mowed lawn without the cost of fuel plus regular milk - what's not to like?! To be fair, this probably isn't too practical for most of us, but Urban Shepherding is a real thing. Perhaps a more practical response is to share a lawn mower with your neighbour - after all, how many mowers does one street need?

At the end of our last gathering, Victoria challenged us to commit to doing one of these by the next time we meet. We'll be looking forward to hearing what people get up to when we meet in November. 

Which one will you do?

The redemptive struggle to forgive

I found this article in today's Independent inspiring and challenging. What do you think? What would you have done in each of these situations?

"Eric Lomax, who died on Monday aged 93, was one of thousands of British soldiers taken prisoner by the Japanese in 1942 and forced to build the 418-mile railway to Burma. He was tortured until there was not a patch of unbruised skin between his shoulders and knees; 900 blows in six hours broke arms and ribs. At night he was confined to a cage coated in his own excrement.

Somehow he survived. But back in Scotland, Lomax was tormented for decades by nightmares. Post-traumatic stress led to estrangement from his father and the breakdown of his marriage. The mental scars refused to fade...

... Anger, hurt and bitterness is the commonest response to cruelty. It fuels sectarianism in Iran, resistance in Afghanistan and the blood feuds of Syria. Often it does not abate. When the killers of James Bulger were released, eight years after the murder, the dead toddler's mother said: "I never knew I had so much hate in me." Winnie Johnson, the mother of one of the victims of the Moors murderers, could not forgive for almost half a century until she died recently...

... Eric Lomax was different. He set out almost 50 years after the war to meet [his captor and tormentor], his heart filled with utter loathing and hate. But something extraordinary happened. "When we met, Nagase greeted me with a formal bow," he wrote on the website of the Forgiveness Project. "I took his hand and said in Japanese, 'Good morning, Mr Nagase, how are you?' He was trembling and crying, and he said over and over again: 'I am so sorry, so very sorry'. Lomax found himself saying: "We both survived."

Forgiveness turned to a friendship of nearly two decades."

From The ultimate heroism is forgiving the enemy - Comment - Voices - The Independent: