'9'

We had a great end to the hOME year last night at our carol service - a service of 9 lessons and carols - (idea knicked from Jonny and Grace's re-interpretation of this old tradition). We borrowed a fantastic old Oxford Movement/Anglo-Catholic revival church (as it was set back from the road some of our guys made a brilliant illuminated walkway using tea-lights in jam jars to lead to the church door) for the night (perfect ambience for some pre-service Sigur Ros), lit it, fired up the projectors, dusted off the mirror-ball, and then 9 members of the hOME community re-interpreted the 9 traditional readings.
They were all great - but I particularly enjoyed Jules's use of 'Planet Telex' by Radiohead in the first reading (from Genesis) - "everything is broken, everyone is broken", Esme's dramatic soundscape (which she made herself using Pro Tools) of what the shepherds might have heard on the hillside the night the angels appeared, Chris's imaginative story helping us to put ourselves in Mary's place, and Julet's movement piece (to Nitin Sawnhey) where she danced while holding a light and started high up on the balcony and then moved down and in amongst the congregation to represent Christ the light of the world coming to earth and presencing himself amongst us.
But mentioning these items particularly makes it sound like the others weren't any good, which of course is not true. It's just that some of the pieces impacted me more than others.
Tom did a great job on the music front - unearthing some fantastic re-workings of Christmas carols by electronic composer Mars Lasar (you can find him if you search in iTunes) as well as contributing some of his own pieces. So we ended up singing 9 re-worked carols too which was great.
That was our last service of the year and it felt like a good end to an eventful 12 months.
more pictures are available here.