Paris Today

sorry about the lack of a 'Happy Christmas to all my readers' post. have been at my parents house in N Wales for a few days. got back to Oxford last night and today we are heading off to Paris for a few days on Eurostar. We have a friend who has an uncle who has a flat in the Latin quarter, so we get to stay in a top location for free...which is nice.

Ricky Gervais podcast

very funny! go here for RSS feed and links to previous episodes you may have missed.
UPDATE : having just listened to episode 2 it's not for the faint-hearted!

definitely my favourite advent image

i think it speaks for itself.

Re:mix. Re:make. Re:configure. Re:consider.

I'm loving this! San Francisco creative collective Rebar paid the parking meter for a couple of hours in a built up area of downtown San Francisco and used the time to create a garden in the parking space figuring that the time was theirs to do whatever they wanted to with it. Passers by fed the meter to keep it all going, and some sat down on the bench, read the paper, chatted...
I think it's a wonderful idea - a real image of redemption for me. It kinda reminds me of Isaiah's garden in the desert. More info and some wonderful pics here.
Thanks to Jonny for the link.

'9'

We had a great end to the hOME year last night at our carol service - a service of 9 lessons and carols - (idea knicked from Jonny and Grace's re-interpretation of this old tradition). We borrowed a fantastic old Oxford Movement/Anglo-Catholic revival church (as it was set back from the road some of our guys made a brilliant illuminated walkway using tea-lights in jam jars to lead to the church door) for the night (perfect ambience for some pre-service Sigur Ros), lit it, fired up the projectors, dusted off the mirror-ball, and then 9 members of the hOME community re-interpreted the 9 traditional readings.
They were all great - but I particularly enjoyed Jules's use of 'Planet Telex' by Radiohead in the first reading (from Genesis) - "everything is broken, everyone is broken", Esme's dramatic soundscape (which she made herself using Pro Tools) of what the shepherds might have heard on the hillside the night the angels appeared, Chris's imaginative story helping us to put ourselves in Mary's place, and Julet's movement piece (to Nitin Sawnhey) where she danced while holding a light and started high up on the balcony and then moved down and in amongst the congregation to represent Christ the light of the world coming to earth and presencing himself amongst us.
But mentioning these items particularly makes it sound like the others weren't any good, which of course is not true. It's just that some of the pieces impacted me more than others.
Tom did a great job on the music front - unearthing some fantastic re-workings of Christmas carols by electronic composer Mars Lasar (you can find him if you search in iTunes) as well as contributing some of his own pieces. So we ended up singing 9 re-worked carols too which was great.
That was our last service of the year and it felt like a good end to an eventful 12 months.
more pictures are available here.

Churches decide not to bother with Christmas

Apparently some of the mega-churches in the U.S. have decided not to have a service on Christmas day. I say 'why stop there?' Why not go the whole hog and stop celebrating Easter as well? Of course, this is slightly hypocritical of me as our little church has its last service of the year tomorrow night (our carol service - see here for more info) and won't be having a service on Christmas Day. But we were planning to until we realised that hardly any of our small congregation was going to be around. We are small. Willow Creek has a congregation of around 20,000. What's their excuse? Read the whole story here.

Sufjan Stevens Christmas Tunes

absolutely loving the Sufjan Stevens Christmas songs available for download free (for some reason!) here. Thanks to Jonny for the link. I think we'll be using some of these at our Carol Service this coming Sunday.

we do romance too

Just back from a fantastic 24 hour wedding anniversary break at The Falkland Arms (winner of countless Real Ale awards) in a beautiful, classic English, village called Great Tew in North Oxfordshire. Any townie looking for a romantic (4 poster beds etc.) get-away should give it a try.

which '24' character are you?

take the test here!

Holiness

I have been reflecting a little on the Advent Sunday lectionary readings for last Sunday and the coming Sunday. There's a lot in there about John the Baptist. He makes the comparison between himself and Jesus - 'I baptise with water, one comes after me who will bapstise you with the Holy Spirit'. I wonder whether John's baptism has to do with turning from something and Jesus' baptism (with the Holy Spirit) has to do with embracing something.
It's not enough just to turn/repent, we also need to embrace.
I think my concept of holiness for too long has been to do with NOT doing certain things - i.e. defined by absence. I wonder whether I/we need to rediscover (cos there's nothing new) a concept of holiness that has to do with DOING things (that are good) rather than NOT doing things that are bad. i.e. defined by presence (of good things).
You can either try to remove the air from a jam jar by sucking it out or by filling it full of water. i know which one is easier.

Ancient-Future Time

My office is just behind the Christian Bookshop in East Oxford. I pop in once a week for my copy of the Church Times (oh I am so Anglican!). Normally for buying books I use Amazon, or, being in Oxford, we have a fantastic selection of bookshops in the city centre. But this book - 'Ancient-Future Time' - caught my eye so I picked up a copy.
I know that Robert Webber is 'Mr Ancient-Future' (has he TM'd the phrase yet!) and this is one of a zillion books he seems to have published with that phrase in the title, but as we are at the beginning of a new liturgical year I thought he might have some interesting to say about a spirituality that is formed by the seasons of the church year. we'll see.

Teaching Team

we're looking for some new models for how we do teaching at hOME. Last night we had the inaugural meeting of the newly formed hOME Teaching Team.
The idea is to explore some more collaborative teachings styles. At the beginning of each month those with an interest or a sense of calling to wrestle with and teach the scriptures in the context of our community will gather to look at the Sunday lectionary texts for the following month (so last night we were looking at the texts for January). Out of the creative discussion that follows ideas and themes will emerge which people can then take away and shape up into talks (and the plan is that some people will work in pairs etc. and think of creative ways of helping the gathered community to engage with the texts).
We had a really great first meeting. To me, as someone who has spent many hours over recent years sitting alone in a room trying to come up with some interesting and spiritually nourishing things to say from a text, to work on texts in a group setting was a very rich way to approach the task of doing a talk. Especially if, like me, you are an extrovert processor. We were finding that there was a real synergy to this approach as one person tossed out an idea which someone else then developed and added to.
And I like the idea of broadening the teaching base and democratizing it a bit more - taking it out of the exclusive domain of the 'professionals' and releasing more people with a gift/desire/passion for this work, to learn together and from each other.

Sigur Ros

Sigur Ros are playing a one off show at the Hammersmith Apollo in London on March 29th. pre-sale tickets go on sale today. i'm tempted but £25 a ticket seems a bit steep to me.

There's only one Edgar Davids

As a Spurs fan I couldn't let Edgar Davids' first goal for Tottenham go unmentioned on this blog. For my money he is still one of the standout players in world football and he is doing a great job for Spurs. It was great to see him really enjoying scoring his first goal for the club on Saturday.

Bulldog

In the process of switching our broadband and phone over to Bulldog who are offering 8 meg broadband for £9.75 per month. The offer expires at the end of November so get your skates on if you're tempted.

Advent Sunday

Yesterday, of course, was Advent Sunday - the beginning of the church year. A season of anticipation and expectancy. We had our regular Eucharist but added some Advent spice with a short candle lighting ritual at the beginning using the U2 track '40' (in darkness) followed by the Delirious track 'There is a light that shines in the darkness' (I know - I've lost all my emerging church kudos by mentioning Delirious...woops) as Pippa lit the 'Christ' candle at the back of the room and walked into the circle of sofas and then lit each person's candle. Simple but effective. We sang some of our home-grown songs (and it was good to have Martin singing for the first time), read the lectionary readings and Suzie shared some reflections on 'Watching, Waiting and Hoping' (I particularly enjoyed her tie in with the 'buy now pay later'/instant gratification culture we live in). We then prayed the eucharist liturgy together (and Jim has brought back a fantastic chalice and patten from Iona for us to use).
One of the things that I was most pleased about last night was the way people lingered after the service had 'officially' ended and prayed for each other without it being 'organised'. We have been struggling for a while to find some natural ways to incorporate 'prayer ministry' (for want of a better phrase) into our services without reverting to the overly hyped-up practices of many charismatic churches. It was great to see people in 2's and 3's around the place just simply and quietly praying for each other where they sat. I hope we see more of that.

Devon

A dozen of us from hOME went down to Devon for a couple of nights this last weekend. 5 of the crazy fools even went surfing in the Atlantic. I was not one of them. They tried to convince me that a winter wet suit would see me right but I wasn't buying it. I mean, there was snow on the ground for crying out loud. Anyway, a good time was had by all and we got back in time to celebrate Advent Sunday last night (see next post).

The Big Ideas of 2006

Even though I am more sceptical these days of the adbusters agenda after reading 'The Rebel Sell' the end of year issue of the adbusters magazine is always worth getting. I picked up a copy from Borders the other day. Get yours at all good newsagents now!

more on the emergent conversation day

Jonny has reminded me that there is some stuff that really chimes in with what we were talking about on Saturday in the introduction to his book 'Alternative Worship'. Reading his blog post sent me back to re-read it, and i wish I had done so before we went to St Albans as it's really relevant to what we were talking about. here's an excerpt:

"Alternative worship was 'post-charismatic', particularly in the determination of most groups to reject the culture of chorus singing and the worship group with worship leader. We have already noted the time lag between the musical forms (soft rock, easy listening) adopted by the charismatic renewal and the forms current in 'secular youth music'. There was a reaction against a performance-based musical idiom, in favour of one oriented to communal celebration and participation. People were also reacting against a model of the working of the Holy Spirit which stressed immediacy, spontaneity and extemporizing as the true signs of 'the Spirit moving'. The charismatic renewal contained an explicit critique of liturgical tradition as 'formal therefore unfree'. Most alternative worship groups have rejected this opposition and turned to embrace form, set prayers and liturgical patterns. Both the turn from choruses and the turn from an exclusive emphasis on 'free prayer' reflected an aesthetic and a spiritual disillusionment with these forms; a sense that they had produced a culture of banality in worship. A number of groups have retained a strong affinity with the theology of charismatic renewal, which they seek to explore within a new cultural mix."

I found that to be a helpful summary of some of the stuff we were talking about on Saturday.

I am still trying to discover, though, more groups like the one Jonny mentions at the end there - having a strong affinity with the theology of charismatic renewal but seeking to explore that within a new cultural mix. I'm sure there must be more groups out there like that - perhaps similar to us in hOME in wanting to explore the intersection of ancient/future liturgical forms whilst holding on to a charismatic spirituality - I just haven't found many yet. If that describes you, get in touch.

The Constant Gardener

Pip and I went to see this last night and thoroughly enjoyed it. we stopped off at 'The Big Bang' beforehand which is a sausage restaurant (choose a combination from a selection of sausages, mash, and jus - I went for the traditional Oxford sausages with a carrot and swede mash and a red wine jus - delicious). Anyway, it's a really well made film by the director of 'City of God'. without wanting to spoil it for those who haven't seen it yet, it does make you wonder how much of this sort of thing really goes on and how much is covered up. if you haven't seen it yet that will obviously make no sense whatsoever! do go and see it.