Pentecost - The River

Last night was our Pentecost Service. This year we called it 'The River' as the lectionary gospel text was from John 7 where Jesus speaks of the those that come to him knowing the Spirit as a river of living water flowing from within them.

We focussed quite a lot of attention on thirst and thirstiness. The first section of the room was asking questions to enable us to get in touch with our thirstiness (while eating dry crackers). What are we thirsty for?

The second section was drawn from Jeremiah's prophecy where God tells Israel that they have abandoned him the fountain of living water and dug for themselves broken and dirty cisterns - in other words they have tried to satisfy their own thirstiness. I made new labels for small water bottles that I filled with dirty water to represent this:


Here's 3 of them - 'Be Popular', 'Work Harder', and 'Look Good' but there were others too.
So the idea was to think about the ways we try to satisfy our own thirstiness.

As we moved deeper into the theme text there was an opportunity to consider what it meant for us to 'come to Christ' - what does that mean, how do we connect with Christ, what helps us etc.

Then we moved to the river we had made out of material and relieved our cracker-driven thirst with cups of cool, clean water (with the words of Christ 'come to me and drink' on them).

The river flows out into the world - our intercessions and offering were focussed on WaterAid and the Burma cyclone - and then we finished with Communion and anointing those who wanted it with oil blessed at the Cathedral in Holy Week.

Home's Pentecost Service

As usual, if you live in Oxford you are more than welcome to join us for our Pentecost service this coming Sunday at 5pm.
Directions are on our website here.

mags

Couple of very decent mags out at the moment I thought I would bring to your attention.
Firstly, Time's annual '100 Most Influential People' edition is well worth a look. I got it for the first time last year and found it very interesting. There are some surprises this year - Peter Gabriel? Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie? Mariah Carey?!! But good to see Radiohead on there (and of course Steve Jobs). You can see the complete list here.
Secondly, Creative Review have their double issue Annual for 2008 out (can't figure out why they don't do it at the end of the year though). If you're interested in visual communication then it's a must -have really. Only just got it yesterday and haven't had a chance to have a proper look yet so can't do more than alert you to its availability! Enjoy.

My Fortieth Year

I celebrated my 39th birthday on Monday...or rather I was due to go out and celebrate it with Pippa but she got sick early that morning and spent the rest of the day incapacitated. Shame.
Then I got sick the next day (yesterday) - double shame!!
But it was good to be with friends for posh breakfast out on Saturday morning instead.
Very pleased to receive the complete West Wing ('Collector's Edition') on the day itself. Still the best thing ever on TV IMHO.
Also pleased to receive a couple of books - 'Chrysalis' (Alan Jamieson) and 'Remembering our Future' (Andrew Walker and Luke Bretherton).

many streams, one river...where is God for you?

We're spending some time in Home at the moment - in our prayer focus - on the different streams of spirituality that make up the river of Christian history. We're using Richard Foster's book - Streams of Living Water - as a resource.

One of the things that has intrigued me as I have been thinking about it is that each of the traditions seem to locate God differently - at least that's how it occurs to me. Of course they would all say that God is omnipresent but I think one of the things that marks the different streams out from each other is the place they conceive of God in..

To use Foster's categories it looks like this.....

The Evangelical Tradition primarily finds God in the scriptures/the bible.
The Contemplative Tradition primarily finds God within - the inner journey, Christ within you etc.
The Social-Justice tradition primarily finds God in the poor.
The Sacramental Tradition primarily finds God in the physical or in material things.
The Charismatic/Pentecostal tradition chases God who, for them, is like the wild wind - unpredicatable and hard to pin down.

Most of us would want to affirm all of these possibilities, but what's your default? When you're not theologising too hard where would you most readily expect to encounter God?

Ian Adams - Pace Bene

One of the people in my life I am truly grateful to God for is Ian Adams. He was gathering and shaping what has become the mayBe community here in Oxford around the same time that I was doing the same for the Home community. So it feels like we have been brothers in arms for a number of years now and I have been increasingly thankful for his comradeship. He continues to be an inspiration to me.

At this point in our journeys both Ian and I find ourselves needing to find alternate sources of income to supplement the stipends we receive for leading our communities. We are both determined to not see this as a backwards step but an opening up of new possibilities - and who knows where the wild wind of the Spirit will blow us.

I am not quite ready to say what I hope to do yet (more in due course) but Ian is just launching a very exciting new aspect to his ministry - Pace Bene, which is Ian's offering of himself as a guide, mentor, sounding-board, retreat-leader, consultant, or trainer to individuals and nascent emerging communities of faith. I think he'll be brilliant at it and would highly recommend him to anyone who could use this sort of input.

Do go and check out his new site : www.ianadams.info

God is nowhere/God is now here - The Road to Emmaus

Enjoyed speaking at Home yesterday evening on the Road to Emmaus which was the gospel reading for the day. I borrowed Douglas Coupland's phrase from his book 'Hey! Nostradamus' - 'God is nowhere, God is now here' and made a little video loop that played while I was speaking. The gist was that following the path of Christ means cycles of absence of presence and absence. Our faith journey starts off very solid and certain - we think we know what God is about - but almost always seems to move into times of disillusionment and doubt - just like Clopas and his friend on the road to Emmaus. Christ returns to us (did he ever leave?) but it's often different to how it was before - these disciples who thought they knew him failed to recognise him.

How often does God go unrecognised in our lives?

The other thing I love about the story - as I heard Bishop Steven (Reading) say - these disciples are actually going the wrong way! They have turned their backs on Jerusalem and given up on Christ. And Christ comes to them on THIS road.

Whichever road we are on is our Emmaus road and God comes to us there.

more crazy weather

fun in the snow yesterday morning but you've got to wonder - snow in April?

Music update

really thankful for some fantastic new music I've been listening to recently. thought I would give you some recommendations...

I've already mentioned the new Goldfrapp album, 'Seventh Tree' - it's fantastic stuff. I think someone described it as pastoral, electronic folk which seems about right to me. Less glam-rock than some of their other stuff, a bit more song based. Love it.

I stumbled across Cara Dillon on the Transatlantic Sessions on BBC4 where they get the finest Celtic folk guys together with some of the finest American bluegrass/country musicians and put them in a big house in Scotland and see what happens. I was totally blown away by her voice and found her album, After the Morning, for £1.50 on play.com - it's fantastic stuff - beautiful songs, great musicianship..it'll be too folky for some of you but I absolutely love it. She's married to Seth Lakeman's brother who plays piano for her. Hoping to see her live later in the year.

Young Mountain by This Will Destroy You is one I discovered through LastFM which is a fab internet radio thingamy - you can type in an artist you like and it will create a playlist of similar artists. I was listening to artists similar to The Album Leaf and this came up - it's kinda post-rock, Sigur Ros type stuff - no vocals though - quite atmospheric but guitar based. I bought it for a few quid on iTunes. Check it out.


A little while back Pete Ward lent me an album by Ralph Stanley called 'Shine On' - it's really grown on me even if I can only take it in small doses - it's real deep bluegrass/American country singing - old time gospel stuff. Listening to the Robert Plant/Alison Krauss album also led me down this path. Good stuff - give it a try.
Bought the Jack Johnson album, Sleep Through the Static, for the missus on Mother's Day but of course I've ended up listening to it myself a bit and like it. The title track is the standout one for me.

Ok music fans, that's your lot for now!

Easter Update

we had a cracking Holy Week and Easter.

On Good Friday we had our Stations of the Cross installation and eucharist, the second year we've done this. 14 people contributed the different stations and as usual they were surprising, intriguing and thought-provoking. It was great to have the space open for a couple of hours for people to engage with the Stations at their own pace, and great to have quite a number of guests and visitors.

On Easter day we gathered for a champagne breakfast at Chris and Katharine's house and afterwards had a short easter eucharist. When that had finished we got our coats on and headed down to the river where we shared in a corporate renewal of baptismal vows for the year to come - committing ourselves to another year of trying to live in the way of Christ. It's important to point out that we didn't get into the river! We used bottled water and it turned into a bit of a water fight.

It was great that some people made a deliberate choice to be around rather than going away (it's always struck me as a little odd that at the high point of the church year everyone goes away and we find it difficult to be together!).

Anyway, I really appreciated sharing the journey of Holy Week and Easter with our little community.

Happy Easter

Happy Easter everyone!

Subverting the Empire

Very pleased that Oxford will be one of the venues hosting Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat on Weds June 18th this year where they will be presenting us with material from their important book - 'Colossians Remixed - Subverting the Empire'.

I picked up a copy recently but haven't read it yet but a number of years ago I read some of Walsh's earlier work - most notably 'Truth is Stranger than it used to be'.

Anyway - highly recommended stuff. Book here.

At a Maunday Thursday service of ministerial recommitment at the Cathedral

Palm Sunday - 2 Pathways

really enjoyed our palm sunday service yesterday and I enjoyed preparing it even more. It was one of those ones, for me, where the texts really come alive.
The 'lightbulb coming on' moment was when I put the gospel reading (Matthew 21: 1-11) next to the epistle reading (Philippians 2: 5-11). It was in the contrast between the 2 readings that I had an 'aha' moment as to what was going on.

In the triumphal entry we see, what we called in our service, 'the path of ascent' : the invitation of the crowds to Jesus to take the path of power, success, prestige, strength. These things aren't always necessarily wrong but Jesus wouldn't be defined by them. It was inconceivable to the crowds on Palm Sunday that Christ would 'give himself up to death' i.e. go to the cross.
In the epistle reading we see Christ instead taking the 'path of descent' - giving up human notions of power and success for something so counterintuitive to us that we just don't know what to do with it.

And of course - the story of Christ is our story. What happens to Christ happens to us.

In our service we created two stone-lined pathways - one littered with palm branches, the other with palm crosses. On the first one - the path of ascent - we had words associated with ascent on pieces of paper for people to pick up. On the second one - the path of descent - people were invited to put down the values of ascent and pick up the values of descent.

lay down success, pick up apparent failure
lay down status, pick up lowliness
lay down significance, take up insignificance
lay down power, take up trust
lay down pride, take up humility
lay down strength, take up weakness
lay down ego, live out of a different centre
lay down privilege, seek solidarity with the least

The palm branches need to become palm crosses.

The path of descent led to the altar - i.e. leads to death - where we celebrated communion, the great continuing participation in Christ's death where we too die - we fall back into the arms of God in the hope of resurrection.

is Rugby like Fight Club but with better rules? (i.e. you are allowed to talk about rugby!)

Overjoyed yesterday to see Wales win the Six Nations. I nailed my colours to the mast at the beginning of the campaign so no one can accuse me of just supporting the winning team. Wales were unbeaten and easily the best team in the tournament.

Watching the Six Nations this year has made me think about issues connected with masculinity, violence, physical aggression etc. I really must watch Fight Club again!! Seeing some of the ferocious tackles flying in - literally flattening players - made me aware of how cossetted my life is...how unphysical my life is - a lot of it is lived in my head.

Looking after a little girl is quite is quite a physical task, and of course it's not possible to not live in a body...and I definitely don't want to go down the whole 'Wild at Heart'/John Elderidge trip (and I'm also not asking you to hit me next time you see me!!) - but I imagine the raw physicality of the game for those players yesterday - even the getting hurt - was quite exhilarating - and that's something a lot of guys don't have going on any more.

Like I say - I probably need to go and watch Fight Club again. Any thoughts anyone?

coffee wars

Just been up to Summertown - an area in North Oxford - to run some errands and was quite amused to see that a new Starbucks has opened up right opposite Costa - and they are really at war with each other...wandering baristas move up and down the pavement on their respective sides of the street handing out free sample of food (of course I tried both - I was a little peckish!) with a big bright smile, tribally marked balloons are flying around outside each store. But you have to make a choice don't you? so I sit writing this with my take-out cup of americano from.....well, that would be telling.

palm sunday

I did a quick flier for our Palm Sunday service a week ago (see below) but as I've worked on the service over the last few days it's become much more focussed.
I'll hopefully blog more about it on Monday but here's the new flier and, of course, if you live locally (i.e. Oxford) you are more than welcome to join us.

help needed - palm branches

i'm in the middle of planning this sunday's palm sunday gathering and I really need to source some full size palm branches. I have palm crosses but need some branches. They are not easy to find!! Does anyone know where I could find some? Garden centres?

talk about leaving it to the last minute!!

Home Easter Programme

Goldfrapp - Seventh Tree

It's really, really good.