a commonplace life

A commonplace life, we say and we sigh,
But why should we sigh as we say?
The commonplace sun and the commonplace sky
Makes up the commonplace day.
The moon and the stars are commonplace things,
And the flower that blooms and the bird that sings;
But dark were the world and sad our lot,
If the flowers failed and the sun shone not.
And God who studies each separate soul
Out of the commonplace lives makes His beautiful whole.
—Anonymous

Next Year

So, I thought I’d better write something quickly about my plans for next year (starting August ’08).  I have agreed to stay on with the Pais Project as well as starting a new kind of team for the department.

Last year, shortly after I arrived in Vancouver, I had the feeling that I didn’t know why I was here – I mean, I was doing youth work (which I’d not done much of before) and was living in the biggest city I’ve ever lived in (which was kinda daunting).  It wasn’t feeling much like home and on top of that, I was starting to feel that I didn’t want to lose the passion I had for film (after having completed my degree in Film Production).  

But then I had the idea of combining both my passion for my Christian faith and film together – brilliant plan!! I remember praying before I knew what I was doing after graduating, saying that I wanted to combine the two and that I’d be up for anything … but then I ended up on Pais?? 

I’ve met quite a few people in the Industry here – Vancouver has a million movies being filmed here, there and everywhere – in fact, there is a movie being filmed this week across the road from my church at the local high school we work at.  People always ask me if I want to go into the Industry too – but I don’t.  That’s not my passion – just ask me what movies I like and my mind goes blank, so I can’t be all that into it all eh? haha. Having said that, I recently watched three movies that I’ll recommend to you now – Juno, The Darjeeling Limited and A Scanner Darkly. Go watch, and let me know what you think.

ANYWAYS, to get back on track….

In October, we helped at a conference called Campusfire and whilst there, I heard a guy called Brett Ullman speak and he inspired me in what I want to pioneer next year with my team.  So let me try to explain this…

**I have a love for people, but a hate for the pain that people struggle with.

**I have a love for culture and media, but a hate for the lies that are constantly telling us we’re not good enough.

**I have a love for God and the truth and freedom that His name brings, but a hate for the barriers that prevent us from believing any of it, causing us pain and anger.

So, what to do about these things?  What I want to do now, is go into high schools and through creative (art, film, music, etc) workshops, seminars, classes, assemblies and whatever else, share with the students a life worth living – bringing them Biblical and good values but not in an explicitly Christian way.  However, this stuff won’t happen for a while. I need people to join me on this mission, and prayer.  As well as all this, I’ll have Pais work to do – which will be fun, doing things like update videos for the other teams, and newsletters and other stuff too.

Hello world!

So I have taken the initiative in starting this blog for all you people who want to keep up-to-date with how things are going for me in Vancouver.

I moved here about 8 months ago, in Sept 07 to join the Pais::Canada department.  I have been working as a ‘missionary’ to the students in the Westside of Vancouver – working with the youth at University Chapel, as well as offering local schools free resources through the Pais Project.  We do this with the vision of connecting churches with high schools – building community and hoping to bring students to Christ.  I have been doing this since September and have consequently been terrible at updates (due to busyness, but that’s a lame excuse really) – so this is my new leaf.  

Please, please keep me accountable to this!! If I’ve not written something for more than ONE MONTH, then feel free to email me with abuse.  

I am eternally grateful to all of you who have supported me during my time here in Canada, and to those who continue to do so….I  just hope I can give back to you a little appreciation in the form of these updates.

AND…for you who are in England, you should definitely make sure that you have 22nd June – 22nd July in your diaries because that is when I am back for a short month of visitations….so I’ll probably want to see you, so EMAIL ME!!! jessvgordon@gmail.com

Here’s an awesome photo of Downtown Vancouver, pretty sweet eh?: