Soap for Jesus

In modern society, there are many new phases and phrases of "expressing ourselves". There are also many new open forms of behaviour - not merely tolerated, nor even accepted, but promoted and taught by subtlety, blatantly and through constant, thorough inculcation. Most of these began in the last century. From 1,900 years of fairly slow changing, there has been a sudden rush of things generally considered "unacceptable" being promoted in the highest degree. Most of these are not really "human rights-centred", as much as being "me-centred". Not as much about correcting incorrect morality - such as the freeing of slaves - as about ensuring the comfort of individuals, which has now enforced the point of freedom of speech so harshly that most of the liberties it grants are curtailed. For example, you are allowed, encouraged and firmly supported to announce that you are gay/homosexual. Even if I like you and am your friend, I am not allowed to ...

We had the mayoral referendum yesterday, as well as the local elections. The local elections, from what I understand of it, select the council. One person from the local party (it could be anyone) stands to represent the party to the people, with their policies and what they will do to change the local authority if it comes under their control. We only had a choice of three in our area. There are way more parties than that, so other areas have more options, depending on what parties are standing in the areas. But I'm basing most of the following off the choice of three in my area. Who gains the most votes out of the three parties - Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat - gains the most seats in the council, and the council is declared as under the authority of that party (even though members of the other parties will still make up the rest of the council). I spent most of the wake yesterday after the funeral sitting in The Foley Arms watching the councils declare and ke...

Finally! I figured out why I'm so busy online! And...it makes me happy cause I've figured it out. Are you curious? Now I can manoeuvre stuff to make time, so I don't feel so bad about never being on Holy Worlds, OYAN or the Rebelution. Here's a comprehensive list of my online activities - social networking, etc. Walk With Us - my personal blog Poema - my poetry overspill blog Snapshots - a collaborative story that isn't going very well at present, on a girl with a broken family that suffers with abuse. In the Footsteps of Hymns - a blog on the meanings behind the dear, getting-forgotten old fashioned hymns. Rejuvenating the RAFA - my newest blog coming out on becoming a member of, growing into and starting recruitment for the Royal Air Force Association, and my ideas on how to get younger people involved. MademoiselleSJ - my Twitter handle Sian Garner-Jones - my profile on G+ Sian Garner-Jones on Facebook On Tumblr LilCorpJanie18 ...

This is a big topic of small importance... I attended the OYAN Summer Workshop 2011 last year (well, obviously last year). And loved it and everything to pieces. (I think you were still intact when I got home though... *glances at her trident*) I spent two months in the States. 2 weeks in Kansas, 2 weeks in Oklahoma, 1 week in Oregon, 1 week in Texas and 2 more weeks in Kansas. June 15 - August 16. I am not a millionaire and family circumstances were such last year that it is a total miracle that I even got there, much less to travel that extensively. My families took care of me and loved me and God bless them very, very much. Thank you. I fell in love with America while I was there. I'm a passionate British patriot, but I feel two totally different ways about both countries. America and Britain are not perfect - but America is a new land. A beautiful land. A new life. A fresh start. And chock full of my friends and people I love. Long and short of this being, due to my family'...

As a child, my parents raised me minus Father Christmas, believing that a) it detracted from Christ being the centre of the celebration and instead focusing it on a man who gives presents, and b) that it teaches a child to trust in a falsehood and then later, when knowing the truth, realises they've spent their entire early years believing a fairy tale. A lie. How much trust - and faith - does that inspire? Our church therefore taught against Santa (Satan?) Claws - oops, Claus...and every year my twin brother, our friend Rebekah Morris and myself would sing as a trio a song, written off Buddy Davis's (from AiG) song, I Don't Believe in Evolution, by Rebekah's father, Adam, called, I Don't Believe in Father Christmas. Following this, my Mom would read out this to the assembled parents. Believe you me, my brother and I found the end part HIGHLY amusing. So - I give you an engineer's perspective on our dear Father Christmas...or rather, Father of the other side...

One of my favourite things to do is to post a new post. And then, to share it. On Facebook, on Twitter, and on various chats. Then I sit and watch for a couple of minutes with my finger on the refresh button. I love Feedjit. :D It's so fun to watch the visitors start coming!! "New Bern, North Carolina" "Woodbridge, Virginia" "Belfast, Northern Ireland" "Moscow, Russia" Within minutes of posting. O.o My mother saw her grandfather once before his death. George Edward C was born in c. 1889. What would he have thought, I often wonder, if he could see his great granddaughter "slamming up blog posts", "Facebooking and tweeting", "emailing", "using a laptop", "typing" on something that wasn't a typewriter, talking about "gigabytes"...and what could a "website" possibly be? FLYING in a "jumbo jet" to a country that took months to sail to...flying's just been inven...

Here's a quote from my friend Scott Rowley's Facebook page, regarding my home town. How very true! *chuckle*: "Loves the way Walsall can promote itself, lol. Walsall The filthy streets, the unwashed masses, the charming local accent that makes us sound as though we were born retarded and have been drinking turpentine every day since then… These are the best aspects of Walsall. There’s a new art gallery, grey and shaped like a box. Clearly a great deal of thought went into making it look as appealing from the outside as it is enjoyable inside. And a new bus station. Cost a small fortune to build, looks absolutely revolting, has slowed down traffic for miles around because the entrance is tiny and buses have to queue past the exit to get into the entrance — so a traffic jam can last theoretically until the end of time. Best of all, they didn’t realise until after it was built that it wasn’t big enough for all the buses. The crowning glory of Walsall, though, is its people. T...

Posted blogs or video blogs? Both have something going for them. For video blogs, you see a person. You hear their voice, watch their mannerisms, observe their surroundings, recognise emotion, faint at accents, recall memories. It puts pressure on for instant thought, creative speech and expressive body language. In short, it contains a lot more of the physical person in a small confined space of time and image. Written blogs, however, can be long - as long as you like. They require extensive and interesting patterns of thought, creative writing and usage of words to carry the reader through to the end. Painting pictures with words and imagery is completely necessary to carry an idea or a thought that you wish to share. You use eyes and ears and heart to read into what a person is saying through their words. You use fingers to type it out. People feel much freer to express themselves when they aren't visually exposed. In short, writing blogs is supported by the mastery of conversan...

I'm nineteen years old with a fairly unusual past. I have two names and two personalities (no, I'm not schizo). I'm British (half Welsh, 3/8 English and 1/8 Irish with a dash of Scots), redheaded and passionately love my country to being willing to die for her. I love America and Americans dearly to wanting emigrate there. America is "the Promised Land" in spite of its failures, as Britain is "the Land of Hope and Glory" to Americans. I'm independent and very dependent. I'm silent and talkative. I love CCM rock and choral orchestral pieces. I'm crazy about the Royal Air Force, a member/cadet of the Air Training Corps and planning to join later as an officer, but I want to marry and have loads of kids. (As an ex-feminist to a degree, God's done really well on that one!!) I adore military drill, both narrowly watching it done, learning it in depth and performing it with precision. My soul overflows into music and song, both listening to, si...

Okay, I'm going to settle a little problem here, right here and right now. This is to prevent any further talking behind my back. I am busy. Very, very busy. In fact, most nights I'm so busy I'm actually falling asleep online. The other night, I even fell asleep in front of my mother online. Woke up until she went to bed, then fell asleep again until about 2am, when I finally gave up in despair and crawled off to bed. Most days, I get up somewhere around 6:30am and don't stop until 10:30pm. The times that I don't, I'm frantically rushing about online trying to sort out things like emails, and blog posts, and the S4C website. (The only thing I've been wasting time on is watching Dr. Who, and yes, I intersperse that with chatting.) I'm falling asleep a LOT online. I am very tired and constantly on the run. It's not that I don't want to talk. It's not that I'm ignoring you and leaving you in the past. It's that I'm very busy, and I...

Sooooo. I'm not online very much any more, and I'm encouraging people to email me or even - yes, I'm opening the doorway! - WRITE to me - rather than chat me, so I can clear my emails, tweets and Facebook notifications, work on the S4C website and blog in the relatively short time I have online now, apart from weekends. Of course, if you need to chat me, I'm around mostly on Saturdays and Sundays. I now have a 9-4:45 job on Mondays - Fridays as a market research telephone interviewer. You know, those horribly annoying people that ring your phone and ask you to spend some time on an interview. I always turned them down, politely and pityingly. After all, I could imagine how hard it was for them. Now, I KNOW how hard it is for them. Their job - my job - hangs on getting those surveys. So remember that, next time you turn them down. :P I should be getting 6-9 surveys a day, depending on the quota set, and at the minute, I'm roughly getting 3-4. If you don't make th...

There's an app on Facebook called 21 Questions. Recently, I found out someone had answered a question about me. In fact, LOADS of people have! Here are all the fascinating things I discover that people know about me, that I mostly didn't. Wow! Q: Do you think that Siân Garner-Jones is a good driver? A: No. Comment: Minor explosion inside. Although I'm sure that right now, they're pretty accurate. :P Q: Do you think that Siân Garner-Jones has smelly feet? A: No. Comment: Angelic smile beaming forth. I love thee, nice personage. XD Q: Do you think that Siân Garner-Jones is tone deaf? A: No. Comment: Inner radiant glow beams forth upon that person. You're wonderful. YOU LIKE MY SINGING! - maybe. Unless that response was off my siblings, who KNOW I'm not tone deaf and DON'T like my singing! XD Q: Do you think that Siân Garner-Jones spends more than an hour on facebook everyday? A: Yes. Comment: Someone knows me too well. V_V Q: Do you think that Siân Garner-Jone...

Today was a sad day and a happy day. Several goals were missed, and others were accomplished. Although very tempted to be down by the ones I missed, it's better to choose to be glad over the ones finished and not to be so blinded by the present I miss the repairable future. So! To share the happy part. :D Mom and I went to town this morning, Mom to the doctors and me to the bank...to meet up with her in an hour. However, I had a few other ideas of what I wanted to accomplish in an hour - AND I DID THEM ALL! :D :D :D Heading down Lichfield Street and across the Arboretum Island, I went to the Walsall Centre for the Deaf. When we drove past it yesterday, I noticed a sign up - BRITISH SIGN LANGUAGE COURSE, for beginners. YAY! This was one of my goals when I got back to the UK, to learn sign language! Met at the door and guided upstairs by a deaf man, he took me into a room where a rather harassed looking lady was on the telephone. Turned out she was the only one in that ...

I HAS A NEW BUTTON ON MY BLOG! Yes, there it is! Right at the bottom! Look, it'sh pwettyful! :D It's a Google Plus 1 button. And look, there are some more, shortened as suggested by my big brother Jay Lauser . Thoughty, interesty, and encouragy. You know, this is probably one of the most selfish posts out. But I really, really, really appreciate you letting me know what you think by clicking one of those teeny buttons! :D In Christ, ~Janie

My introductory OYAN topic reads as follows: "I am Jane. Jane Johnson. The Brit. Some of you have never heard of me. Some of you have heard fact that is stranger than fiction. Some of you recognise me as legendary as Robin Hood. I hear fables and fantasies woven around my name that startle me. Now is your chance to see the real me. I have changed since I joined OYAN at 15 years of age. I am now approaching 19, and though I rarely visit (for now), I always feel like I'm coming home when I step onto a topic or see my friends gather round, or even occasionally step inside the chat. I never find a chat stay solemn for long when I'm around. I was a girl; now I am a young woman. I've gone through some fairly unusual trials and troubles, some brought on myself, others sent to bless. Yes, to bless, for God has taught me how to see His hand in the troubles. I am British - 3/8 English, 1/8 Irish and 1/2 Welsh. My real name is Sian, but I prefer Jane from my American friends, as ...

So I've had a lot of new experiences really, as God changes my life and turns it upside-down, inside-out. I've learned to babysit, day in and day out, moving from a six-month old to five and two year olds. For a girl who wants a goal of thirty children (God and husband willing :P), maybe that's not such a bad thing! I've learned to cope with mildly primitive living conditions, with raw emotions and trying to support other people simply by listening, to dealing with shifts and changes, to eating things I don't like, doing things I don't like. Well, this experience was a new one, and I call it my first in home education - the reproductive system. We'll skip a small part, for while the childish candour had my sister, friends and myself in hysterical laughter, it might not be suitable for younger ears. Jamie (5) holds up the doll that his mom uses to teach her classes. (Toni is a doula, and teaches other women.) Jamie: "This is my baby, Rosie. Why haven...

Due to the unfortunate change in our family circumstances, I have a rather sad announcement to make. Today, we go to look at a new house in Bloxwich. If it is acceptable and we are able to rent, within the next few months we will be moving. Some...other changes also means we lose the internet. Right now, I am working off the BT Openzone hotspot privilege we have, as members of BT Broadband, but when we move, I'll lose it. I will probably be able to get a dongle for £10 (approx $17), but this will severely restrict my internet hours to one or two a night, if that's not one or two every few days. My chatting will be limited to the minimum, as I have emails, blogs, Twitter, Facebook and other things to sort out. You will be as free to chat to me as always, but please do not instantly presume I do not want to talk to you and am ignoring you. I'm simply working feverishly in the short time I have. If the dongle option does not work out, you will see me once a week, probably on F...

Yes, I know it isn't a word. Ah well, who cares. Last night, I was on the receiving end of this truthful observation of a close friend of mine. "You're being kinda silly tonight." It lead to a serious of complicated thoughts. Was I being kinda silly, or was I acting kinda silly? Because being is one thing, and acting is another. Being implies a state of being, acting invokes a state of action. Of course, I could be acting a being, but could I be being an action? I guess action could be a state of being, and yet, is being a state of action? It could be an be-tion or an action, but was I actioning or be-tioning? This is as far as my thoughts took me before I got muddled. ~From the definitive silliness of Yours truly.

Some of you might find this interesting...here is a chat on relationships I had with one of my close friends. What really amazed me is that there's no way that I could've phrased all that myself. I think God was showing me a few things as He spoke through me. Hope this blesses someone in some way. (11:24:15 PM) Rich: I learned that her mom things a break would be a good thing for the both of us (11:24:33 PM) Rich: That she thinks Danielle is distracting me from my life at college (11:24:46 PM) Sian Jones: ... (11:25:48 PM) Rich: I... (11:25:56 PM) Rich: I can't handle that... (11:26:12 PM) Rich: I'm depressed already because Danielle's gone for a weekend (11:26:22 PM) Rich: If she was gone longer... (11:26:26 PM) Sian Jones: *softly* (11:26:37 PM) Sian Jones: You learn that there are times that you need to be apart. (11:26:45 PM) Rich: But a break? (11:26:49 PM) Rich: *voice cracks* (11:26:50 PM) Sian Jones: Especially if you're going to spend the rest of your l...

Skyping earlier with a girl friend of mine, who recently broke off a developing close friendship with a mutual guy friend, lead to some serious thinking. She didn't break off with him because she was attracted to him or was in danger of losing her heart to him. She did it simply because he was a boy, and she was a girl, and she didn't think she should be that close to a guy. And yes, this principle hurts. I know. I've been through it, and still am. No, I'm not condemning people's consciences. I'm simply expressing my own thoughts. My ideal of a perfect world is where there aren't stupid blocks because of gender. The world starts off attempting to start children at age 3 with treating boys like potential boyfriends and partners in illicit behaviour. Christians tend to go to one of two extremes; throw up a barrier that blocks practically all but the barest minimum of communication between boys and girls, or else behave in a manner that's cheaper than the w...