What kind of people work for themselves?

What are the skills that you need to be self employed?  I recently read about a priest (on a retreat site) who had left the church to become self employed.  Over the years I have often wondered about becoming self employed and never done it.  I think that there are two things that I lack: unbounded confidence that everything will turn out OK (in fact I have rather the opposite - see here) and an ability not to worry (see here).  Neither of these are great attributes for a man of faith - see here and here.

This reminded me of the theory we discussed many years ago at work.  Have you noticed, like we did, that most of the big entrepreneurs don't have much in the way of formal education?  We came to the conclusion that this was not chance.  To make it as an entrepreneur you have to take risks with your life.  If you have a degree you can (at least you could then) be reasonably assured of a good life with little risk by entering one of the professions, the civil service, or management.  Why would you risk that to take up an insecure self employed role?  It could also be that to be a successful entrepreneur you need to have a clear vision of what you want to do - and that further education will rarely help take you towards it.

There are of course those who are exceptions to the rule.  Some like Stelios Haji-Ioannou have family wealth changing the risk/reward ratio somewhat.  Others like Michael Lynch turn their academic research into a product, again changing the risk/reward ratio.

And yet the irony is that technically I am now an office holder and not an employee!

Count Your Blessings - 31 March

The unemployment rate in Gaza is 45.5%. Give 40p for every treat you bought yourself yesterday.

Mmm - treat? - Holy Week.  Day off!  80p

The Police Again

Another example of bad behaviour by the police - this time costing them compensation - came to my attention (h/t Graham Wilson) in the video below.

I have blogged on bad police behaviour before and am doing so again at least in part because I also happened to see one of the programs where police are videoed dealing with traffic offenders - not my normal viewing.  The program made me wonder whether there is a culture within the police that makes incidents like this one, and like the others I highlighted more likely.  In the TV program - which I presume came with police approval - we saw mostly young people being stopped for driving offences, and the police were overwhelmingly sarcastic in their dealings with the offenders.  There seemed to be a lack of respect for the other person and it is this lack of respect that I find worrying.  It is perhaps a double concern as when I was stopped for speeding the policeman was very polite (I was driving a Jaguar at the time but wasn't yet ordained) - is the lack of respect based on their perception of positional power as described here?

Either way I find it worrying if the police feel that they do not have to show respect to people.

Count Your Blessings - 30 March

The Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated places on earth, with 1.6 million Palestinians living in 365 sq km. Give 60p if there are more rooms in your home than people.

Well, that is 60p then.

Women and Women Bishops

I have recently had cause to reflect on discrimination in the Church of England and thus changed my mind about my response to Women Bishops.  It is not that I was agin them either before or after my rethink, rather that I used to think that some form of accommodation with those opposed to them was a price worth paying and now I don't.  Of course the Welsh got there a while ago and refused to vote for them, having first voted not to make any allowance for those opposed.

What changed my mind was seeing discrimination happening, and being shocked at my reaction to it.  It was roughly "well, what can you expect".  In later discussion and reflection I realised that my thinking came from the fact that we allow discrimination in certain circumstances, and whilst as a church we institutionalise discrimination we cannot be surprised when we discriminate outside the "allowed" circumstances.  Having recognised that within myself I now see the damage that institutionalised discrimination brings about and want none of it in an organisation to which I belong.

Count Your Blessings - 29 March

Ilana Rathouse is an Israeli nurse volunteering in the West Bank. ‘We are creating threads of an embroidery upon which peace can be built,’ she says. Give 10p for each time you’ve visited a local pharmacy this year.

Mmm - lucky enough not to remember - lets try 3.

Doubt

25 years ago I was told that the church would be better off without people like me.  I had just shared some of my doubts and was expecting support.  Then for the next 20 years I kept my thoughts to myself, only to find that I had a calling to the priesthood.

I have blogged indirectly before about faith development, but thought it worth looking at again.  Both Fowler and Hagberg and Guelich have 6 stages and the suggestion is that people can be at any stage, and can stay there, although often they will move to stage 3 because

Stage 4 is "the journey inward" - "a deep and very personal inward journey" that "almost always comes as an unsettling experience yet results in healing for those who continue through it". In this stage, our former views of God are radically challenged. The disruption can be so great that we feel like we are losing our faith or betraying loyalties. Hagberg/Guelich

Signs of this disruption can be seem by the creation of Spirited Exchanges

Spirited Exchanges is a network offering support, encouragement and resources for people who are experiencing challenges to and/or the unravelling of their faith paradigms with all its associated issues. Many have already left the Church. Some have felt marginalised and misunderstood, others have felt controlled and disrespected. For most it has led to considerable upheaval in their Christian understanding and practice and has often meant the loss of previously valued community. Much of what is happening for people could be described as faith transition.

 There is of course the old saying (at least I assumed it was but Google seems to attribute it to Ann Lamott)

the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty

and this for me fits with the staged model - in the earlier stages certainty is present - but to move to other stages one has to let go of that certainty.

While I was training David Winter lecturing us said something like: as I get older I am more and more certain about less and less.