The church. We all know this enormous enterprise. Whether you believe or not, you cannot avoid seeing all the work the church has done to contribute to the society we now have. But time waits for no-one and it looks like the church is slowly losing its touch. It’s importance is dwindling. It might take a hundred or more years but the church is heading towards a future where its importance will be negligible. It will stop being the spiritual anchor for our society.

There were my thoughts, until I read some recent quotes from the current pope.

Paus Franciscus said:

“I prefer a church which is dirty and hurt for being on the streets helping to a church that is unhealthy for sitting inside holding on to the status quo”

“Priests need to get out onto the streets, into the mud and not be a passive sour prune.”

Could it be true? Might there be a future yet for the church and will the pope manage to have an affect on the enormous bureaucratic organisation the church has become? Will he really manage to reform the church from being a place to worship and a place to go if all else has failed to a place of hope offering support and help to those who need it and a place to go in order to improve yourself and help others?

The pope was elected to be the man of the year 2013. It seems a good choice. The wheels of change are set in motion and slowly seem to be starting to move towards a better future.

If he manages to change the church it will be a change for the better. No longer will the association of your actions be lost. Donations, confessions, lectures and singing will suddenly have a direct result. A donation is for giving help directly to someone who needs it. A confession is not for getting your soul clean but for getting advice. A lecture is for getting general advice and the singing together is just for enjoyment together. Stop with the bread and wine. Make the church into a place that is a nice place to be. Turn on the radio, have hobby afternoons, parties for volunteers, help afternoons, open the church for professionals providing help, social training, education, bridge tournaments, chess-events, revalidation help, you name it. Start to fight the individualism and focus on the force of the many, exactly as Jesus tried to show us more than 2000 years ago.

Change the story behind the cross. Stop it from being a symbol for a crucifixion of a man, but make it into a symbol of being together. A symbol that shows that personal beliefs are important but are less so that helping each other and working together to make our world a truly better place for those who are to follow in our footsteps.

Alex has had his first performance. It was very strange for him and in the beginning he was shaking on his little legs. Quite normal because suddenly hundreds of people were watching him. Still he did very well indeed. For us there was no doubt, Alex was the star of the event.

(Alex is the fourth from the right)

When Sinterklaas was visiting our country this year he came accompanied by a big storm. When everyone was receiving their gifts we received a bit of mayhem. Either one of the peets, or the storm destroyed the (empty) rabbit home. It was smacked against the ground.

It was a nice adventure. Fishing on the North sea was a fun experience. Sailing for a while, trying to catch something, sailing a little more. This is how it went a couple of times and during each of the stops our bucket stayed empty and clean… until father Kees caught the first fish. Quickly loads of fish followed until we had the bucked totally filled. The result was 29 mackerels.

The result:



The route:

Tough sailors who defy terrible weather and the hardships of the endless ocean. The fierce life of hardship and suffering. Risking your life in a storms and in the pouring rain just to catch a few measly fish. On a ship adrift on the wild ocean praying to the mighty god of the seas to be allowed to see your home again. Knowing your family is home, living in fear and anxiety.

Most likely the trip will not be so bad as the previous paragraph depicts, but you never know. With some family and friends we are going fishing on the North Sea. With shipping company Trip we’re leaving tomorrow early in the morning to spend the entire day fishing for Mackerel. The fish we catch we can take home, so we’ll be eating lots of fish.

We have a new car! We traded in our faithful Seat Ibiza and now we have a new nine year old red Focus.

Well, the car was as good as new when we bought it. After a few days of use we have notices that our parking place on -3 is giving us quite a few problems. The car already had some big dents and huge scratches on the left side, the right side and on the front bumper.

7 young rabbits are playing in our garden. The left their nest about a week ago. All seven are as black as the night, which is strange because their mother is red-brown. Clearly they are having a lot of fun in the garden.

Emotions are a very personal subject. Writing emotions down on a piece of paper is even more difficult. Still, it seems that it is possible to use mathematics to calculate the emotional values of written texts. In this context I was asked if would agree to allow two texts from my website to be used in an investigation.

The texts the researcher was interested in were the two texts read on our wedding. One text read by my brother Bert and one read by our friend Miguel. Ana and I were both very moved by the texts so clearly there is a good amount of emotion there. I am very curious as to the results but I will have to be patient because the results will probably take a few months.

At my parents place there are always a lot of animals walking around. Thanks to the rabbit the number of animals has just gone up a lot because the rabbit has a nest full of young ones.

Noordwijkerhout is a little town in the middle of the area where loads of flowers are grown. Normally it is a very quiet town and there is not a lot happening, but today there was something to be seen. The 66th annual Bulbflower Parade passes through town. A lot of cars all decorated with thousands and thousand of flowers.

It was very cold, but very nice to see.