well done America!

Very pleased with the outcome of last night's vote. I stayed up till 130am watching the early results come in and would have liked to have stayed up later but today would have been a write-off.

Anyway - delighted that Obama has won (and a McCain/Palin victory would have been unthinkable but I appreciated McCain's graciousness in defeat).

A couple of notes of caution however....firstly, as my friend Chris Langston says, we perhaps have to be a little cautious about anyone - however talented - that makes it to the top of American politics. Perhaps this is similar to the old adage about winning the rat race and still being a rat.
Secondly, this victory is perhaps similar to how we in the UK felt with the arrival of Tony Blair. And that didn't exactly work out brilliantly did it?!

Still - I am genuinely relieved at the result and am hopeful that Obama will reposition America in world affairs so that it is seen as a country that makes the world a better and safer place and not the opposite any more.

Cara Dillon

Cara Dillon has been one of my 'finds' of the last year. She has one of the most exquisitely beautiful voices I have ever heard. She'll be too folky for some of you but I absolutely love her stuff.
Anyway - Pip and I had tickets to see her at the Carling Academy here in Oxford back in June. The gig was cancelled and rescheduled for last night. So we finally managed to get babysitters (thanks Jim and Mary!!) and went over - got there for 815pm only to find her half way through her set!!
'Gigs aren't what they used to be' I was thinking (finding it incredible that a headline act would be on stage at 750pm) and then we realised that in fact two gigs had been shunted together and that actually Cara was now playing as the support act for Glenn Tilbrook (ex 'Squeeze' singer). We were not happy (having paid £30 for the tickets).

Anyway - I went over and chatted to Sam Lakeman (Cara's husband and band member) who was at the merchandise stand. He was very apologetic and I managed to blag a free CD of Cara's new album (which isn't in the shops till the New Year apparently). He also said we should ask for our money back! So we went to the box office and talked to the manager who gave us £30 in cash! To top it off he put us on the guest list for Seth Lakeman next Tuesday! (which I can't actually go to cos of Blah! Oxford - but nevertheless...)

So let's do some accounting....
-
cancelled gig
missed half of this gig
+
money back
free CD
guest list for Seth Lakeman
we heard half of her set anyway

So by my reckoning we are up!

Anyway - you can hear more of the beautiful and very talented Ms Dillon at her Myspace page here.

Steve Croft is moving on from Fresh Expressions

It's been announced this morning that Steve Croft who heads up 'Fresh Expressions' is to be the next Bishop of Sheffield. Fresh Expressions are announcing who is to take over his job next week.

I've just started a one-day-a-week job with Fresh Expressions - working with Ian Mobsby on content for their website. I don't work directly with Steve but I can see he's done a great job over the last 4 years of promoting Fresh Expressions of church across the country.

Read the full story here.

Richard Rohr webcast on Emerging Church

Richard Rohr - one of my spiritual teachers - is doing a live webcast on Saturday November 8th at 4pm (UK time) on the title 'What is the Emerging Church'. There is a suggested donation of $5 (£2.70) for what I am sure will be 90 mins of wisdom. For more info and to book your place go here.

Coupland's Law

I remember reading an interview with Douglas Coupland a few years ago. In it he said that each morning he would go and buy a selection of newspapers and glance quickly at the headline on each one - if they were all different he knew we were ok for another day; if they were all the same we're screwed.

Using Coupland's law it would appear we (or more precisely the global economy) is screwed.

Free electronica!

Electronica fans amongst you might be interested to know that I stumbled upon some quite beautiful IDM (intelligent dance music - apparently it's a genre) (thanks to Last.fm) the other day by a musician called 'Esem'. He has an album ('Scateren') available on a Creative Commons license for free download. It's lovely stuff and will probably feature in some of our worship sometime soon.
The only problem is that it's in .ogg format so you will need to convert it to mp3 to play it in iTunes. On a mac this is relatively simple - just download a free bit of software called SoX Wrap which will perform the conversion for you. Windows users you're on your own I'm afraid.
So - get on over to here and get hold of a top free album, and don't say I never give you anything.

the lectionary

The Lectionary (for the uninitiated - the lectionary is a set of readings from scripture for each day of the year) has become an important part of my spiritual practice. If you have an electronic calendar of some kind (iPhone, Palm etc.) and want to have the readings automatically appear on your device (just the references not the full text) then there's a handy, free, file you can download from here.

reimagining the good life

The most helpful thing I took from the evening with Tom Sine (see post below) at the CMS house recently was his call for Christians to 'reimagine the good life' (sorry, I couldn't resist the pic - used to love that show when I was a kid!).

He said that where we seemed to have ended up with (as Christians in the West) is with lives largely shaped (in terms of values, aspirations, lifestyle choices etc.) by consumer culture with a little weekend spirituality tacked on.
In other words - our vision of what the good life is is pretty much the same as anyone elses.

We need to reimagine what living the good life looks like - and paint some pictures that imaginatively express and celebrate a different set of values.

I wonder whether this might be one answer to my earlier question of the missing interim models i.e. how do we go about creating community when we don't live together or very near each other. I wonder whether community is one of those things that happens as a by-product of something else, rather than a goal in itself (and if that's true then the phrase 'intentional christian community' perhaps isn't that helpful!). Perhaps we will see a greater depth of community happening when together we reimagine the good life.

So - an example of this might be the following: a reimagined good life might involve a desire to grow more of our own food. So we might do this with other people e.g. we might share an allotment etc. as we do so we find that we are living more deeply in community with the people we share the allotment with. But we didn't set out to deepen our community, we set out to grow more of our own food.

So maybe if you make 'community' an end in itself it's very difficult to acheive?

Harvest Supper this Sunday

This Sunday we are having our harvest supper. We celebrated harvest for the first time last year and it felt like a good thing to do so we're going to make it part of our yearly cycle. We are asking people to bring home-made or unprocessed food and canned food for the local food bank. We're going to have our service around a big pot-luck meal. Looking forward to it. Feel free to come along if you live locally.

'modern life is rubbish' (an occasional series of things that annoy me)

People listening to music on the speaker of their mobile phone. It's
ridiculous.

StillPoint recommences next week

Back in June we trialled a Monday night session we called 'StillPoint' which is a meditation class/group designed specifically for people who are 'spiritual-but-not-religious' at a local cafe.
We've taken a break for the summer but we are beginning the sessions again next Monday night.
If you are local to Oxford and are wanting to explore the Christian mystical tradition & contemplative prayer - whether or not you would call yourself a 'Christian' - then please feel welcome to come and join us.
StillPoint has its own wee website here where you can get more info (and please pass on the info to anyone you might think would be interested).

Blah! Oxford with Ian Mobsby

Tom Sine in Oxford - where are the interim models for community?

I've got a bit behind on blogging recently so I'm trying to catch up post holiday (see next post when I get a moment to write it).

A couple of weeks back I went to an evening at the recently launched CMS community house in Oxford. If you haven't come across this yet it's a great initiative - CMS have recently relocated to Oxford and as part of that relocation they have invested in a couple of large houses in East Oxford which they have knocked through to create one very large community house where they hope to model creative communal. missional living. Some of the Home guys live there and Jim, our Warden, was very involved in getting it set up.

Anyway, they had an open evening with Tom Sine - author of books like 'The New Conspirators' and 'Mustard Seed vs McWorld' - who was chatting and telling stories etc.

It was great to be there. Enjoyed it. Tom spoke a lot about different communities who are living communally and how important these new expressions are. I agree. He also acknowledged that it's not easy to set up. This too is very true.

I asked what we could do about this gap between, on the one hand churches (like ours) saying that they don't want to just be a Sunday gathering, and, on the other hand - full on communal living. What's inbetween?

Tom's best answer was to move towards proximity living - i.e. trying to buy or rent houses in the same geographical area. I think this is a great idea. But I also think that even that could take considerable time and effort to bring about.

I'm still left thinking - what does it mean to be community when we don't live close to each other and we don't live with each other? How can we generate some interim models or foster greater community somewhere in between?

Raed tihs... yuor mnid rokcs!

Cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid. Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh?

my week beats your year

I'm enjoying the new 'Genius' function on the new version of iTunes.

If you haven't got it yet this is what it is: you select a song and ask iTunes to create a playlist for you of similar songs from your iTunes library. You can also see recommendations of similar artists iTunes has for you from its Store (so obviously they are onto a good thing here too).

iTunes gradually 'learns' your likes and dislikes over time and streamlines its selections based on your choices.

Anyway - already this week (through Genius) I have discovered a top new band that I had never heard of before - Telefon Tel Aviv. Not - as you might think - an Israeli electronica outfit (shame really) but a duo from New Orleans. It's really beautiful electronica....lush textures and lots of broken beats etc. - for me there are similarities with Mylo (but less obviously pop-y/commercial) and The Album Leaf. If that's the sort of thing you like then check them out at the iTunes store here. ('my week beats your year' is the title of a track from their album 'map of what is effortless').

Holy Cross Day

So last Sunday was Holy Cross day. This is a major feast in the lectionary but to my mind it's a bit of an odd one!
Unlike Good Friday - when we remember the theological and spiritual significance of the cross - Holy Cross day is when we focus on the actual wood of the cross itself.

It's beginnings are in the supposed discovery of the true cross by Helena - mother of the Emperor Constantine - in 300 and something.

The one thing I do find helpful from all of this is that it's reminder that spirituality and discipleship etc. are about physical things. It's a helpful corrective for when we get too other-worldly and ethereal - which we are all prone to from time to time. Holy Cross day says that God's actions in the world have to do with very solid, physical things like wood and flesh and blood.

So we marked the day anyway in our community and spent some time talking about the cross.

heavy reading

Mondays are childcare days for me.

Lily-Anna and I often end up walking to the Central library in the middle of Oxford - she enjoys being in the children's section, looking at the books etc.

So we picked up some interesting books this morning. Couldn't help but chuckle when I saw them side by side on the sofa!

Which one should I tackle first?!!

watching and waiting

A lot of the daily lectionary readings at the moment are stories that Jesus told about watching and waiting - particularly for the 'owner of the house' or the 'bridegroom' to return.

I see in this something that speaks directly to the practice of contemplative prayer which has to do with developing presence, awareness or mindfulness.

We do not see. we live a dream-like, sleepy existence. We need to wake up and be alive to God's life which is all around us and within us. Prayer should help us to do that - to open our sleepy eyes to the wonder all around us as we watch and wait for the movement and activity of God to be revealed.

GB 08

Just back from Greenbelt.
It was a different kind of festival for us this year. This was mostly because Lily is now 19 months old which meant that this year was the 'in-between' year: last year she was still a baby and not mobile and so we could just take her around in the pram and that sort of thing. And next year we will probably register her in the fantastic kids festival.
But this year she is walking and needs more stimulation so much of our time on site (we were staying with friends off site which was great but also made us a little more disconnected) was spent entertaining her - which was fine and often lots of fun but it did mean we didn't do as much programmed stuff as previous years. And I ended up doing bits of different things (half a talk etc.) so it was all quite fragmented.
So because of that there's not a whole host of highlights to mention (at least as far as the programme goes) but here's some stuff I did enjoy:

- Julie Lee in the Performance Cafe on Sunday : exquisite songwriting and singing in a rootsy, folksy, bluegrass americana style with excellent contributions from her co-musicians
- One Giant Leap 'What About Me' : again could only stay for the first bit of this but seeing excerpts from the film and listening to one of the film-makers made me want to immediately go out and buy the DVD. Amazing.
- Seth Lakeman on Saturday night : I think he's invented a new genre - stadium folk

Didn't go to much prayer/worship stuff this year and to be honest the one or two bits I did go to didn't do much for me (but that probably says more about where I was at).

As usual one of the most brilliant things about Greenbelt was connecting with people: really enjoyed chatting to Karen from Seattle, the two Ians (Adams and Mobsby), Nadia from Colorado, Si Lockett from the Shire, as well as the usual Oxford posse.

So there we go - another festival over. I always end up leaving my wristband on for a few days afterwards...can never bring myself to immediately cut it off..it's like some sort of umbilical cord that still connects me to the fact that I was there with my tribe even if I am now back in normality.

So - what was your highlight?

some people just don't get it

How about this for an image that totally misses the point of the cross?!! I'm hoping it wasn't supposed to be serious.
(from Bob Hyatt's blog)