Extreme Pilgrim - thoughts on spiritual leadership

I really enjoyed the Extreme Pilgrim mini series on TV recently. I thought the first one was a little weak but the last two were really good.
I watched them out of order and ended up watching the second one last. Even though the last one was about the Jesus prayer and the life of an Orthodox hermit, it was the second programme I found most thought provoking.
In it Jones travelled to India and met a Sadhu or Holy Man. He then went to the Himalayas, to a village where he lived in a cave and was the de facto Holy Man for the village for a while.

It thew up lots of interesting questions but the one I have been left to chew over is the particular understanding of spiritual leadership that the Sadhu tradition offers.
His vocation was really to be an 'enlightened one' on behalf of the village - so, much of his time was spent in meditation and prayer, and the villagers supported him out of their meagre resources in order for him to do that. His presence was enough for them.

Much leadership in the church in the UK (and I guess I am talking particularly about the Anglican church now which is what I know best as it's my 'tribe') seems to me to be managerial and administrative in style. I am more and more convinced that what we actually need is more of a Holy Man/Woman approach.

But I am, however, a little conflicted on this as I was slightly troubled by the suggestion that the Sadhu (in Owen Jones' film) was doing/being something that the ordinary folk couldn't do/be. And that doesn't sit well with me either.

My friend Kath, who comes from a Tibetan Buddhist background and brings that flavour to her practice of Christianity (which I really enjoy and am fascinated and challenged by), talks about how important, in the Eastern tradition, devotion to a teacher is. And how we don't really get that in the West. I want to talk to her more about this. I am wondering what this means in terms of Christ being our teacher and also with what St John said in 1 John 2:

"As for you, the anointing you received from him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you." (1 John 2:27).

too good not to share!

the final healing?

some of you will know that my Father has been seriously ill for a number of years now. Well he has contracted pneumonia in the last few days and the outlook is pretty grim. We are making an unscheduled trip to see him this afternoon. I will update my blog if there is any development.
In a twist of 'fate' my Grandmother has been admitted to hospital as well and is also seriously ill with a urinary and chest infection.
UPDATE:
We're up in Wales now and the doctor has been out to see my dad and it looks like he has improved a bit. We'll see how things develop.

when everything is a fresh expression is anything a fresh expression?

I received a clergy mailing this morning from Anglicanshop.com - subtitled 'a fresh expression of Christian retailing'. Are we now at a point where the term has become almost meaningless?

sometimes you do get something for 'nothing'

very happy to receive a text last night from O2 - my mobile provider - telling me that from next month I would be getting three times the number of inclusive minutes on my tariff and more than twice the number of inclusive SMS messages - at no extra cost. deal! How often does that happen in this day and age? Hats off to O2. They just went up in my estimation.

Bonza Music Bonanza!

Today is a good music day. Downloaded two albums I'm genuinely excited about listening to and making part of my life.

Firstly, Tom Middleton's 'Lifetracks' (artwork for it above (picturing St Ives bay (which is enough to get me interested!) is available here) is just gorgeous, sumptuous electronica. It had me involuntarily nodding my head and looking like a right chump in the coffee shop where I was working just now. Couldn't help it. First rate stuff, some of which will be making its way into our gatherings soon no doubt. It's available on iTunes+ (sorry - don't know how to do the clever link to iTunes that opens the app for you and takes you to the right place. You'll just have to search!). Listen out particularly for 'Optimystic' (now there's a title - could be my theme song right now!)

Secondly, courtesy of Jonny's Proost label and site (which is absolutely fab by the way - if you haven't checked it out yet then why not?) is the new album from our friends Church of the Apostles in Seattle. It's called 'Laudamus' and it's an album of music to accompany morning and evening prayer. This follows on from their previous release - 'Ordo' - which was music for the eucharist. As we have come to expect from COTA it is highly original and creative and very professionally produced. There's some songs we already use at Home as well as plenty of new ones. There's even a cover of one of our tunes (St Patrick's Breastplate) which is ace. Get on over there and download it for the princely sum of £6.99. Cheap at twice the price.

the wedding at Cana

Yesterday, as all you nu-liturgical types will well know, was the fourth (and last) Sunday of the Epiphany season.

The Wedding at Cana is a traditional mainstay of the Epiphany Season and although it wasn't the 'official' gospel text for yesterday (not this year anyway) we went ahead and used it anyway.

Epiphany is all about the disclosing of Christ's true identity. And so it contains stories that illustrate this - like Christ's baptism etc. And the Wedding at Cana fits because it's the first miracle. I suggested, though, that it was an important story not just because it's Christ's first miracle but because of what it reveals of God. The kind of God that God is. A God who knows how to party, who loves festivity and celebration.

So we spent a lot of the gathering talking about joy - the difference between joy and happiness (joy is an internal state independent of circumstances, happiness seems to be connected to the external), how we can cultivate more joy and festivity etc. particularly as the church seems to have largely forgotten.

We framed the service with the gospel story and also passed around drinks, in cups like the one pictured above (in case you can't see it there is a quote on one side from Barbara Ehrenreich's fascinating book - 'Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy' - which says "Christianity is a danced religion"). We began - fittingly enough - with water, then grape juice a little while later, then red wine, then champagne (at the peace) and then finally communion wine as we celebrated our participation in that which brings us into fulness of life - our communion with Christ in death and resurrection.

Thirty More Years/libidinal failure

Good to be with my old friend Mary yesterday in Hatfield for her 40th Birthday celebration. I know a number of people who are turning 40 his year or next. Myself included (next year). Some are at peace with it and some are struggling a little. It is liminal space for sure and crossing the threshold from the first half of life to the second is perhaps not easy.

My spiritual director and I talked recently about 'libidinal failure'. He wasn't meaning it primarily in the sexual sense but in a sense connected to this transition from the first to the second half of life. For many people - particularly guys - in the first half of life we think we are invincible: there's nothing we can't do, the world is at our feet. We feel that everything is within our grasp and we are very powerful. That's the outlook of the young man. One of the painful things about moving from the first half of life to the second is the realisation that we're not as powerful as we thought we were and that we can't do everything we would like to be able to do. That's a difficult reality for guys to cope with and we rail against it.

My life has been enriched recently by the poetry of Wendell Berry. Here's one I read the other day that touches on this subject and I offer it here for my friends who are transitioning...

'Thirty More Years'

When I was a young man,
grown up at last, how large
I seemed to myself! I was a tree,
tall already, and what I had not
yet reached, I would yet grow
to reach. Now, thirty more years
added on, I have reached much
I did not expect, in a direction
unexpected. I am growing downward,
smaller, one among the grasses.

It's been a long time coming...

8 long years of hurt were over last night as my team - Tottenham Hotspur - finally beat our local arch-rivals Arsenal to secure a place in our first Wembley final this century.

Boy did it feel good.

And I got to see it all in HD in the pub down the road from where we live (football in pubs is going a bit upmarket then!).

And, as if to make up for lost time, we beat them 5-1. So not just a win then but a rout (I think we could call it that).

Well done fellas!!

The Power of Now

Just started reading Eckhart Tolle's book, 'The Power of Now', which by all accounts has become a bit of an international best-seller. I'm enjoying it so far.

What I find interesting about it is that I think he is basically talking about contemplative prayer without using religious language. The language he uses is more akin to 'self-help' terminology.

He talks about this (briefly) in the introduction and says that the reason for that is that religious language carries so much baggage for people that he would rather talk, for example, about 'Being' than 'God'. To a certain extent I am sympathetic to this point of view. It's very hard for people to get past the 'school assembly' associations of religious language (and I would be quite happy to use Being as a synonym for God who is Being itself).
He is very clear though that one of the things he sees himself doing is helping people of faith (he mentions Christians and Buddhists) to go deeper into their own tradition, not to leave it.

I think I'll blog some more about it as I get further into the book.

digital copies of DVD's

following on from my last post, I'm really disappointed to see it taking so long for DVD's to come with digital copies as standard. If you don't know what I'm talking about there's an explanation here but basically it means that inserting a dvd into your computer and copying the film to your iTunes library so you can watch it on your laptop or transfer it to your portable device should be as easy as doing the same for an audio CD (without the need for ripping dvd's and then trying to get them into the right format and all that nonsense)
Thankfully it seems like they are beginning to include digital copies on DVD's but it should have been standard practice ages ago if you ask me.
rant over!

the presents keep rolling in

Christmas - the gift that keeps on giving.
Due to the wonders of online shopping I am still receiving Christmas gifts.
Through the post this morning arrived 'Heima' the Sigur Ros DVD, described in The Observer as "staggeringly beautiful").
Thanks to the mrs for that one.
Can't wait to see it - I think it'll be one to set the projector up for!
(you can watch the trailer on YouTube here).

Baptism of Christ

Preached a rare sermon on the Baptism of Christ at Home yesterday. Word must have got out as, inevitably, it was the week when pretty much all the Home regulars decided not to come - someone must have tipped them off and coordinated the action.

Anyway, I enjoyed it! And it was great to get some country music in the service too - Alison Krauss's version of the old folk song "When I went down to the river to pray" seemed most appropriate.

In the sermon I went for the angle of the unconditional affirmation of the Father (remember, this event was before he did any of the stuff) setting Christ free to engage in 'pure action' i.e. not being controlled by people's opinions of him, or trying to manipulate people to get stuff from them (getting his needs met) but doing whatever was appropriate in the moment.

I suggested that contemplative prayer was a way of taking the bartering out of our relationship with God (I do good stuff, you do good stuff back etc. - the whole reward/punishment thing) in that through it we are becoming more aware of God's love and listening for God's approval, setting us free for pure action too.

the West Wing effect

I don't know if it's just because I'm loving the West Wing but I'm finding myself increasingly interested in the unfolding story of the race for the US presidency.
Rather worryingly - and perhaps tellingly in terms of the state of our culture! - I know very little at present about what the candidates actually stand for in terms of policy. For me (and I suspect many US citizens judging by some of the reports I've read) it's a battle of personalities - the big two being Hillary and Obama. I'm not satisfied with this though and feel compelled to know more about what the differences between them in policy actually are. Can anyone point me to a good idiots guide?

John O Donahue

Sad to hear last night of the sudden passing away of John O Donahue - Irish priest, author, theologian, poet and mystic. Loved listening to him at Greenbelt just a few months ago - so full of life and energy and wisdom.
I felt I was only just 'discovering' him and was looking forward to hearing him speak some more. He was a strong contender for inclusion in my own private Jedi council, and perhaps will still make it in. Funny...just the other day I was standing in Blackwells flicking through a book of his poems.
Thankyou God for the life of your servant John, he will be missed.

Heads up Sigur Ros fans

some good telly on tonight....

Peter Owen Jones' 'Extreme Pilgrim' is on BBC2 at 9pm. Sounds really intriguing (and I've really enjoyed his books ('Bed of Nails' should be required reading for anyone going to theological college, and 'Small Boat, Big Sea' was his journal of his curacy which was great as well). Here's the blurb from the BBC site:

Peter Owen Jones has been a vicar in the Church of England for 14 years. He has three parishes in the beautiful Sussex Downs, and is happy with his rural ministry. But Peter feels that spirituality - a closeness to God - is almost absent from religious life in the UK. In a series of three tough, physical journeys to the extremes of world religions he seeks to discover and experience spiritual enlightenment for himself.

And for all the Sigur Ros fans out there there is a Culture Show special, again on BBC2, at 11.35pm

enjoy, telly fans!!
(or watch again on the iPlayer if you're reading this tomorrow)

epiphany

This Sunday we celebrate Epiphany. You are very welcome to join us if you live in the area.

Get behind me Santa!

Christmas is a time when I normally find myself listening to Sufjan Stevens 'Songs for Christmas' (also available on iTunes) at some point. This year was no exception (he's normally playing as people arrive for the Service of 9 Lessons and Carols).
Anyway, he's just appeared in the Guardian with a list of his favourite Christmas songs (the article is entitled 'Get behind me Santa' which made me chuckle). Read it here.
(update: for some reason blogger isn't letting me add links so if you're really that interested then search the Guardian site!)

Quiet Time

One of the peculiarities of my job is that even though I am a priest in the Church of England, Christmas is quite a quiet time for me!
Our little community is largely made up of younger adults for whom it is a time of year to go away to see family etc.
So our big event for this time of year is our Service of 9 Lessons and Carols which we had last Sunday evening. After that things tend to quiet down considerably.
So I am trying to use the time to do some reading, particularly as next year we hope to launch some spirituality material for unchurched people.
This week I have read some Bernard of Clairvaux (pictured here). One thing he said that I found particularly interesting is the stages of love that we go through in our spiritual journey. He characterised them like this:
Stage 1 : we love ourselves for our own sake
Stage 2 : we love God for our own sake
Stage 3 : we love God for God's sake
Stage 4 : we love ourselves for God's sake
I'm not sure I totally get the last one and indeed Bernard says that it's very rare in this life. But the others make a lot of sense to me.
I'm very aware of how easy it is to love God and 'do all the religious stuff' for what I get out of it (stage 2) though of course we never put it in those terms. And I'm not sure that's a totally invalid thing (echoes here of the Westminster Catechism where it talks about 'enjoying God' which John Piper also talks about although I'm really not a fan of his).

It's interesting to hear this common theme emerging in the mystics which can basically be summarised as a turning from the self as the focus of attention (stages 1 and 2 in Bernard's schema) to a focus on God (stage 3), which involves a kind of emptying and forgetfulness of self.

Anyway, maybe I'll post some more tidbits as I uncover them.

Cathecting with Christ (or 'I love Jesus more than you')

Those of you who have read M Scott Peck's seminal book, The Road Less Travelled, will know that he has a whole section on love.

His theory is that what most people call love actually isn't love at all, it's what he calls cathecting. Cathecting, for Peck, is the early stage in a relationship where the heady rush of feelings and emotions sweeps you along. This stage always, always, in any relationship, ends at some point. This is the point that a lot of people bale out of a relationship saying things like "my feelings have changed" or "I don't feel the same about you anymore" or "I don't love you anymore". Our culture makes a direct equivalence between these cathecting feelings and love. But they're not the same.

For Peck, when the cathecting feelings fade that's the point where real love begins. Cathecting is nature's way of getting us together. But it's not to be mistaken for love. Love is the deliberate choosing of the will to be with, and serve, another person despite our feelings - which will ebb and flow in any relationship.

Recently I've been reflecting on this in the light of my relationship with Christ and particularly my worship of Christ. It seems to me that much of the corporate worship I have participated in attempts to keep people in the cathecting stage of relating to God. It's very feelings based, it's often quite romantic. People have talked about the Jesus is my boyfriend/girlfriend type worship songs that are around.

Sometimes it's easy to feel that your relationship with Christ is failing because "it's not like it used to be". I don't think it is necessarily failing, it's changing, it's maturing. I am worried about churches which encourage people to think that if you're not cathecting with Christ you're lukewarm.

Of course, relationships that last involve work, making an effort, keeping romance alive etc. and there will be an element of that sort of thing in our relating to God, but it's a very different thing to the early, cathecting stage.

Home service of 9 Lessons and Carols

All Saints Day Service

Enjoyed our All Saints Day service yesterday even though it was a lot of preparation and many of our saints were unable to be there.

We are increasingly developing a rhythm of 'special services' which punctuate our liturgical year - this was our 5th special service of this cycle - 9 Lessons and Carols (last Advent), Ash Wednesday, Good Friday Stations of the Cross, Harvest and now All Saints.

Anyway - it was a good time - and made more fun by the fact that a load of people who had been to the Climate Change camp (near Heathrow's proposed site for the new Terminal) were just back from their protest and were using the Community Centre, where we meet, as a base - so there was a constant stream of people coming into the hall to use the loos which meant there was a bit of a queue and therefore people were standing and watching everything we were doing. A couple even got involved in the service and stayed for communion at the end!

Mac OS X Leopard - the Rees view - for Mac geeks only!!!

As I only just bought my new Mac I was eligible for a £5.95 upgrade to Leopard when it was released (last Friday). It was delivered to me on Monday and I installed it on Monday night. So I've had it on the machine for the last few days and thought I'd post some brief comments about how I'm finding it.

Apple claim that this is their biggest operating system upgrade yet with over 300 new features (compared with Tiger). Here's my initial thoughts:

Time Machine : this has got to be one of the key new features. Having recently paid a heavy price for not backing up my data (see earlier blog entry) this is a great feature. You assign an external drive (I have a USB 160GB portable drive) as your Time Machine drive and the computer automatically mirrors your entire hard drive updating the mirror every hour. There's now a Time Machine icon in the dock and when you click on it it opens up a dazzling Star-Wars-esque (the beginning bit where the writing scrolls upwards through space) screen. This is where you can see all the back ups of your drive (most recent at the front going back into the distance with previous back ups behind it). You can then scroll through 'back in time' to previous dates and times to see your system as it was then.

This is a great feature although I'm not sure how much I will use it except for the security of backing up my system in case of hard drive failure. Apple seem to think that random files might just go missing for no reason and that you can then go back in time to retrieve them (searching for them 'through time' via Spotlight) - but in reality how often does that happen? I will still be using Time Machine to back up my system though.

Spaces : This is a clever new feature that allows you to organise what you're doing on your computer in up to 16 separate spaces - so you can group together certain applications in clusters according to different things you are doing and then just switch from one space to another (with useful keyboard shortcuts) as you complete different tasks.

This has the potential to be a great utility but I think Apple have really missed a trick here. Here's why: you can't open the same application in more than one space at a time. What I would really find useful is to set up, say, a work space and a leisure space. In the work space I would have my web browser open with various web-pages open that I was referencing for work stuff + any other apps I was using for work - my word processor etc. In the leisure space I would have my browser open with maybe some football news sites, for example, + maybe a game or whatever. But you can't do that with Spaces. You can only have the web browser (or any other app) in one space at a time.

It's a shame as I could see myself using this utility a lot of it had that functionality but as it is I probably won't use it much.

Stacks : the dock now has the ability to hold folders e.g. your downloads folder or recent documents and then, when you click on them they open out in a fan configuration. This is pretty neat and tidy but I haven't had much opportunity to use Stacks yet so can't really comment.

Finder with Cover-Flow and Quick-Look : this I really like. You now have the option in the Finder to browse your folders, documents, pictures etc. using Cover-Flow i.e. seeing a small version of the actual file not just an icon of it and you can even blow it up to readable size with Quick-Look. This is great if you're browsing through a folder of documents to find the right one - you don't need to keep opening Word (or Pages) to view the documents. Nice.

iCal and Mail : The new versions of iCal and Mail are really sweet - particularly Mail. It has smart data recognition so if someone sends you an e mail with details of a meeting/appointment you can hover the mouse over it and Mail will recognise it as a calendar event and instantly give you the option of making it an iCal entry. You can also now highlight any portion of text in an e mail and instantly turn it into a To-Do which will go straight into your iCal To-Do list (and then, in my case, get synched to my Blackberry). You can also now compose notes and To-Do's in Mail).

So there's my early take on Leopard. No doubt I will get into it more as time goes by. There are a few teething problems I'm already noticing - I use PocketMac to sync my Blackberry and it looks like it doesn't work that well with the new OS. And I've had a couple of issues getting on to Airport networks that are normally fine. It also did something really wierd when I upgraded and wouldn't let me empty my trash - I spent an hour and three quarters on the phone to Applecare sorting that one out! (I needed to as I had about 40GB of data in the trash due to accidentally importing three copies of my iTunes library).

All in all I would say to Mac users out there that it's well worth getting the new OS - it's probably worth it for Time Machine alone let alone the other stuff.

The Bishop and the Orchestra

Off to meet the new Bishop of Oxford - Bishop John - for the first time this morning. And this evening I'm off to Bristol to see The Cinematic Orchestra (+ Bonobo in support) live at the Colston Hall with Jim and Brother Ian from mayBe.

Should be a good day!

______________________________
sent on the move from my Blackberry.....

www.home-online.org
______________________________

all saints day next Sunday..

Goodbye Martin Jol

So Martin Jol, manager of 'my' football team Tottenham Hotspur, finally got the sack last night. It had been coming for a long time.

Whilst it may have been the right decision from a footballing point of view - our results have been shocking and I genuinely don't think he was the man to take us into the top four - I really liked him as a man: he had a big heart, loved the club, loved his players. In all honesty he's been treated appallingly by the club and I'm not sure we would be in the position we are in now (in the relegation zone) if they hadn't undermined him like they have.

He should have at least been given the chance to turn things around - we owed him that after the fantastic progress he has made over the last couple of years. I feel sorry for him - he deserved better. Goodbye Martin - thanks for making our club believable in again.

challenges of work 2: be here now

Another challenge of my work-style is one I am becoming more and more aware of. In my line of work - helping and facilitating the birth and growth of a new Christian community - a massive proportion of my time is spent thinking about the future - where are we heading to, how are we going to get there, will there be enough people, money, facilities, do we need to get a property, where, how, etc. etc.????
I am coming to realise that almost all my headspace is crammed with uncertain questions and thinking about the future - and it doesn't help me to be healthy or wise. In fact it very easily leads to stress and anxiety.
I love the phrase 'the sacrament of the present moment' - in other words, the grace that is available to us if we can be here now (rather than shooting off somewhere in our heads - always living in the past or the future). This is a huge challenge to me - to try and redress this balance and live more peacefully in the present.
In this I can learn from my little girl - she has a very limited understanding of past and present. She can get upset and have forgotten about it literally moments later - like it never happened. She knows what she needs now and she lets the future take care of itself.
I once heard a wise old sage say that it is only in the present that we meet with God - God was there in the past and will be there in the future, but those times and places are inaccessible to us and we can only meet with God in the now.

challenges of work 1 : workchums

I spend a lot of my working time alone - often staring at a computer screen writing e mails or other documents. It doesn't particularly flow well with who I am as a person.
So I'm thankful for people that I engage with on a regular basis that help me to work better.
Yesterday, Jim - who, like me often finds himself working alone and it doesn't suit him either - and I met at our local coffee shop (which now, praise God, offers free wi-fi) so we could get on with the things we had to do but at least be with someone else while we did so, rather than sitting alone in our respective houses.
This morning I had what has now become my regular coffee meeting with my brother nu-monastic abbot here in Oxford, Ian from the mayBe community.
Later on today I went to work in the Bodleian library - and unbelievably fantastic place to work - where I'm putting together some material on the Christian mystics (more on that at some point) and I was able to work near to my friend (and Lily-Anna's Godfather) Alan.
I have a growing appreciation for those who I can share my working life with. Bless you brothers!

Harvest Service

Really enjoyed our Harvest Service last night - it was the first time we had marked harvest and it felt like a good thing to do.
The first hour of the service was spent engaging with prayer stations - confession (pulling up plants as a symbol of our using of the earth without care or consideration), absolution (replanting the plants in fresh earth as a sign of our reconnection with the land), thanksgiving (bringing food that we were thankful for - I brought a lovely bottle of ale!), offering (bringing symbols of our work to 'hallow' our labour once more to God), texts & response (readings from scripture and the christian mystics on our relationship with creation), intercessions (lighting tapers and placing them into a container of earth as we prayed for the earth using a prayer written by Tess), and then communion.
I managed to get hold of a bale of straw - not an easy thing to do for a city boy! - which we used as an altar for the evening (see pic) and we gathered around it for the peace (which we remembered meant not just peace with each other but also peace with the rest of creation - we passed round daffodil bulbs to symbolise this), celebrated communion with a creation-based eucharistic prayer, and then a final benediction (also written by Tess) before being offered a plant pot and some more earth so we could take our bulbs away with us.
A top night!

harvest home

tonight the Home community is celebrating harvest - giving thanks for the provision of the land and praying for the healing of humanity's relationship with it. There will be prayer stations for an hour from 5-6pm and communion at 6. I'll blog about it tomorrow and perhaps post some pics.

if you're local do come along.

thanks Nan!

My nan rocks. Many of you will know that the hard disk on my computer died a couple of weeks back. My nan has bought me a new mac which is incredibly generous of her.
So I am the proud owner of a new MacBook - complete with inbuilt camera so I can take zany photos like this one.
Thanks nan!
Hopefully I will be back to better blogging ways soon.

the kind of mistake you only make once

so - last week the hard disk on my laptop failed. I've taken it into the shop and they've told me that it needs replacing - and it's not going to be cheap. In fact it might not make financial sense to do it as the machine is getting a little old now - so it might be time to get a new machine - but they don't come cheap as we know (and if anyone feels moved to make a contribution to the 'replace matt's mac' appeal we would be glad to hear from you!).

The absolute killer though is that on my hard drive were 3 year's worth of photos which weren't backed up AND EVEN WORSE all our photos and movies of Lily-Anna from the last 9 months. Total nightmare.

The guys in the Apple shop said they'd tried 3 or 4 different ways to extract the data, all of which have failed. So our last hope is to send the hard drive off to a specialist data recovery place in London.

I have an external USB hard drive but haven't used it to back up our photos - it's the kind of mistake you only make once in your life.

lost and found

The gospel for the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity yesterday was Luke 15: 1-10, the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin.

We had a very interesting discussion time at our eucharist on the text. what does it mean to be lost and what does it mean to be found?

There is a very kind of "right-on" perspective which really struggles to imagine anyone as being 'lost'. Who are we to judge people or say that we are 'the found' and that they are 'the lost'. How arrogant and condescending!

At one point in our discussion someone looked out of the window at the street and asked whether we really had to believe that all the people walking past were really and truly lost.

But I think it's vital to hold on to this sense of 'lostness' if we are really going to 'honour' people's pain and take it seriously. The fact of the matter is that as much as we want to say that people are alright as they are (the trendy, right-on view)I suspect a lot of people would not say that about themselves. We want to say they are alright as they are but they know they're not. They know and experience pain and alienation in many different ways and this is a big part of what I would call 'lostness'. They may not use this language but there is a very real sense in which they need to be 'found', and they know it. Our political correctness does not help anyone. And we ourselves, even as followers of Christ, need to go on being found by him - there are parts of us that are still in the 'lostness' of pain and alienation.

Now that 'being found' may not mean 'coming to our church' and believing all the same things we do (and one of the reasons we squirm a bit when talking about these things is that we inherit these concepts with these 'colonial' overtones ringing in our ears) - but if we abandon the possibility that people are lost and need to be found then we not only diminish the gospel we also trivialize people's very real sense of their own pain.

The fact is that, as someone else in the discussion beautifully pointed out, these parables tell us that there is no where that God cannot find us. But God doesn't just locate us, he picks us up and carries us away from our alienation and pain and returns us to our homeland in him.

iPhone about to get UK release?

It seems that the long awaited and much hyped iPhone is about to get a UK release - macworld.co.uk are reporting that there is a special press conference scheduled at the London Apple store next Tuesday and the speculation is that it will be to announce the launch.

I am waiting to see what the price will be and which network it will be on. My Blackberry is now due for a new contract but I'll wait to see if the iPhone is affordable before deciding what to do. If it comes in at a reasonable price I might be tempted as my iPod is still one of the now very old (in technological terms) black and white ones - the iPod equivalent of a black and white telly I guess!

does enjoying new (apple) technology make me a hopeless consumerist sell-out, enslaved to the spirit of the age? anyone else planning to get one?

Sigur Ros Movie

Seems that Sigur Ros have a movie coming out (thanks to Ben for the tip off).
I'm a big fan of The Ros. We often use their music in church and I loved seeing them live last year.
As we have come to expect from them the film looks amazing - if the trailer is anything to go by it will look as well as sound absolutely gorgeous.
Go here to see the trailer.

Lily-Anna's Baptism

Last Sunday was Lily-Anna's baptism - a really important event in the life of our family and our little faith community.
Here are some photos - you should be able to work out what's going on in each one. Tess Ward co-led the service with me...there's one of the godparents...one of me doing the actual baptising...one of the 3 of us...and one of the star of the show herself.
The photos were taken by our friend Suzie - I think you'll agree she did a fine job. If you're interested, the full set can be found on her flickr page here.
I planned the service - we basically followed the Common Worship (anglican) service but with a few tweaks of our own. Towards the end we used a fantastic track by The Cinematic Orchestra while showing pictures of Lily-Anna and encouraging people to pray silently for her. We then invited people to stand one by one and offer a blessing for her life. We've collected the pieces of paper the blessings were written on and I'm going to compile them, along with a selection of the photos, and make a book for Lily to have when she's older.

Some people get very uptight about infant baptism but for me it's a fairly simple and straightforward deal. The question is this - is Lily-Anna going to be part of the community of faith or not? If she is then it's entirely appropriate for her to be baptised as baptism is the mark of being part of the covenant community. In the scriptures there are simply no categories for un-baptised members of the church. We want Lily to play a full part in the life of our little faith community and therefore she should be baptised.
Some people say that she's not old enough to know what's happening. But since when did our life with God depend on our understanding? Infant baptism symbolises beautifully for me the fact that God reaches out to us before we are ever aware of what's going on and before we are ever able to respond to God.

new iPods

so - only just been reconnected and I'm having a quick look through my regular websites - which include macworld.co.uk and apple.com/uk and what do I find? they've just announced a new generation of iPods including the 'iPod Touch' which basically just looks like the iPod bit of the long awaited iPhone (you certainly wouldn't need both!).

back on wi-fi

it's great to finally get back on wi-fi in our new temporary home. when you don't have it you suddenly realise how much you were relying on it. which of course is true of most things in life.

baptism

This Sunday is the baptism of our daughter, Lily-Anna Joy Rees. To the left is the design for a postcard invite I knocked up which we sent out a while back.
It's all a bit hectic what with friends and family coming from all over and getting things like the service itself organised - Tess Ward and myself will be getting robed up and doing the honours. It will be such a privilege to actually do the baptising bit myself.
Readers of this blog can consider themselves invited if they haven't already 'officially' been (by the receiving of said postcard).
I'll try and post some pics afterwards.

Another year, another Greenbelt

Back from another Greenbelt and straight into the throes of moving house.
I really love Greenbelt - it feels like the annual gathering of my tribe, or the annual pilgrimage up to the Temple....choose a metaphor that works for you. Anyway, great to catch up with people, drink a lot of tea and beer (depending on the time of day - photo of the pub sign for the organic beer tent on the left), hear some great talks, listen to some great music, and participate in some great worship. Highlights:
talks: John 'O Donahue
music: Coldcut, Andy Yorke and Duke Special
worship: our friends from the mayBe community did a cracking 'beautiful day' eucharist
What about you (if you were there) - what did you enjoy this year?

Celtic Wheel of the Year

It's been great to have Tess Ward become part of the hOME Community here in Oxford over the last few months.

She has a book out - The Celtic Wheel of the Year - which looks fab. She's leading some sessions on it at Greenbelt this coming weekend and she's asked me to provide some music for them so I've written some pieces.

Her sessions (and the book) have 4 quadrants based on the 4 seasons of the year and I've tried to write music that reflects those seasons.

The book is available on Amazon here.

new house

finally found a house for Team Rees to live in for the next 6 months while ours is being sorted out after the recent floods (see pic on the left).
It's round the corner from Pete and Tess Ward (Tess has become part of the hOME Community over the last few months) which is nice.
If anyone REALLY wants to see some more pics (that's you, mum!) you can see them here.

blog trimming

I have 394 unread blog posts in my newsreader. A few minutes ago it was over 400. That's a little bit silly. I am paying less attention to blogs than I was, partly due to the arrival of facebook (which is great for 'realtime' bite-size updates on people but not very deep....wide but not deep...blogs do the deeper stuff better I think).
Anyway, I think I'm going to have to do a bit of a blog cull - I have far too many feeds. I might have to be a bit ruthless.

Tony Wilson

Tony Wilson - godfather of the Manchester music scene, discoverer of bands such as Joy Division/New Order, the Happy Mondays etc. - died yesterday.
I grew up in the North West and remember seeing him on BBC regional TV when I was a kid though that was before the whole Manchester music scene exploded with him at the epicentre of much of it.
He was undoubtedly a very important cultural figure. Rest in peace.

A Floody Nightmare - update

this phrase - coined by my friend Jon - is probably the best one I have come across to describe out situation. It looks now like we will be out of our house for most of the rest of this year and will be in temporary accommodation - a short term let paid for by our insurers - while builders take up our ground floor + joists underneath, leave open to dry for 4-6 weeks, replace, replaster the walls, possibly put a new kitchen in.
So we've been looking at rental property this week and hope to have something sorted before Greenbelt.

summer is finally here

flood

So - interesting week for the Rees's.
We're up in Scotland on holiday and meantime, the photo on the left shows you what's been happening on our street. The white house you can see on the right hand side is ours.
So - that's going to be fun to go back to on Saturday!
Thankfully, we have fantastic friends nearby who have been amazing. They have keys for our place and have been in and moved most of our stuff upstairs and even got some of the neighbours to help them put our sofa up on breeze blocks. By all accounts the community spirit has been amazing (and we're gutted we've missed out on that). Our mates went to bed slightly pissed the other night cos they'd been invited into so many houses for a glass of wine!
So - we've been trying to have a holiday up here while listening to the news reports and getting updates from our friends. It's not easy to relax - especially when you switch on the TV to find a Top Gear special on BBC2 where Jeremy Clarkson sets out to prove it's possible to drive to the North Pole! Great timing mate - my house is underwater, due undoubtedly in part to global warming and you're driving across the polar ice caps. Nice one! Tosser.
Is it time to start rounding up two of each species?
Thankfully it sounds like the levels are starting to drop.

Live Earth

Well then, Live Earth. I have to say I was disappointed.
It made me depressed at the lack of genuine musical talent that there is out there (although I guess those with that kind of talent were probably not 'household names' and therefore weren't gonna get invited).
I know that focusing on the music is kinda missing the point but some of it was soooo dire - I mean...The Pussycat Dolls?!! A bunch of go-go dancers pretending to be a band. Watching them made me think that the end of civilisation as we know it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing.

And I loved the way that so many of the bands desperately hunted through their back catalogue to try and find a song or two that had some sort of connection with the environment. Unfortunately, for the aforementioned Pussycat Dolls that means 'Don't you wish your girlfriend was HOT like me?' - at least it had the word hot in the title.

Having said all that I do genuinely like Al Gore. And he did make a point of saying that these concerts were only the beginning of a 2 year programme to change popular perception (apparently more than half the people in the UK, let alone the US, still don't believe human beings are contributing to climate change). God bless him and the work he is doing.

It's easy to be cynical about these things. Chris Rock, the American comedian, when interviewed by (the very annoying) Jonathan Ross, said that he believed Live Earth would solve the problem of climate change in the same way that Live Aid solved the problem of world hunger. Easy to be cynical, harder to remain positive and try to make a positive contribution. Gore has to be respected for that.

And anything involving a reformed Spinal Tap can't be all bad. Their new single 'Warmer than Hell' (in which they ponder the relative temperatures of hell and a climate changed earth and muse on which one Satan would enjoy more) was possibly the musical highlight of the day.

Sister Corita

When we were in St Ives a few weeks ago we went to the Tate - like you do. There was a great exhibition on at the time (it's still on) called 'If Everybody had an Ocean' based on the life and music of Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys.
Anyway, one of the artists whose work was featured in the exhibition was a new one on me - Sister Corita Kent. She was a Catholic nun and quite an extraordinary graphic artist who was quite prominent in the 60's counter-culture. Someone said that she did for bread and wine what Andy Warhol did for Campbell's tinned soup. I was quite taken with the pieces of hers that were in the exhibition and particularly with the way that her faith, art, and the counterculture blended to produce some striking results. For example, how's this for an altar piece:

or this....and here are some of the nun's from Sister Corita's community in production...


Anyway, if this flips your widget you can find out more about Sister Corita here or purchase an art book with lots of her stuff in on Amazon.

Cowley Road Carnival Tomorrow

Tomorrow is the annual Cowley Road Carnival. I love it. For one day they close the whole road to traffic and thousands of people flood the street - it's Oxford's most multicultural area so there's lots of local flavours and colours to enjoy and celebrate. There's a great party vibe and it's very evocative of the kingdom of God.

Last year's was great - I remember dancing on the street to some local soundsystems and generally having a great time in the sun. Doesn't look like there'll be much of that this year though!

A few of us from hOME have decided to volunteer this year and help out serving - doing set up for some of the stages and stewarding etc. Because I have an unusual clergy job it means that tomorrow morning, instead of being in a church somewhere, I can be getting my sleeves literally rolled up and helping to make the Carnival happen.

If you live locally it's really not one to miss!

As hOME meets on Sunday evenings in the Community centre hall - right in the centre of the action - we've decided to cancel our normal service and host a post-carnival chill out room instead (with prayer stations, ambient music, projections, floor cushions, lots of candle light etc.).

pet hate

just watching the Henman showdown from the first round of Wimbledon on the BBC and it's reminded me of one of my pet hates. For some reason the BBC in their wisdom only show their mini scoreboard (the one in the top left hand corner of the screen) while a point is in play - precisely the time that you want to be watching the play not looking at the score. In between points - when it would be a good time to check the score - they remove it. It's sooooo annoying! Does anyone have any idea why?