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love it… if it’s saying what i think it is
yes i am a Christian girl/woman? and i want/feel called? to be involved in church leadership…. maybe not only sunday school/prayer meetings though.
do i get it?
I love this
You old iconoclast, you!
Just as long as the person who does the tea doesn’t catch you!
So, who’s going to do the children’s book take-off on the theme titled, “Jon, the Uncomforming Bull”?
The television series?
Or, maybe the bull goes by another name?
I love it too!
It’s about hope – I do not need to do the (bad) things people expect me to do…
Even if it might be sometimes a tad difficult:)Love Angela
I found this site from Pete (Rock in the grass).
Very funny and enlightening.
becky
and sometimes, like tonight I get it a bit wrong
and my throat is opened and jumped down
a bit unfairly
but I’m left feeling like shit… and wondering if I’ve blown it
I wish that I wasn’t a bull in church china shop, I wish I was one of those nice people who always manage to say the right thing…
damn … damn…. damn
time for bed
and the fatted cow sat down with the pink and blue china tea set
Love it! You got my expression to a tee!
@ Caroline too: I didn’t mean to say something wrong.
Church that’s the place where we are cattle among cattle,
Plus – look at this bull isn’t he beautiful with all his power and strenght, sure he defends all his cows and calfs agains any danger
I see there’s two Beckys – welcome. I’ll post as BeckyG from now on (I’m the weirdo religious satirist).
4. The Jon ‘n’ Bull jokes abound – but I did enough ragging on him re: man boobs. |-)
I never conform to anyone’s expectations except I hope I don’t tick God off too much … |-)
I attended a church meeting last night which YES I opened my gob yet again and YES I got into trouble and YES maybe I should have kept it shut but NO I am who I am and if there is an injustice I will open my GOB! even in a china shop. We talked about a new vicar and get this we want him like this and we want him like that which someone pointed out HE might be a SHE? OK so we are ready for a girl as long as they are white middle class BUT and it was a BIG butt! He had better not be gay.
I wont even mention what was said about the church music, so I left the china shop a little bit shaken. Oh my goodness! has anyone seen the super glue?
Ouch, this touched a nerve with me as I used to be called the bull in the china shop as a child, by my family. Apparently once I did run amok in a local dept store
Ok, someone help me out here. This is about women in leadership in the church????
how now brown cow?
really, I don’t get it…
No, i didn’t get that bit either? Someone will explain to us
I didn’t read it as women in the church, though I can see how it could be applied to that scenario as in many others. That’s the beauty of these cartoons – everyone brings their own experience to them and reads them in a very individual way – bespoke therapy. I saw it more as anybody who is inclined to challenge the things held dear (the sacred cows?) in church. It’s related to the other one about things we would like to say but can’t. Also I relate it to the ‘Emperor isn’t wearing any clothes’ cartoons from last year.
I am loving reading Caroline Too, BeckyG and Dennis’ comments…because I have been there with you on many occasions, in my own way. I know what it is like to have the compulsion to challenge something, when it’s there like a growing knot in your stomach…you just have to say it. Then you see the fallout from an ill-timed/placed comment and wish you hadn’t. No-one has any sympathy for the perpetrator but they often hurt more than the ‘offended’. These days, I am finding it very hard to keep my mouth shut in the world of education.
gosh, I hadn’t noticed a women in leaderhship thing in the cartoon
‘bull’ militates against that idea
for me the problem is not about gender but about language… I tend to argue poetically, I tend
to be careless in my use of hyperbole when in discussion/argument whilst others -
like my lawyer/vicar take me literally and sometimes I just get it wrong.
I can’t justify myself, as Dennis can, by pointing to the particular topic that raises my head above
the parapet…
I just get it wrong, say things that hurt people
… I didn’t mean it that way 
and it’s mostly carelessness and a lack of awareness that I can be quite intimidating in argument…
but there’s another point to Jon’s cartoon I sense, it’s uncomfortable to me,
yes, I am ‘bullish’ sometimes and occasionally I crash into china, but I don’t have to… I don’t have to fulfil something called my personality… I have a God who transforms… can transform me… the creativity and visionary thinking that I can offer doesn’t have to come with the side affect of hurtful hyperbole… that can be transformed… I don’t have to live up to the expectations…
fortunately, I have all eternity to get this right, I fear that I’ll need it
“I don’t have to fulfil something called my personality…” beautiful. hard though. some wise person said on a thread about 200 cartoons ago something along the lines of personality stopping us from changing and that we don’t have to conform to ‘type’. profound and wise i thought and something i’d not considered before. we are not set in stone.
i think it is often important for us not to keep our mouths shut… and offending people is often a bad measure of whether we’ve done the right thing or not. the truth often offends… pride, fear, judgementalism, ignorance, hatred etc. etc. all hate and are offended by truth.
but Jon, I don’t mind offending Pride or judgementalism or hatred…
I can tell myself a noble story about that kind of offence
no, the times I wrestle with are the times when my half baked fragility meets up with someone else’s half heard fragility…
that’s the offense that has a cost to Kingdom life….
Love it!
The bull is being the bull, and the china shop is being the china shop, and you betcha the bull is happy, and you can bet also, for as long as the bull is there, there’s a possibility, at least, for the whole thing to go horribly, wonderfully wrong.
That bull has poise. He’s cool. He’s in control. Potentially, he could turn over a few tables, if he wanted to… Does he want to?
And the rest of us, how are we going to handle our adrenaline pumping, continuously, at the thought that he just might do it…?
Caroline Too – as a fellow hyperbolist, and someone who has also sometimes been designated as ‘intimidating’ in the church context, I know where you’re coming from here
I think there’s a problem sometimes when one moves between different environments: If you’re used to robust engagenment and debate in one sphere, it’s easy to forget that it’s not necessarily the default operating mode of another, different one.
Mind you….. I find it hard to imagine that anyone can find me scary – I just don’t see myself that way at all
Yeah, Steve, spot on! I was getting bogged down in the bull in a chinashop cliche, but you’ve put me right. He’s a lovely bull, with a great smile. He has got great presence and as cools as…not a hint of steam from his nostrils. I’ve stereotyped him and I owe him an apology.
Kis expectations goodbye and be what the Lord wants us to be. Dare to be a disciple.
All the best people have nose rings!
Carole -Yep, been there, done that.
My problem is that I “think” others want to know the truth, when in fact they don’t. It’s much easier to live in a faith fog to the point where they can’t see the hypocrisy. I’ve learned the hard way to walk away.
Where I am getting hammered – like I am now – is when you hit someone’s sacred cow, they MOO VERY LOUDLY. The challenge is to make sure that I am assuming the role of the court jester by targeting the king (the religious rock stars) and not the people in the pew.
Wasn’t Jesus a lot like this cartoon? He could have made hash of religious establishment by his own brute force in being one with the almighty and 10,000 angels but, even though he did turn over a few tables, chose to lead people to him via love and education.
Come to think of it, he didn’t exactly ‘conform’ to their idea of their messiah either.
Jesus Christ, the bull in the china shop of our souls.
This made me think of me and sin. Prone and clumsy, but trying to resist.
- do you mean it would be a sin not too? (smash a little china)
it certainly would be… sometimes.
“In this game you get nothing for 2 in a bed”
Who said it?
I feel more like the fragile china than the strong bull =]
Forrest wins the internet again: if Jesus is the bull, then i feel safe to be the china.
Jim Bowen
Well in, Botticelliwoman – You get Bully’s star prize, a motorboat – everyone else just gets a bendy Bully!
This is something I need to learn. I tend to be the typical bull in a china shot.
I need to learn patients and peace.
Having said that charging around can be fun as well
http://www.beatthedrum.wordpress.com
just one of my adventures in missing the point…
welshdisastergirl.. can we all come on your adventure too?
missed points always create the best conversations!
my two sheep, Molly and Dolly (currently sitting on my desk)ask if you could say hello to their cousins… assure me that they’re from Wales… sometimes I wonder if I should worry about talking to my desk toys….
Man, I need a t-shirt with this on it!
Now thats a cracking idea Rick
Jon how about getting the price for getting some knocked up?
it’s time… if i had time i’d do it. or when i get time, i will. i certainly want to.
Thanks Caroline Too- of course you can join me on my next adventure, Molly, Dolly and their Welsh cousins (maybe Golly and Folly?) can come too. (they say ‘BAH’ by the way)
desk top toys are wonderful things. my office is being sorted out now… needs turning from a hole in to a room. i have a few toys ready and waiting for their new home.
welshdisastergirl… great name!
it’s a name i have earned… apart from the Welsh bit, that is just a blessing from God
welshdisastergirl… having just watched question time from merthyr tydfil i would have to say that being welsh is a blessing. the best, most thoughtful audience in weeks i thought.
welshdisastergirl: yaaaay Welsh! I am not Welsh, but I have the joy to live in beautiful Wales
You’re first comment reminded me of myself, girl power!
Ta v much theseoldshades i love the enthusiasm, yaaay right back atcha!
sometimes i’m a bit scared of expectations, i don’t really want certain things to be inevitable.
can a bull control what happens once it’s in a china shop?
hey welshdisastergirl… as a big fan of the tv show ‘mythbusters’, i can say confidently, having watched the experiment, that bulls are very careful in china shops. at one point, they had three bulls and loads of china on shelving units… and the bulls moved around them with precision and care. they were also surprisingly light on their feet.
‘inevitability’ is scary , isn’t it. i can’t think of anything rendering us more powerless than a real sense of something being inevitable.