Thinning On Top?!

No, Thinning on Top is not a small quaint village in Worcestershire somewhere (pronounced Wus-te-sha, not wussussestershishishishishi etc) full of English stereotypes out of a Hollywood movie, I’m talking hair here, and you know, you’ve all been running from that for a long time, haven’t you? Time to face the truth...

 

Oh, woe is me! Hair today, gone tomorrow!? As the hair goes, the beard grows! Grass doesn’t grow on a busy street!? His head is growing through his hair! Taking longer and longer to wash your face??! Well, at least you’ll save a fortune on combs!! Hey, Chromedome!! Oi, Slaphead?!! And on and on it goes, a veritable litany of cruelty, jibes, anxiety and hilarity aimed at the man who is ‘follicly’ challenged.

 

I’m going a bit thin on top, you see. At one time, it was a traumatic thing for blokes to go bald, or starting to go bald. In fact, it still is really, but the trend now is to make it trendy “are you going  bald, mate? Oh no, I’m just shaving my head. It’s really cool, isn’t it?” and so on. Get a tight t shirt and tight jeans, grow a trendy goatee beard, or the latest guy accessory a full beard (if you can, that is) and the bald head is the crown on the head of your new image change. Baldness can actually be trendy...

 

I suppose of course, that losing your hair also brings your youth to an end in some cases, too. But, not always. What seems to happen to guys where I come from is they actually start to take more care in their appearance, lose a bit of weight, perhaps work out a bit and start thinking about their wardrobe and what clothes they are actually wearing. In some cases, some blokes might even start buying AND using moisturiser!!! Not me, oh no... But, suddenly the hair loss isn’t the end, not a bit of it, it can be the beginning of a whole new you. Without hair though, obviously.

 

Just look at these guys for a moment, if you will, and savour their slapheadedness in all their glory...

 So, it’s not so bad to be a baldy, is it. Could be the start of a whole new you... and let’s face it, you won’t go through the trauma of going bald again, will you? And I’ll leave you with this pearl of wisdom, that may leave you at peace:

 Perhaps going bald is just God’s way of saying you are losing your hair....?

 And Here, is the Slaphead’s Slaphead....

 

 

John Sentamu’s Coming!!!!!!!!

John Sentamu’s coming, he’s coming today

Is he staying for a year, or a year and a day?

John Sentamu’s coming, he’s on his way

Three cheers for the fella, hip hip hooray!!!

 

 

John Sentamu’s buying, he’s getting them in

Cider for her, and I’ll have a gin

John Sentamu’s buying, so don’t be late

He drinks like a fish, and he eats for eight.

 

John Sentamu’s drumming, he’s forming a band

Rap indie rock metal, he’ll never be panned

John Sentamu’s strumming, a one man band

It’s always live music, he’ll never be canned.

 

John Sentamu’s running, get out of his way

Running for dolphins, or so they

John Sentamu’s gunning, he’s gunning for souls

He’s driving a mini, but never a Rolls.

 

 John Sentamu’s thinking, of what to do now

Skiing for hedgehogs, hopping in Macau

John Sentamu’s smiling, a friendly old chap

The nation is grateful, we all doff our cap.

 

John Sentamu’s laughing, but never at you

His anger is righteous, his barbs are all true

John Sentamu’s angry, but never for long

Soon he’ll be smiling, then what can go wrong?

 

John Sentamu’s singing, he isn’t half bad

Hes rarely unhappy, and usually not sad

John Sentamu’s ringing, he wants a nice chat

Nothing important, just this and that.

 

John Sentamu’s going on holiday

A caravan park, thats where he’ll stay

John Sentamu’s going, a nice well earned rest

Some fishing, some climbing, whatever is best.

 

John Sentamu’s crying, for all the poor

He jeers at poverty, shows injustice the door

John Sentamu’s frowning, at all of the pain

But his soothing smile is like desert rain.

 

John Sentamu’s dancing, dancing with joy

For every girl and for every boy

John Sentamu’s rapping, in the cathedral at York

He walks the walk, and he talks the talk.

 

John Sentamu’s jumping, and hopping with glee

He’s doing it all for you and for me

John Sentamu’s flying, flying at height

He frowns at wrong, and smiles at right.

 

John Sentamu’s walking, and he’s walking tall

He does it for one, and he does it for all

John Sentamu’s jogging for sweet charity

For  hope, and peace and equality.

 

John Sentamu’s sombre, he’s thinking through things

He takes in his stride whatever life brings

John Sentamu’s smiling, the sun has come out

He never worries, and there’s never a doubt.

 

John Sentamu’s here, and sometimes he’s there

You’ll get to see him, just don’t you despair

John Sentamu’s grinning, with nary a frown

Hey hey, its big Johnny, he might be coming to your town...

Man Talk

 

What does it mean to be a man?  What does it mean to be a Christian man?  How does an ordinary bloke, a regular guy, turn the other cheek on the street or anywhere for that matter, when society and all our instincts call for retaliation?  Do we have to subsume our masculinity to live as a Christian man, should we be consciously genteel and constantly rather nice to everyone we meet, being overly polite even to our old mates?  What on earth will our drinking buddies think of us when instead of laughing at obscene jokes, we just earnestly want to talk about our faith, between gulps of beer that is?  In short, do we have to deny our masculinity, whatever that may mean, to be a Christian man?  Do we have to pretend to be something we are not?  What about all us macho big city guys, baseball cap wearing street-smart blokes-are we really Christian material?  What about guys covered in tattoos and earrings and shaved heads and 3 day stubble?  Did Jesus really come for people like that; for people like us?  Didn’t God, after all, create all of us, not just holier-than-thou, well-to-do religious types who go to church and sing hymns on Sunday?!

 

Can Christian men listen to rock music; can we like Jimi Hendrix, The Who or The Doors anyway?  Just why is some music considered sacred and something else profane?  Can we only interact with other Christians?  Can we only listen to Christian music and watch Christian movies?  Do we have to eat Christian sandwiches and shop in Christian supermarkets?!  Just what does being a Christian man really mean anyway?

 

What does the world want of Christian men?  What does Jesus want of Christian men?  What do I want from being a Christian man?  I think, above all, I want a little honesty in my life, a little reality to shine through the fog of my life.  We allow women to be feminine, to be gentle, to reassure and speak soothingly; do we allow men to be masculine?  And I don’t just mean dominant alpha males, you know, the super-successful, the super-rich, the influential politicians who make decisions and wield power, I mean the guy on the street, the bloke who might be unemployed, the guy propping up the bar, the awkward, the loner, the misfit?  The ordinary bloke who has to struggle to get on; what does He mean to Jesus?

 

Jesus takes us as He finds us, in all our glorious individuality, our macho masculinity, our ‘woundedness’, our brokenness, our feelings of being lost.  What Christian men need to know, understand and come to terms with is that Jesus knows who we are; if He’s comfortable with our masculinity then we should be too.

 

What happens if a bloke isn’t really interested in singing hymns and Sunday worship, what happens if we struggle with the idea of being over-emotional in a church setting or we’ve never even been to a church before; is God not for us then?  Is worship reaching out, is traditional Christianity really reaching out to masculine men?  Does Jesus want Christian men to be religious stereotypes, clean shaven and wearing dark blue suits?!

 

Men, like you and me, need to know who the real Jesus is, because only through Him can we really understand who we are and only in Him can we begin to make sense of it all.  Jesus is big and tough enough to take on our masculinity and our awkwardness, our questioning and our misgivings, our very struggles with our often flawed masculinity.

 

Does Jesus know that even the hardest macho man hides behind an image, an image of toughness, to hide a tender side, a side that is hidden to the world?  Is it ok to feel doubt within, doubt that we are not sure of who we are as men?  We are brought up to be hard, cold and not to cry, and then when we are just that, we are condemned for being men!  And then if we are gentle and in tune with our emotions, we are called wimps!  When we throw off these mental chains, of all kinds, maybe, just maybe we can find out who we are as men.

 

Being reconciled to God means we can be reconciled to other people and as importantly we can be reconciled to ourselves; we can really find out who we are as Christian men.

 

God is big enough to take us as we are and He knows all about us anyway, so what’s stopping you moving towards Him?  Is the Christian life for real men or just for those who hide behind a mask; failures, losers, awkward loners, those who can’t get by in life without an emotional crutch?  Real men are often broken, broken into little bits, and we spend our lives pretending we aren’t broken and everything is fine, when it isn’t and we carry the broken bits around with us, trying in vain to put them all back together and make sense of it all; at all costs we have to be macho, or keep smiling, never letting the truth seep in, the truth of our deep and bitter brokenness; not even to God can we be honest; not even to ourselves can we be honest.

 

So, just what is it to be a Christian man?  Can we bring all our troubles and hopes and fears to Jesus, or what?  Can we still be real men and real Christians?  You might be surprised at the answer; if Jesus was a real man, so can we be real men!

 

Donald Trump - Making America Grate Again.

We tend to be a little perplexed over the Big Ol’ Duck Pond, at the goings on at the race for the presidency. To give any one person such power in the world’s biggest economy and no1 superpower seems a little worrying. Americans seem to have two choices: the nice candidate who pretends to care about ordinary people, and the bonkers one who seems to hear the beat of his own drum.

I’m saying, that Trump definitely is in the latter camp here. Quite frankly I don’t think he is nuts, not by a long chalk. Not even deranged. But whether he is saying what many Americans think is open to question. Obviously some agree with his views. Building a wall along the Mexican/Texas border, and making the Mexicans pay for it seemed popular in some quarters, but probably not Mexico. I wish you the best of luck with that, Donald. Perhaps you could pay for that wall instead, seeing as you’re richer than most oil sheikhs?? It’s not even that I don’t think he has no right to air such opinions, but they are the sort of things that people who frequent bars tend to air to nobody in particular when they’ve had a few ‘sherbets’, not the sort of thing hopeful presidential incumbents should be saying. How high will the wall be? 10 feet? Hmmm, I suspect the more enterprising Mexicans will be able to work out a solution to that. 12 foot ladders, perhaps? Oh, and the fact that by keeping immigration illegal, businesses stateside have a plentiful supply of cheap labour that will do almost anything, live in almost any slum and accept awful pay just to get a foot in the door. So everybody wins!!! Those for and against immigration. Democracy in action.

In Britain at the moment, our democracy has descended again into a sort of privately educated posh rich boy aristocracy, with the underlining unspoken assumption that such folk have the perfect right to run things, being descended from some dead aristocrat that nobody cares about or remembers, and that such things matter. In America, they have merrily done away with such things, and so any ordinary regular billionaire on the street, or someone backed by billions of dollars, can democratically run for the presidency. Thank goodness our respective political systems are not corrupt or lop sided in any way, or we’d all really be in trouble. People might get the crazy idea that democracy is democracy in name only. How silly it would be to think such a thing.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah. Now, if this post ever goes viral, or gets more than the usual 20 or so hits such posts as this get, I will appeal to all Americans to think kindly on me. Because....  (deep breath) ... If this post angers Trump fans and they vote for him in spite of me and all I stand for, you can thank me in no small part for his election. However, if this post helps people vote for anyone else other than Mr’s Trump’s fave son, then all those who didn’t want him as president can thank me. So, whether Big Donnie wins or not, it’s a win win for me. And that’s the kind of democracy I like.

This is a blog exclusively for men, talking about men, and being men!!!

But women can look in from time to time, too!

Also, if anyone wishes to contribute something, I would like to hear from you. Men stuff only please, even if from a female perspective.

It is also going to be more light hearted and though I am a practising Christian, it is going to be on anything and everything.

Well, cheerio for now...