emergeandbe

is blogging communication or rumination?

2012-01-17T08:21:00.002Z

After not posting for a year, I have been wondering whether to close this blog, or revive it.

Without posting for a year, I don't think anyone is reading it, so I don't expect this entry to elicit any answers.

But, a church leader asked me yesterday if Iwas still blogging. And I know that I have been disappointed when blogs I have enjoyed have come to an end.

Perhaps the issue is one of purpose. Facebook and Twitter are places where daily snippets can be shared. This blog was started to try to articulate what the Emerging Church conversation would mean for me. I'm not sure if it is the place to continue that reflection. But I won't shut the blog down just yet.

Meanwhile, I think Doug Gay's Remixing the Church (2011) is the most thoughtful book I've read on the subject recently.

the long, slow journey across the desert

2010-12-25T21:50:00.007Z

I just want to pop this up here so I don't forget it. It's one of those anonymous pieces that speaks to our restless times.

"If, as Herod, we fill our lives with things, and again with things: if we consider ourselves so unimportant that we must fill every moment of our lives with action, when will we have the time to make the long, slow journey across the desert as did the Magi? Or sit and watch the stars as did the shepherds? Or ponder over the coming of the Child as did Mary? For each one of us, there is a desert to travel. A star to discover. And a being within ourselves to bring to life." (Anon).

a manifesto from 1997 for 2011

2010-12-24T20:19:00.003Z

It's Christmas Eve, but I find my mind looking forward to 2011.

Reading about mission and the majority world church today, I came across this manifesto statement composed by Jim McClendon with five other ministers in 1997 ("Reenvisioning Baptist Identity: A Manifesto for Baptist Communities in North America," Baptists Today, 26 June 1997, pp8-10).

I'm not quite sure what a theory of 'soul competency' is, but apart from that, it's a vision worth sharing and putting into practice:

We affirm Bible Study in reading communities, rather than relying on private interpretation or supposed 'scientific' objectivity.
We affirm following Jesus as a call to shared discipleship rather than invoking a theory of soul competency.
We affirm a free common life in Christ in gathered, reforming communities rather than withdrawn, self-chosen, or authoritarian ones.
We affirm baptism, preaching and the Lord's table as powerful signs that seal God's faithfulness in Christ and express our response of awed gratitude rather than as mechanical rituals or mere symbols.
We affirm freedom and renounce coercion as a distinct people under God rather than relying on political theories, powers or authorities.

doing it, not talking about it

2010-09-28T04:24:00.006Z

There are seasons in the human spirit. Learning is both about seeking and finding. Finding requires new kinds of doing--or what is the purpose of seeking?

This is a way of trying to explain to myself (and millions of other bloggers), why I have not posted on this emerging church blog for about nine months and also done little published hifi reviewing.

In both cases, the reason is that I have been doing it, rather than talking about it: teaching on Fresh Expressions and Emerging Church, talking, reading and writing about ecclesiology with friends, preparing new teaching materials on church and mission, participating in church life.

There was even a pleasant day this summer when a friend introduced me to Karen Ward, abbess of the Church of the Apostles, Seattle.

This is not really a hifi blog, but it is worth recording that I have been doing the same with hifi: listening, fixing, restoring, exploring. I have worked with others on new hybrids of SME 3012 tonearms, repaired a contemporary valve amplifier, puzzled over two early classics by Avantic/Beam Echo from the late 1950s (both working but work in progress), restored a huge Japanese Trio W-38 receiver and even dabbled in vintage solid state (early 70s Kenwood amplifiers), with some success.

I have learned that there is a big difference between doing hifi journalism and practising vintage electronics: electronics repair takes time and mental energy. Getting something broken to work properly again requires opening up the messy underside. There is a lot of looking and detective work involved. Sometimes you have to undo the mistakes of others. Sometimes you add your own mistakes....

So, seeking involves a lot of doing. But maybe I'll stop by here more often to reflect on it too.

curvature and contact

2010-01-12T22:37:00.003Z

The icy coating of the world for the last few weeks has warned me that I take my connection with the world for granted.

Now I see that the ground is not flat. Even the tamest pavement has a camber, a slope, an acute angle. Nothing is level out there. How did I not notice this before?

Without the natural gift of friction every curve is dangerous. Every footing fallible.

Winter ice offers a precious inversion of reality, showing that even walking is an unearned grace.

Tread carefully, for you tread on the changing world.

Unexpected visitors on Christmas Eve

2009-12-25T23:16:00.012Z

Here's hoping you were also able to welcome some unexpected visitors this Christmas. CAM's Bill Frog to the Rescue still evokes happy memories for people of my generation because he and old George Mouse set aside their own comfort to work things out for others one cold Christmas eve.

how long do we have to keep longing?

2009-12-03T07:47:00.005Z

I don't usually cross-post information from other blogs, at least not without digesting them first. But, researching ecclesiology this morning, I came across a 2005 post from the site Subversive Influence. There Brother Maynard described his longing for a different kind of church from the ones he had been in before. The website is still going strong, so he was not just having a bad day.

I resonate with so much of what he longs for, that I offer his list here as a starting point for you and I to articulate our own desires. The original post called "To clarify this journey," and his further reflections which fill out this summary can be found here: http://subversiveinfluence.com/2005/02/to-clarify-this-journey/

He writes:

I long for a church that is low-key. I’m tired of hype, I’m tired of noise, and I’m tired of intensity. I used to like all those things, but I no longer equate these with “signs of life.” I long for something more contemplative, a place that can acknowledge worship as being intellectual as well as emotional.

I long for a church with deep interpersonal relationships. I was attracted to a place that talked about relationships and tried to build relationally, but with growth, time, and change, what started as relational has become merely functional. Faith walks need camaradarie, lives shared one with another

I long for the attainable challenge of Jesus. Put the other way, I’m tired of being challenged, by which I refer not to the challenge of the gospel or the challenge of Jesus, but to the challenge of leaders who seem to continually push for greater levels of sanctification. Ever unattainable, this leaves one straining for an unreachable goal and feeling cast down for falling short. To elaborate, this causes a situation in which a believer perpetually feels or is actually considered “not quite good enough” to engage in ministry. I long for the challenges which God give the grace to attain, rather than the challenges of men which one strives fruitlessly to attain.

I long for a decentralized structure and I long for servant leadership among peers. Power corrupts, which is a danger in the church as anywhere else . . . and a heirarchical structure is the breeding-ground for the corruption of church leaders. Jesus talked about this, about what can happen to church leaders who start well but end up enamoured with their positions. Practically speaking, this drives the necessity for decentralization so that the structures can be interrelated but independently manageable in smaller sizes.

I long for a culturally relevant church. I don’t understand why cross-cultural missionaries attempt to understand culture to present the gospel within it, while churches in the developed world tend to simply withdraw from their own culture, often condemning its evils. Unfortunately for them, our culture is filled with people who need to see real Christianity in action — they’ve seen enough caricatures of Christianity already. Being culturally relevant in the early 21st century means understanding -gasp!- postmodernism.

I long for a church that can be outwardly-focused without constantly pushing evangelism on the congregation. [I also long] for a church that does not relate evangelism with church growth as an end.

I long for a church that recognizes the value of ancient traditions. I’ve long been saddened by the iconophobia in many evangelical circles, discomfort with symbolism, suspicion toward any type of mysticism, and the ignoring of rich faith traditions from Advent to Passover.

I long for a church that is not uncomfortable with mystery or with the sacraments. The evangelical understanding I’ve been taught on the Eucharist is anemic, and the standard baptism explanation of “an outward symbol of an inward faith” misses the spiritual act, which still has an element of mystery in it.

I long for a church that recognizes the value of story. Scripture is story, and so are the lives it touches. One cannot presume to talk about relationship without recognizing the importance of personal stories.

So this is the path I’m on. I am seeking a place that is in pursuit of the things I long for. If I can’t find a place like that, I’ll find some people who are in pursuit of the things I long for, and together we’ll create such a place. The path I’m on is the pursuit of these things I long for in the church.

... Now, I’m not dismissing the church or writing it off. On the contrary, I consider it a part of my heritage; for many years it was a rich part, and something for which I’m deeply thankful. On the other hand, I’ve reached the point where I long for different things than the things I longed for when I first signed on.

So the basic thing about this journey is the same as about any journey, it’s not about the place we’re leaving, it’s about the place we’re going. Even if we don’t know where we’re going; it wouldn’t be the first such journey instigated by God.

Upon Westminster Bridge

2009-12-02T11:26:00.003Z

I read a captivating memoir of ministry in Hackney (one of London's poorest boroughs) over the weekend. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Inner-city-God-Diary-East-Parson/dp/1853118826 It is an honest, funny, human book about what you can achieve even with very little faith.

Then on Monday went to a meeting in the one of the 'airless rooms' in Church House Westminster, to review ministry educational policies with a small group of like-minded, middle-aged WASPs. I wondered about the relevance of what we were doing for ministry in the multi-cultural, multi-faith, decaying-and-being-gentrified world of Hackney. I was certain what we were doing had no purchase on the world outside the building we were in....

Beside Westminster Bridge, workers on minimum wage tout tourist fantasies to bewildered multitudes, speaking (it would seem) every language under heaven. The visitors mill around, photographing themselves in front of Big Ben, a symbol not of order but of the neglect of time by the mortals swirling below its tower. I imagine the scoundrels within the gothic Palace of Westminster, guarded by police, visible only on television either asleep or posturing, untroubled by the few good people in their midst.

Below the bridge, the iron-grey Thames swirls menacingly, its surface whipped by a sharp wind and its strong currents challenging the bridge supports.

Westminster seems a dirty and expensive place, sending visitors the message: this is not for you, but we will tolerate you for a while if you pay, pay, pay. The effect is life-sapping. Here it is not death that undoes so many, but the place itself.

Nothing is on a human scale, everything reminds you of the power of others, even two huge churches, the Abbey and Central Hall. Both seem given over to tourism, if you are poor, or conferences, if you have money. I am tempted to dismiss them too, yet I know two people who ministered with integrity at Westminster Abbey, without losing their humanity.

Perhaps there is room for a miracle somewhere between Whitehall and Millbank.

love hitting the cosmic fan

2009-11-19T17:55:00.007Z

Sometimes, just sometimes, I read something about God that really rings true.

Today, this happened as I read a marvellous lecture called 'The Mission has a Church: An Invitation to the Dance' by Stephen Bevans. You can download the whole text here and I recommend it to anyone who wants to find out what God is like.

Here is a taster: God is a dance--a great conga line moving through the world, inviting everyone to join in.

God is 'a fellow-sufferer who understands.'

God is 'love hitting the cosmic fan.'

And Jesus is 'God's message of joy.' To illustrate this, Bevans refers to an art exhibition put on by his students called, "The Laughing Jesus". Here is one, showing Jesus and Peter ice skating. Peter falls and Jesus catches him. 'The image shows Jesus and Peter on a public ice skating rink with Peter slipping and being caught in Christ's arms. Both are in that high spirited state of hilarity that being slightly out of control on ice produces.'

For more of these wonderful pictures, see here.

vocation invocation revocation

2009-11-11T23:13:00.003Z

Today I learned that we respond to God's call to become what we truly are first for our own sake, not for the sake of others, or 'ministry'.

So, if I or you don't like what we are becoming, the question is: Why are we not following our inner call?

As the Meerkat says, 'Simples.'

the daring night

2009-10-28T22:45:00.003Z

I was thinking about Van Morrison's beautiful passionate song "Daring Night" earlier today. Is it just about love, "squeeze me, don't leave me," or is this love a metaphor for exulting in God?

In the daring night,
when all the stars are shining bright,
Squeeze me, don't leave me,
In the daring night.
Galactic swirl in the firmament tonight--
Oh with the Lord of the Dance,
With the Lord of the Dance,
In the daring night!

And so on. The words make little sense without the music, and I'm playing it in my head from memory. But, this is exactly the prayer of one longing for God, especially when standing out in the open in the starlit night: Come to me! Hold me! Dance with me! Catch me up with you in the heavens:

In the firmament we move,
we move and we live
And we have our being ...

This is Van's Song of Songs! So, alone in a dark chapel, I cry out, "Squeeze me, don't leave me; in the daring night." Alone, in the presence of the galactic swirl of love, I call out, sing, whisper, fall silent.

And don't let go, and don't let go.
Don't let go, don't let go in the daring night.

ivy house silence

2009-10-27T22:13:00.007Z

Okay, time for another post. I have been wondering if there is time for blogging in my life, and realised that probably not a lot. But there must be room for some.

I say this because a few people seem to appreciate my blog and I have to recognise that I value those of others. Blogging is definitely a form of writing, in a way that Facebook posting is not.

Facebook is good for social contact, but blogging offers a place where each of us can say our piece. Often what is said is more truthful and helpful than the filtered journalism that otherwise fills the gaps between books in an average day.

So, here is my contribution: I'm grateful for places where pilgrims gather to rest awhile. Places where people can come to try to shed the load for a day or so, and just let go. A place where there is a thicker, denser silence, which invites expectancy in prayer.

So, I'm off down the darkened corridor to sit in a dark chapel. No hymnbooks, no prayerbooks, no Bible, no light except streetlight through stained glass. And enveloping silence, rounded, velvety, composed.

generosity

2009-09-22T20:33:00.006Z

I'm attracted by the theme of generosity, perhaps because it doesn't come naturally to me. I'm the kid who hid his bag of sweets under a pillow when a friend came round unexpectedly. It's taken me more than half a lifetime to realise that giving not hoarding leads to flourishing. And I still don't 'get it' sometimes.

When I need to open up more, I think of Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. Both starting off without much formal musical education, but learning along the way, as people taught them on the job.

Armstrong, thrown into the Colored Waifs' Home for firing a borrowed revolver into the air at new year, learns the trumpet and becomes the greatest trumpeter ever.

Ellington, the freelance sign painter, starts gigging in his teens and pours forth a torrent of musical creativity over a distinguished lifetime.

They epitomise for me generous musical creativity. Let's do likewise.

facebook or emergeandbe, or both?

2009-08-31T20:18:00.003Z

Facebook has prised my attention away from this blog and I've been puzzling about this. FB is clearly more rewarding, because one isn't just talking to everyone and no-one, which may well be a sign of insanity.

Yet on Facebook, precisely because one is talking to one's friends, all the usual social rules apply: be friendly, be witty, listen as much as you talk, take an interest in others' concerns, don't talk about yourself too much, etc.

Blogging, in contrast, is about 'the view from here'. It is a diary entry, not just a tweet or quip. At its best, it is a small creative action and an act of discovery. To be pompous and obscure for a moment, blogging is the art of on-line performative utterance.

Now, if I wrote the above on Facebook, I'd be ignored or teased for this kind of sententiousness, for over-thinking and over-stating the whole matter. But here I'm not. Here, I amuse myself, trying to be a little bit honest about my life in public. Anybody can read this, not just my friends.

Blogging is also about only saying something when something presents itself as worth saying. It is emphatically not the obsessive diarising about daily life of Pepys and his successors, detailing their daily meals, bowel movements and liaisons.

So, I won't tell you about today, this August Bank Holiday, talking of spray painting between rain showers or walking and drinking in the sunshine. Nor will I remark that it is time I did my shoulder exercises, with a cane, a 500ml water bottle and a large pink resistive therapy band.

when he came to himself he said ...

2009-07-11T21:50:00.005Z

My left arm has permission to roam from my chest, so it's welcome back to capitals, when needed. The permission was granted by my physio, h.p., the same person who helped me stay mobile while I waited to be fixed. Now she says I can move my hand away from my chest and my arm up to shoulder height, with the help of the other one. It's all a bit creaky and slow.

But slow is good. The only thing that happens fast around here is the occasional bid on eBay. (P was amused to find that the section of the hospital ward I was in was called E Bay.)

Slow stops multitasking. Slow lets you be. Slow stops the fizzing, popping brain. Slow says, Take it easy Bud, you don't know nut'n. Which is about right.

The busy, busy me would be waxing lyrical about Us Now, the More 4 programme by Ivo Gormley which examines the revolution in the way people join up to help one another on-line, and the virtues of self-organising systems. But you can check out these cool new developments for yourself: Horsesmouth (a social network for informal mentoring), Slicethepie (on new ways of organising the music industry) and Zopa (new ways of organising finance). I'm too chilled to push. Things will probably have moved on by the time you read this anyway.

Have a nice life.

the mystery of healing

2009-07-07T20:34:00.005Z

bless me father, it's a week since my last blog, and me with so much to confess, yet it all being so trivial, i hardly like to bother ye.

this week i've realised that healing is mostly about waiting; waiting for the mystery of what goes on while you sleep between your body and your maker. yet we also serve, a bit, who only rest and wait.

today two personal events made this real. rather routinely, i had 15 staples removed from my shoulder. i breach all canons of taste and decency by showing a picture of how my body has been fixing itself after repairs by the maintenance team.

much more momentously, my great nephew zach (hi zach!) arrived at 3am, amidst worrying complications which rushed him into neonatal icu for treatment for mas. as i write there are many people praying for him, as the icu and specialised medical staff provide the best conditions for his body and his maker to mend him.

the mystery of being made of living tissues of flesh and blood remains. the staples or the ventilator can hold us, but life, fragile and wonderful remains beyond our ken.

medics and mystics

2009-07-01T10:16:00.004Z

just had my dressing changed, with a chance to see the body art traced for 4-5 inches across the top of my left shoulder, neatly tacked together with metal staples. we laymen don't see this very often. a really neat job. just as well, as it's more permanent than any tattoo.

a good job then, but as so often with technicians, there is no discussion of its meaning. this implies that they think, 'it's just what it is.' a physical, even mechanical problem, now fixed.

but is it? it is certainly not just mechanics--the blood at the start and the slow knitting together that follows tells us that. it is a paradox: intervening with steel into the living web of life, with dexterity and discernment. an art then, certainly.

so, what then does this art signify, for the artists and their living media? a quick web check reveals relatively little, just one or two books or articles. hmm. time for medics and mystics to talk to one another, facilitated by a philosopher.

sleep, drugs and rock 'n roll...

2009-06-27T21:17:00.007Z

... is the other combination beloved of the flower power generation and it suits me, one day back from the hospital. more poems should be written about sleep, beautiful sleep, it's an underrated activity.

caught a bit of glasto on the telly; crosby, stills and nash on the tame side, but neil young was blistering. must have a word with my friend k who failed to attend his gig at the isle of wight!

time for s, d and r&r (on the radio) again; a body could get used to this.

peace and love -- keep on rocking in the free world.

Pic credit: Guardian

somewhat okay

2009-06-26T15:54:00.004Z

i only have one arm to use for the next two-three weeks, so headline l.c. 'style' continues in body.

how hard it is to experience something, reflect on it and then express this elegantly; they are three different tasks. i cant do this yet, one day after surgery, but i hope that the memories will be accessible later.

two impressions: that entering hospital as a patient is like making a trip to a foreign land, and that the night shift is another country again. watching most of a shift last night, i wondered how far each of them walked!

with one working arm, i marvelled at how everyone else used two with ease; and i felt the envy of those with only one working leg as i went to the bathroom unaided.

waiting to be hurt and mended

2009-06-22T14:55:00.005Z

From my window I look over to the garden next door. There is a garden chair there, with a full-length faded pink cushion on it. From the corner of my eye it looks like a person, but when I look directly at it, there is nobody there.

Waiting for surgery later this week, I feel as if I am living in a world of illusions. Do my arm and shoulder really need to be cut open to be repaired? It depends what I try to do. Most of the time I don't look or feel like a need fixing. Till I try to hang out the washing. Then I notice myself compensating in a dozen small ways.

But how strange to be inviting people into your body on the basis of a ten minute conversation three months ago. I do not know, and may not meet, them. They do not know me, just my body, and then only in part. The nearest analogy I can think of is casual sex.

Above all is the waiting. This story started in early February with waiting four hours in A&E on the snowy night of my accident. Then six weeks for healing. Then another for a consultation, a another for a scan, another for a consultation and another for a pre-op. Twenty weeks measured out in pain and pain relief, waiting for this week. Waiting for a short (how long? I don't know), sharp, violent, intervention.

I feel my shoulder. At the top, the bone is just below the skin, but further down the rotator cuff is dense with muscle. How will they find their way in? Will they find the ruptured tendon in a state to be reattached? Will the repair hold?

Some of these questions could be answered quickly by an expert. But there is no expert here. So I have to wait. And others can only be answered by time. Time, imperceptible yet insistent as a moving glacier. There is much more waiting to be done before I will know what I will be able to do again.

So, I float suspended in the still air like a dandelion seed. There is life in me, but I am unable to direct my own course. We living things have to learn to take our chances.

priesthood and spiritual maturity--how often found together?

2009-06-17T22:17:00.005Z

I came across the Anglican solitary Maggie Ross quite by chance this week, and have started reading Pillars of Flame: Power, Priesthood and Spiritual Maturity. My copy does not have a date of publication, oddly, but much of the literature is from the 80s. I was reissued in the USA by Seabury Press in 2007.

A lot of what she is saying is consonant with the emerging church movement. So, this is another root to explore. I'll write more on this when I understand more.

A review, dating the first edition to 1998, sums up her call to "spiritual maturity which embraces interdependence, self-forgetfulness, living with ambiguity and paradox, and acceptance of suffering with an appreciation of God's presence working in us through it."

Her blog is Voice in the Wilderness.

take another look at your vinyl collection

2009-06-12T05:25:00.008Z

After posting the covers of two of my favourite albums, I got a whole new perspective on album cover art from this site via Peter Rollins' blog. Both websites are worth visiting in their own right, but if you haven't got time, here are two covers from the first.

One is to inspire and the other to alarm. You choose which is which by deciding who you'd prefer to have performing at your party.

I c

american beauty--costly grace

2009-06-08T21:06:00.012Z

...is the title of one of the two great albums by the Grateful Dead. It comes second in my book, after Workingman's Dead, which still satisfies nearly 40 years after it was recorded. If you really don't know it, look out for it, and play 'Uncle John's Band'. It told my 15 year old self, 'Well, the first days are the hardest days, don't you worry any more. 'cause when life looks like easy street, there is danger at your door.'

But, it's the cover of American Beauty I have before me, with the distinctive artwork from Mouse Studios. This cover, like Workingman's Dead, are part of my life. Even the price sticker in the top left hand corner: R10.50. That price amazes me, because it was 1/10 of my total monthly income as a student. I paid for food, shelter, running a car, clothes (sometimes), dates, church collections, etc out of R100 a month, but still spent R10 on American Beauty. It was almost, and is almost, a pearl of great price. Or, in theological language, costly grace.

Today we are awash with music, but I wonder whether this prevents us from recognising how precious good music is. How rare, how much it costs the artists and therefore how much we should be willing to give to share it.

I don't really want to go back to 1970, or 1975, I'm just revisiting the 'Attics of My Life':

In the secret space of dreams, where I dreaming lay amazed.
When the secrets all are told, and the petals all unfold.
When there was no dream of mine, you dreamed of me.

how do you see it, how do you say it?

2009-06-03T05:50:00.006Z

Been reading too many books at the same time again. The problem with this is that I find it hard to remember where I read those really good ideas that I now want to put into practice.

Hang on, I've found them. The first is that I've noticed when I read theology (or philosophy, or politics for that matter) by gay and lesbian writers, I learn something liberating. Sometimes it's about sexuality, but not necessarily. It's not the topics they write about, it's the way they see the world.

Perhaps it's through the work they've done on knowing themselves, or the risks they've run in describing themselves in ways that others might not accept. They've gone through an invisible barrier and out into a new world on the other side. Philosophers of science call this a paradigm switch (deduct 5 points for using a technical word). But it's simpler than that: it's called reimagining 'the way things are'.

It's possible to test this out for ourselves. Think of one of the less positive beliefs you have about yourself. Then ask, 'If I knew that this belief wasn't true, how would I act and behave?' If you allow yourself to experiment by acting in that new way, you might show that your original belief wasn't that true after all. Of course, if you don't try this out, you'll never know.

That's idea 1. Idea 2 is like unto it: be really clear. Journalists start articles with the main idea, then add supporting evidence, and finally add a little background. Orwell said, avoid cliches, use short everyday words, always shorten what you've written, always use the active voice and break these rules when necessary.

Credits:
Some of this is from John Middleton (2006), Upgrade Your Brain, Oxford: Infinite Ideas, others this week from Michel Foucault, Carter Heyward, James Alison and Nicola Slee.

nothin' to say; i'll listen to others for a change

2009-06-01T21:29:00.002Z

Nothing to say tonight. It's just as well others are blogging.

I'm excited about the idea of a webring of bloggers on a cluster of interests all related to Christian life and ministry. This will help resolve the problem of blogging being too much a one-way 'listen to me' activity.

early morning emergence?

2009-05-31T22:15:00.004Z

Pentecost for me today was at 8am. I ruminated intermittently through the familiar language of the Book of Common Prayer, but felt culturally miles away.

The book and its Anglican settlement assumptions suited the elderly congregation well it seemed. And good for them.

But, I think there are many people who would like more -- at 8am, without hymns, hoopla, or anything else too hearty. Think of parents who'd like 45 minutes of adult reflective time before entertaining the kids for the rest of the day. Think of singles, with friends or responsibilities to aging parents. Think of thoughtful preadolescent kids.

Enter the concept of Alt-At-Eight. Emerging Church, with a touch of Fx if you will, in the morning, on a Sunday.

I wonder if this idea would fly. Any thoughts?

on not having a sermon to preach tomorrow

2009-05-30T20:13:00.006Z

After all these years since I moved out of parish ministry, it still feels strange to find myself on a Saturday night not thinking about the sermon(s) I would be preaching tomorrow.

Preparing sermons is a bit like cooking for yourself. You know you'll be fed, but you're not sure what others will make of the meal.

I wonder, then, whether it is good to be preparing sermons and other worship material week in, week out? A bit like a cow, producing milk for years, till you dry up. I think the process of working on something to say, drawn from Scripture, is good. I have never failed to be surprised and usually also excited by some discovery or other. And there is a buzz in having some good news to share.

But, there is a lack of fit between regularity and inspiration. Perhaps one should prepare at least one sermon a week, but only preach those that are fit to preach? At other times, just be honest and say, I've nothing worth saying today, so let's just read aloud somebody's favourite psalm. Requests anyone?

to follow knowledge like a sinking star

2009-05-28T20:33:00.003Z

I've been enjoying examining a PhD over the last few weeks. It's not always so, but this time it was a great pleasure to watch a small corner of knowledge unfold, seen just this way for the first time.

Changing the metaphor: how beautiful to see an enquirer standing carefully but gracefully on the shoulders of others relying on their strength and balance to see a little further out into the unknown.

Those who are awarded doctorates should not be given the title of doctor, but enquirer, investigator or discoverer. Researchers are the true explorers of our world. Or, rather, of the world we have not yet found.

'Come my friends, 'tis not too late to see a newer world.'

Or, if you prefer the view from California:

'Into a dancer you have grown
From a seed somebody else has thrown
Go on ahead and throw some seeds of your own
And somewhere between the time you arrive
And the time you go
May lie a reason you were alive
You'll never know.'

(For a Dancer, Jackson Browne)

i remember--if i let myself

2009-05-25T16:10:00.008Z

Between doing nothing and tending a barbecue, I have been reading Ray Bradbury today. I'm not a sci-fi fan. This is his collection of essays on creativity called Zen in the Art of Writing. Books like this don't enable me to be more creative, but they do remind me that we all have that capacity already. We just need to use it.

In one chapter(1), he shares an interesting trick: write down a list of nouns which can act as provocations to your subconscious; words which might provide you with a hook to your own delights and despairs, loves and frights. His lists looks quite banal, yet they and others have fed his writing for forty-four years.

So, here goes with one of mine:

the neckerchief, the undertow, the visit, the look, the old stove, the treehouse, the phonecall, She, mornings, the railway bus, the departure lounge, the vest, the haircut, the drive home, the river bank, the walk home, the race, the return, the last morning, the party, the night, the phone box.

I know that this list will be as useless to you as Bradbury's lists are to me. You can't use mine. You will have to compile your own list. If you do, you might find that it 'helps you to discover you.'

Yet we are not that easily found. Looking back at the list I have just written, I notice that I have already forgotten what experience some of the words refer to. The words are only keys to memories, they are not the memories themselves. But I don't mind because I know the remembered experiences are still there inside me, waiting quietly. They may be silent, resting in the dark, but they are breathing.

You might like to try writing your own list. Bradbury describes the process as 'feeling my way towards something honest hidden under the trapdoor on the top of my skull'. That's not very good prose, but he is still a best-selling author.

***
(1) Ray Brabury (1996) "Run Fast, Stand Still, or The Thing at the Top of the Stairs, or New Ghosts from Old Minds," in Zen in the Art of Writing: Essays on Creativity, Santa Barbara: Joshua Odell Publications.

should I say it, should I tell?

2009-05-23T07:43:00.006Z

Without noticing it, a couple of posts back I passed the 100 posts mark. So who's counting? Who counts their thoughts, words or prayers! Still the figure tells me that I have sat down and published my thoughts to unknown readers over and over again.

Why? I think the answer is, just for the relief of speaking out a little of how it is for me, today. That sounds self-indulgent. Why not just use a notebook? Because I want to speak out something in the presence of others. I want to risk showing a little more of myself to whoever wishes to listen.

This self-disclosure is a kind of dance. I am aware that I am doing something in public. I am aware that my readers are also dancers. For any real communication to happen, I need to be aware that they too are trying to make sense of their lives. They too have steps to take. And so, as I venture a truth, however trivial, I invite them to come with me and wonder, 'How might this work? Let's try this one out together.'

I started this blog because of the example of a friend. Now another friend wonders how safe it is to blog. I guess it is a risk, of a kind. But imagine the alternative: a world without the attempt to put 'it', whatever it is, into words.

Picture credit: Eurythmy Spring Valley by Nan Melville, from NY Times.

edgy one day, still the next

2009-05-19T22:12:00.003Z

The variable that is often not taken enough account of in life is us. I know this because the same song played through the same hifi system can sound amazing one day and just so-so the next. Though I have heard some people blame the mains power supply for this (!), I think it is more likely that it is our receptivity that varies.

Like much on this blog, it might be blindingly obvious to you, but I find I need to remind myself of this. I'm not a machine, nor are you.

If I am restless, edgy, heartsore, dully guilty, slightly hot, bored, lonely, antisocial, overtired, wide-awake, half asleep and just a little unsatisfied tonight, ... this does not mean that I will be this way tomorrow, and nor will you.

'a little more conversation, a little more action'

2009-05-17T19:33:00.005Z

I came across this fine quotation of Theodore Zeldin in a post by Nic Paton on the Emergent Village weblog,

“The kind of conversation I like is one in which you are prepared to emerge a slightly different person.”

Yes, the purpose of conversation--in old language sometimes called 'intercourse--is to connect, and for something to come from that connection. Why converse if there is no desire for change?

And yet, when I read the extended, sometimes exhaustingly long and rambling, responses to Paton's blog post, I realise that conversation can be really difficult. Particularly when there is profound disagreement. And doing this in cyberspace where one can't see facial expressions or tone of voice, and one is exposed to hasty, half-formulated ideas (like this one) makes it harder still.

In this context it helps to assume the best of people. Even those who aren't doing their best at one moment will normally try to do better if given the benefit of courteous attention.

So, is true conversation really an act of love after all?

a few untidy thoughts

2009-05-16T23:39:00.003Z

On thinking about leadership of Fresh Expressions/Emerging Churches: why are there so few women leading such churches? I can guess reasons, but I don't know.

On buying some shelving: the smell of raw timber is full of possibility.

On time spent in a secondhand record shop: “You'd better move on.” And, on thinking about that song, “I wonder whether I'll ever find a record by Arthur Alexander?”

On the Eurovision Song Contest: zzz … [bling] … zzz …[???]

On the film The Motorcycle Diaries (2004), about the journey around South America that moved the young Che Guevara to revolution: where are the young revolutionaries of today? Who cares enough about the poor to die for them?

On writing like this: best not done after midnight. Leave this hour to Bird, Davis and Coltrane.

---
Mostly men pic source: http://www.sophianetwork.org/sophia-blog?page=5 (They got it from asboJesus.)

laughter in the pews?

2009-05-11T10:41:00.007Z

Okay, I know that it's a time honoured tradition for the preacher to crack a few jokes to warm up a congregation at the start of a sermon. That's not what I'm talking about.

I'm talking about laughter that shows us that we need to lighten up and stop taking ourselves, our religion and even our sins so seriously. (Yikes, did I just include sins in that list?)

Yes, I mean all three. The problem with this excessive self-preoccupation is that it prevents us from thinking about other people. From time to time a friend will advise me to lighten up, so that (a) I get my problems into perspective and (b) so that I don't 'pop a tonsil'. I experience a blessed relief from the pressure of my own self-importance, and I begin to notice what matters a bit more. I recommend it.

Suddenly problems shrink and 'difficult people' become people with difficulties. And there's that feeling of 'Aaah! That's better.' (You might even think of it in terms of getting rid of a little wind.)

So, if those are the benefits of lightening up, how can we do so together in church? By laughing at ourselves a lot more. Here's a call then to the comics, satirists, jokers, gigglers, and stuffed shirt deflators: please step to the front. We need you.

And, for anybody who finds that this idea makes them feel anxious, please be patient. There has been so little of this in the church for so long, it might take a while for the comics to hit their stride.

Photo credit: PishonRiverMinistries.org

fixin' stuff

2009-05-07T22:37:00.004Z

Ever since I was a kid, I have liked fixing things. I realised early that anything that has been made, and was once working, can be be made to work again, assuming that you can get or make the replacement parts. Of course, this only applies to durable objects. It doesn't work if the very materials the thing is made of have melted, rotted, corroded, crumbled, or otherwise fallen apart.

But when the basis is sound, fixing is rewarding. Over the last few days, I have fixed a hard disk recorder (new disk from another faulty machine), amplifier (putting replacement part in the right place, and identifying and replacing a faulty valve), external hard drive (replacement hard drive) and an espresso machine (just a good cleaning and reading the instructions). Nice to have stuff whirring, singing and gurgling all around me.

I think fondly of the creative people who thought these things up and actually got them made. Then my mind wanders to broken people, plants and planets. Can they/we also be fixed? Who will fix us?

Religious people, like me, think that God has to, can and will do it. We can't fix ourselves. But neither are we machines that just have things done to us. For humans at least (I can't speak for plants or planets) we have to participate in our salvation.*

*I know that last phrase triggers a 'big word alert'. But it's not a big deal. It just means that we take part in the fixing process.

finding our story between the lines

2009-05-06T23:04:00.006Z

I was flicking through a pile of Carol Shield's novels this evening, looking for an incident in one that has been on my mind. Alarmingly, though I recently put in my Facebook profile that she is one I have enjoyed most in recent years, I could hardly remember some of the novels, and couldn't find the incident. So much for what you retain when you read last thing at night!

But in a couple, I noticed that I had marked some passages in the margins.

The Stone Diaries: "Most people need an envelope into which to concentrate their thoughts..." and "...there are chambers ... in the most ordinary lives that are never entered, let alone advertised, and yet they lie pressed against the consciousness like leaf specimens in an old book."

Or Mary Swann: "It is a surprising fact that Mary Swann never ... attended church. Surprising because in every one of her poems there is one line at least that can be interpreted as sacred." Or, "... she realised she didn't really like him, but she wanted him to like her. He was too anxious, too greedy somehow, but underneath the anxiousness and the greed there was something else, a green shoot that matched her own unfolded greenness."

Why those passages? And what meaning can they have here for me or you, detached from their complex contexts? What about the lines that struck me which I didn't underline? And why do I now recall not these sentences, but the feel and flow of the books? Strangely I am haunted now by a minor part of a novel, yet I cannot even locate which novel. It may not even be by Shields.

We live in a world of stories, mostly made up and imperfectly remembered. And we go through life trying to find the shape of our own story by identifying links with details or with the whole shape of the stories around us.

This is why we tell stories about God in which God tells stories to us. "In the beginning ..." "Now when... " "The birth of ... came about like this." "After he had said this, he ..." And as we hear the stories again, we look for parts to underline, and we look for our own stories between the lines.

love and comedy

2009-05-05T22:58:00.005Z

Are all love stories comedies? What about all the heartache, misunderstandings, mistakes, betrayals and loss?

I dunno. I just know that love shines best in the context of laughter, wit, humour, play, foolishness and (humour's trigger) surprise.

The common element in all of these is proportion. Comedy resizes us, so that we take our right place in the world and in the lives of those we care about. We realise that we are fallible, foolish and human, but still special. Fools falling for motley, beloved fools.

When the disguise comes off and the play ends, standing on the stage are the players. Ordinary people amused at all that they had feared, laughing at the plain, beautiful faces of their beloveds.

free someone else

2009-05-04T22:51:00.004Z

I read today, 'The function of freedom is to free someone else.' (Toni Morrison) A beautiful insight on a day when I felt personally very unfree.

I love it that truth is so outward-looking, so open to the goodness of the outside.

The last thing I want to do is turn Morrison's statement into a sermon: free this person physically, that one emotionally, the other spiritually. Yawn, tru--ue tho' it is.

It's the 'someone else' bit that grips. To want freedom for another. For them, not for you. The logic is that we can't free ourselves. We can only be set free by someone else.

But, again, it isn't about us. It's not about Who can I find to free me? It's about who can I/we free? 'Remember those in prison as though you were in prison with them.'

connected lives, for a reason?

2009-05-04T07:55:00.007Z

I enjoyed watching You Can Count on Me early this morning--not at 3am when Film 4 prefers to show its thoughtful movies, but more like 6am (don't ask).

I mention this because it is an artistic example of what I have been talking about in the last few posts: because living our real lives is a complex matter, we can help one another by sometimes trying to tell the truth about how we experience this.

This film tells a story made up of some well-worn themes--single mother, kid wishing he had a dad, rootless sibling, the tedium and beauty of small towns--but the honest telling of how things don't really work out, or might work out in the future, is somehow satisfying and even hopeful.

The paradox is because there is no neat ending, the viewer is able to relate the experience of the characters to her/his own life, which similarly keeps unfolding without resolution. We see that our lives are similarly connected with others, and as we dare to hope for a resolution for them, we do the same for ourselves.

The reviewer Norm Schrager notes this when he concludes his review with a remark about the director Ken Lonergan's comments on the DVD: '-- the main curiosity being Lonergan's disbelief in a higher power or "a reason for anything." Which is kind of odd, when you consider this powerful film he made that might suggest something to the contrary....'

a little banging on about difference

2009-05-03T23:01:00.007Z

Munching my breakfast while visiting Fibrefairy's lively blog, Strands of Life, I noticed that she had posted the results of her personality type test from MyPersonality.info. So, I took the Myers Briggs test myself and came out, well, you guess.

I've done these tests before, and I still don't believe them. The questions are too obvious and either/or for me. (They were clearly designed by people who think there are either/or answers!) "When you have a free evening, do you (a) prefer to stay in or (b) go out with friends?" I mean, please, what sort of question is that? It depends on the day of the week, the friends and the sort of evening out on offer for a start. What about the option of having friends join you in? What about the times when you'd like to go out with friends, but none are available?

So, much as I want to like surveys and questionnaires, I don't trust the results much. Of course there are personality types, but just 16 (if I recall the MBTI options correctly)? Pah, fiddlesticks! We are all much more interesting and mixed up than that. I'll go and play in the green, red or blue team for a game, and play a role for fun or to serve a particular function for others, but I'm not one colour nor one type. Nor are you. Nor is God. Thank God.

look, don't make it up

2009-05-02T22:45:00.006Z

Some friends tell me that they found what I wrote about 'lisn'ing' helpful. What is interesting is that I wrote that blog entry because of the experience of not feeling listened to earlier that day. I was trying to understand a real event and process it truthfully. Somehow that led to some transferable insights for others.

Again I ponder the paradox of blogging. It is writing a diary (or commonplace book) for others to read before I even re-read the entries myself. The human psyche being what it is, there are bound to be some giveaways. In writing this I make stuff visible to others as well as to myself. Obviously almost everything significant goes unsaid. How could these things be said without causing alarm, boredom, confusion, despondency ... (and I'm stopping at 'd')?

So, what's the point of writing about what's left? To try to speak truthfully about them at least. And so I write away, not watching my words too carefully, grateful for the chance to say what I have noticed about these trees, that face, this emotion.

Noticing something or someone is a way of loving them. Not being noticed hurts.

'My teacher,' said Bartimaeus, 'let me see again.'

reviewing the day in public?

2009-05-01T22:12:00.005Z

I suspect that lots of blogs are written last thing at night. Maybe they are a bit like the traditional prayer discipline of 'review of the day'? But, is this the sort of thing that should be done in public, even the v. small public of a blog readership?

Dunno. As usual I'm too tired and too wide awake to have a rational answer. So, I'll just do it anyway:

It's amazing how we wrestled down a sense of disorder and panic into a tidy one page agenda before coffee time. We even managed to reflect together on questions truth in relation to committee processes.
I read a paper on a complex topic that was well-crafted and made some good points. I even had time to thank the sender with a few considered responses.
Began to examine a PhD--after a few pages it is clear that this is a goodie. Phew, I'm really going to learn something working through this.
My friends kept me a place at lunch. Nice guys.
There was time for a walk afterwards, the spring sunlight lit the streets, and I came back with the stuff that money can't buy.
A plan was coming together reporting on Songs of Rage. Good research. Made some notes and took a proper nap for medical reasons. What does it mean to sleep in the daytime at your place of work? Well, the world doesn't come to an end, and you seem to get the same amount of work done by the end of the day. I'll recommend this to a convalescing friend.
Phone calls and emails. Anything achieved? Only time will tell.
Graded a first class essay. The pleasures of praising good work.
Had a shot at tidying my desk before leaving. Oh well, everything can't go equally well.

That's part of what happened at work today. Even then it doesn't do justice to the colour, texture and emotions of it all.

Another amazing day at the salt mines, carried along by prayer, patience, pain, pleasure and just getting on with it.

dance while you can

2009-04-30T21:15:00.006Z

A travel book examining ideas of happiness around the world ends (almost) with a quote from W H Auden, '...dance while you can.'

I didn't recognise the quote, but found it in the poem, 'Death's Echo' (1936). There, farmers and fishermen, friends, lovers, dreamers and drunkards all praise the beauty of the natural world till Death replies to them, '... dance while you can.'

Auden's poem expresses it in an eerie ballad. But in prose Death says, don't let your work, your friends, your lover, sleep or booze stop you 'dancing', whatever that means.

Dance, dance for the figure is easy,
The tune is catching and will not stop;
Dance till the stars come down from the rafters;
Dance, dance, dance till you drop.

Dancing for Auden is an ambiguous symbol. In his 1933 play, The Dance of Death, death is a dancer that people cannot escape through health clubs, political revolution or sex.

We cannot escape death, but we can 'dance' in the face of it. Yes, here everything ends eventually. But today we are alive, so let's get on and '... dance while we can'.

marvellous moonmen then

2009-04-30T20:50:00.005Z

The evening air was still on my walk tonight, but above there was a thin whisp of hurrying cloud. Haloed in the racing vapour, hung our moon. Not all of it, just a slice. The air beyond reach, but not too distant, seemed to emphasise just how far this graceful natural satellite is from us. I looked up, feeling old and earth-bound, amazed to think that some of us have been there.

My mind swirls at the thought of the physics, the engineering, the mathematics, the astronomy, the sheer teamwork and flair needed to do that, probably (as urban legend has it) with computers smaller than are now packed into a cheap mobile phone.

We last went there in person 37 years ago, and we haven't been there, or anywhere else that interesting since. What happened? Did we stop looking up?

not let it be, let it go

2009-04-29T22:36:00.007Z

It all depends what 'it' is. Here I'm thinking of church structures, privileges and convictions. Specifically the establishment of the Church of England.

I heard a public lecture from a leading retired bishop and life peer this evening which argued that 'the church' (but only referring to the C of E) could have an influence on public life via episcopal presence in the House of Lords.

Now, I know that is an authentic commitment and experience for him, and I respect him for it. But, if this is the way Kingdom is to be promoted in this country, then we have a long wait.

It's midnight, and I'm too tired to assemble the arguments, or even focus on the screen, but I'm still able to say this: we need churches which engage with public issues locally (and personally and visibly) and which network on matters of shared concern, offering support to politicians supporting these matters. I don't believe we should leave it to senior bishops of an established church to do this for us. It needs all of us.

people and Python

2009-04-28T19:52:00.004Z

A friend said something important to me today: Every relationship is different.

You'd think I knew that by now. But, what is helpful is the realisation that there are two people in every encounter, and that you are only one of them. Therefore what actually happens between you depends on both of you.

If that sounds totally obvious, then forget it. Just get on with doing whatever you were doing. But if you are intrigued, stay a moment. This means that each relationship needs to be navigated differently and has potential for unique outcomes. There are possibilities there that are found nowhere else.

So, let's not dismiss anybody. And let's not give up on the relationships that aren't working out as well as we would hope. Chances are they are unfolding as best they can given the current dynamics between us. But by recognising that each relationship is different, if things aren't working out too well, then we can see that there is always the chance that a different approach might work out better.

Okay, I know this sounds a bit like hippie mumbling, even though nobody has seen a real live hippie for decades.

To make matters worse, what comes into my mind is the song at the end of Monty Python's Meaning of Life: "Every sperm is sacred, every sperm is good, every sperm is wanted in your neighbourhood." If you replace the word 'sperm' with 'person' that pretty much sums up what I'm trying to say here. Kindof, y'know.

LISN bud LISN

2009-04-27T09:44:00.011Z

Listening is a basic. We all do it, or think we do. But, I'm worried that few of us do listen. Right after someone has spoken their first sentence, we get down to telling them what they need to know. And if we think their need is trivial, we add a little 'put down' to the tone of our words.

There are reasons for this. In the workplace, it is often because we just want to get the job done. Or we're too tired, or it's Monday morning, or we know that we are the expert, or the topic interests us so we like to talk about it....

Please (and I hope I'm listening to myself right now) let's stop talking so much! Let's just look attentively at the person before us and let them talk for a change. And when they have finished talking, let's remain silent, as they may not have said the most important bit yet.

The church needs to invent the opposite of a pulpit, which ministers can step (down?) into and then say, I'm really listening now. Perhaps the confessional does this a bit, but there are lots of things that need to be heard that are not sins.

I am aware that all blogs say 'Listen to me' rather than 'I'm available to listen to you.' So, I'll stop now. And if we meet, I won't talk about this topic, but I'll try and listen to what you are saying. Even when you don't say anything.

(The blog title is from the poem ygUDuh by e e cummings. It works because cummings was listening.)

too tender for the rooftops

2009-04-23T22:48:00.011Z

Tonight, as part of the St George's Day celebrations in Salisbury, the words of a number of stories were projected onto the roof of the cathedral.

It makes me think about prayer. Where does the exchange of messages between us and God take place? On the wall, as the warning to Belshazzar of Babylon? Or on the roof, as the stories were tonight, for the sake of art?

When it comes to prayer, neither. Things are too personal, too complex, often too tender for the rooftops. Whether we speak aloud to God with others, or think our prayers alone, the answer comes softer than a whisper, as a kind of tilting of the will towards the good things we fear. And, too, as a lifting of what is tight, tangled or torn. Stillness gradually creeps inside us and our world is made new. A little.

The miracle is that while the answer is truly personal, prayer is for everyone.

***
p.s. Looking up the phrase 'writing on the wall,' I came across this poem by the poet, priest and satirist Jonathan Swift, called "The Run Upon The Bankers". There really is nothing new when it comes to folly with money, but prayer is for everyone, even chancellors and bankers.

A baited banker thus desponds,
From his own hand foresees his fall,
They have his soul, who have his bonds;
'Tis like the writing on the wall.

the light recedes in splendour

2009-04-22T21:16:00.004Z

The churches need to reconnect with the natural world. At the moment, most only pay lip service to this idea, preferring to spend their best energy on buildings.

And yet, even in cities, the world outside offers the only space that is big enough to speak adequately of God The only space, too, that is open to the ever-moving flow of life.

Stepping outside, it is impossible to believe that 'nothing changes here'. Change is constant, hourly, daily. Constant graceful motion is the way it is. Change upon change, each one inviting the observer to stop and attend.

Death is part of this flow, not cycle, of change. Each thing that is, moves on to dissolution and reconstitution in the complex living movement that is life.

Recognising this, I am not surprised that Christianity holds the belief that when God became a human being, he walked on the land, worked with wood and explained God's nature with examples from the natural world.

So, today, I consider the leaves, look at the evening sky, notice the birds and move my body in the big space outside.

two more spirited gals!

2009-04-21T23:25:00.006Z

When you sit up and take notice, spirited gals are everywhere. (And yes, I know, not just gals.)

Just in case you've been away on Mars, here is another name: Susan Boyle. She is YouTube's biggest attraction at the moment, so I'll leave it to you to explore the clips of her singing, being interviewed and generally having a spirited time. As a colleague said today, her story is a modern parable.

Meanwhile, so's we don't lose perspective, here is the prayer for Africa, thinking particularly of South Africa as she goes to the polls later today:

God bless Africa
Guard her children
Guide her leaders
And give her peace,
for Jesus Christ's sake.

And not forgetting that older sister amongst the family of nations, India, as she takes her time to elect her next generation of leaders.

who can you talk to when you want to tell the truth?

2009-04-20T22:06:00.009Z

Today has been difficult and good, but how to talk publicly about it? Learning I would need shoulder surgery, and not as a young person, led me to face my mortality again.

Getting back to work and preparing to cover for a colleague on leave was a further hump. But, after lumbering down the runway for a long way, I finally got airborne and started enjoying the flight and the view.

Yet there is a lot that cannot be said here, however allusively. No smart mottos will suffice. In the church we need people we can talk to, one to one, regularly getting down to trying to speak the truth. Soul friends. Not so much friends on steroids as friends off steroids. Gentle, prayerful listeners. Even, or especially, on the days when they have heard it all before.

yes, you have got a friend in me

2009-04-19T23:04:00.006Z

We were watching Randy Newman sing this song with Lyle Lovatt tonight and thinking about our friends. This is for you.

The YouTube link may be the last refuge of the uninspired blogger, or the honest recognition of a thought well expressed. I can't find a good clip that looks and sounds good, but this rough recording of a live performance is a reminder of the imperfection of real life. The song also reminds me that friendship has to be one of the foundation stones of every church.

It takes a Jewish musician and a Hollywood movie for children to set the standard for us all.

morphin' talkin'

2009-04-18T22:48:00.009Z

Is this the cotton wool talkin'? 'It's smooth sailing, with the highly successful sound of wonderful Radio London.' Darn, that's an old Who jingle jukin' me. Wha'? Wha's runnin' all 'round mah brain?

Push the pause man. Life in suspension (two spoons). 'We give this to kids you know?' You go lie on that cushion. It's a li-lo. Low down then, arms under your head. 'Don' you move now.' Hush now. Lil' brown baby wif sparklin' eyes.

Still yoh head and your vitals now. Jes for a while. Yoh fren' for tonight. 'You take Sally, I'll take Sue, ain't no difference between the two.'

'Hey man, don' quit on me now.' Slow lazy breaths. 'Slowly now dude. Jes' take that pillow for yoh head, and close, close, ... jes' close them. Who you lookin' at wif those tired eyes? You see nuthin', unnerstan'? Nuthin'.'

working musically with silence

2009-04-17T23:27:00.004Z

In a TV programme about the jazz pianist Thelonius Monk tonight, somebody said that he played the spaces between the white and the black keys. Elsewhere, I think I heard someone say his music was made of the silences between the notes.

I know that the gospels record Jesus as saying, 'Let your yes be yes, and your no be no,' but I wonder about spaces, the silences between yes and no. There is a way of looking at the place between yes and no, not as a place of indecision or disengagement, but as a valid place to stand, in art, in relationships, in science, in politics and in prayer. Sometimes this will mean the faithful rejection of both options. At other times, it is a truthful acceptance of both.

more spirited gals

2009-04-17T13:57:00.009Z

Country music has curious power. Not studio produced schlock, but the real, honest to goodness pure corn. It tries to tell the truth about life, usually hard, and death, often early and welcome.

I was looking up one such song about death "Beyond the Sunset" (nice tune), when I came across a couple of other corkers, on a Southern gospel programme hosted by Billy and Willie Pollard called Strolling Down Memory Lane.

First Bill and Jake Jolliffe and Band, notable for Bill's beard, Jake's smokin' mandolin playing and bassist Louanne Fugal's vivacity (spirited gal #1). Things really get going in the middle, as young Jake 'plays the living snot' out of the bluegrass classic "There is a fountain."

Then, for sheer good-sportedness, here are spirited gals #2 and #3. Mary Carter and Gail Stoddard, singing "The Devil's in the Phone Booth, Dialling 911". Words fail me, but I still admire them.

Then, a bit more of little Jake, his Dad, Louanne and that other guy.

cheer up and listen to the kids

2009-04-16T21:53:00.005Z

When I need cheering up, I usually find something good in one of the blogs in the RevGalBlogPals ring. These holy gals seem to be able to make honest links between faith and life.

Reading a few of their blogs tonight, I enjoyed an embedded animation of the life of St. Patrick. It turns out to be part of a series in which recordings of Dublin children made in the 1960s have been animated.

I'd like to see more room in the church for Bible stories which are retold by rather than for children.

the public intimacy of song lyrics

2009-04-15T22:11:00.012Z

If I am not careful, I find that all my thoughts are shaped by song lyrics. I wanted to begin this post 'Not a day passes,' till I realised that that too comes from a song (by Clive Gregson and Christine Collister).

This is a paradox. One of the reasons for blogging is to find your own authentic public voice. To do this, you have to speak for yourself, and so quoting song lyrics will not do.

On the other hand, song lyrics are a good analogy for what you are trying to achieve. They are crafted public statements, yet they are alos personal, idiosyncratic and unguarded. Their intimate views may not reflect the actual views or experience of the songwriter, but they usually convey the writer's unique voice. Even the tin pan alley songs of Carole King and her partner Gerry Goffin, 'Will You Love Me tomorrow?' 'The Loco-Motion' and 'Up on the Roof,' are readily identifiable. Later, in 1968, Goffin and King provided authentic lyrics for the counterculture, e.g. in 'Goin' Back' and 'I Wasn't Born to Follow', both standout tracks in the Byrd's Notorious Byrd Brothers. What is that about? Amazingly, good songwriters both speak with their own voicese and express the longings of their era.

It is harder to see how songs express our era. Here are some of the topics we need authentic personal statements about now: the unreality of money, the fluidity of relationships, virtual everything, the way broadband has taken over from Broadway, and the web of public lies and spin that seems to have replaced politics.

I don't want analysis: there are plenty of column inches and micro-focused blogs for this. I want someone to catch one of these flavours in a song as memorable as 'Up on the Roof' or 'Miss You like Crazy', or even a blog.

Note to self: must read the interview with Clive Gregson here.

can a blog enable people to think together?

2009-04-15T02:26:00.006Z

Each post in this blog is meant to have something to do with what the church can be. But, a blog is written by one person, and the church only comes into being when two or more people gather in name of Jesus Christ.

So, I ask, and not just rhetorically: is there a way for me to write this blog that reflects this? Can this blog in some way be church, rather than just be be about church? How can I, at the very least, write about about the concerns of others and not just my own concerns? How can I think more from the perspective of others?

At this point, I am tempted to get abstract and talk about 'open source ecclesiology' and 'taking a decentred perspective', but I have already decided not to use big, abstract words. I want to do this, not talk about it.

So, my few but valued readers, what do you think?

wiltshire's recycling policy that prevents recycling

2009-04-14T20:42:00.004Z

Today I discovered that Wiltshire County Council has devised a recycling policy that actively prevents the resale and re-use of items. They refuse to allow people to buy and reuse anything left at their recycling centres.

I know, it's a bit like trying to understand short selling. You think about it again and again, and just when you think you understand your brain tells you that it still makes no sense.

They have a bunch of reasons for their policy, but they all add up to the fact that they won't allow real 'reducers, reusers and recyclers' to mess up their neat recycling programme.

After all, there is still plenty of space left in that skip.

stop doing ... keep doing ...

2009-04-14T20:17:00.005Z

Some days are just about keeping going.

Sleepless failure. Wakeful fixing: tidying, clearing, disposing, listening, helping, not helping. Challenge to official evasion. Facing official scrutiny. All together, yet alone, yet not alone.

In such days, faith is present, yet as thin cloudy light. Ain't no sunshine here.

Sleepless fog. Bones rub and crunch beneath a light clothing of persistent discomfort. Dense spike of tension in the flesh.

This too is what it means to be embodied and not just for me.

So, I pray for others who need to keep going, especially those for whom today is the 'time of trial'.

miles and sunny fields

2009-04-13T19:47:00.008Z

The 'and' is deliberate in the title. The 'miles' refers to Miles Davis, who has been spooking me with his music for the last few days. Current favourite, In a Silent Way (1969).

But about twelve years earlier he was putting together a dream sextet with the aim of going beyond themselves. These musicians were to do something different from what they did well all the time, so that they would think differently, use their imagination, be more creative and take more risks. Miles' concept was to get people to play above what they know. The result was the legendary Kind of Blue (1959).

I love the way great artists naturally think in this way and would like church leaders to try doing the same. As Miles said, 'Then anything can happen.'

no big words, fat books or long posts (here)

2009-04-12T22:53:00.006Z

I've been thinking that I find some theological blogs quite intimidating.

So, I've decided. I will not use big technical words (-ologies), refer to large academic books, nor write long posts here. Hope that's okay?

Come to think about it, 'intimidating' is almost too long.

two hours before easter morn, awake and dreaming

2009-04-12T10:07:00.011Z

It is Easter Morn, about two hours before first light. The silence of the house and the neighbourhood is emphasised by the tiny whirr of my laptop. The pool of light from the standard lamp behind me is intimate, but burns my eyes with a slight protesting dryness. I am aware of medication mellowing the protesting pain behind me. Thus I am: alive, awake, almost attentive.

I’ve read as much as I can take of the Church Times, an honest and thoughtful denominational weekly and the one paper that I do scan every week. Its Anglicanism and its Englishness, with just a hint of Wales here or Scotland there, offers a comforting, yet limiting vision.

I wonder, does the deep cyclical groove of the church’s year, patterned on the seasonal cycle of the Northern hemisphere, obscure the fact that our lives progress, at least in a spiral? We are back at the Spring and Easter point again, but not in the same place, nor in the same condition. For richer or poorer, another year has beat upon us from without and renewed our cells within. We are both renewed and diminished, one year closer to our eternal rest or resurrection.

I’m glad we’ve got to Easter at last. We always do, yet it always seems an achievement, as if somehow we might not. As if our sins, or the holy strivings of Lent, might drain all the life out of us. Yet here I am, conscious of all those believers waiting, or snatching the last hours of sleep before the dawn.

One year I would like to welcome Easter with others outside, in silence. Imagine standing together, barefoot, beside a lake or beach as the first sheen of light makes the water at our feet visible. The air is agitated by the noisy activity of birds at the edge of our consciousness. This Easter morning is no different from any other day this spring, and yet the day shows itself to be entirely fresh and entirely new.

We stand together without words as the light grows. There is the sun now, our own little ordinary star. It is also on its way to ultimate extinction, yet today again it is vividly here. It is alive as we are and the birds. We close our eyes and lift up our faces, setting our sightlessness aglow.

We remain in silence, warmed, almost weightless. Then someone says, ‘He is risen.’ And another, ‘He is alive.’ A third leads us at last in a clumsy improvised prayer. We don't mind. What words can adequately praise this moment which recollects and witnesses God’s continual self-giving to the world?

Someone in the distance behind us calls out, ‘Food’s ready,’ and we turn towards the fire, the rising smoke and the boiling kettle. Not fish today, but bacon, eggs, beans and tomato. There is even toast and marmalade, and soon there will be a mug of tea for all. This may not be an Anglican liturgy, but it is an English one.

'it's the people stupid'

2009-04-11T16:30:00.003Z

'Stupid' here refers to me, because I am often depressed by the church. Its clumsy structures, its expensive buildings, its ludicrous hierarchies, its timid obsessions, its overwork and underpay, its tedium. 'Don't get me started...!'

Yet, I have just spent a beautiful week with people who have sold their shirts (as it were) to learn to lead and care for the church. When I close my eyes, I see a stream of ordinary faces, transfigured by something special. I see interactions between them, chafed warm and crafted by an active unseen presence. Peace, splattering and pooling like mild spring rain. Bracing questioning, opening up crisp vistas. Plans, commitments, hope.

Stupid me. I've been wasting time looking in all the wrong places, and forgotten the saying, 'Wherever two or three, or twenty or three hundred, are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst.'

tata nano: the only car i've ever wanted on sight

2009-04-04T17:44:00.006Z

It is good to read in Time magazine this week that the world's cheapest car will be going on sale soon in India, the Tata Nano. Price: 100,000 rupees, or about £1,350. It has been designed from scratch to be a good, safe and affordable family car and it looks good.

Now, I don't want the world covered with cars any more than you do. But, some people do need cars, and this looks a sensible option for once. Not too fast, with excellent fuel economy (better than the hybrid Toyota Prius) and simple.

I suspect it's the perfect product for the re/de-pression. And for once, the third world gets a good thing first.

the comfort of tannins

2009-04-04T08:00:00.006Z

A painful muscle injury wakens me regularly every two or three hours at night at the moment. At least once, I'll get up to brew a cup of tea and microwave a heating pad.

As I apply these remedies externally and internally--making sure that I know which is which--I marvel at what actually sustains us through life. It seems to be warmth, and the familiar taste of tannin, just bitter enough to give a warm drink distinctive character.

Wakened by pain last night, I caught the end of a BBC World Service documentary on pain. A woman coping with chronic back pain said, that it is closer than your closest family and friends, "It is the next thing from you." And so it seems to make sense to seek to take comfort inside you in the form of a warm drink.

What else helps? Human touch or mental distraction, I find.

And what of the divine Spirit, living within us? Yes, it is good to know that as we groan inwardly, the Spirit prays for us in groans that are beyond words.

elvis' sun sides

2009-04-02T20:17:00.004Z

After a long haul at the computer, I put on a record containing Elvis' earliest recordings. They are raw, unadorned and (thank goodness) without the professional musicianship that soon followed. It sounds like hillbilly folk music: authentic, heartfelt, tender.

Now, I know that Elvis never made a bad record in the 50s, but this is a reminder that he did some of his best work at the very start.

I wonder what that says about education and formation?

world of pain (nothing to do with the Cream song)

2009-04-01T21:39:00.005Z

Today has had a sheen of pain spread across it, others' and mine. It's hard being human, but kindness goes a long way. "Be kind to people," my first rector used to say, "everybody is having a hard time." He lived with back pain daily, and seemed sometimes to be standing upright through sheer force of will, or faith. (With him, I was never quite sure where one started and the other ended.) Another friend has offered me regular support over the years, whilst living with daily pain.

I definitely don't believe that pain is God's megaphone, as CS Lewis once said, but it does seem to promote a sense of dumb creatureliness. "For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers ... together until now." Paul likens this suffering to that of childbirth. As a man, with no wife or children, I wonder why he used this image? Like every sentence of this great chapter from the heart of Romans, this statement best yields some of its meaning in meditation. What is clear is that Paul understands our pain and Jesus' pain as pointing to something good in the future.

transient grace

2009-03-31T20:16:00.003Z

I heard the phrase 'transient grace' recently. It was used to express appreciation for something precious but fleeting, like the appearance of blossom on a tree.

I like the idea. Grace arrives for you, but you have to stop. And receive it now. It is here and it will not wait. This is not a theological statement. Or is it?

I was going to find you a picture of this, but that would not be transient. So, if it is spring now for you, go and find the picture -- out there -- yourself. Soon.

cognitive surplus

2009-03-30T17:18:00.006Z

My earlier post was a bit grumpy--heck someone has to come to the aid of the improvident!

Right now I am intrigued by the concept of cognitive surplus. With cheap broadband people can pull together the power of our minds as never before. Wikipedia is already a huge intellectual product because of such collaboration. The galaxies are being mapped by ordinary people with a little time to spare each day. Listen to Series 4 Episode 4 of Click On on BBC Radio 4 to the ideas of Clay Shirky or go to his website, and blog, Here Comes Everybody.

Now, can't we use some of this surplus to make some real progress on cancer research?

again today: 'one toxic asset for you and one for me'

2009-03-30T08:58:00.004Z

Today it is the turn of the taxpayer to take over the 'toxic assets' of Dunfermline Building Society. As I understand it, the profitable mortgages will go to Nationwide and we get to keep the defaulting business and sub-prime mortgage loans. In layman's language, society picks up the tab after the speculators fail and default.

Yet for years, and still today, BBC1 spends half each weekday morning broadcasting programmes on how people can make money buying property. I don't get it: doesn't the BBC listen to its own news bulletins?

deep church or emerging church?

2009-03-29T21:06:00.011Z

As my sabbatical blogging ended in April 2007, I came across an important paper by Luke Bretherton, entitled "Beyond the Emerging Church", in a collection called Remembering Our Future: Explorations in Deep Church, edited by Andrew Walker and Luke Bretherton (Paternoster, 2007).

I remember being nettled by it at the time, and promising myself that I would try to clarify my concerns in this blog. On re-reading it this evening, I note that we share the same commitments, but are simply approaching them from opposite directions. We both want a church that is deeply rooted in our faith heritage, yet profoundly open to the present, and what God is doing today.

He comes from a evangelical-pentecostal, alt.worship background and feels the lack of Bible and tradition in the emerging church. I come from an evangelical-pentecostal, catholic-activist background, and feel the lack of impact of the Bible and tradition on the mainstream churches. He wants to apply more tradition and Bible to the emerging churches, I want to apply a firmer critique of the strategies of power and control used by the mainstream churches, and invite them to re-read their Bibles from the perspective of the powerless.

And so we see the same problem (the church's inadequate engagement with contemporary culture), the same needs (to remain rooted in the faith) and the same opportunities (to some new things). I suspect we could achieve considerable consensus over a cappucino at Starbucks. I'd probably be insisting on 'a little less conversation, a little more action, please' (as Elvis says), he'd probably want a little more institution, and a little less acting!

Both of us probably need more faith in God's providential work in us all in the present. I don't think we need to have our doctrine, worship and practice as fully worked out as he says he wants. But, on close reading of his text, I don't think he really wants that either. He just evinces a little residual evangelical anxiety about other forms of Christianity here and there. I don't mean to sound patronising in saying that. The emerging church is uncomfortably hybrid.

My conclusion: 'deep church' is not making a bid to replace 'emerging church', just to keep it on track. Fair enough--just watch the power issues...

writing short stories is like planting a garden ...

2009-03-29T16:04:00.012Z

... says Japanese writer Haruki Murakami in the Introduction to Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (2006). He's a pretty famous author, but new to me since I got his memoir on long distance running for Christmas (What I Think About When I Think About Running, 2008).

He is unassuming about himself, saying that he finds writing and running hard. Yet the effect on the reader is to feel encouraged, not intimidated. As I read him, part of me wonders at his skilled artlessness, while the other part thinks, 'I could do this.'

It reminds me of an early lesson on preaching: handle the biblical text simply, so that your hearers can follow what you are doing and think, 'I could do this.'

Murakami says, '... you can create a story out of the smallest details--an idea that springs up in your mind, a word, an image, whatever.' And you don't have to worry about failing. You can always do another one.

Does this have anything to say about the church that is coming? Yes. In the clear light of spring we begin again, God remaking the world and we our allotments, window boxes, fields or gardens. Sharing in the miracle of making and being made. Let the smallest detail take you somewhere new.

it begins again: me, melody and emergence

2009-03-28T09:34:00.006Z

I started this blog in December 2006, when starting a sabbatical looking for signs of the emerging church, and wondering whether I was part of it. Apart from a few more posts, the impetus for the blog ended at the end of my sabbatical--with a nice greeting from Doug Pagitt.

Now, I think the time is ripe to start blogging regularly here again. The main reason is that my college, which trains people for ministry, has agreed that we need to focus more explicitly on ecclesiology. Our week-long Easter School, which starts next week, will be focusing on that and so I am doing a lot of thinking and reading about it now.

The other reason is that my wife and I have been exploring how to begin an emerging church with one other couple for some time now, and we have all found the progress very slow. I want to reflect on these, and invite comments and help, if any readers wish to offer them.

I have also decided to start writing this blog again because I am now active on Facebook, but find that this does not provide a space to write and explore ideas. So, I'll provide a link from my Facebook page to this blog, to allow for this. Of course it is possible to access this without getting involved with Facebook, Twitter, or any other social 'thought for the day'.

Finally, the title of this post, It Begins Again is also the title of a Dusty Springfield comeback album. This blog will continue to be about music and life as well as theology, because the emerging church is interested in these things too.

Here's one musical snippet: in the wee hours of this morning, I heard an interview with Melody Gardot, a young jazz singer whose career has taken off since her life was almost ended in a road accident at the age of 19. Wishing to move on from merely coping with the help of drugs, she began to make music again as therapy. Home compositions and recordings began to sell and she now has her second mainstream album out: My One and Only Thrill. You can sample her music and her story here and on Amazon UK. What leads me to write about her, is her demonstrating that music replaces damaged neural pathways in the brain.

Maybe all the kids and adults who insist that listening to music while doing their homework helps them learn are onto something?

women bishops (too) for the church of england

2008-07-07T22:34:00.003Z

It's late, but I have to break this long blog silence to rejoice publicly over the Church of England General Synod decision to proceed with arrangements for the consecration of women as bishops.

It feels to me like a huge milestone, as one of the institutionalised forms of gender discrimination in my church is finally voted away.

This is a gospel moment: "...neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus."

handling the invisible

2008-04-25T21:36:00.008Z

Not much time for blogging at the moment. I'm spending my spare time reading and re-reading the same circuit diagram. And then testing and re-testing components, apart and in position.

With the help of my electrical engineer brother in law, I got the amplifier partially working. Then my unaided attempt to improve it still further via the checks mentioned above set progress back again. I understand more of the problem (three different ways of wiring the output transformer, each variant depicted separately in the article I am following), but haven't yet approached a solution.

The experience is deeply frustrating and, for that reason, fascinating. I find myself thinking in electrical metaphors, seeing life in terms of voltage, amperage, resistance and capacitance. I am intrigued to be working with a system in which while there are quite generous tolerances, there is an also no tolerance of one error. If you get it wrong in that way, it simply doesn't work at all.

We are used to having electricity as the background to our lives. But, when one wants to sculpt with is, how frustrating not to be able to see the essential material one is working with, only its effects.

Yet one can feel its effects: on one dramatic occasion about 350V DC (I guess wildly) discharging through my body. It felt unworldly. Unlike the violently wriggly feeling of making brief contact with 240V AC, DC current feels pure and almost spiritual.

Is God ultimately then pure energy? No, much more. At least creative, loving, purposeful energy. And, once, in one particular person, visible and physically present.

dark night of the solder: amplifier building continued

2008-04-18T06:57:00.005Z

Hm, I thought that with the Verdik completed, I would just copy that circuit mindlessly to make a clone/match. However, the chassis I bought and the schematic and construction advice in my book on classic Mullard designs is very slightly different. Also the output transformer that I have is a little different from that in the Verdik.

So, I decided to follow the book. To the letter. So, two more problems. First, the book makes assumptions, (a) that the reader knows the obvious, like how to wire the output and (b) that the (s)he is following the schematic exactly.

The good outcome about all of this is that I have had to get properly acquainted with every detail of the circuit diagram and the pinouts of each of the four different valves used. Which is exactly why I wanted to build a matching amp and not looking for a working mono Mullard 5-10 on eBay.

The overall cost is paid in humility: recognising that I need help (thanks Chris, John and Eric); that I make mistakes, even when I am trying not to; that some days I have to stop and learn something new before I can proceed. And, even when it works out, realising that I don't have much clue about the physics of the processes involved. A famous British audio designer once said that there is little that cannot be solved with a combination of Ohm's Law and commonsense logic.

It just shows how hard people find simple tasks within a new discipline. A good lesson for an adult educator like me.

Verdik rebuild conclusion (vintage hifi again)

2008-04-11T15:32:00.010Z

Working with vintage hifi is fun, but it is not simple.

My Verdik Quality Ten (based on the Mullard 5-10 circuit) continued to have a niggly rustle until I replaced every valve socket, capacitor and resistor. Oops, except for one large 6k6 resistor. It looks different, so I keep overlooking it.

New valve sockets are available but they don't fit the old holes, which are smaller. So, I had to take two old radios apart and re-use their valve holders. This meant a couple of days of fiddly de-soldering and then resoldering, with one ('help there's smoke!') mistake.
Capacitors are available, but high voltage ones are not that cheap, and need to be ordered from specialist suppliers. Then finding a clip to secure the replacement for the big one mounted on top took another search.

Resistors are cheap, but locating the correct ones (quality, wattage, etc.) takes a bit of learning for those who don't do this every day. It's easy to overlook one and then a pain to have to pay £3.00 minimum postage charge for items costing just a few pence! I've learned that one should probably buy a pack of ten of each value that you think you will need.

Still, at last this vintage beauty sounds crisp and clean with just the tiniest of background hums. I am amazed at the sound, and am still using some old valves.

Now comes the challenge of building a companion for this one, so that I can use the pair for stereo. I have an old chassis, with valve holders, quality vintage transformers (finding them is another story) and all the other bits and bobs and have begun work. I'll post a picture of the story so far later.

Then it will be time to start work on restoring the old PlayStation PS1 which will be an excellent CD player as soon as I replace the disk drive. (There is a thread on diyAudio.com that has been running for more than two years about this!) I'd love to get the Mullard engineers and the Playstation designers together to listen to this postmodern system.

tell the truth by telling stories

2008-03-30T20:48:00.006Z

This is a follow up to my post of 18 February. I am just back from a most memorable week-long STETS Easter School where I enjoyed offering some readings of Acts 1-4 as imaginatively reconstructed sources.

Towards the end of the week, after just two hours of group exegetical work, each participant also prepared a narrative interpretation of one of the gospel resurrection narratives. When some were shared with the wider group today the experience was intensely moving.

When was the last time you heard seven gripping biblical interpretations in one hour and were left wanting more?

good old stuff (warning--hifi post)

2008-03-07T22:53:00.008Z

One of the pleasures of living in a consumer society is having access to all all the good old stuff that everybody else is throwing away to get 'the latest'. Anybody with the patience to set up a good FM and analogue TV aerial is likely to be treated to beautiful sound and high-resolution pictures. If they have had the courage to keep their non-flatscreen TV, the picture will be better still.

Same applies to furniture, bathroom furnishings and many appliances.

At the moment I am replacing a few of the worn out bits of a 50-year old amplifier. It is tiny (for the technology used), elegantly and robustly constructed and implements a design that is still being appreciated today. Here is a pic. It is a Verdik Quality Ten, using the famous Mullard 5-10 design. (Okay, I know that beauty is in the eye of the beholder!)

But never mind the cute appearance (!), this device is designed for listening. People say that valve (tube) equipment sounds warm and mushy. This little tyke sounds nothing like that. Imagine hearing your CDs more clearly than you ever expected? If you can't imagine that, you've not heard classic valve gear.

Did I mention that this amplifier is 50 years old, not just the design, but most of the components too? With care, it could still be sounding good in another 50 years. I wonder where today's flat screen TVs will be then?

all that research just to tell stories?

2008-02-18T15:44:00.006Z

I don´t want to make any promises, but am wondering whether it is possible to do a complete exposition of Acts via imaginary sources. I am intrigued by Barrett´s suggestion that the author of Acts may have collected his information not just by visiting key places, such as Caesarea and Antioch, but also by correspondence. It is so simple when you think about it, yet I have not seen this seriously proposed before. (Haenchen may just hint at the idea.)

Well, it´s a rainy day and time to get a cup of coffee to test this idea out.

Pic copied from this interesting article by Paul Babie.

wild waves

2008-02-17T22:07:00.007Z

The weather has been intermittently brilliant and very windy here on the Costa del Sol. When the wind has blown in strongly from the sea I have been amazed at the size of the waves. I never imagined that they could get so big on the Med--pure ignorance. It has really helped me to imagine references to waves in the New Testament. Jude 13 refers to false teachers, or at least teachers he disagreed with (!), as "wild waves of the sea, foaming up their own shame". Justone of many images that pile up effectively. That is exactly how the sea behaves here, swirling up the dirt which normally lies settled below to make the sea look dirty and unattractive, as can be seen from this stock photo from the net.

I have also been reminded of the end of Acts 27, when the surf breaks up the boat in which Paul is travelling and they have to take their chances in the wild sea. When one can imagine what the sea might have been like, you can imagine the sense of the miraculous that accompanies their escape to land.

Vivid stuff. So, what images from your and my world illustrate our experience of life seen through the lens of faith?

sun and exegesis

2008-02-14T13:42:00.008Z

At last we see the sun (hazily) and the trees have stopped trying to uproot themselves. Beautiful. Sigh. We visited this coastal building last night, Villa Bil Bil. It was built in the 30s and is named after a father and son, both called Bill(!), but still a nice reminder of Southern Spain´s African and Islamic past.

Good to have time today to start my exegesis of Acts 1-4 for Easter School, and consider the place of exegesis in the Bible via my hero Ulrich Luz. He has important things to say about the relationship between late 20th century takes on history (new historicism anyone?) and on exegesis. We are really undergoing a revolution in our epistemology in the West these days, and about time too!

Not much time to say more for now. Time for a chilly swim.

No pics please, we´re British

2008-02-13T17:22:00.002Z

Elle and I are on a short break in Spain. Not the Costa del Sol so much as the Costa del Wind. (Sorry, Rachel we´ve not been able to buy a Spanish phrasebook yet). Tantalising to be in a new (to me) culture with all the impulse to try to begin to make it intelligible, in itself and as it is seen by the average British visitor. Not being able to sit in the sun and just fry our brains is the reason I guess.

I´ll try to post a few pics when the hotel link gets up and running. If any STETS-os see this, my best for the coming weekend.

hey, we're alive!

2008-02-10T20:26:00.000Z

After going to a dance last night, my knee hurts. An school sports injury not properly fixed by surgery, then hammered by the army and years of jogging. But I'm alive and my body still works.

Each day that seems a mundane miracle. It's not just that I am alive in my body, but that we're all here in our bodies, even the smallest flower. We're here to be looked at, touched, tasted, smelled--but don't pluck us, or we'll die.

Without bodies, flowers are nothing, we are nothing. At least nothing that can be experienced. Is a bodiless heaven of any value? Does it even have any meaning?

I worry whether Christianity really takes any notice of bodies, or even hates them. Why does it ignore or hate them? (e.g. Ps 51.5 read in a broadcast church service today: 'I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me.') What is wrong with our bodies? What have our bodies ever done, except live until they die?

In contrast, I love the way dancing affirms bodies. When we dance, we know that we are bodies. When we dance with others, we feel their bodies, moving together, smelling, touching, holding. I do not say tasting, but we do 'know' someone more after dancing with them.

As we dance, we also know the limits of our bodies. We know they don't move as well as we would like, or look as good. We are afraid of being known by touch, and even smell. Yet we are all beautifully made. And, with eyes of love, we see beauty in every detail. Yes, every detail.

buy nothing for Lent?

2008-02-03T23:07:00.000Z

In the run up to Christmas, I was attracted by the Buy Nothing Christmas campaign.

Browsing amongst some blogs this afternoon, I was attracted by a similar Buy Nothing Lent idea. The link here takes you to a personal blog, where this idea of offered in relation to a particular person's life.

I'm offering this here to give anyone who reads this the chance to consider whether this is something they might like to try for 6 weeks, starting this Wednesday. I'm not committing myself to it now, but I am considering it.

As I understand it, the point is not even to save money, or set aside money to give away. Just to see what it is like to take a break from recreational shopping, and to put some other recreation in its place.

Hmmm.

Jane Siberry's 'The Valley'

2008-02-02T11:01:00.000Z

Sometimes things just work out. I heard k. d. lang on a Radio 4 programme this morning mention her favourite song, 'The Valley' by Jane Siberry. It is about how while some of us live in the hills and others in the valleys, we all need good company. Okay, it's not 'about' that. If that was all there was to say, Jane would not have needed to write the song, nor anyone to sing it or hear it. I found that it is on bound by the beauty (Reprise, 1989). And, to my delight, found that I have the album on vinyl (I have a few others of Jane's on CD). The cover picture is above.

Try and listen to it, if you can, because Jane's music is hypnotic and atmospheric. Here anyway are the bare words:

I live in the hills
you live in the valleys
and all that you know are these blackbirds
you rise every morning
wondering what in the world will the world bring today
will it bring you joy or will it take it away
and every step you take is guided by
the love of the light on the land and the blackbird's cry
you will walk in good company

the valley is dark
the burgeoning holding
the stillness obscured by their judging
you walk through the shadows
uncertain and surely hurting
deserted by the blackbirds and the staccato of the staff
and though you trust the light towards which you wend your way
sometimes you feel all that you wanted has been taken away
you will walk in good company

I love the best of you
you love the best of me
though it is not always easy
lovely? lonely?
we will walk in good company

the shepherd upright and flowing
you see...

Yep, I agree with Jane Siberry and k. d. lang that life is like that. We're all in the same boat, yet we don't experience life the same way. Thank God for those who love the best of us, and for good company as we walk (lovely? lonely?) through life.

keep going sister-mama!

2008-01-28T22:41:00.000Z

Been helping our beloved daughters this week. One to recover from a violent mugging and the other to move flat. Whew! No time for words.

But on Sunday night we caught some live jazz by the Brighton Jazz All Stars at the Lion and Lobster pub in Brighton. (If you use Windows, you sample their work in this short movie by Richard Harris entitled Compared to What.)

It was a particular pleasure to hear their much-loved guest vocalist. I didn't catch her name, and part of the time could not even see her because she was surrounded by her admirers, but I hope I can do half as well when I am her age.

As they say, "You go girl!"

welcome to tnt-audio visitors

2008-01-14T17:02:00.000Z

You will notice on the side bar of this blog, that I also write occasionally for TNT-Audio.com, a leading amateur hifi website. Thanks to a link on the We Support Real Stereo page I expect some audio enthusiasts to drop by. You are welcome. While this blog is focused on exploring what the church of tomorrow might be like, it is written by a hifi and music lover.

I teach in the humanities field, so it is refreshing for me to have to think more like an engineer when I write about hifi. It helps me avoid becoming an 'specialised idiot'.

I enjoy being reminded how much my daily life is dependent upon the work of scientists, mathematicians, engineers and techicians. Just designing and making a turntable to spin an LP well depends upon an understanding of materials, electronics, applied mechanics, geometry, physics as well as skills like woodwork and matters of aesthetic and design. Part of the popularity of the Garrard 301 turntable (below) is the way it looks and the way it is engineered. That it sounds beautiful too is a bonus. The same goes for SME tonearms.

And I love the imagination that went into the process of learning to record high quality analogue sound. It is amazing how tiny transducers (the one in this picture is the original Music Maker, a hand built cartridge) can produce such delicate nuances in sound--in stereo, just by tracing a carefully shaped groove in a vinyl disc. It was a revelation to read some years ago on TNT-Audio just how much detail mechanical and recording engineers managed to encode into these grooves. Modern designs and materials mean that we are sometimes able to extract even more of this detail. At other times, it is a marvel to me to discover that a device designed and made 50 years ago and neglected for perhaps 25 years can be cleaned, tidied and used to make very rich music.

Is there a lesson for the church? Lots! For a start give more credit to the scientists and engineers on the one hand, and the artists on the other. As one of the Psalms (90) sings: 'And let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.'

learning pastoral skills by parenting wild animals

2008-01-12T16:07:00.000Z

Last night (11 Jan) I enjoyed the BBC Natural World programme called, 'Raising Sancho, the giant otter orphan'. It followed the naturalist Carolina Vargas as she 'parented' a rescued baby giant otter 'Sancho' to adulthood.

She showed how, with enough commitment, a human being can act as a surrogate parent to a wild animal and enable it to return to the wild. A generation or two back, such a person would have tamed the otter and kept it as a pet. But, no more. Now, the natural identity of the wild animal is respected, and the purpose of parenting is maturity, independence and freedom.

I wondered whether there were any parallels for those who pastor people? What is their goal, to tame those in their care, or to respect their 'wild' natures, raising them to maturity to flourish in their 'natural habitats'?

What of their methods? Do they, we (for I include myself), take enough care to enter fully into the worlds of those in our care? Carolina caught a lot of piranhas for Sancho and did a lot of swimming with him before he could do this for himself. She loved him and was totally there for him, only finally to let him go. He was not her captive, he was not tamed, yet he remains within her heart. And here is the paradox: not as an animal, but as dear to her as if he were her own child.

Maybe we Christian leaders should stop thinking of ourselves as shepherds and start learning from people like Caroline.

unguarded thoughts

2008-01-10T22:29:00.000Z

There are a lot of questions in these short posts. No apologies for that: this is meant to be an exploratory tool for me, though I really welcome responses and comments.

What I'm wondering about tonight is how to permit myself more 'unguarded thoughts'* and even words. Thought, and particularly Christian thought about God, is so structured that it sometimes seems pointless to me. Or at least unproductive. How will we learn more about God unless we spend more time thinking the not-yet-considered? Even the unthinkable?

God can become a human being, for example. Once that was considered crazy or deeply offensive. Then it happened, or so some of us think.

So, this is an invitation to you, to me, to practice ignoring the censor in our heads. If you see the eyes of a new thought glistening for a moment in the dark, be still, and let it come out. Say out loud that new 'something' before it has even put on the clothes of thought. Surprise yourself with what you already know, wordlessly, thoughtlessly.

For a different take on people's first thoughts, see this article on Google's huge database of search terms, 'The unguarded thoughts of the digital haves ...' by Tom Foremski.

* Unguarded Thoughts (or Thought Unaware) is the title of an intriguing little book by Andrey Sinyavsky, published in English translation in London by Collins/Harvill Press in 1972.

is life working?

2008-01-08T22:27:00.001Z

Was this you? Why? When will you go home? When will you be back here?

Perhaps God has an office too? If so, is God working late tonight? Or, has God gone home to draw the curtains, straighten out the living room, catch The Simpsons and talk a little about the day?

Does God stay at home all evening? Or is it a quick supper and then out, to the pub, to the club, to a friend? God has lots of friends and likes hanging out with them. What do they laugh about together, when work is done?

covenant and sacrifice, or Immanuel

2008-01-07T21:45:00.001Z

In some Christian traditions, the new year starts with a service intended to enable us to renew our commitment to God. Good. But, the way this is most often done is via a 'covenant renewal service', in which our renewed commitment is expressed in the form of a covenant. Not so good.

What is my problem? Well, first, I just feel uncomfortable doing this. It seems heavy handed--God over there, waiting for us to sign away our lives in the form of a blank cheque to be spent any way God chooses. Hmm? Does God not care about our differences, or what we think? Is God, being God, not able to find us fitting and fruitful tasks? Or is God not into seeking win-win arrangements. I think God is; so I don't feel comfortable with this format.

Second, it does not relate to my understanding of God. Is this the 'deal' we have with God--sign up or ship out? Does God like 'making deals'? In whose interest is this deal? Is there anything in the small print I haven't had a chance to go through yet? No, my God does not cut deals. The God I know is already totally committed to me and present with me. 'God (all of God) loved me, and gave his life for me.' And God will be and do whatever God chooses; God is not subject to human control. God is not only love, but also 'wildfire'.

So, third, this metaphor for the divine-human relationship is not appropriate. It carries with it associations of military alliances, of blood sacrifice, of ganging up, of inequity between the partners, of legal language, and so on. I am aware that it is part of the way the Bible expresses the way people ally themselves with God. I've read, studied and preached on the passages. But, I cannot use this idea to define my relationship with God any more. Equally seriously, I cannot use this idea to invite others to 'try God'.

There are many other ideas. God as a close friend for a start. But now, in this post Christmas season of Epiphany, I also like the prophet's name for Jesus: Immanuel, 'God [is] with us.' Now that is a deal that I'm willing to stand on my head for, or shout from the rooftops. Of course, it won't change anything, because God is with us.

how accurate is the map in your head?

2008-01-03T20:37:00.000Z

Today, I read an interesting article* comparing the travel adventures described in ancient Greek novels with Paul's travels in Acts. I was struck by the insight that to understand these journeys, you need to know what map of the world was in the mind of the novelists and their readers. In their minds, the world looked roughly like this map by Eratosthenes (276-194 BCE).

We have different maps of the Med today, but even these are not 'the way it is' but 'the way we think it is'. We may have the physical dimensions right, but what about the rest: how could we possibly represent the whole?

So, I wonder tonight at how the maps in our head prevent us from seeing more of the world as it really is. Maybe the only way we will discover new worlds is to travel without maps?

* Loveday Alexander (2007) '"In Journeyings Often": Voyaging in the the Acts of the Apostles and in Greek Romance,' chap. in Acts in Its Ancient Literary Context, London and New York: T&T Clark.

fifteen things the church can learn from parties

2008-01-02T08:25:00.000Z

Just before the January working world takes over, I want to ponder what the church can learn from parties. Here are the first fifteen things I can think of:

* We go because we are invited, i.e. see ourselves as wanted.
* Customs vary, but many guests enjoy bringing a small gift for the hosts or a contribution to the refreshments.
* We enjoy meeting new people and make an effort to learn their names.
* The place and hosts vary because all can give parties--you don't need a special qualification nor an official permit to give a party.
* There are no time limits on parties, except those mutually agreed by the hosts and guests.
* Busy or tired guests don't have to stay till the end.
* Usually, everyone gets a chance to talk and a chance to listen.
* People enjoy telling stories and jokes.
* If there is room, people sit in comfortable chairs at the start and to get up and dance later.
* Sometimes people flirt, sometimes people fight; emotions come into play.
* They are places where personal and group relationships can be affirmed and developed.
* If the hosts are in fancy dress, the guests are also invited to dress up.
* If there is live music, an organ is not the first or only instrument used.
* People don't usually sit in rows all looking in one direction.
* People of all ages can be at the same party and a few children running around often livens things up.

In the gospels, Jesus' enemies accused him of spending too much time at parties....

across the universe

2007-12-30T22:12:00.000Z

Today has included some time for music. I always try and follow the advice of Brian Wilson: 'Add some music to your day.' Just Beatles all day, and then some Stones this evening. There is so much of it, and so much that is so good (especially from the late 60s/early 70s period). It threatens to burst my head with joy and melancholy. Creativity pouring out, despite the madness and distractions of unimaginable success, wealth and fame. Two groups of mates, egging each other on to greatness. Two writing duos, Lennon and McCartney and the Glimmer Twins, driving each other crazy with their shared passions and complementary gifts.

Nice to see boys working together. A new year's resolution for all those men out there? C'mon boys, let's pull together a bit more.

p.s. But, if you want to hear really great music, you'll have to ask the girls to join you, starting with Joni Mitchell, Bonnie Raitt and McGarrigles.

dance brittania!

2007-12-29T22:21:00.000Z

Not much time to say anything tonight, as the season of parties and mid-winter house maintentance rumbles on.

One of the interesting features of the television schedule this year has been a dance strand, including a useful history of popular dance in Britain over the last hundred years. In my view, BBC4 is now the only UK television channel which offers some critical reflection on popular culture.

For those of you who may have missed this series, it can be viewed on-line via the BBC iPlayer site. (Sadly, access is limited to the UK at present, and downloading is only possible on Windows XP or Vista based computers.) Here is the link to Dance Brittania.

The picture above is of the official announcement of this programme by Illuminations.

Sometime soon I want to get into some more reflection on the spirituality of learning to dance, in preparation for a public lecture on this topic at the University of Winchester next year.

"leaving church: a memoir of faith"

2007-12-26T21:30:00.000Z

I've been reading Barbara Brown Taylor's Leaving Church (HarperSanFrancisco, 2007) over the last few days. It's about how she had to leave her job as a successful Episcopal priest to become more fully human. Her own spiritual growth, survival even, required her to become an 'ordinary person' once again. She needed to learn to take a regular job, know that she herself couldn't fix anyone, stop being so sure about what God is like and be a lot more inclusive of the faith of others.

It's a beautifully written book, if a bit muddled. But, that's okay. She's not setting herself up as an example, she's just telling her story ... so far. If she still sounds a bit of a perfectionist, it seems that she finds it easier to live with herself. And I suspect others find her easier to live with and just as much a help as she was when in public ministry. She's pretty busy speaking and preaching, mind. You can read more about her at her website. You'll see that she's hanging out with some of the familiar names in the US emergent church and that she is well aware of the difference between preaching and writing a memoir.

Here is her present hope for the church, expressed as questions: 'What if people were invited to come tell what they already know of God instead of to learn what they are supposed to believe? What if they were blessed for what they are doing in the world instead of chastened for not doing more in church? What if the church felt more like a way station than a desintation? What if the church's job were to move people out the door instead of trying to keep them in, by convincing them that God needed them more in the world than in the church?' (p. 222).

Surely there are churches out there doing this already? Surely?

colours of night

2007-12-25T18:18:00.000Z

Driving out to Sixpenny Handley across Cranborne Chase the sky at dusk was blazing with winter light. The just-washed air was fresh and soft. It is not surprising that the first signs of Jesus' birth were seen in the night sky. Even in a northern winter, the heavens are full of beauty.

reason for a party!

2007-12-24T14:37:00.000Z

[Pic removed as promised.]

For all those who want to remember the Christmases of their childhood, here is a little nudge from my childhood favourite. If you have a chance today, join me by getting down on your hands and knees to see the view from the right perspective. Crib services are a good place to do this--the fuller and rowdier the better.

While this picture by CAM [of the party at the home for waifs and strays after Father Christmas has finished delivering all the presents] is etched in my memory, it is not my own and so will only be up here till tomorrow--just for fun. If any reader of this blog has an original "child's eye view" picture that I can put in its place, I'll be glad to.

Now, it's time to get on with inviting some friends and neighbours to a party.