This year we are doing a tent installation-ours is going to be a mini Eden with Asbo Adam and Eve. On Sunday night we are running a service in the worship co-operative titled prodigal cartooning at 11.15 pm. The theme is on the prodigal son, inspired by Rob Bell and Asbo Jesus!

Just to invite you all to share together in our advent journey making, I felt very blessed at the recent Sanctuary service to hear people talking about their recent spiritual experiences, and the reminder that God is involved with our daily being.

Here then is an invitation to share your pictures, ideas, prayers and hopes.

It always blows my mind, every year, when I reflect on the events leading to the birth of Christ. Angels, dreams, decision making, rejection, exclusion, and adoration. It’s the stuff of life, and every year brings hope and transformation to my life

I have a set of photo’s from this service, which I will be sorting through and posting on this blog, so keep checking. And I, for one, very much
looking forward to hearing about your thoughts and experiences this advent

Road Psalm

You O Lord are Lord of the road.

You have opened out the landscape like a map.
The contours of the earth and the twists and turns of the road
are not hidden from your sight.
The highways and the lanes are your servants,
you know all their ways.
The climbs and the descents are yours,
the rolling hills and short sharp climbs,
switch-backs and fast descents,
wild mountain passes and sheltered valleys.

The winds are your servants.
The headwind and the crosswind to make me work,
the tailwind for the big ring.
The summer sun warms my legs and
The summer rain cools my back.

You O Lord are Lord of the road.

Sometimes I ride my own way,
believing I am stronger than I am,
but you are always on my wheel.
Waiting,
for me to blow.
You are beside me now,
we ride together and laugh and talk.
You push the pace, half a wheel ahead, you make me work.
You ease off when I am tired
and wait when I bonk up.
You will never drop me.

You are a mystery in the peleton.
You wear the Yellow Jersey, yet serve like a domestique,
fetching and carrying water and provisions for the team.
When a rider crashes out you fall back and pace him to the bunch,
even a rider from a competing team!
Grace and mercy are you lead-out team
I am happy to ride in the glory of your presence.

You O Lord are Lord of the road.

Your spirit is the carnival of light and colour as the peleton zooms past,
a shimmering glittering dance of polished alloy and
cross-hatched carbon,
a whirr of super-charged energy.
Your spirit is with us
closer than the rider and the bike.
Take your spirit away and there is no race.
In you we ride and have our being.

You O Lord are Lord of the road.

Mark leant over me and in confessional tones told me that he cried himself to sleep each weekend thinking about how he could escape from the hold that alcohol and cocaine had on him. He has two children that live with his ex-partner, a demanding job and a fast life style. Weekends are the main problem as that is when he begins the binge of drink and drugs which lead him into a cycle of regret, remorse and fear that perpetually turns him to prayer. He describes himself as a ‘lapsed Catholic’ and I was stunned at the depth of our conversation and the sincerity of his confession to me as a stranger he had just met, to be honest it felt very special and had the quality of an ‘ordained meeting’. I was able to offer him some support and advice, I listened to him and have been praying for him ever since.

I was in Northern Ireland to speak at a conference and decided in my free time to grab a pint of the ‘black stuff’, I had wandered into a local pub and happened to ask Mark to take my photo whilst supping my Guinness. We got talking and he soon discovered I was a Christian, at first he was shocked that I was in a pub as this didn’t fit his understanding of Christianity. My encounter with Mark has raised a couple of reflections for me that I wanted to share.

Whilst the cultural context of perceived faith in Northern Ireland is unique I find it interesting that Mark, like many people, has a well developed and quite strong assumptions about what is and is not acceptable Christian behaviour. His perception was that his behaviour prevented him from being a Christian or receiving God’s help. I felt that my role in this ‘confessional’ encounter was to help him understand that God loved him just as he was and that Christianity was not something that excluded him because of his behaviour but was rather something that might help him with his behaviour.

It seems to me that a task for Christians is to enable people to know that they belong and that this might lead to belief that might lead them to change the way that they behave. For some reason this process seems to have been reversed in that people often assume that faith requires prerequisite changed behaviour, rooted in new beliefs that will enable them to belong. This is subtle stuff! My point is that we must find ways of generating a sense of belonging, however, it may also require us to ‘debunk’ our own and other people’s assumptions about the ‘terms of membership’!

I also reflected on how the encounter with Mark would never have happened unless I had visited the pub and how even in writing about this I am nervous of how I will be judged by others. Perhaps I would never have crossed the road for the injured man in the story of the Good Samaritan for fear of ‘questionable association’! The truth is that I love association with people in this way and perpetually find myself having to assure ‘non believers’ that God likes and loves them despite their assumed messages to the contrary.

Jesus seemed to cross social, cultural, religious and political boundaries all the time in His ministry. It was one of the main reasons that he ended up on the cross if you think about it! I wonder if we run the risk of safe, known and respectable Christian interventions and behaviors that comply with seductively sanctimonious views of faith that spends more time identifying and patrolling the boundaries of faith membership than we do eating with sinners.

I’m all for cracking open another Guinness this Easter as well as an egg or two! What do you think?

Dave Wiles

“May God’s name be made great and sanctified. Amen.
In the world that He created according to His will, in His kingdom in which He reigns supreme, may His salvation sprout forth and may His Messiah be close, in your lifetime, and in the lives of all Israel, speedily in our days. Say Amen.
Amen. May his great name be blessed for ever and ever.
May the name of the Holy One, Blessed be he, be blessed, praised, extolled, raised high, and made great-Blessed be He!-higher than all blessing or song, praise or consolation. Say Amen.
May great peace from heaven and good life be ours and upon all of Israel. Say Amen.
May He who makes peace in His heights make peace upon us and upon all Israel, and say Amen.”

Whilst listening to the programme itself, I was struck by how many people often forget to mourn at Easter. Don’t get me wrong, the central message of the story is that Jesus rises from the tomb, triumphant from the grave; yet how many of us truly feel the pain of death in connection with the story? When we lose someone close to us, we live with that pain, we can either claim it or try to ignore it, but it’s constantly there. But on Good Friday it can be hard to connect to death. It’s almost too big a thing for us to comprehend. I’ve attended services, I’ve done the stations of the cross, but have I ever really mourned? Have I really thought about how the disciples must have felt, for surely they did mourn.

I’m not really sure what I’m asking you to do, if anything. I’m certainly not saying we should change the way we observe Easter, nor am I advocating reciting Jewish prayers. Perhaps though, this is a time to accept Jesus more personally, to approach His death in a new way.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p006hrrr/Heart_And_Soul_The_Mourners_Kaddish/

This Lent, for me, began with the imposition of ashes in service of communion in Tymaur Convent chapel, not the usual experience of a Quaker!. I was on a painting retreat where I was invited to play with God. The opening statement of the week was a quote from Mechtilde of Magdeburg,

I God, am your playmate!

I will lead the child in you

in wonderful ways.

For I have chosen you.

Play I did, painting stones, modelling clay and painting paper. The trick was that I used our non dominant hand, I had no control over my painting, even the paper was wet so the colour ran freely into each other. The painting became a prayer, a conversation with God I was invited to be open to what God was saying to me in our daubes and splashes. My prayer time was watching paint dry! And it was amazing. Each painting was so different as I choose what colour God was for us that day. Some days God was purple full of kingly glory and I was orange, other days God was pink and I was green. (Today God for me is definitely daffodil yellow)

The retreat focus was that of the life of Gideon and so I expected a fleece themed event. The day came for us to make felt, making something very substantial out of tiny fibres of wool, it seemed like a miracle.

The theme of the felt making task was to ask questions of God. I used orange as a matrix of my piece which was to represent my life in God, in Christ this was a substantial base for my questions and life to be laid on. I chose aquamarine wool for the Holy Spirit which bordered my life and encircle me. For myself I chose a fresh green and for the questions in my life which I have always struggled those of love and loss purple and red. I lay on these fibres over the orange not believing that I could meld them into anything useful or substantial, it felt very loose and flaky. I could really relate to that feeling. However as I worked hot soapy water into the fibres and massaged them together and finally threw them repeatedly into the sink a miracle did occur and my flaky fibres became matted and strong. The resulting piece which I am proud to call felt I brought to the last Sanctuary service as a symbol of my Lent retreat.

It was for me a very powerful exercise seeing that the very questions of my life with which I struggle were in fact themselves integral to the fabric of my life.

See above the finished piece, which those who attended the last Sanctuary Service will have seen.

I wonder if this week we could look at the questions in our lives with which we struggle. Maybe play with them, perhaps using paint or clay or even the chosen medium of James May plastercine, and hold them in the light have a conversation with God an let him/lead you into wonderful ways.

Before reading below, just take a few moments to look at the pictures above. They all represent something of an Orthodox Easter. They by no means represent it all.

Are you sitting comfortably?.. Then we’ll begin…

Easter in the Orthodox Church is the most special time of year.
The seriousness of fasting and feasting, the sorrow of death and the joy of resurrection are everywhere… in the music, in the imagery, in the words… everything in the liturgy is geared towards the annual re-telling and re-enactment of the story of Christ’s journey towards the cross and beyond to his glorious rising. Easter in the Orthodox Church is in some way reminiscent of the way Christmas felt as a small child. awe-inspiring, magical, beautiful, and ultimately joyous.

Throughout lent there are many services and a lot of prostrating goes on. On all fours, broken, sad, in need.
Food is simple. No dairy (that is a luxury which will wait until the feast). The seemingly unbroken liturgical pattern of penitence, forgiveness and even (to my mind) foreboding go on with a feeling of relentlessness.

Good Friday is perhaps the most moving service of them all. A burial service to all intents and purposes. A service in which Christ is entombed. Dead to his friends. Gone to the world.

Then Easter Saturday. A church dimly lit with just a few candles held by readers. The book of Acts, read in its
entirety in as many languages as are possible. More penitence, more longing for resurrection to come and more pouring over the gravity of our human condition and our need for new life.

It’s 11.50pm. In 10 minutes it will be a new day. Everyone files out on to the street in procession, the clergy, the choir who are leading the songs , then everyone else carrying candles and boldy holding and displaying icons of the saints. It’s midnight and the choir strikes up, louder than ever and with a joy that spreads throughout the congregation… “CHRIST IS RISEN FROM THE DEAD, TRAMPLING DOWN DEATH BY DEATH, AND UPON THOSE IN THE TOMB BESTOWING LIFE!” As we file back in to the building it is not as before. For now it is alight! candles everywhere! Even electricity is utilised! This is full on ‘light has re-entered our world and now there is hope’ type stuff! It’s amazing, joyful, uplifting, powerful. In this moment it really does feel like there is no defeat, only victory.

And if that overwhelming sense of ‘the Lord has risen’ isn’t enough for you, then soon, in the small hours, arrives the most glorious of
feasts. at the centre is the ‘pashka’… a dreamy pudding, rich with eggs and cream. Cheese and wine are abundant, for now is the time to eat, drink and make merry, for ‘He has risen indeed!’

Well, if you weren’t aware of it before, you now know, that i consider an Orthodox Easter time to be the most astonishing of times.

I have never experienced any event in the Christian calendar that does the job more powerfully. The liturgy makes for no over-spilling of slushy sentiment… there is an earthy reality to the whole thing. Of course, my experiences of an Orthodox Easter are in the context of a community of Orthodox Christian who know each other and care for one another very well. There is a sense of sharing this whole journey with those you love and those you look after. This sense of ‘family’ makes this time even more special.

My question is a simple one. How to make Easter special? Our culture seems to have lost it’s magic. I think sometimes that even the guys at stonehenge were having a better time than we do in our churches. They were connected to the land, so how the gods behaved towards their crops mattered at the most basic of levels. At least they had belief… God, in our culture, no longer seems to matter. In our churches there is often very little sense of just who God is and how awesome he must be. So, what do we do? How will our little bit of the world get to know or experience a taster of just how much God loves his world… and just what Christ’s death and resurrection means?

The one answer I have is, that it starts with me. As I write this I am now feeling very challenged, because I have no clue where to start… or maybe the clue is in what I’ve written above… i’m not sure.

I started writing this, not knowing what i would write about. Now, for the first time this year, Easter feels more real.

Thank you for the opportunity to say something.

Much love to you all.

Jon.

Things continued in this vein for several days. I was irritated every time I heard someone talk about God’s love. Irritated in the way a single woman is irritated by her annoyingly ‘in love’ friends. Everyone around me seemed to be getting on just great with God. What was wrong with me?

You’re probably waiting for me to work up to some neat resolution to this experience. A moment when God’s grace became clear to me, and I felt better. Except it isn’t like that. Never is, for me. But there are strands of hope which I am holding on to. I saw a friend at the end of a long day.”How are you?” I asked. A rant ensued which would put mine to shame, during which he expressed the opinion that there was more point believing in the tooth fairy than in God because at least you could predict when she would show up. I was sad that my friend was going through a hard time. But I was also encouraged. I thought: I am not alone in this.

The journey to Easter was painful for everyone. Jesus, his disciples, the authorities – all were taken well out of their comfort zones. It can’t have made any sense to any of them until well after the events of Easter Day. And from this I also gain hope: maybe God is leading me even though it doesn’t feel like it. Maybe, on the other side of Easter, all of this will make more sense.

On asking God what should I do for lent, bearing in mind that I can’t do without chocolate, coffee, booze or …, so will have to be a positive activity with immediate benefit, one to bring me closer to God tangibly and straight away.

One small activity came to mind, I’ve been trying to peruse the practice of trust, intermittently for a number of years now, it began with watching a vid of a mime act cautiously shutting all the windows in their house. How did they know? How had they caught me doing that? Avoiding, hiding, excluding, and shutting up shop. Later I read some of Brother Rogers words on coming to the wellspring of trust, which equally challenged me, as though God wanted to bin my cosy shell and set my feet on the path of peacemaking and kingdom seeking.

Now the practice of trust is very much part of my relationship with God, even if it’s still work in progress. So I read and re-read Brennan Manning’s books, knowing his overblown, eclectic language connects with my fear, in a way that other writers haven’t yet. Brennan’s writing is like the Dirty Dozen Band from New Orleans, where they take sweet hymn tunes and play them through dirty brass instruments creating a belly busting sound. Brennan also has connections with New Orleans, a recovered alcoholic, he peppers his text with experiences of dirt and despair and the touch of God.  (take a close look at the badge on the drum in the photo, for a glimps of N.O.)

The practice of trust then, is about placing the things that come to mind, into God’s hands, asking God to take care of those who I am concerned for, and to ask him to hold me throughout the complex experiences of bullying that seem to contaminate my workplace.

Here, then, is a generous chunk of Brennan’s text, from his book “Ruthless Trust, The Ragamuffin’s Path to God”

“The ubiquitous presence of pain and suffering—unwanted, apparently undeserved, and not amenable to explanation or remedy—poses an enormous obstacle to unfailing trust in the infinite goodness of God. How does one dare to propose the way of trust in the face of raw, undifferentiated heartache, cosmic disorder, and the terror of history?”

“Any Christian writer who ignores these grim realities or dismisses them as inconsequential is either naïve, dishonest, or disconnected from the trust-busting anguish of many struggling seekers and believers.”

“The sheer magnitude of evil that our age has witnessed in death camps, nuclear warfare and internecine tribal of racial conflicts has not raised the question how can God tolerate so much evil, but, rather how the more tangible reality of evil still allows the possibility of God’s existence.” (Louis Dupre.)

“The Book of Job and the psalms of lament show no interest in exculpating God from responsibility for the tragedy and misery of human existence. The psalms are raw, disturbing, and brutally honest. It is to an angry and bewildered Job that God appears and speaks, and yet God later tells the theological sophisticate Eliphaz to ask for Job’s prayers, adding, “for you have not spoken truthfully about me, as has my servant Job” (Job 42:7)

“However, a fleeting, incomplete glimpse of God’s back—the obscure yet real, penetrating, and transforming experience of his incomparable glory—awakens a dormant trust. Something is afoot in the universe, Someone filled with transcendent brightness, wisdom, ingenuity, and power and goodness is about. In the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, somewhere deep down a Voice whispers, “All is well, and all will be well.”

“Often trust begins on the far side of despair. When all human resources are exhausted, when the craving for reassurance is stifled, when we forgo control, when we cease trying to manipulate God and demystify Mystery, then-at our wits’ end-trust happens within us, and the untainted cry, “Abba, into your hands I commend my spirit” surges from the heart.” Brennan Manning

I have been thinking quite a bit about what I want to do for lent this year. I am planning on reading Maggi Dawn “Giving it up” lent book. However despite the title she suggests lent should be a journey to re imagine and discover God and a time to give up our old unhelpful ways of understanding/ images we have of God. Through conversations with friends recently I have decided to do something this lent rather than give something up!. I am gong to make my own lent book. My plan is find something each day which helps me to capture a glimpse of God, and to document this in my book. It maybe through something I see and photograph, something I make to express how I feel, or writing a few words. This feels in many ways very unlike me, but I have a sense that I want to do something creative and documenting my journey fits with my academic/ work life where I regularly encourage others to document what they are doing. I am hoping that this journey will give me the chance to discover God in new and unexpected ways. For Maggi’s writing on ash Wednesday she suggests “Lent begins with a challenge to clear out the mental and spiritual clutter and discover how to live life to the full”. I don’t think I do live life to the full but I would like to try!