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.

been a long time coming

We moved back into our house (after the flood last summer) last weekend and consequently have no broadband (which is killing me). As a result I haven't been able to blog on a very significant event - Spurs victory over Chelsea in the Carling Cup Final at Wembley last Sunday. Some even thought I was being modest by not mentioning it. But no - it was purely down to the lack of net access.

So that's us in Europe next year. Good to do it via a convincing victory over one of the country's best teams who were playing to win too.

Joke from the West Wing

It's impossible to say how much I am enjoying the West Wing. It is surely one of the best programmes ever to grace our TV sets. We went right back to the beginning (having missed it when it was on TV) and begged, borrowed and stole (ok, not the last one) the DVD box sets. We are now approaching the end of Season 5.

One of the many reasons I love it is the humour. It can be genuinely hilarious at times. This may not be the best example of that but here's a joke from President Bartlett from the episode we watched last night:

A pessimist and an optimist are talking to each other.
"Everything's terrible. It couldn't get any worse", says the Pessimist.
"Yes it can" says the Optimist.

Well, I thought it was funny anyway. Although it was taken from a speech of his that bombed so perhaps I'm in the minority there.

The Oxford Open

Very pleased that I managed to finally get along to Modern Art Oxford yesterday, after a meeting in town, to see The Oxford Open.

It's a free exhibition featuring the work of any local people who wanted to contribute something. In many ways it felt like a reclamation of space - an art gallery that has been temporarily taken over by 'ordinary people' rather than the artistic elite. I say 'ordinary people' but the level of creativity was quite something to behold and the overriding feeling I had whilst wandering round was about how extraordinary it is that people have expressed themselves in such a diversity of ways. Only a few of them are doing it to make a living (like my friend Clay Sinclair who had a great piece there). The rest are just pouring this stuff out from the depths of their being in their spare time.

It's only on till tomorrow so if you're local and you haven't been yet hurry along down.

with preaching like this, why wouldn't people come back to church?!!

This is just too funny. Thanks to Andrew Jones for linking to the original blog post. This is just wrong on sooo many levels, I don't know where to start. So I think I'll just let it speak for itself. You've probably already seen it via Andrew's blog but just in case you haven't I thought I should put it up here too.

has spring sprung?

Beautiful early Spring day here today in Oxford. Mondays are now my childcare day as Pip has now gone back to work 2 days a week. So today the little'un and I went to the swings and hung out in the back garden.

Here we are in our matching yellow with the french doors open and Neil Young and The Band blaring out.

Sweet!

The Rugby

I felt I should officially declare (before today's game) that I have
decided to support Wales in this year's 6 Nations Championship. I do
have some Welsh blood after all.

Anyone got a problem with that?

U2 3D

This looks amazing. U2 are releasing a 3D concert film in IMAX cinemas in a couple of weeks time.

In the UK that means London, Birmingham, Manchester and Bradford.

Apparently one is closer to Bono than his mic stand and he was worried that it might make him look like a 40 foot tall 'lardass'!
Might have to try and get a group together for an outing.

Read the BBC report here. Visit the official site here.

ash wednesday

Last night was our Ash Wednesday service. Our fifth one now, and the first one not to involve burning things!!

We borrowed St Alban's church - which we use for high days and holy days. The focus for the service, coming through the readings particularly, was a call to a life of integrity - where our inner life and our outer life are in sync and one is not running ahead of the other. It's not healthy to put on a show for people - being the person we think people want us to be - whilst we are somewhere else on the inside. Similarly, it's not healthy to develop our interior life and not express this in our engagement with the world - then it just becomes a private piety.

This led to us talking about the masks that we wear - what do we try to project to people about who we are, and who are we really?? We then spent some time making masks from card and clippings from lots of different magazines etc. On one side of the mask we collaged what we show to those around us. On the other side we collaged who we felt we really were.

We then used the ashing as an affirmation of this essential, often hidden, identity. A recognition that God knows who we really are and loves us in all our brokenness.

Super Tuesday

So yesterday was Super Tuesday. I was and am fascinated by the whole thing and I woke up this morning wondering what had happened overnight.
I guess I feel a little disappointed that it wasn't the decisive day that many people thought it would be. Obama and Hillary are neck and neck - like they were before. McCain is emerging as the frontrunner - like he was before.
One question I do have though is this....a lot of people I know are really turned on (in a political sense!) by Obama, but as far as I can tell there isn't much to choose between his and Hillary's policies. So, let me ask you this - particularly my American readers - why Obama and not Hillary? Is it to do with Bill?

Pancake Day/Shrove Tuesday

So today is Pancake Day.
I'm all for pancakes. Got nothing against 'em. Eaten quite a few of 'em in my time. Will eat some more tonight (courtesy of Rich and Sarah).
Everyone knows about Pancake Day, but ask people what tomorrow is and I imagine you'll get some blank faces.
For me, this is a classic example of the remnants of a once Christian culture now still hanging around in a very anachronistic way. Even the name we now give it is telling - Pancake Day rather than Shrove Tuesday. Admittedly, I don't know the provenance of the word 'Shrove' - I'll just look it up on Wikipedia. Hang on a moment....I'm back. Here it is:

The word shrove is a past tense of the English verb "shrive," which means to obtain absolution for one's sins by confessing and doing penance.^[7] Shrove Tuesday gets its name from the shriving (confession) that Anglo-Saxon Christians were expected to receive immediately before Lent.^[8]

Anyway, my point is....it feels a little odd to make so much of Shrove Tuesday which only exists because of what it precedes, but to have lost an understanding of the thing that makes it meaningful. Now it's just an excuse to eat a lot of pancakes.