“Time goes by so fast; people go in and out of your life. You must never miss the opportunity to tell these people how much they mean to you.”

I love the above Quote. Unfortunately, loving and living are 2 entirely different things and I must try harder – could do better. Over the past few days I had the opportunity to observe people who take time. Not even time to save the world but time to stop and listen. Time to notice that a smile wasn’t real, time to help, time to give advice, and I saw what a difference it made for the people the time was spent on.


I went on a training day for Worship Leaders a couple of days ago. We looked at different aspects of Worship leading, both from a musical and a theological point of view. I felt a bit baffled because there were people there who had so much more experience in both aspects and yet they were quit happy to have me there too. At one point all the different bands went to different rooms to work on a song, creating different intros/outros, trying to find a different way to interpret a song etc. The person leading the weekend went round from room to room, listing in and offering advice where it was wanted. Now our drummer is quite young and although he knows a lot about music he doesn’t have a lot of experience of playing in a group. Now the person leading the whole workshop, certainly having so many different things on his mind, 2 other bands to check up on, maybe even having to prepare for the next session listened to us for a bit and made some general observations regarding our whole group – but in the end he just stood next to our drummer, showing him a certain beat and just remained standing there, tapping his foot to help keeping the rhythm. Until the drummer got it right and got confident enough to play it. He didn’t get impatient when the young boy couldn’t get it right, he didn’t roll his eyes when he fell back into his old was of playing – he just stood there until we all got it right. I know that to our drummer that bit of time – it wasn’t ages, it was maybe 10 minutes – meant a lot. Because the next day at the hall he proudly showed the “different” beat he had learned. All it took was someone to take a little bit of time out their busy schedule.

Today I received an Email I wasn’t very happy about. An Officer felt that SAGIC weren’t doing a good job and he felt our ways of doing business weren’t fair. My first reaction was to reply to the E-mail in a bit of a sarcastic manner, asking how he would do it if he had to deal with approximately 1000 schedules in a very short space of time and the people who should support you in that task where not giving you the necessary information? Luckily I thought twice (that doesn’t happen often) and I gave him a ring, asking if he could point out what exactly had upset him. At first he was quite strong about how badly he had been treated (he was surcharged for not having kept a deadline despite having been warned about it on at least a couple of occasions). But once he had said everything he had to say, telling me how wrongly I was doing it all I tried to explain my view and why I was doing my job the way I do it he started to understand my view and we parted in an almost friendly manner. I was on the phone for about 15 minutes, the 5 of them not being very nice for me as he was clearly quite annoyed with us. I could have written an E-Mail in 2 minutes (I’m really fast at typing – hence the typos!) but the extra 13 minutes mean that he has now promised that next year he’ll be in time and even though he wasn’t declaring undying love for me (a) he’s married and b) he’ll still have to pay the surcharge) he even had a friendly word for me and thanked me for my understanding and patience. Not that I was either of these when I was dialling his number – in fact I thought that he’ll get a good piece of my mind.

A few days ago I got a text saying: “I know you tried to hide it but you weren’t very happy today, were you? I hope you are feeling OK, thinking of you, xxx”. Now I suppose we all notice when people close to us are unhappy or upset. I also suppose we let people close to us know when something’s wrong so I was quite surprised at that text because it wasn’t from someone I would have considered particularly close – certainly not close enough to share anything that would upset me. And I know that this person would definitely have had better things to do than to watch me – but they took the time to notice that I wasn’t happy and more than that, they took the time, a couple of days later, to check up on it.

I suppose none of these things, considering that a day has 24 hours, took up much time. But all of them meant that someone had to stop for a minute and take time for someone else - I suppose in a way telling them that they are important enough to notice.

And sometimes I’m so wrapped up in myself, my problems, my issues, my thoughts, that I just forget to stop and tell “my” people that they are definitely important enough to notice, to take time, to realise when something upsets them, to listen to their worries. So I wanted to tell you that:

You may go in and out of my life. And sometimes time may go so fast in-between you entering and leaving that I forget to tell you how much you mean to me… if I do, please pull me up on it, will you?

Just so you know...

Switzerland managed to get 9 Medals at the winter Olympics this year. Yes, my little country, the one you all make fun of, little innocent Switzerland managed to get 9 medals. And the UK? Well… they were there too… they even managed to get a medal. Yes, a medal – as in 1. Well done.

Anyway, teasing aside, I thought as you all enjoy making fun of Switzerland so much I’ll tell you a little bit about it. Mainly about the political system – to prove that it does make sense, even if you don’t know the name of the President.

Where most countries have a single person to be their president, Switzerland has 7. 7 people work together for a period of 4 years to represent Switzerland (it’s rather unusual for a person to be elected only once – the average President stays on for 2 to 3 periods). Each one of them is head of a department with exception for the one that gets chosen to lead the 7 – this person changes every year, in fact, it’s almost like a rota system. The 7 people who work to lead the country come from different political parties – the left wing (2 reps) is as much represented as the right wing (1 rep) and family oriented Christian parties (2 reps) get a say the same way business oriented economical parties do (2 reps). This has the benefit that most decisions have been thought through thoroughly, taking into consideration the effect each decision would have on various groups of the Swiss population. If the people still disagree with a decision made they have various ways of making the presidents re-think their decision, they can start initiatives and write petitions. But I won’t bore you with details.

The fact that all the “main Stream” parties are part of the “reigning power” makes it impossible for a lazy opposition whose job in most countries consists in attacking ever decision made by the president and blaming all the bad things that are happening on the incapability of the leading party. There is no time for this in Bern.


Not only do all the parties have to work together to get to a decision – once the majority of the group has made a decision, all of them have to represent that decision even if they personally disagree with it. That means as long as 4 of the 7 agree on something, the other 3 have to go along with it – even if the “leading” one for that particular year is against it, he or she will have to represent the decision made. This is called the principal of collegiality. It's what nice people do :-)

So yes, we are a sweet little country with some great winter sports people, lovely mountains, four national languages…

…and, oh yes, a Libyan threat of Jihad spoken against us.

And you guys still think we sit on the fence… go figure.