Monthly Archives: February 2010

mind body spirit at sweeps … come join us!

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‘Medway’s annual Sweeps Festival recreates the joy and laughter enjoyed by the chimney sweeps at their traditional holiday: the one time of the year the sweeps could leave the soot behind and have some fun. The sweeps’ holiday was traditionally held on 1 May each year. Locally, they used to mark the occasion by staging a procession through the streets of Rochester. The modern day Rochester Sweeps Festival is a colourful mix of music, dancing and entertainment with more than 60 Morris sides and entertainers celebrating throughout the three-day festival.’      (Medway Council website)

Essentially, Sweeps is a 3 day folk, Morris dancing and beer festival. The people that attend are looking for an experience and searching for opportunities to engage and/or make sense of with what is going on around them.

At Rochester Cathedral we have a history of being open and available during festivals and in more recent years we have attempted to attempt to engage more with people during a variety of worship and art installations.

Following attending my first Sweeps Festival last year I noticed very much that the festival goers appeared to be looking for an ‘experience’ and were interested in ‘spiritual’ areas of luck/blessings associated with sweeps and the spirituality that exists around morris dancing and folk music.
Our plan this year is to set up a stall outside the cathedral, pretty much along the same lines as Dekhomai; offering foot and hand massage, prayer and anointing for healing, prayer beads, blessings, prayer postcards based on St Florian (the patron saint of sweeps) and so on.

The festival runs from Saturday to Monday and I am looking to recruit a team to cover 6 sessions over the 3 days. I hope to recruit six groups of 3 people, around 18 people in total to cover a session. People are fee to volunteer for a whole day or days rather than a session if they wish. The sessions will run from 10am – 1pm and 1pm – 5pm. Of course we can be flexible with these timings as well!

If people have not done stuff like this before hand we will run an informal training session at the cathedral.

If you might be interested please contact me through the blog and we can take it from there.

the 2 sided coin of worship and mission

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Yesterday was also quite an exciting day as I had the privilege of joining with many others to welcome Peter and Michelle Guinness to St Mark’s, and to support Peter as he was inducted as priest in charge.

There were lots of people there and lots of people pretty excited by the new era that Peter and Michelle will inevitably bring with St Mark’s.

Bishop Brian preached excellently on mission and worship being two sides of the same coin. He used as his text Leviticus 23:22:

“When you harvest the crops of your land, do not harvest the grain along the edges of your fields, and do not pick up what the harvesters drop. Leave it for the poor and the foreigners living among you. I am the LORD your God.”

Bishop Brian made the point that in this book (not the first we would choose to read!!) which is all to do with ritual in worship that there is this reference to mission.  Bishop Brian challenged us to remember that worship and mission go together. They are two sides of the same coin. Our worship informs our mission and our mission informs our worship.

On a personal note I guess this is why we feel uncomfortable when we see churches with what they call wonderful worship who seem to neglect the poor and destitute on their doorstep. Worship and mission must go together as one just seems false and empty with out the other.
last night it was good to be present at the start of a new era and I look forward to seeing what happens at St mark’s over the next few years.

I met the pompey pioneer!

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I met up with the Pompey Pioneer yesterday who made the journey to Rochester and found me …. yes you guessed it … in Wetherspoons! He’s quite a good bloke … apart from a very misguided interest in Portsmouth Football Club!

We had a good couple of hours chatting away about ‘stuff’ such as mission and discernment and other pioneering things. 

For me it was great to be able to hear someone else’s story and be questioned on mine.

Thanks Mark for your time!

‘I like to think of God as …..’

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Yesterday was the First Sunday of Lent. I have not spoken much about Lent this year but there are plenty of other people doing so. I have not subscribed to the ‘give up something that is bad for me’ group as I am not sure, based on my readings and experiences of the last few years, that this is what Lent is all about. I have learned, mainly from Maggi’s writings, that Lent was originally about giving up the basics and essentials, i.e. the things that are good for us rather than luxuries, or bad habits, that are not that good and which people seem to be doing today.

I have noticed lots of people giving up Facebook for Lent … in my honest opinion … if so many people really think that Facebook is that bad for them to give it up for Lent (based on this newer idea of what Lent is about); then I question why they think it is ok to use it for the rest of the time?  I digress … but it follows that if we use Lent to give up luxuries that we are then using the season of Lent in a very different way to our ancestors. Giving up essentials will give a different meditative focus than giving up luxuries.

This year I am reading Giving it Up in the morning and using the Sacred Space for Lent book as part of my Compline in the evening. I particularly like Maggi’s book and am challenged by her teaching that Lent is about giving up our images of God that we have allowed to develop and allowing God the space to renew or refresh the images that we have.

I am inspired by this view of Lent as well as being heavily challenged by it. As I look back I hear myelf saying things like ‘I like to think of God as …..’ and realise that in some cases I have no idea how I have come to that way of thinking. I guess I am trying to use Lent this yer as a bit of an onion peeling process as far as how I ‘see’ God.

I’m not sure where this will go, it may lead to frustrating dead ends, but I hope not. So I am on a Lentern journey …. walking along the alleys of my life, hoping to rediscover the God that God wants me to rediscover.

Photo Friday : Nature

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My Photo Friday entry this week on the theme of ‘nature’ may be seen here.
I have decided to set up another blog, Shiny Photos, to post my pics there in an attempt to keep SHP tidier.
The blog needs some work on it – i’ve just quickly set it up and will play with it later …. maybe!

is FB the new 3rd space?

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Ryan Bolger writes an interesting article here looking at the idea of third spaces and whether Facebook has become the new Third Space (i.e. places where we relax and socialise; by definition not placews of home or work so coffee shops, bars etc.). It is an interesting question and one that we should be thinking about.

Personally, I see that lots of people spend lots of time on social networking sites, a number of people are voicing concerns over (particularly young) people living more and more in a  virtual world but I don’t see this myself. From the example of my children and other young people that I know FB and others does not stop them form going out to their ‘third spaces’ and being with their friends. It does seem to, on the other hand, keep them connected and know of what’s going on. As a parent I suppose I should question where the time for FB comes from if it does not detract from third spaces – it’s probably homework, but that is another issue!

I’d be interested to hear what other people think …. is FB becoming the new Third Space?

awesome gathering ?

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We had another interesting gathering this afternoon. We took the theme of love from 1 Cor 13 as it was Valentines Day and each group of people brought something to share whether tht be music, liturgy, prayer ideas or something to help us in our looking at the Bible passage.

This was one of the most inclusive gatherings from an involvement point of view that we have had for a little while, possibly as most of us were able to join up together this afternoon.

After our worship together we chatted about the future. We agree that we need to move from our home, and we agree on the location we would like to move to. Watch this space – I think it’s exciting but I don’t want to post anything until I am 100% certain this is going to happen. We also seem to have pretty strong ideas of a name, and an explanantion of our name to sit alongside what we are trying to achieve and who we are. The light is starting to shine through the woods!

Who we are and what we are about is a challenge to us all, although it is summed up with words such as acknowledgment of all being on a journey, of being inclusive and of being participatory rather than merely consumerist. We come together as the body of Christ, accepting of all, with no expectations of each other, in order to learn more about truth together.

It has taken a long time to get to this place along with a lot of hard thinking, praying and talking; and I am pretty excited about where we seem to be at this point in time. I am, however, still very conscious of how fragile we are and how we, as individuals as well as a community, have very little control or knowledge over where we are going or how we get there.  I guess there is a bit of a sense of the Abraham story here as we start to step out in faith.

It’s scary and pretty messy, but there is also something pretty beautiful about this group of people who are all on different stages of a journey with different views and different beliefs but yet are committed to each other and to what we are trying to create.

While in Seattle my new friends there seemed to use the word ‘awesome’ a fair bit. I think maybe they over-use it (but who am I to judge!) A few hours after our gathering, it started to sink in that we have made a pretty major step today. If that is so …. then that’s pretty awesome!

lightness

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this weeks topic over at Photo Friday is ‘lightness’

an egg is quite light – and this one (which I took a photo of in Gloucester Cathedral) has light coming from within … a different kind of lightness.

I am the 237th photo to be submitted!

Support the Robin Hood Tax

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no further explanation needed!
Go here

Fresh expressions next stage

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I have been encouraged this week by the response of Synod to the Mission Shaped Church report. An interesting motion has been passed and I am particularly intrigued by part b below (I have cut and paste the whole motion from Thinking Anglicans)

the actual report can be read here:  (GS 1761)

Following debate, Dr Philip Giddings moved the following motion, which was carried by the Synod:

‘That this Synod
(a) affirm the mixed economy of traditional churches and fresh expressions of church, working in partnership, as the most promising mission strategy in a fast changing culture;
(b) encourage those responsible for vocations and training in dioceses and parishes to promote the imaginative recruitment, training and deployment of ordained and lay pioneer ministers in and beyond title posts;
(c) commend the making of Bishops’ Mission Order to integrate suitable fresh expressions of church in the life of the dioceses; and
(d) request the Mission and Public Affairs Division and the Research and Statistics Unit to gather evidence on the spiritual and numerical growth of the mixed economy church in general and fresh expressions of church in particular, and to bring a further report or reports to Synod in the next quinquennium.’

Those words ‘imaginative training and deployment of deployment of ordained and lay pioneer ministers in and title posts’ give me hope. My diocese has been great and creative in setting up my title post … but I am aware of lack of imagination or willingness in other areas.

It also fills me with some hope for the future, as I guess it will not be long before I will have to start to think about where this all goes next. What will happen to me after my 3/4 year curacy? It is a worry – and this gives some hope, although the gap in this proposal is the whole money issue. I’s great to encourage creativity in thinking, but creativity costs money – and there does not seem to be a lot of that around!