rev tc: January 2006

Sunday, January 29, 2006

quiet blog

i'll be a bit quiet this week, as i'm attending a conference on industrial mission chaplaincy and unlikely to have much time to give to blogging.

Saturday, January 28, 2006

today i spent in the company of a group of about a dozen other curates from chelmsford diocese as we learned something about our forthcoming trip to kenya in may. chelmsford diocese is sponsoring part of the trip to our partner dioceses in kenya as a 'ministry enrichment experience'. they simply want us to experience another culture and learn from our brothers and sisters.

so, today we did some stuff like: learning a few phrases in swahili, hear something about how we'll need to dress (much 'smarter' than i normally do!), make a list of first-aid and health stuff to take, hear about how anglican culture is likely to be more highly thought of by idigenous people than by some of us, work through the itinerary, hear about what is likely to be expected of us by the locals etc.

i'm really looking forward to it as i've never been to africa, and will feel the shock of culture as i'm sure i never have in the past. and i'm thinking there will be some solid reflecting on life and faith on my return. spare me a prayer...

Friday, January 27, 2006

beware: music file-sharing declared illegal

and according to the judge, the old 'ignorance is no excuse' still holds no water in court. one poor postie dad from brighton, who did claim ignorance, got fined £1500 pending final determination of costs and damages. the music industry is going for the jugular, so beware!

see the independent's report here.

pope blog!

yep - the pope has a blog. its called, 'the pope blog'.

its been going for a couple of years now, as the archive list shows.

maybe the archbishop should set one up....

and no, i haven't gone all 'catholic' and become a 'pope-lover' - just sharing information brothers and sisters.

love, life, and living together

so, the pope's new encyclical on love is released. the guardian unlimited has a post about it here.

there's also a great interview with the archbishop of canterbury, dr. rowan williams, when he was speaking with simon mayo just before christmas (thanks to ruth gledhill for posting to it). the interview goes for 35 mins, but is well worth taking the time to listen to.

these two guys are the leading figures in world institutionalised christian religion - the very thing that is viewed with inherent suspicion by most in today's world. but i suspect they are guys who take their call to fulfill their vocation with a whole-of-life sacrifical commitment probably not practiced by those who dismiss them.

they're guys who know their utterances and behaviour are taken notice of by about one-fifth of the world's population, so they give consideration to what they're saying and take the risk that what they say will be taken out of context, torn to shreds, wilfully misunderstood, as well as taken seriously by some. how may of us have to shoulder that burden?

gives me some idea of the risk god took with leaving us a book (the bible) which can also be taken out of context, torn to shreds, wilfully misunderstood, as well as taken seriously by some. not to mention jesus' risk in leaving his message of love in the hands of a few frail men 2000 years ago.

so put the coffee on, let the answer-machine take your calls, and give yourself 35 mins to listen to a humble man be publicly vulnerable as he answers some good questions on the nature of love, life, and living together.

Thursday, January 26, 2006

zacchaeus part 4 (luke 19:1-10)

The story of Zacchaeus is told as Jesus makes his way to Jerusalem. The story before shows a blind man receiving his sight in response to his request of Jesus, and all the people praising God. Zacchaeus gets to see Jesus, but is also seen by him and in the process of being seen, is found. But the people don’t seem to praise God. And the next story is pointed toward those who think they’ve seen it all, have got it sorted, but who have missed the point altogether. They certainly wouldn’t have been praising God about that story.

How amazing grace is! How surprised many of us will be by those we will encounter in the Kingdom of God. And what a wonderful thing for us to be found by him who has come looking for us.

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

on movie ads, arms trading, and love

amnesty international are hoping to shock cinema audiences into action by showing a spoof ad on how easy it is to buy an ak-47 assault rifle.

the uk is great at producing and selling weapons to all manner of countries - even those who are mutual aggressors! see the figures here.

and against the madness of human aggression and warfare, we can expect the new pope's first encycilical on love, tomorrow.

maybe the old 'rotweiler' can bring a creative critique to our world that seems bent on tearing itself to shreds. maybe the efforts of amnesty and the pope can mobilise ordinary citizens to demand better, more creative foreign policy and behaviour from our elected politicians.

what would the world be like if everybody just said, 'oh, its all too hard.'?

zacchaeus part 3 (luke 19:1-10)

The surprises keep coming as Zacchaeus announces that he’s going to give away half his possessions to the poor, and pay back anyone he’s cheated four times the amount he cheated them. I wonder if he could believe what he was saying! How many times can we think of saying something that seems unbelievable to our own ears, especially when we’re in the company of someone we look up to, and who has surprised us with something they’ve said or done to make us feel special?

And yet another surprise – Jesus stands up (maybe) and announces to all and sundry that salvation has come to this house and that this man can call himself a son of Abraham along with the most religious and genealogically correct Jew in the land. It’s as though Jesus has pardoned the filthy collaborating tax collector in response to Zacchaeus’ own response to Jesus inviting himself into Zacchaeus’ life.

I suspect that Zacchaeus had no idea how the day was going to pan out. He just wanted to see the celebrity. But I further suspect that Jesus knew who Zacchaeus was, and wanted to use the occasion to make a point – along with making a hated man happy.

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

some environmental info

check out friends of the earth for some news on recycling in response to a planned government draft paper on waste incineration.

and also check out wonderland's post on fashioning an ethical industry where the fashion industry engages with the question of whether fashion can be fair.

and finally, george monbiot looks at the so-called 'self-vindicating policy on nuclear weapons development' - mighty scary stuff.

when i was talking to someone at the police yesterday (with me dog collar on) they said, 'i stay away from religion. all the problems of the world are about religion, politics, and land. and power. and its always men! will we ever get it right?'

and while it won't be anywhere near perfect in this world, the christian hope of personal transformation leading onto some corporate transformation through engagement with the deadly issues of life really does have something to offer. transformed individuals generally don't remain isolated - they engage with others.

this new globalised age we find ourselves in is struggling, i think, to learn to live with itself due to an immediacy and proximity unknown in ages gone by. and it has the ability to bring global destruction in completely imaginable ways. isolationism is struggling with globalisation, and yes, religion, politics, power, land, and men are in it up to their eyeballs.

martin luther king jr. said, 'an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind'.

while the complexity of life is mind-boggling, let's try to see and respect the image of god in all people, and demand that our political leaders, captains of industry, and religious leaders do the same.

Monday, January 23, 2006

zacchaeus part 2 (luke 19:1-10)

As I was thinking about this story the other day, I thought about it from an angle I hadn’t thought of before; that, while Zacchaeus wanted to see Jesus, he may not have expected Jesus to actually notice him in the tree. And further, that being noticed would bring the unexpected consequences of giving away heaps of his money and being declared fit for the Kingdom of God.

There is no mention in the text that Zacchaeus had any need of seeing Jesus; no ailments, no life-searching questions, and no apparent personal need to become a follower. I wondered whether Zacchaeus actually just wanted to be nosey and have a good old gander at the new celebrity in town. Jesus was famous, caused a stir wherever he went, and drew the inevitable crowd. So, in response to the large and noisy crowd, the small and nosey tax collector wanted to see what the fuss was about. And being somewhat used to having to fend for himself due to being short and disliked, was not beyond climbing the nearest available tree to achieve what he wanted. He wanted to see Jesus.

Zacchaeus was probably as surprised as the rest of the crowd when Jesus called him by name and announced in clear and simple terms that he would be availing himself of Zacchaeus’ hospitality for the day. Well there’s a turn-up for the books. Now the hated little man was the centre of attention and mixing it with the famous celebrity. Now he was being noticed for reasons different to the usual; no curses, no threats, no pained looks from broken-hearted, bankrupted families. Here was someone who wanted to be with him, to share his food, to talk and listen. And do it all in his own home. Little wonder that he welcomed Jesus gladly. And little wonder that the people couldn’t believe it – Jesus the holy celebrity inviting himself to the house of a filthy sinner.

zacchaeus part 1 (luke 19:1-10)

As a tax collector, Zacchaeus was many things. Hated as a collaborator with the occupying Roman regime; wealthy - the text even says so; shunned by the general populace; probably even distrusted by his Roman masters, as tax collectors were notoriously unscrupulous. He was even vertically challenged, and so probably even further disregarded by society.

There are many interpretations of this story, and the most popular one is mostly used by Sunday School teachers to speak of the little man who was noticed by Jesus; ergo, little people – children – are also noticed by Jesus and welcomed into the Kingdom of God.

Of course, the real scandal of the story is that Jesus welcomes rotten scumbags into the Kingdom following their response to him. It’s a story of the shocking nature of the grace of God.

police and community relations

today i was invited to the launch of the new 'safer neighbourhoods' team for our local ward - hoe street.

it was great to be invited along and to see the enthusiasm of the safer neighbourhoods team members. the aim of the teams is to do better than the 'sticking plaster' solutions to criminal activity and community cohesion. that means engaging with the community stakeholders to find long-lasting solutions that create a culture change so that neighbourhoods become safer - not through fortress mentality solutions - but through integrated community connectedness where the neighbourhood feels involved, listened to, and whose suggestions actually are incorporated into larger strategies for community safety.

the thing is, the police can't actually make neighboourhoods safe. while they have some resources to bring to the table and they have a duty to uphold the law, they are one part of a community taking responsibility for the whole of the way it lives with itself.

how a community feels and operates is about the community taking responsibility for itself. walthamstow village is very fortunate to have a vibrant residents association (wvra), and the hoe street ward being given 'safer neighbourhood' status is partly due to their lobbying.

st. mary's church is also part of the local community, and is looking forward to continuing to grow our relationship with the police and the wvra. at some point in the not-too-distant future, we can expect to see some members of the safer neighbourhoods team at church, as they introduce themselves to us.

Sunday, January 22, 2006

historic new church-without-walls

today was an historic day in the life of our parish, as it marked the beginning of a new expression of an ancient faith in contemporary london. st. luke's walthamstow has been a christian congregation for just over 100 years, meeting in a church building that has just about come to the end of its life.

the 'big idea' is of a church metamorphosing from being comfortable in its own building to starting again with no building and meeting in the high street of walthamstow. bishop david hawkins gave it the official 'kick-off' today, so that next week the core congregation will meet in the high street and begin the double-listening process: to god, and to the local community. no-body knows what form this new community of faith will take as it will be shaped in and by the local community in relationship with the people of faith.

and that's the thing that people find hard to understand - what will this thing look like? how much will it cost? what will you do? they sound like realistic questions, but they're really only realistic from a certain 'church' paradigm, which is not the paradigm that the new expression of faith is working from.

bishop david said, 'for 2000 years we've made the mistake of putting the church before mission. church is meant to grow from mission, not the other way around. so, from next week, the emphasis will change as mission will come first.' the paradigm will change from 'church' to 'mission'.

that mission will be undergirded by the agreed 4 core values of the new congregation: new, generous, embracing, transforming. what those core values look like in practical action will depend on what happens through the double-listening process.

this will be very interesting to see how a (largely) traditional anglican church reinvents itself as it seeks to follow in jesus' footsteps down the high street in walthamstow. i'll keep posting on this as and when....

Saturday, January 21, 2006

spirituality in new movies

internet monk has a good post on the release of 'the end of the spear', a new movie looking at the deaths of 4 young missionaries in the mid 1950s as viewed through the eyes of the son of one of them.

and the guardian unlimited looks at the world's first black jesus film, 'son of man', which depicts jesus as an african revolutionary fighting oppression in contemporary africa.

i wonder if these are the start of a new breed of jesus movies that show him as someone a lot stronger and more radical, with real transformative power that gets rid of the soppy 'gentle-jesus'meek-and-mild' rubbish that's been around too long...

whatever, they're bound to produce not a few discussion groups when they finally arrive here.

Friday, January 20, 2006

blog behaviour and the creation of moral virtual communities (original)

doug pagitt has expressed his discontent with blog behaviour, and maggi dawn has also picked up on it. ben witherington, also in the usa, has some good thoughts on the subject.

the prospect of bad behaviour was one of the main reasons i didn't take up blogging when jonny baker started - i still remember the conversation with him outside a coffee shop in london. the virtual community is quite different in culture to what we normally experience in the flesh and blood.

there is a theological challenge for the church to engage with virtual culture, and the incarnation brings a good critique. below is something i wrote a few years ago when at college that i offer to put into the pot:

Virtual culture, virtual community, virtual humans: ergo, virtual God?
Is it possible to have a virtual society with virtual humans who create a virtual culture? Almost ten years ago, a thesis was produced by Tim North, which looked at these issues in the wider context of an anthropological study of the Internet and its users. Underlying his thesis was the primary research question of whether the users of the Internet and Usenet global computer networks form a society that has a distinct culture of its own. After discussing whether it is possible for a society to have more than one culture, North concludes that, ‘It seems reasonable…to assume that the members of a particular society all share the same culture.’ However, he goes on to argue that the nature of the Internet is such that it spans the globe, and that if it were to conform to the classical anthropological understandings of society and culture then its users would need to be from the one society. This obviously cannot be the case, and so he resolves the issue by creating a new term for the Internet’s societal structure, which he calls the pan-societal superstructure. So, a new way of thinking about society is created with the Internet. This pan-societal superstructure frees the Internet from some of the responsibilities of ordinary society such as providing food and shelter for its inhabitants, because its members are also members of societies that already provide those things.

This new way of thinking about society, virtual community and culture, (which sounds like an oxymoron) has nevertheless been taken seriously by the private sector as it engages with globalisation. For example, Sandia, a major research and development agency in USA is doing work in conjunction with BT in this country in developing virtual culture in cyberspace so that Internet communication becomes more like a ‘real’ place. One of Sandia’s developers, Elaine Raybourn says, ‘Designers of collaborative virtual communities now have the opportunity and responsibility to consider the impact of the underlying dynamics of culture and intercultural interactions such as identity, negotiation, conflict, power, equity, and trust on virtual spaces and collaborative communities.’

Some of the work they are doing incorporates the use of ‘avatars’ – human-shaped figures that can be generically representative, or fairly sophisticated 3D representations of an individual which include skin texture, hair and eye colour, all faithfully reproduced on the screen. Raybourn says, ‘The avatar is you in cyberspace… your avatar might ‘walk’ on the computer screen and ‘sit down’ at a table with others in virtual meeting space. It’s your persona on the Internet.’ Essentially, it’s a more sophisticated form of a ‘chat room’.

So, to some extent, a virtual human exists in cyberspace. But what effect does cyberspace have on valuing a human being? And where does cyberspace’s valuing of human beings lead in the discussion about humanity’s relationship to, and valuing by, God?

We do not live alone as individuals in the Universe. Historically, we are creatures of community. The social sciences are in general agreement that we are products of the shaping of our communities, and that we in turn shape others who encounter us. So if a person’s community is predominantly virtual (e.g. being an only child of absentee parents, who is brought up with massive TV and computer input, lacking in social skills, who is home-tutored for schooling, who gets a job as a computer operator working from home), will that person’s self-image correspond to a virtual self-image, and only be able to conceive of a virtual God?

Embodying the Trinity in the Incarnation
From a Christian perspective, it seems quite weird to think of humanity being able to be valued if it is ‘disembodied’ in cyberspace. There is no biblical understanding of humans existing without being body and soul. The apostle Paul also sees no separation of being, either physical or spiritual, as he talks about the body being the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 6:19-20). At an essence level, we cannot be who or what we are not. Later in that letter, he speaks of the resurrection of Christ, the dead, and our resurrection bodies. Paul insists that what will be for us will be as it was for Christ: transformed bodies for a transformed existence. But the reality of that eschatological transformation is not reserved for that ‘pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die’ sense, rather, it provides the Christian with a hope that must also be grounded and lived out in the real world in the present (1 Cor 15:58).

Of course, Paul’s context was very different to our current context from a technological perspective. But does that necessarily mean the hermeneutic for valuing human beings will need to be wildly different? In the words of that great old song, ‘…it ain’t necessarily so’.

One of the basic tenets of social Trinitarianism is that human beings are only fully human in their imaging of God when they are in living relationship with one another. Their individuality is only ever fully realised as they encounter the ‘other’. This is because God is a ‘community’ of three persons who are fully individual only in their relationship with one another. This ‘relationality’ has been a great insight from post-modernity about identity formation, and the nature of the Trinity. So perhaps the hermeneutical critique of relationality needs to be brought to the new context of cyberspace.

So, let us try to put these thoughts together. God is love in the fellowship of the Trinity. The Trinity is something we cannot see (and so could be loosely argued that it itself is in some kind of analogy to cyberspace). If the Trinity is something we think of as being encounter-able when we die and are resurrected, but we also bring Paul’s critique of the eschatological transformation of our bodies which means something very real to us in the present, then we cannot escape the obvious implication of the invisible (disembodied?) God taking physical human form in the Incarnation of Jesus of Nazareth. So if the Ultimate Reality of the God of the Universe finds it necessary to show Ultimate Love and Value to humanity and the rest of creation in physical human form, then anything less is also bound to be something less than fully human, and subject to being treated in ways that are less than how we have been treated by the Trinitarian, Incarnational love of God.

Cyberspace needs the critique of the Trinity and the Incarnation if it is to be a place where humanity can be truly valued as we enter the new world before us.

As humanity finds itself in a shifting, transforming context through post-modernity and has to learn to live with itself and the world in new ways, it seems to me that the valuing of humanity is not something to be done in abstraction, or any disconnection from real flesh and blood interaction.

I think there are many implications that will need to be grasped and interacted with by the Church if it is to meaningfully engage with the rapidly changing context of western civilisation. Some of these implications could be:

1.If missiological anthropologists tell us that God speaks to us in ways we can understand, then how does God speak into a virtual world inhabited by virtual humans who are participating in life in hitherto unknown ways?
2. How do we create moral virtual communities?
3. How will the Church be a foretaste of the new humanity in relationship with God as expressed in cyberspace?
4. How will eschatology and incarnation need to be addressed in cyberspace?
5. If only a small, but very powerful minority of the world have access to this form of virtual reality, will that minority exercise its power over the rest of humanity by insisting that virtual reality has precedence over normal reality?
6. How will the various humanities express their love to each other, and how will they value one another’s humanity?

The Church must take up the issue in this new millennium.

Thursday, January 19, 2006

food, farming, and fair trade

yesterday i spent the day at writtle college in essex, attending a conference with the above title. it was put on as a partnership between the centre for environment and rural affairs (cera) and the diocese of chelmsford. the idea of the conference was good as it sought to engage with the issues of food production for an ever-increasing global population, and how the 2 institutions might work together on those issues.

there were about 33 attendees, most of whom were anglican clergy, along with some farmers from essex. that number had the potential for the conference to have been quite interactive, but instead it was done in classic 'lecture' style as an information impartation exercise that left one's brain feeling somewhat overloaded at the end of the day. 3 of the attendees were the diocesan bishop, his advisor for mission and ministry, and an archdeacon, all of whom got an email from me suggesting they consider any future conferences to experiment with open-source conferencing to stimulate more of an interactive and conversational style of conference (jonny baker has a good post on open-source conferencing here).

the issues discussed by experts in their fields included: pressures on eu and uk farmers, including the common agricultural policy (cap); food security, population growth and environmental pressure in the developing world; ethics of global food trade; fair trade; global food chain issues; food miles; traceability and food packaging issues; and corporate social responsibility. and yes, we got hit with all of those one after the other!

the overall picture the combined information gave was not at all rosy, or even particularly hopeful. world population is outpacing the world's current ability to feed itself. the food mountains and milk lakes that were stored in the 1980s have now disappeared. the world population is rising at the rate of 100 million people per year and may peak in 2050 at 9.1 billion. world food production has been declining since 1984 and would need a 50% rise in current production to meet demand for 2020. prof. michael alder, principal of writtle, did a great job in introducing us to the complexity of what he called 'the problematic' that includes food, poverty, climate, environment, health, and a range of other issues that are intertwined and multi-faceted.

most of the speakers were explicit in saying that, while they could provide an analysis of the problems, they had no answers.

bishop john suggested that the church could begin to help through awareness raising, education, and advocacy. this is good, but if that's as far as it goes then i suspect little will actually change.

a good example of christians actually engaging with these kinds of issues is the generous project, which came out of greenbelt 2 years ago. the big idea is that people will commit to practical, sustainable actions that give legs to the idea of living more generously on the planet in interconnectedness with the rest of humanity. the website allows people to connect with each other, learn from each other, and be encouraged that their little actions are becoming cumulative as others join in. this is one of the benefits of the internet as it allows a small idea to grow into a sizable groundswell through connecting people. that groundswell can become politically volatile and have a tangible effect on the way people live and behave.

perhaps we could get the diocese to engage with the generous project, and link writtle's experts in as well to help with hard data, bring other issues to the fore, while we try to give constructive theological critique to the debate, etc.

our diocese has already sigend up to be a fair trade diocese, has written and adopted an environmental policy, and is encouraging parishes to become fair trade parishes.

church house publishing produced an excellent little book called 'sharing god's planet' last year that gives a great introduction to engaging with a christian vision for a sustainable future.

the reality is that doing nothing is not an option.

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

new phase

last night marked the beginning of a new phase in our collective life as the parish of walthamstow. the institution of our new team rector, simon heathfield, was a mixture of traditional anglican pomp and ceremony, laughter, creative prayer, a variety of symbolic acts, and a big nosh-up afterwards.

having read 'thomas' recently (see an earlier post in the archives entitled 'half a tradition?'), i was struck, during last night's ceremony, by the latent power behind the act of swearing fealty to the crown and the lord bishop. in thomas's day, the implications of that act could literally include the issue of life and death. i'm not sure it has anything like that power now (and probably just as well, given the disputes in the anglican communion at present!). but for me, it was a stark and direct link to the ancient past from which our tradition has grown, and of which we are a living part.

and that's the point really, isn't it; how much of the tradition is dead, and how much of it truly lives? if swearing fealty is nothing more than words, is it simply a quaint reminder of a dim past from which we've emerged? (i know that there are ecclesiastical courts, and ways of bringing discipline in clergy life, but no longer to the point of death).

and yet the power of ritual, symbolism, and tradition used in appropriate ceremony with apt liturgy infused with god's holy spirit is still able to touch the human being in surprisingly deep, even unfathomable ways that can bring lasting personal (and corporate) transformation. which is the guts of simon's (and ours) job: to proclaim the historic faith afresh in each generation.

i'm looking forward to working with him in doing that.

Saturday, January 14, 2006

fab first time!

what a great first experience at the footy. good vibes, good seat, good skills, good result, and club history was made. with his hat-trick of goals, gunners skipper thierry henry equalled the club's highest goal scorer, cliff baston's, record of 150 goals.

poor old boro just weren't in it, and i can imagine their long treck back up north tonight will be an ordeal. thrashed by 7 - 0 they were lucky to get away with that score, as there were easily another half dozen chances gone missing.

and its wonderful to have generous mates who like to bless you, eh...

footy virgin

am off to my very first game of football (in australia, we call it soccer) today. its a premiership game between arsenal and middlesbrough at highbury, so not far to travel.

a friend has a spare ticket and kindly offered to take me gratis. while looking forward to it, i'm not sure anything comes close to real footy - aussie rules style.

but the atmosphere alone should be fantastic. a bit of 'cross-cultural exploration...'

Friday, January 13, 2006

something and nothing

like gareth at moot, i'm also reading merton, though its 'the intimate merton - his life from his journals'. its something i've been reading for a couple of years - y'know, dip in and out. he's a fascinating man.

the entry that caught me recently was from april 15, 1961. he records a time sitting alone in the hermitage watching a powerful thunderstorm. the last words of that entry are: 'not to be known, not to be seen.' part of his context is to try to stop being famous, and the storm helps him to feel something of real anonymity. the storm raging outside is all powerful, and doesn't notice the man in the small building watching it and being taught by it.

there is something very salutary about the awesome power of nature and how inconspicuous humanity is in the face of it. i think we're terrified of nature. but i think we should be more terrified about how helpless we've become as we rely more and more on technology.

along with our advances in technology has come a strange ambiguity in our sense of who we are. technology allows us the comfort and ease not to have to survive on a day-to-day basis amongst the forces of nature. this comfort allows us the time and space to develop a sense of the value and importance of self that can at one and the same time be healthy and completely unrealistic. healthy in the sense that each person really does matter and is of inherent worth, but completely unrealistic in the sense of an immature egocentricity that thinks it unjust if a storm wreaks havoc on our own comfort and ease.

urban dwellers are at most risk of this ambiguity i think, as rural dwellers and people who work in and with nature possess an understanding and humility more conducive to a wholesome engagement with life (says me as an ex-dairy farmer, surfer, and sailor).

so, given that, it makes me wonder about the re-creation of all things at jesus' return, as the biblical picture is of all things coming together in a great city. the biblical drama moves from the opening scene in a garden to a new opening scene in a city. what transformation will need to take place in the psyche of contemporary western humanity for all people to live harmoniously in such a place? will being in the (unshielded?) presence of god be enough to work such transformation, as even the greatest storm must seem insignificant in comparison to him who creates the means for such storms to occur?

oh, i don't know, and there are plenty of others who have written far more eloquently than i ever could about such things. see for example c.s. lewis' "the great divorce".

perhaps it might be good for more of us to sit amongst a few more storms and be content to 'not be seen'?

Thursday, January 12, 2006

Being Adam

the church of england morning prayer lectionary is following through the genesis stories. again, i'm reminded of something i wrote nearly 5 years ago on retreat:

Genesis 2:4-9.

This meditation is all around the connectedness we have to the earth. The word ‘Adam’ means humankind, with its basic meaning as ‘earth’. The implication is that humans are drawn primarily from the earth.

No wonder the indigenous peoples such as the Australian Aboriginals and Native Americans feel such a connection with the earth, and that their spirituality and sense of meaning, purpose, and place is so intimately and powerfully connected with the earth.

It’s interesting to note how they like to walk barefoot, and sit on the ground, feeling its warmth and texture.

How very different to us modern, post-industrialised urban westerners who wear footwear, sit on chairs, raise our homes from the ground, and generally try to insulate ourselves from the earth and nature. What richness and deep communion from mother earth do we forfeit in our efforts to be clean and comfortable…?

I remember several years ago at a C&CC Retreat that I organised, spending an hour or two sitting outside under a tree, on the ground. The day was warm and so was the ground, and it felt good to be sitting ‘in’ nature. There was a sense of timelessness about it.

After I’d finished my readings this afternoon, the sun went down and stars came out. I turned the lights off and had the curtains open. The only light came from the radiator, and that light was almost like a small open-fire (it has one of those fake coal fire tops on it that glows).

It was beautiful to watch the stars in the ever-darkening night sky while listening to the gentle sound of the sea.

The longer I sat and looked, the closer I felt to God. And I realised that there is a sense of timelessness when you have nothing else to do but be with God. The timelessness includes a richness of being that seems to be rarely found in normal, everyday life.

On the train journey to this retreat, I was reading an article in the Financial Times about GPS (Global Satellite Positioning) integration with mobile phones, and some of the issues that go along with knowing where anybody is at any given time of the day or night. One of the issues was around how quickly time seems to go when you have to account for every minute of it.

There’s an interesting thread between that thought, our mortality, and our sense of truly ‘being’. I know that the busier I am the more quickly time seems to pass. Next week I’ll be 42 years old; more than half my life has gone – and it seems to go by more quickly each year!

When I come away on Retreat, I take my watch off and put the clock in another room so that I’m not aware of what time it is. And as I surrender myself and my ‘time’ to simply being with God, the day and a bit that I actually spend in this house with God seems to take a longer time than what a day and a bit at work would seem like.

I was also thinking about indigenous peoples and how they don’t seem to have a sense of ‘time’ like we do. Some of them in Africa call us ‘the people who worship the clock’. They might turn up to see you ‘when the time is right’, not at 10am. And yet, they often have a sense of joy and richness to their lives because they can relax into ‘being’ who they are in their sense of connectedness to the earth. Perhaps time really does pass more slowly for them. Perhaps they don’t feel as though they’re being rushed to their grave. And even when they approach death, there’s a sense of welcoming the return home to the earth from which they were drawn in the first place.

I know how busy my life is, and how quickly the time is going by. I’m the one who makes myself so busy, trying to achieve as much as I can in the time that I have on earth.

But do I have time to simply ‘be’ with people, and with God?

And if I did give more time to simply ‘being’, would time go more slowly, would the experience of each day be richer?

How far have we really gone from being truly ‘Adam’?

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

2 ways of looking

for some reason, looking at jonny's post on emerging church reminded me of something i wrote a couple of years ago whilst on personal retreat at the beach. i pasted it below:

Have just spent the last couple of hours (I think) sitting by the window with the curtains open, all the lights out, and with classical music on the radio in the background. It’s a beautiful, clear night. I experienced a wonderful sense of the stars ‘showing’ themselves at the beginning of that time as my night vision came into play. I was thinking about my ignorance of astronomy and wished I could identify the constellations. And its amazing how many aeroplanes there are in the sky!

I found myself a little saddened in a way to think of the beautiful night sky. They’re same stars the psalmist would have looked at, and now the view is now somewhat different due to the presence of metal, lights, humans, and fumes.

As I watched the stars and looked into the blackness of the sky between the stars, I noticed how I could see the stars better out of the corner of my eye – by looking at them ‘obliquely’, so to speak. Of course, this is nothing new. In fact, I was looking at the flashing lights of a beacon on the horizon in the same way earlier on. It’s a technique used in navigation when trying to count the flashes if they’re difficult to see. Its easier to see and count the flashes if you look slightly away from the beacon, rather than looking directly at it.

Two minor thoughts arose from this observation. Firstly, that looking obliquely at something can sometimes give a better view. This could be a clue as to how to start thinking ‘outside of the box’. Most people (me included) find it very difficult, if not impossible to see what we are looking at any differently from how we have always seen it.

But rather than looking at it (whatever it is) directly, perhaps we can try looking at it obliquely, out of the corner of our eyes and see if we notice it in a different way. This could be helpful if the object of observation is the church. How can we look at church in a different way? Try looking at it obliquely.

Secondly, the opposite of what I’ve just said. Try looking at something very intently. I remember doing this on several occasions in the bush in Australia. Usually sitting at a vantage point, like the top of a gully, I would look intently at the bush at the other side of the gully. It was interesting to observe the transformation of what, with a cursory glance was an almost 2 dimensional image become a very deep 3 dimensional reality with an intense ‘looking’. Again, perhaps we could revitalise the church by looking intently right into it.

interesting media stories

the human being is a fascinating creature, don't you think? we can't leave each other alone as we're such social creatures, and we can't leave religion alone as we're such spiritual creatures. life is full of stories about both.

i missed the tv programme on dawkins the other night, but the skinny kiwi has a post on it.

there's also a new series on radio 4 that started yesterday morning called, 'who killed christianity?', presented by dr. david starkey. its on each tuesday morning for 15 mins at 9.30am. if you miss it, you can use the listen again feature on the beeb's website. the first episode was looking at st. paul as the 'inventor of christianity'. dr. starkey asked, 'does the iron ever leave the persecutor's soul?', pointing toward paul's pre-conversion state of rigid pharisee bent on persecuting the early christians. starkey thinks that paul is harsh on humanity and distorts the essence of christianity in contrast to jesus' more positive view of humanity and gospel message. starkey engages prof. john milbank and morna hooker in the conversation. worth a listen.

that radio programme was preceeded by a fabulous half hour show called 'the choice', presented by michael buerk. yesterday's show featured a remarkable story of reform through the prison system of john hirst - a convicted killer and dangerous man. inspiring story.

Monday, January 09, 2006

critical friends

you can imagine that that phrase, 'critical friends' means more than your friends giving you a hard time about your fashion sense, music tastes, or body odour.

i'm thinking that its more about who you allow to speak critically into your life. someone who has the 'distance' from the everyday reality you experience, who can therefore help you to see the 'blindspots' in your life.

of course, this kind of relationship requires permission-giving: permission for another to look into your life; permission for that other to speak about what they see; self-permission to hear what is spoken; mutual permission for what is spoken to be accepted and acted upon, or rejected.

so different to much of what passes for contemporary friendship, where 'you don't rat on your mates', or 'being there for your friends' is more about unquestioningly affirming what your friends do whether its right or wrong.

but critical friendship requires a level of mutual maturity. it anticipates mutual growth.

today i experienced something of this, as an international faith-based charitable organisation invited me to sit in on an executive meeting and be a critical friend to them. it was a great meeting that displayed maturity and anticipated growth - neither of which have, or will come without some cost.

but then, 'fair-weather friends' never were worth much....

Saturday, January 07, 2006

more monopoly?

interesting article on the bbc website, looking at the latest in online demand purchasing from google.

one of google's co-founders, larry page used the lauch at ces to

make a plea for gadget makers to agree to common standards so that devices would just work with each other and use a standard power supply.

great idea to make things work and be accessible for us ordinary punters, but is it a cloaked attempt to develop monopolies and stifle creativity and diversity?

online photo sharing

jonny baker has a great post on a fabulous new tool for photos - flickr.

you can see in me sidebar, i've started uploading some of me own. this could be a great way to worry less about backing up those gigabytes of photos on the mac. it also creates an incredible sense of connectedness and accessibility with the wider world.

crackin' christmas waste

just following on from yesterday's post and thinking of things more green and generous toward the earth, i get a daily email from friends of the earth. they have all manner of simple, achievable ways to tread more softly on our passage through time on this celestial orb. they had one the other day about recycling all those christmas cards you popular people got. worth a crack...?

Friday, January 06, 2006

food bi-products

aahhh yes - the breadmaker does its thing again!
had this one about a year, and its just fantastic. i don't think i've bought bread since i've had it. its a panasonic sd-252.

not only do i make all our bread - well, put the ingredients in the machine - but really enjoy making soups, especially in the winter. i find all the chopping of ingredients very relaxing, and gives space for the mind to contemplate things of nature as i work in the kitchen. i've really only discovered cooking in the last year and a half. could never understand it before; i couldn't get past the thought of preparing food for an hour or more, only for it to be gobbled in 10 mins.

but now, well, i find cooking very satisfying, and generally more tasty than bought food. and definitely more wholesome as i know what's actually in it. we also have the benfit of walthamstow market just down the road - the longest street market in western europe. so its good to have a yarn with the stall holders as i make me purchases.

this last year has also seen us start composting - its something that i've wanted to do for some time and finally started it in response to being involved in the generous project.

making your own bread, cooking your own food, composting your own organic material - simple things that take more time, more thought, more effort than simply stocking up the shopping trolley in the multi- national corporation's distribution point. and the bi-product is, for a time in the midst of urban living, a quieter mind and healthier body.

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

contemplating abandonment

today, wednesday, is meant to be my 'contemplative' day. its the day in the week that i am supposed to set aside for the discipline of contemplation. but it really is difficult to do, as there's always something else to do. like today, i've got to write a sermon for sunday, finalise sunday's baptism service, do a rota for 'soul space', attend 'soul space' tonight, do various bits of admin, write a blog entry, and be prepared to deal with the inevitable interruptions throughout the day. not much space left for contemplation!

but as part of my spiritual reading this morning in the northumbria community's 'celtic daily prayer' book, was 'a prayer of abandonment to god', by charles de foucauld. he prays:

father, i abandon myself
into your hands.
do with me what you will,
whatever you do, i will thank you,
i am ready for all, i accept all.
let only your will be done in me,
as in all your creatures,
and i'll ask nothing else, my lord.

into your hands i commend my spirit;
i give it to you
with all the love of my heart,
for i love you, lord,
and so need to give myself,
to surrender myself into your hands
with a trust beyond all measure,
because you are my father.

as i read it this morning it caught me, like something you notice out of the corner of your eye and you have to look at it again by turning your head to face it. so i faced the prayer and read it again, and then again. i was aware of what a radical prayer it is, and how aptly titled ...'abandonment...'

i was aware that, in spite of my longings to do so, i couldn't really pray it with all sincerity and honesty and integrity. and i found myself wondering what state charles was in when he wrote it.

i wrote the prayer out in my journal, and noticed there was some different sensation in the physical act of writing that slows the mind and allows the heart to connect with something of the passion of the author. try it - write it out for yourself. feel the heartbeat....

it's an arresting prayer that draws us to contemplate the unknowable immensity of the love of god - the beating heart that powers the universe, and takes notice of us! this beating heart, this god who has not abandoned us to ourselves, or to the forces of nature that so easily overwhelm us, or to the sense of being inconsequential in relation to the enormity of the universe - this god, known ultimately in the person of jesus, calls us to face him.

turning to face god in the midst of the busy-ness of life is one small act of abandonment as the object of one's attention is, for a short time, not the busy-ness anymore but the source and giver of life itself. so abandoning yourself to god, is abandoning yourself to life.

Tuesday, January 03, 2006

Graffiti

someone had a go at our church just prior to christmas.

has this happened to anyone else?

does anyone recognise this handy-work?

any thoughts on what the magen david might mean in the context of a christian church?

Monday, January 02, 2006

Half a Tradition...?

is it possible to have half a tradition? i don't know - technically speaking. but today got me thinking about traditions and half traditions.

this morning we went to our friends, the rathbones, for brunch. this is normally a tradition that takes place every new year's day - the tradition being that they have open-house for their wide circle

of friends to come around to theirs, they cook bacon, sausages, scrambled eggs, and put on croissants, coffee, tea, mince pies - you can imagine....and tons of people turn up. the tradition continues with everyone leaving the house after about 2 hours and meeting somewhere in epping forest to walk off (supposedly) the food consumed, while talking with all and sundry for the period of the walk - about 1.5 hours.

well, i reckon this was only half a tradition for us today, as it wasn't new year's day for starters. it couldn't happen on new year's day this year, as new year's day was sunday, and rathbones were needed in church (jonathan is st mary's music director). it was also only half a tradition for zoe and me, as we didn't do the walk. we fed our faces - or rather, i fed mine - and headed into town for the day. zoe was keen to photograph one of her ancestor's homes in battersea, so that's where we went.

i hadn't been to battersea, or battersea park before, and was amazed yet again at another side of london. in the this huge, magnificent city lies another fabulous public park that seems well used by londoners. and in the midst of the park we came across a really wonderful example of english tradition. it was 'carter's old english fair ground', a travelling fair. it wasn't your usual 'carny-type-fair

', but a truly classy set-up with real, old-fashioned rides, shooting galleries, and arcade. the trucks and caravans were in immaculate condition, and it was fascinating to see the old arcade machines. they were in the park from boxing day

until today. it was their first year there, and they were hoping to make a new tradition of it, though they are hoping that in the future it will be in the summer rather than winter. so, was this half a tradition for them? is a new tradition half a tradition, or is it no tradition at all...? is tradition real, or have the deconstructionists done away with it for good?

i've just finished reading a fabulous old novel, 'thomas'. set nearly 900 years ago, its about the great english archbishop, thomas becket, written by the american shelley mydans, 40 years ago. you can't be an anglican (i still feel a bit weird calling myself that) and not be caught up in the traditions of the english church, or church in england (rather than church OF england) as it was then. the novel deals with the relationship between thomas and the english king henry. i'm no great shakes on history - ecclesial or english - but i think it goes some way to helping understand the traditions of relationships between church and state. so i'm encouraged by that book to attempt something a little more ambitious and learn some more about tradition by taking up my diocesan bishop's challenge to read 'reformation - europe's house divided, 1490-1700', by diarmaid macculloch.

anybody fancy reading it with me? could be good to engage with some others about church history through a very tumultuous period, especially as we consider the contemporary tumultuous debates around sexuality, women's episcopacy, and the fate of the anglican communion....how can tradition help us to engage with the debates and navigate through these particularly turbulent waters?

and tradition is fundamental to the anglican expression of the christian faith as it forms part of the trinity of anglicanism's formation through scripture, reason, and tradition. i will take part in a fundamental tradition of christianity this sunday when i baptise a child. this tradition goes beyond anglicanism and reaches back into the very heart of christianity. baptism remains one of the two fundamental sacramental acts participated in, and commanded by jesus himself (the other being holy communion). so by participating in baptism we will be consciously engaging with the traditions of the past and seeing them live today. this is not about a dusty old religious activity that has no bearing on contemporary life. there is a vital (in the life-giving sense) difference between tradition and traditionalism: tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living! so, is there any sense in which baptism could be half a tradition?

is rathbone's tradition reduced to half a tradition because it was a day late? would the tradition of christmas be reduced to half a tradition if it was held a day early (dec 24)?

hope you had a good bank holiday!

Sunday, January 01, 2006

100_2108_1

100_2108_1
Originally uploaded by rev_tc.

just playing with flickr, to see if i can understand how ot make it work...

So begins a New Year.

I'm taking the plunge for a year to create a blog, never having done it before. I'm not sure what it will turn into, but look forward with some trepidation to interacting with a different aspect of the world - not to mention learning new stuff about cyberspace and the mechanics of its manipulation.
For many years I've been reading blogs, and occasionally joining a few conversations. I think that's somewhat frowned upon...but now, for a while at least, I'll join in. One of the reasons for starting was not being able to face writing a Christmas Newsletter, and I thought that it might be better to keep some form of constant communication throughout the year. But one of the reasons for not having started earlier is the whole thing of making a rod for my back that will become too burdensome.
Ah well, today as a New Day has begun with a gathering of Holy Communion at my home church of St. Mary's Walthamstow, London, along with about 160 others. It's the only gathering we'll have today, and feels somewhat quiet in comparison to the Advent and Christmas period. But we came home to a message from one of our daughter's (Bree) friends mum in the USA, to say that Bree's friend, Lisa, has suffered another stroke and is laid up in hospital. Lisa'a only a young woman of about 22, and has been struggling with her health for around 2 years now. Its always difficult to accept young people struck down at the beginning of their lives. A new year of struggle for her and her family. Please keep her in your prayers.
So today, Zoe and I are reading, writing, and watching movies and telly. We wish you a Happy New Year, one in which God keeps you alive in faith despite the ambiguities of a complex and complicated life in the urban western world. Please journey with me this year of 2006.

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