romereo, an advent prayer

thanks to me old mates geoff and sherry at the ashram for pointing to this fabulous prayer from the late archbishop oscar romero. its a prayer worth taking 15 minutes at least once a week in advent to contemplate:

It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view.

The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work.
Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the church's mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about.
We plant the seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.

We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.

This enables us to do something, and to do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.

We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.
Amen

the sign of the sabbath

the rest of the seventh day is a memorial of creation, but also a sign of the covenant between god's people and himself. if a king were to ratify a treaty or agreement this would bear a sign, usually an image of the gods he owed allegiance to, but israel was commanded to not make any such image - instead the sabbath itself would be the sign, and a representation of his nature. only israel had a seven-day cycle of weeks.
we do not sense today how unique israel truly was, for the seven-day week has since become the practice of the world.

adapted from Jewish Roots, as printed in the Northumbria Community's Celtic Daily Prayer

hollow ponds today

zoe took this photo this morning while i was at whipps cross hospital at my physio appointment. you can see some more of her photos by clicking on the flickr link in the sidebar.

hollow ponds is a delightful bit of natural woodland just across the road from the hospital.

lovely init....?

all things coffee

thanks to si kirby for this tip about a new, ethical coffee distribution company, ethical addictions.
this looks like a great little fair trade company, who even give you a free sample of their coffee delivered to your door! and make sure you click on the little movie link to get a look at the the promo for the plantation in tanzania.

and a fabulous new type of coffee machine that i'd love to get, the presso (that's it in the picture). you can buy it here in the uk through culinaire.

there are quite a few good sites about coffee, like caffeist (coffee geekery), and grendel's green coffee blog (passionate about home roasting - this looks like the thing to try).

mmmmmmmm........coffeeeeeeee

The Moon 1: Psalm 8

As I read this psalm, I’m aware again that I bring my preconceptions to what I think its about, yet again.

But I’m trying to imagine David writing it. He wasn’t a mathematician, scientist, scientist, or scholar, but a poet and artist, a musician who developed his gifts as a simple shepherd boy out in the hills. In looking at this psalm, I found the juxtaposition of his imagery interesting:
∑ God’s name, earth, glory, heavens
∑ Strength from babies to still enemies and avengers
∑ God’s fingers made the moon, stars, and heavens
∑ Human beings seem so small in comparison
∑ But we’re only a little lower than the angels
∑ Crowned with glory and honour
∑ We’ve been given dominion over all the earth
∑ And God’s name is excellent in all the earth

Heaven, earth, humans, and all creation, while different are inextricably connected, primarily because their source is God.

But I wonder why David put in the bit about babies having God’s strength to still enemies and avengers? It’s right in the middle of two verses about the glory of the heavens. Perhaps it’s the shepherd in the poet that has a firm grip on the reality of earthly life, while also seeing beyond it to the glory and majesty of God as revealed in ‘the cry of a tiny babe’ (Bruce Cockburn).

Heaven and earth; and God is in both places simultaneously inspiring the poet to consider God’s glory in both.

too much common sense

george monbiot has written a couple of cracking articles that make too much sense. i mean, they make so much sense that for the government to accept them and then adopt his proposals so that they became real in our country, would make the government look utterly ridiculous - and so, they'll probably never happen.
you can read the one on 'defence' here, and the other on the renewal of public transport, with particular reference to the coach, here.
i just sent an email to the today programme saying how great it would be to hear george, alan storkey and sir rod eddington debate the renewing of the coach and bus system, as described in george's article.
why not send them an email yerself?

The Sun - 2: Mark 1:32-35

Why did they bring the diseased and possessed at night, after the sun had set? That thought occurred to me because I have this idea that night-time would have been a pretty scary time to be performing exorcisms. And I imagine people would have been pretty superstitious about such things back then. Well, some folks probably still are today!

Or was it simply that by the time Jesus had healed Simon’s mother the day was getting on anyway, and it just worked out that by the time everyone had heard about the healing and got around to her house with their own people in need of some form of healing, that it was night-time?

And Jesus, the great, divine physician, worked on into the night.

I wonder how much energy that took out of him. I wonder how much joy he got from seeing peoples’ lives changed as they were healed. I wonder if he was actually energised by his interaction with people in that way.

I know how drained I can become by being with people and giving out all the time. I need retreat times to re-energise. But there are other people who are the exact opposite of me, and who find energy when they’re interacting with others.

So Jesus worked on into the night.

Then, a long while before sunrise, he got up and went to a solitary place to pray. Jesus wasn’t scared of the dark.

I wonder if the moon was up that night, or if it was a starlit night. I imagine that if it was a cloudy, moonless night the disciples would have had difficulty finding him (verses 36, 37).

The creation of day and night, heavens and earth and the lights were all good and reflected the nature and purposes of God. Jesus would have appreciated and understood that better than anyone else. What is there to fear?

He may well have needed that prayer time to re-energise after a long and tiring day, full of healings and exorcisms. But he didn’t need to re-energise by the sun (as many pagans do). His power came from the Creator of the sun. His power came from God, who is not restricted to either day or night.

We must remember to worship the Creator, not the creation.

Inspiration for the Week

Antarctica Time lapse: A Year on Ice

i'd love to spend a year in antarctica.
what a beautiful place to contemplate the wonders of creation....

advent - wait

great picture from ben bell reminding us that the season of advent is actually about waiting.
but its not just waiting around for something to happen. its waiting with a real hope that causes us to be engaged with life. and its a hope that refuses to give up in the face of adversity.

world aids day

today is world aids day.
aids is highlighted on 1st december every year.
every year more people die - they don't have to.
in first world countries, becoming hiv positive is no longer the death sentence it was 20 years ago. but it still is in developing countries.
you can watch bono's message about it here.
you can also watch his address to the american presidential prayer breakfast earlier this year, here.
you can learn about the red campaign here.
you can check out info on africa here.
you can join the 'you me us' campaign here.

there's no end of stuff you can look at, just google 'world aids day'.
but will you translate your looking into action?

jesus saw those people others didn't want to see. he went out of his way to include the poor, the lepers, the unacceptable into the party of god's kingdom. he did something about what he saw. hiv/aids is like the leprosy of today. christians at leat, have a duty to follow their master's example.

small actions by lots of people create a mass effect. small actions with visible symbols attached, like a wearing a red ribbon, create a heightened awareness that opens the door for conversation about what the red ribbon is for.
small actions like writing to politicians about the inequity of developing world health care compared to our own, and the protected interests of multinational pharmaceutical companies in comparison to the unprotected needs of millions of hiv infected people in developing countries is the chance to put the power of democracy into action on behalf of those whose voices go unheard.

go on, do something today - you really can; perhaps you must.

The Sun - 1: Genesis 1:14-19

Don’t you think it interesting how we read what we want to, and project onto our readings our preconceptions of what we already think the reading is about?

Genesis 1:14 talks about the lights in the firmament being for ‘signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years’. My initial thoughts were around the ‘signs’. What could these signs be? The moon turning to red at the end of the age, perhaps? And the seasons; how does the sun tell us about the seasons? It comes up and goes down every day regardless of the time of year. Although, depending on your position on the globe, the arc of the sun will vary according to the season.

But verse 14 hadn’t even mentioned the ‘the sun’ yet – only, ‘lights in the firmament’. I had already projected onto the scripture my own preconceptions of what I thought it was talking about. The lights would have to include the stars, sun, and moon. The stars have always been connected with the thought and practice of interpreting signs, and the different constellations do change according to the seasons.

Its not until verse 16 that the scripture reveals something of the nature of those lights: greater light to rule the day; lesser light to rule the night; and the stars. They weren’t even called ‘sun’ and ‘moon’ then. Probably to keep to the point that it was God who created them, therefore, it is God who is to be worshipped, not the greater and lesser lights (many pagans were at that time worshipping sun and moon, which they saw as deities – some still do).

But my initial thought was around projecting my preconceptions onto the scripture: I already know what this is about! But maybe I don’t, really….

God’s creation had a purpose, and the purpose and creation were good.

I wonder what else I miss seeing and understanding because I think I already know what its about? The creation reflects the nature and purposes of God, which are quintessentially good. So, why do we continually seek to stuff everything up?

How should we be interpreting the lights for signs, seasons, days, and years in the context of them reflecting that nature and purposes of our good and gracious God?

muggings - cause, effect, and hope

excellent interview on bbc radio4's today programme this morning, that looks at the question of why young people go around mugging others. you can listen again here.
youthworkers, camila batmangelidgh of kids company, and shaun bailey bring a damning critique and indictment on our liberal democracy that has neglected the care and safety of our children so that they actually feel unsafe in the world. that feeling of being unsafe coupled with a lack of love and care, along with a relentless media-driven diet of violence places too many children literally into survival mode that means the only way they can see that they can be safe is to become known as dangerous.
of course, this sounds like more liberal wishy-washy excuse-making for bad behaviour, but i find myself saying more often these days, that delinquent parents and adults are making delinquent children.
we do well to remember that jesus welcomed children into his circle in such a way that shocked his culture, when he said, 'to such as these (children) belong the kingdom of god'. in other words, the 'status' of children is second to none in the eyes of the king of the universe. that also means that the responsibility for the love and care and nurture and discipline of these first-class citizens of god's kingdom lies with adults.
the critique of the youthworkers mentioned above is that adults are the cause of their own misery because they have failed in their responsibility to the children they have begotten.
this is a complex issue that will not suffer simplistic solutions. it will require nothing less than a cultural shift, probably taking a generation or more to flow through.
but its not hopeless. einstein said that it only takes 8% of any given population to change for the rest of the population to change with them.
people like camila and shaun need to play a louder and more prominent role in helping our society to understand what's going on and develop strategies at a political level that are more effective than what we currently have.
churches need to take heart and realise that they have an enormous part to play in this issue too, as they provide most of the country's youthworkers. organisations like frontier youth trust and oasis trust do great work in training youthworkers and contributing at a significant political level by engaging in prophetic dialogue with the makers of public policy. youthwork programmes like ascension eagles cheerleaders take a long term approach to working with young people and their wider community that actually effect a cultural shift at a micro level.
the downward spiral of violence and revenge is not the only way to be feel safe in our world. the dear man whose son was murdered by 2 young men for his mobile phone and travel card has chosen to look for a better way.
the season of advent leading to christmas reminds us that god did not, and has not given up on the human condition, flawed as it is. the decision of god to live among us as jesus of nazareth, taking responsibility for the children he created continues to inspire a real, living and transformational hope that the way life is, is not necessarily the way it needs to be, and that the human condition is actually redeemable.
there is hope yet, and there are those who live hope.

stop the traffik

check out this short film, with daniel bedingfield, about this most heinous of human crimes.
then check out the rest of the website, and join with me and sign and up to start the process of doing something about it.
see also the protest4 link on the side, one of the pioneers of which is me old mate si johnston, and emily's link that keeps us in touch with her work in bangkok with girls involved in prostitution, some of whom are there against their will.
this issue of slavery and trafficking of people will gain more momentum over the next few months in the leadup to the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in the british empire.
but the tragedy is, 200 years later, its still an enormous worldwide problem that continues to grow.
and what's to be done? next year will see the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade, with many commemoration and other kinds of activities to mark it. today, the prime minister, tony blair, spoke of his 'deep sorrow' that it ever happened. you can read the full text of his speech here. you can also listen again to a couple of slots on the bbc's 'today' programme that open some thoughts on what might happen if the pm offered a full apology. there are people here who want an apology to include financial reparation.
i think that, while an apology would be a good thing, it will undoubtedly open up a whole raft of legal claims made for financial and other kinds of reparation. that in itself is not necessarily a bad thing, but the real problem with that kind of thing is that inevitably the legal fraternity gets involved and any pot of money put aside to pay claims to genuine claimants is significantly reduced after legal bills.
i remember listening to an example of the church in canada being taken to court by the aboriginal peoples of canada for damages in land settlements, and 90% of the money went to lawyers and only 10% to those who had a rightful claim.
in australia (when i left 7 years ago) the pm would not offer a full apology to the aboriginal people for their displacement from their ancestral lands for fear of opening a pandora's box of legal and financial woe (to the federal govt) that could be enormous. the aboriginal people did not want money, only an apology for the wrong done them.
the issues around slavery and peopletrafficking will increase over the next 3 months as the bicentenary draws closer.
what do you think about it all?

Inspiration

i have come that you may have life, and life in ALL its fulness.

Jesus of Nazareth (John 10:10)

i'm rich!

How rich are you? >> I'm loaded. It's official. I'm the 319,576,092 richest person on earth!

i sometimes think it doesn't feel like i'm amongst the richest people in the world, but from a global perspective, i am. i've just got to think back to my kenyan trip for some perspective....

golding describes the rescue

mike golding describes the rescue of fellow ocean racer, alex thomson, here.

sailing drama

Between the hours of 04.45 and 06.30 GMT this morning a dramatic rescue operation took place in the treacherous icy waters of the Southern Ocean. Devastated solo sailor Alex Thomson (GBR) abandoned his yacht HUGO BOSS, after it suffered severe structural failure to the keel, and dramatically transferred via life raft to Mike Golding's yacht ECOVER. Thomson and Golding (GBR) both highly experienced yachtsmen and fellow competitors in the VELUX 5 Oceans race, carried out the rescue operation with the utmost caution. It took four attempts to get Thomson safely onboard ECOVER and the transfer took one hour and 45 minutes. from the velux5oceans website.

the double reality of sadness and heroics involved in this rescue has not been well reported by radio4. they talk about it as a capsize, which is only partly true, if the velux5oceans website is right. rado4 gives a picture that is open to speculation as to why hugo boss is being abandoned, whereas the cause is clearly gear failure of the swinging keel coming apart. this is not difficult to get right from a reportage perspective, so why not get it right? sailors all over the world will be annoyed at the amateurish attempt by the bbc in its coverage.

below is a very clear and well-presented precis of the situation from one of the competitors, the legendary sir robin knox-johnston, reported on the velux5oceans website: "The news that Alex Thomson has had to abandon his boat Hugo Boss in the Southern Ocean is only relieved by the fact that he is safe. His boat was one of the best prepared for the 2006 Velux 5 Oceans race, and the fact that he has suffered a mechanical failure is a tragedy. This was not a new or experimental boat. It is a well tried one with plenty of miles beneath its keel, so for a major mechanical failure - either something was slowly weakening or there was a sudden abnormal strain - but we may never know the answer to that now.

"It comes at a time when the IMOCA boats had had a very good safety record in recent years since the rules were tightened after the Bullimore keel failure, and members were congratulating themselves that they had not had the sort of problems that were experienced by the Volvo fleet last year. The IMOCA 60 boats are probably the most tested yachts before they can receive their certificate and take part in an event, so a structural failure like this may need some hard thinking about, to avoid such problems in the future.

"This also means that those of us at sea in the race are looking at our own keel arrangements and just wondering how secure they are, but few of us can give an answer. We are seamen and sailors, not engineers and designers, and not qualified to say whether what we have is safe or not. We take to sea what we are given but at the back of our minds is: 'What happens if?'

"This is not the first rescue of this type in the race. In the first event in 1982 Tony Lush was picked up by another American between Africa and Australia, and on the next leg Englishman Richard Broadhead beat back for three days to rescue French Navy Commander Jacques de Roux whose boat had been holed. This was the incident that led to the adoption of compulsory watertight doors for this race. In 1990 Bertie Reed picked up fellow South African John Martin after his boat had hit an iceberg.

"It is an axiom in these races that the nearest assistance will probably come from another competitor, apart from some excellent exceptions by the Royal Australian Navy. The good news is that Alex is safe and it won't be long before he is out racing again."

congrats to mike golding on his skill, courage, and exemplary effort in keeping the code of the sea in going to the aid of a sailor in trouble. i know what its like to be passed by when i've been in trouble (albeit nowhere near the scale of this one!)
and commiserations to alex thomson on having his race end in such a way.

Johnny Cash God's Gonna Cut You Down

fantastic song, fantastic artist, fantastic album

music in america

check this site out.
how cool is that!
this interactive website shows loads of music that's starting to play in different cities right throughout the usa right now. and you can do all kinds of interactive stuff through the site to influence the kind of music being played, along with more stuff that needs a better brain than mine to figure out how to do.
aaahhhh, i'm a simple creature, i know.....

deep comfort

Oh, the comfort,
the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person;
having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words,
but to pour them all out,
just as they are,
chaff and grain together,
knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them,
keep what is worth keeping,
and then,
with a breath of kindness,
blow the rest away.

George Eliot.