thoughts on florida

So it seems that Florida is the new Toronto. I am not really in the loop on these sorts of things these days so I have only heard about it relatively recently.
I am trying to be respectful and adopt a 'Gamaliel' stance on it i.e. if it is God then nothing will stand in the way of it...if it isn't it will come to nothing. Others think we have a responsibility to form an opinion and make a judgement. (I enjoyed reading Mark Berry's thoughts here).

The one thought of my own I do have though comes from thinking about the Florida thing (that's what I want to call it if you don't mind) in relation to the ministry of Christ in the gospels.

It seems to me that the whole of Christ's ministry was predicated upon the idea that you didn't need to go to the temple in Jerusalem to encounter God. Christ was himself the new temple and in fact the kingdom of God is around you, close at hand, within you in fact. This idea got him in to a lot of trouble as we know.

So I'm left scratching my head as to why we should therefore be jumping on the first plane to Florida because there is 'more of God' over there (I know I'm caricaturing the mentality but I think it breaks down to something like this). Isn't this the kind of idea that the Christ spent the whole of his ministry deconstructing?

Woops - did I just go and get an opinion?! have you got one you'd care to share dear reader?

new Home website

Home has a new website.

I think there's always a process that happens with a website where - unless it's a really dynamic, totally editable one - a gap opens up over time between what your website says about you and the reality on the ground. When that gap becomes a bit of a chasm you know it's time to change it.

So I built this one (using iWeb) which means the whole thing is totally editable by us. And it's a lot more reflective of where we're at now (rather than where we were at 3 years ago like the old one!).

If you're interested, check it out here.

Amplified Design is open for Business

My work for the Home Community has been full time for the last 5 years. This year - with reduced financial support from the Diocese - I will be working part time for Home instead.

With the other half of my time I am starting to do some freelance graphic design work - under the business name 'Amplifed Design'.

I have a wee web site here (which I would appreciate any links to from you bloggers out there!) and if you, or anyone else you know, needs some design work doing then my rates are very competitive! Get in touch!!

StillPoint

In a couple of weeks' time Home is beginning a new venture - which we're calling StillPoint. This is an important part of our vision to share spiritual practices with spiritual seekers. So for the first 3 Monday nights in June we are piloting StillPoint - which is a spirituality and meditation group tailored for people who would see themselves as spiritual but would never darken the doors of church as we know it. And I'm pleased that we have been able to negotiate to use The Magic Cafe which is a very suitable venue for this clientele.
If you're in the Oxford area and you know of anyone who would find this helpful then please pass on the info.
StillPoint has it's own very basic website here and fliers (as above) are on their way back from the printer and should be available at Sunday's Home gathering.

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.

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.

Contemplative Prayer Group for Lent

I'm planning to host a prayer group during Lent this year.