Tanzania Responses

A very helpful response to the Primates meeting by Dr Katharine Jefferts Schori, Primate of the American Episcopal church, can be found here. I like the grace and balance of this woman. I think she is wise and we should listen to her.

ash wednesday

Great hOME service for Ash Wednesday last night. Some of us had to go home and sleep it off as you can see from the picture above!

We've done the whole imposition of ashes thing for the last three years but last night it seemed to be particularly powerful for me.
When Andy, who was standing next to me, 'ashed' me and said the traditional words over me - "remember you are but dust, and to dust you shall return" - I found it very moving. Those words can seem quite depressing but last night they were words of real freedom for me.
In a world where there is enormous pressure to make something of ourselves, to be significant...where we so often have over-inflated ideas about our own importance - there is tremendous freedom to be found in being reminded that we are but dust and to dust we shall return.
It's all radically okay - as Richard Rohr reminds us. We are not the saviour of the world, it doesn't all depend on us, and our lives are not more important or more significant than anyone else's.
For me - to be reminded of that - particularly having just returned from a Diocesan thing where there was a certain expectation for us to paint a pretty picture of what we're doing and in a sense justify our existence - was enormously liberating.

Kinda takes the pressure off don't you think?

can we get a witness?

"..the church's credibility is being increasingly undermined in a world that is looking for strong witness from its international religious leaders".

It comes to something when you read something like that on the front page of today's Times.

one I love from the one I love

So it was Valentine's day the other day. I tried to be romantic - the dozen red roses went down well - after all, Pip's been through a hell of a lot on our behalf recently!
In return Pip bought me a Van Morrison live DVD. It's his first official DVD release (if you don't count his appearance in the awesome Scorcese 1976 concert film 'The Last Waltz').

What's fantastic about this is that it's from his 'golden' era - when he was at the absolute top of his game. Most Van fans would say this was between about 1974 and 1980. It's a double DVD set - both from the Montreux festival - one set from 1974 and one from 1980. I've only watched the 1980 set so far but it is absolutely red hot. His band are amazing and the sound quality is superb.

Anyone who knows me well knows that Van is probably my all time favourite artist.
In fact I used to have a 'Van Morrison' test when it came to women! If a girl didn't like Van Morrison I reckoned that said a lot about the kind of person she was and the chances were we weren't going to make it. I'm happy to say that Pip passed the test with flying colours. Before we were even going out with each other she got us a couple of tickets to go and see him. That would have been about 1998.

And, yesterday, I managed to get a couple of returns for his sold-out Oxford show this April a couple of weeks before my birthday. It'll be the 5th time I've seen him. He's way past his best now - he's old and even more grumpy and never performs without his dark glasses and old bluesman style hat. And he never talks to the audience. But he's still a living legend if you ask me.

update: it occurred to me that some of you may have been persuaded by my glowing praise to check Van Morrison out. And perhaps you need a pointer as to where to begin. In my opinion 'Into the Music' (1979) is his finest album (side 2 particularly) but you may also want to check out the classic 'Astral Weeks' (1968) when he was probably at his most mystical. Or there's 'Moondance' (1970) which was the first Van album I bought and contains some classic tracks. And there all cheap these days too! Enjoy.

Book plug & a word on the use of Liturgy

One of the things I am most thankful for in terms of my spiritual formation over the last 5 years is the discovery of liturgy - both the liturgy of our gathered times (for those of us in hOME this means our weekly Eucharist) and also the daily rhythm of fixed hour prayer throughout the week.

For those of us who have grown up in the evangelical world it kinda feels like there was a big family argument before we were born and we grew up being told that our great uncle was a really bad man and we shouldn't have anything to do with him. Then as we got older we found out for ourselves that actually he wasn't a bad man at all, in fact he had a lot of wisdom.

Man, am I glad we are learning to be post-protestant!

Anyway, there are loads of great resources out there. The hOME Chapter has midday prayer as part of it's Rule of Life, and each member of Chapter receives the Church of England's slimline 'Time to Pray' which is helpful. I also find Phyllis Tickle's 3 volume set (above) - The Divine Hours - to be fantastic (the Prayers for Springtime volume has just started at the beginning of Feb). She has 4 forms of prayer for each day - Morning, Midday, Vespers, and Compline. And what's really great is that all the text is printed out in each form so there's no flipping from one page to another.

Vaux in London have also started an online resource for the sharing of new liturgy . It's called The Open Office. Check it out.

And for those of you who've never seen the appeal or benefit of liturgy I would say this: it takes time...time to get used to it, time to allow the rhythm of it to seep into your bones, time to get past feeling like it's just reading words off a page. Like some of the most exquisite things - it can be an acquired taste. But 4000+ years of Judaeo-Christian practice can't be wrong surely?

I always found it intriguing that some really low church, charismatic, house-church types, who bemoaned the use of liturgy (some of them left our little church largely because of it) because it apparently wasn't spontaneous enough would quite happily sing the same songs, with the same set words, week after week. Never did understand that!

another anglican political blog post!

This blog is not known for it's comments on the political machinations of the Anglican church - but all of that's about to change...well at least for today. And I might even throw in a bit of theology too!
The Primates meeting - i.e. the global gathering of the leaders/archbishops of each province - has been going on the last few days in Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania (on the left is a pic of Rowan - our beloved archbish and Peter Akinola - archbishop of Nigeria and one of the leading conservative voices in global anglicanism).
As you might have expected, the big topic of conversation was 'the gay issue' - and particularly whether or not the American church should get kicked out of the anglican communion for not towing the party line.

Now - my thought it this: why can't we just simply agree to disagree on this subject? Why do we have to do the typical protestant thing and walk away from each other if we don't agree? Monty Python fans out there will remember the famous scene - "splitters!" - from the Life of Brian which seems relevant at this point (an excerpt from the script is about a third of the way down this page if you need to refresh your memory!).


Some people in the anglican communion want to give full blessing to homosexuals - including same sex blessings and ordination of gay priests/bishops. Some don't. Why can't we agree to differ and preserve our unity?

I think the answer lies in the difference between first order and second order issues. If, for instance, you don't think this is a first order issue, you can probably find it within yourself to say, 'ok - we see this one differently, but let's keep the main thing the main thing and get on with the job'.

If, however, you do see it as a first order issue - alongside things like the divinity of Christ, the doctrine of the trinity etc., you will probably want to say something like 'it's impossible for us to maintain our unity because the whole basis of our unity is threatened'.

For the conservatives, it seems that it's not so much a case of the issue itself - i.e. is it 'ok to be gay' - that makes it a first order issue, it has more to do with what the issue reveals about how we handle scripture that is at stake i.e. 'the bible says quite clearly that it is not ok to be gay so those of you who say that it is do not give the bible it's proper authoritative place and therefore we have no basis for unity'.

But - to these conservatives (Akinola et al) who are pushing for a split - I would ask: are we sure that it's that simple? I mean, doesn't our progressive hermeneutic on issues like the bible's position on slavery or the place of women open up the possibility (I'm just saying possibility) that a similarly progressive hermeneutic on homosexuality is a possibility?

That, for me, firmly places the issue in the second order category, rather than the first, and enables me to adopt an 'it's possible to agree to disagree' position which also enables us to preserve our common bond.

you say potato, I say potato...er...

...um...that phrase doesn't really work in text form does it?!

Anyway, just wanted to have a little rant about the use of certain phrases I'm hearing more and more around the church - particularly the Church of England - at the moment.

The first one, is 'biblical orthodoxy'. As in: 'those of us who are committed to biblical orthodoxy' etc. etc. Ok, right, so what you're saying is that some people are going out of their way to be biblically heretical? No - what you mean, is something along the lines of 'those who are committed to interpreting the bible like we do'.

Is it possible - just an outside chance maybe - that people who have different views to us when it comes to theology and biblical interpretation, hold those views out of fidelity to Christ? i.e. they love God and they're trying to be faithful. Why do we just assume that we love God more and take the bible more seriously and are more faithful than those who disagree with us.

The second phrase that's getting up my nose at the moment is 'gospel ministry'. As in, 'we want our church to be known for it's gospel ministry'. Really this phrase is code used by conservatives meaning that they do a lot of expository preaching in their services. So, are those of us who don't have a 45 minute expository sermon each week on one of the vowels in a verse from one of Paul's epistles, not engaged in 'gospel ministry'?

Is it possible - just an outside chance maybe - that people not in conservative evangelical churches are also concerned to announce the gospel of God's love and desire for restoration for the whole of his creation?

ok - rant over! Maybe I should stop reading the Church Times!

Wolfgang's Vault

If, like me, you happen to be a fan of 70's music (Dylan, The Band, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Neil Young etc.) when you discover Wolfgang's Vault you will feel like you've been locked in the proverbial sweet shop. It is the most amazing collection of live recordings - mostly from that era - imaginable.
The story goes that legendary concert promoter Bill Graham, (definitely not to be confused with Billy Graham!) made live recordings off the mixing desk of many of the concerts at his venues (such as the Filmore East in New York, the Filmore West and Winterland (venue of the Last Waltz) in San Francisco, all in all some of the most important concerts in rock history).
After a long legal wrangle over the rights of these recordings they are now available to stream for free from a very high quality site. It's called Wolfgang's Vault because Bill Graham's original name was Wolfgang Grajonca.
Anyway, I've just listened to an amazing Van Morrison set from New York in 1978 while I've been working this afternoon. Get on over there and register for free if you too feel like someone born at the wrong time!

Into Great Silence

I've been waiting for the opportunity to see this film - which looks more like a 2 and a half hour meditation on the monastic life to me....(no soundtrack, no voiceover) - and I was half thinking that I might need to go down to London to see it. But I'm pleased to say that there is now going to be a one-off screening in Oxford on Sunday March 11th at 3.30pm at the Phoenix. I'm hoping a load of us from hOME will go together.
See the trailer here. It looks stunning.

time to start blogging again!

it's been a long time I know, but I know you'll understand. We've been slowly settling into family life and it's great - highly recommended (although don't quote me on that at 4am!). They say that it takes a community to raise a child and we've been really blessed by our little community here - with people bringing meals round and that sort of thing.
More domestic updates to come no doubt.

coming home

Pippa and Lily-Anna are coming home today. Very excited about this and both Pip and I are slightly apprehensive. So far there have been people down the hall (i.e. the midwives at the hospital) anytime we have wanted to check anything etc. Now it's just going to be the two of us sharing our ignorance. Please remember the three of us in your prayers!

iPhone or iFlop

I've just finished watching Steve Job's keynote address at Macworld, San Francisco (had to watch it in 3 goes cos it was sooo long). And there was at least one moment where it's similarity to a Benny Hinn crusade was quite freaky (the moment where Jobs announced the iPhone - there was whooping and hollering, hands in the air and Jobs on the stage had them eating out of the palm of his hand...I'm sure if he'd have done an altar call then people would have signed up to whatever he wanted them to!)

Anyway, here's a few thoughts on the products:
I'm slightly disappointed with Apple TV (or iTV as it was previously known) - it seems like it's just a box to enable you to watch your iTunes content on your TV instead of on your computer. Which is fine - and it's got a nice user interface as you would expect from an Apple product - but if it had also incorporated a genuine PVR hard disk recorder (like TiVo or Sky+) then it would really have been something. Apple TV has just 40GB of hard disk space - used to store movies and other content which you have sent to it. I've just bought a hard disk PVR with 160GB of disk space on it, and it can record 2 channels at once while you are watching playback of another recording as well as a whole host of other features, and it cost considerably less than what I imagine Apple TV will sell for.

Secondly, the iPhone. Now this does look good, really good. And I'm sure it's going to give my Blackberry a real run for it's money. A couple of questions though:
1. I'm not sure about the touch screen when it comes to inputting text. One of the reasons I switched to Blackberry was that I really went off my last smartphone because it only had a touch screen. Over time the screen became increasingly unresponsive and letter recognition became more and more inaccurate. I really like the 'plasticky little keys' on my Blackberry that Steve Jobs was ridiculing and have found them to be a much faster way of typing than the touch screen.
2. The memory size. 4GB or 8GB are the iPhone options. When it was first announced I seriously thought it would mean I could upgrade both my phone and my iPod at the same time (I have an 'old' black and white, non-photo, non-video iPod). But if the maximum memory I can get on it is 8GB then I'm not sure it will work for me as an iPod. I would have hoped they could have found a way to fit 30GB of memory in but they are using flash memory so perhaps it's just impossible to offer that much space with flash.
I still want one though!!!

Lily-Anna Rees

I am very proud to announce the birth of our daughter Lily-Anna, born Sunday evening at 7.50pm weighing 8lb 7oz. Mother and baby are both doing really well. Here are a few photos from when she was about 17 hours old courtesy of Suzie who came to visit yesterday (I'm not as freaked out as I look, honest!). She has posted a whole set on flickr for all those who are interested here.

the waiting game

our baby is now 4 days overdue and we are getting pretty bored waiting around for it to make an appearance. we have used the time constructively though - we've managed to get through a whole season of 24 (season 5) which was great quality and utterly addictive as usual.

so the race to get the house finished before the baby arrived was not as much of a race as we thought it was! but it's pretty much done now.

apparently there are some fabled suggestions as to how to encourage the onset of labour - curry and sex being two of them. Although, as comedian Jeff Green pointed out, having to make a choice between those two might be the reason you got yourself into this situation in the first place!

repentance and faith

This week has been crazy - trying to get the house finished before the baby comes. The plan was something like this:
Mon & Tues - Tiler, Weds - Plasterer, Thurs - Plumber, Fri - Carpet Fitter, Weekend - baby. We're about half way through and we're not too far off schedule. We're really hoping the baby delays it's arrival till after the carpet's down though!
Anyway, last Sunday night at hOME I shared some thoughts on the day's gospel text, which included John the Baptist's words - 'bear fruit in keeping with repentance'. I said that repentance and faith seemed to form the core of both John's and Jesus's proclamation. My problem is that we seem to have changed the content of those two key elements. We have turned repentance into 'feeling sorry for wrong things' and faith into 'mental assent to a set of concepts'. I don't think either are correct.
Repentance is an act of the will, before it is ever an emotion, that enables us to 'speak the same as God' i.e. to call something as God calls it. And I don't think it's primarily about right or wrong actions, but true or false identities. When we sin we act out of a false identity - not who we are in God. And when we are holy we are acting out of our true identity, and we are living the future life now. It's not some arbitrary list of do's and don't's.
Faith is not about mental assent to a set of doctrinal statements (even the devils believe in that sense) but about action - following Jesus into transformed identity and reality. It's not my place to judge but I think that's why such a huge proportion on the last census identified themselves as 'Christian' - because we have ended up with a concept of believing without following. We have separated the two.
If we are turning (repentance) to follow Christ (faith) we can expect to see change in our lives - fruit in keeping with repentance. If we are no different now to how we used to be this raises some serious questions.
It wasn't a light-hearted discussion in hOME that night! But important stuff nevertheless I think. The podcast will be available here as soon as I manage to locate my firewire lead in our building site of a house!

The Nativity Story

Pip and I went to see The Nativity Story this morning. It was an odd mixture - it was earthy and gritty for the most part, which was good, but then there were some oddly cheesy moments - the birth scenes (John and Jesus) were a bit unbelievable and the less said about the star over Bethlehem the better. Also, I was slightly disappointed with how they did the angels - they could have done something creative but they just went for the old 'guy wearing white clothes' option.
Having said all that, I did find it moving and I am not ashamed to say that it made me cry more than once. Other things I thought:
- we don't give Joseph enough credit. He doesn't get much air time in church but his part of the story was so important.
- the fragility of the whole thing. There were any number of points that the whole thing could have turned to custard (let's not get into the theological points hidden within that sentence!)
- the sheer stupendousness of the whole idea...God becoming a baby....what?
- the in utero Christ. I feel pretty familiar with the baby Jesus, the child Jesus, the man Jesus, the crucified Jesus, the resurrected Jesus etc. but I haven't given much time or thought to Jesus in the womb. There's a lovely moment when Mary feels the foetus move for the first time which I found very moving.

Anyway, go and see it if you can.

'9'

We had another very good Service of 9 Lessons and Carols last Sunday evening. It's become a bit of a highlight of the Advent season for us. It was great to have so many guests and visitors too. As usual we had quite an eclectic mix of Lessons - some video stuff (I particularly liked Janine's use of Sigur Ros's Glosoli video for the Magi Lesson - it's an amazing video well worth checking out if you haven't seen it), a dance, and lots of other stuff. The above photo (from Rich) is of Martin doing his Lesson - he used a clip from the film 'The Believer' about a young Jewish guy who becomes a neo-Nazi! Pippa did an amazing meditation reflecting on her current experience of being pregnant and relating that to Mary's experience - it had at least one person in tears (well done wifey!). And of course the mulled wine and mince pies topped things off in the only really appropriate way!

New Bishop of Oxford

Today the identity of the next Bishop of Oxford has finally been announced (we were expecting an announcement at the end of September). John Pritchard is currently suffragan Bishop of Jarrow in the North East (so good monastic connections there with the Venerable Bede!) but I must confess I haven't heard of him before. Anyway, I just saw the local TV news item about it and he sounded ace. He was only on for a few seconds but used the time to say that he saw himself as a leader in mission (and said that's what he thought a Bishop was) and that he wanted to see the best of 'continuing' churches but also wanted to place an emphasis on 'new expressions' of church. So, we're off to a good start I think. If anyone wants to find out more about him (particularly Oxford types I guess) there's info here.

'9' tomorrow

Tomorrow night at hOME we are having our Carol service - a Service of 9 Lessons and Carols (with the Lessons being re-interpreted by 9 different members of the hOME community). We nicked the idea of Jonny/Grace in London (though we do it slightly differently). It's a highlight of the Advent season for us. If you're around the Oxford area do come and join us for some Carol singing and some mulled wine and mince pies afterwards. 6.30pm at St Alban's on Charles Street.

blogger beta

there have been gaps in my recent blogging - apologies faithful readers, I will try to plug some of these soon. But, as those of you who visit the site will see - I have now migrated to blogger beta (they finally let me on to it) - and this will explain to those of you who use RSS readers why all my recent posts have been republished.
It is a real step forward for Blogger as a blog engine, and easily enables you to add sidebar categories and other content.
I thought I would take this opportunity to change the strapline of my blog. Since I began it a few years ago it has been 'would the last one out of the church please switch off the lights'. But this statement doesn't accurately reflect my heart. It sounds like I have given up on the church but actually I love the church (even though it does drive me nuts sometimes).
So I have changed it to 'slowly learning to live life with God, and others, for the sake of the world' - which is a much closer reflection of where I, and us as a church community I think, are at these days.