Here are some mini-thoughts on the challenges thus far. I can explain things more fully in person but inbetweentimes there has been a lot and much and many things in general, and a number of the themes themselves have formed deep currents swirling through everything so it’s hard to say real things without overstorifying or straining out the mint.

Mostly I am thinking increasingly that limits like this are like diving boards. With something a bit narrow and fairly solid but a good bit of spring in it all sorts of creative possibilities open up that a big empty swimming pool might allow you to miss.

#1 try at least 5 new foods (fiona)
Dried cuttlefish is intrinsically wrong and should be removed from the planet forever.

#2 take a mud bath (beth)
Emma and I looked like beggar children and attracted the unwelcome (although highly prized) attention of a policevan.

#3 fall in love (john-the-wit-whittaker)
Giving attention to concrete is a mindshattering way to spend time;

#4 do two opposites at once (jason)
Moving immobile sets lots of thoughts loose…

#5 i saw this and thought of you (jerry)
Shells in envelopes found amongst red sea anemones in the clearest sea in the world

#6 learn as much as you can in half a day about a sort of human love of your choice (romantic, filial, platonic etc) and then determine how much of what you learn you believe (zoe)
Conversations with strangers and pages read in shops; how they are all a part of the same and yet all have different faces.

#7 upside down (liz)
In the metaphorical sense, to answer each question of -what will you do?- and the goodness of being shaken about like a salt pot.

#8 flannel (josh)
Was bid (amongst others) a lock of hair, a defunct cusu card, a homecooked meal, a t shirt worn all month with an additional poem, an expensive painting on a wall, two failed raffle tickets

#9 silence (roxy)
Head silence is much more difficult than voice silence. The word ‘umbrella’ is helpful for bouncing abstractions, and listening is made easier.

This is an experiment I would highly recommend… ambling down the street en route to wherever, imagine each and every person you come across as being both six and sixty.

It can have quite incredible but largely indescribable effects on your perceptions of people – think you’ll have to try it to see. Every now and then, it seems that people realize you are doing it, or that you’ve seen something; there is a flash of astonishment, of surprise, of shared recognition which disrupts the flow of traffic with a quick rip in the seams.

Also, moving through your day by a process of association is an interesting one; as in only sidestepping through sequences of opened possibilities rather than through pre-planning. Although health warning: this one can have particularly extrovertic consequences.

Our class was of two, our classroom expansive, and our lessons most enlightening.

Notable teachers included Fleep the sad-but-alive tree who taught us about sorrow, the crop semi-circles on Churchill pitch which taught us conspiracy theories about burning eels falling through holes in the ozone layer, and Spiz/Hyacinth the schizophrenic old lady/dj tree who was mostly just confusing. We also received messages from Russia via chocolate wrappers.

as it turned out, our classroom crossed boundaries between several different planetary zones. This was quite accidentally discovered, as (scandalously) it turns out there are a number of doorways to other worlds located around Churchill and the astronomy department; mostly between significant pairs of trees. In one of these other worlds people had tragically been turned into wire sculptures and magnetically aligned. We narrowly escaped this fate by guiding each other through the wires with our eyes closed. in another our brains turned to pulp and started spouting inspired but wonky poetry.

Our lessons also raised a number of unanswered questions:

-         can spiders jump? Can they fly? Do they swing like batman? How do they make webs stretch from tree to tree?

-         Why don’t beavers live in trees?

-         If you cross over accidentally into other worlds, how do you get back to the right one? And how do you know when you are there?

#12 live by the dice        #13 spend a day going backwards

Both of these are interesting and amusing practices in themselves, taken literally. But they have also set fireworks under some interesting themes/questions which had been hovering foggily in and about my head.

#13 - travelling backwards (on trains, mostly!) was about unravelling and simplicity, questions and open spaces. And here's a question: how on earth, on earth is is possible to be properly receptive to the hopes, dreams, fears, lonelinesses and lives of friends and strangers and not disintegrate into a million pieces. HOW?

On #12: the question has been - what does it mean to 'live by the Spirit?' While first thoughts were mostly around the incredible and exciting possibilities exploding out of letting go, of leaning back in trust into maps discerned, and navigating through clues and treasure maps; through a number of conversations with friends and other people this week I think I have learned a new thing (although feel free to re-revise/challenge this. call it a tentative hypothesis).

That is, that it's not just about maps (beautiful as they are); these are all pointing beyond themselves, to real life, which is messy and chaotic, and full of meshes of unpredictable human relationships. SO living by the Spirit is not just about discernment, but also about decision-making. Therefore, it's not just about intuition, but also about commitments; not only about trust and falling back, but also steps of faith and risk taken out of the belief and conviction that God's spirit is in us and our desires are good (although they may not be met in the way we are able to imagine). 

As a new friend from Sweden writes wisely - 'i think it pretty much comes down to ignoring fear.'

This leaves two brand new question which baffle and petrify me absolutely.

What do you want? What are you prepared to fight for?

My great auntie trudy just turned ninety: she is 4 foot 10 and she talks and hops a bit like a sparrow. My grandparents pour stories in their coffee, it turns out; and, on an unrelated note, today they tried to compress me in the back of their car with twenty-five helium balloons, coloured pink, 'lavender' and white.These knocked against the car and against my head like drums as the wind blew in, this was a very strange experience. Sadly, two popped.

At my auntie’s party today rowan (11) asked me if I thought the meaning of life was solely to reproduce. tom (16, mohican now painted post-box red, solidifed reliably with uhu) and david (20, now looking scarily like his dad the vicar, except for pink striped emo-ness) hypothetically redesigned everyone else's 'style' with panache, while three girls ate all the trifle in a corner. We released the balloons with cryptic messages attached to them, some got stuck in a tree - that will confuse the pigeons..

Met a wise man called crow under a bridge.

question: what is the shape of the box into which we fit old people? what are we afraid of?

here is a picture of my family because i like them a lot. 

what if...

... these verses were not talking about expansion and ownership of land, but a radical kind of inclusive love? It reminds me of something I read in 'A Road Less Travelled' once, about all kinds of love being to do with the pushing back of ego boundaries. Meaning that kingdom is more about identity-shaking breaking down of walls between us and the 'other' than about occupation by a single identity, maybe...?

'Enlarge the site of your tent, and let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out; do not hold back; lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes. For you will spread out to the right and to the left, and your descendants will possess the nations and will settle the desolate towns.' (Isaiah 54:2-3)

Maybe it could look like this...