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Sharing stories 

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  Last night I joined the St Luke’s community in Peckham. Ian was licensed here a few days after I was licensed in Greenwich. Tuesday night has become community meal night for this community and I was invited to join them for prayer before eating and talking together. I simply shared my story and how it relates to new monasticism along with my dreams for the community I am involved in birthing on the peninsula. 

I spoke for some of the evening beefed we had a bit of a Q and A thing ….. You can hear what I said on their website here. 

Living for Today

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Affirmation5Below is a copy of the homily I gave at Holy Trinity on Sunday evening. Hopefully we will sort audio and podcasting of these soon from the Holy Trinity website.
This has also been copied to the discussion area of the HT website for questions and discussion …. why not go there and have your say …

The bible reading for the day was Luke 4 : 14-21:

14 Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. 15 He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.
16 When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
    because he has anointed me
        to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
    and recovery of sight to the blind,
        to let the oppressed go free,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

20 And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

I have an issue with how I live my life.
A life where, if I am totally honest with you, I find it hard to focus on the task in hand ….. my mind always shoots ahead.
What will happen next week? where will I be in 5 years? 10 years?
Will I still be in Greenwich?

Will I be at a cathedral again …. and what about being famous in the future….. well maybe not being famous … but being known. Known for doing something good … then maybe the Bishop will reward me! Maybe if I do something good that  he will guarantee my post beyond the 3 years it has …..in the 2 years and 7 months I have left here what should i do….

What will my children be doing?
Where will I live? who will be my friends ….
Sometimes I think so far in the future I confuse myself and forget where I am.
I wake up with a start in meetings ….. and I’d like to say I’ve disguised it well ….. but I think people notice …. it’s in the stare!

As much as I revel in this …. I don’t actually like this side of my character …. but there seems to be nothing I can do about it!
I can limit it, I can ration it ….. but I always always …. always look for what is next!

It does not mean I am unhappy with where I am or what I am doing …. its just that I think I am always looking for what is next, for the next place to be, the next exciting thing to be involved in. It’s just how my brain works!

What frustrates me too is that I know where this behaviour comes from.
Which makes me so much more want to be able to stop being like this.
It comes from living with a mother that never allowed us to enjoy what we had
If we had toys out we were immediately told about tidying away and warned not to make a mess.

I grew up in weymouth, a seaside town …. a seaside town has sand.
I was not allowed to bring sand into the house … in any way, shape or form. So i spent hours on the beach thinking through strategies of how i would de-sand myself on the way home. This involved bizarre stuff like hanging upside down from trees, running against the wind, and other things I won’t mention

But of course I couldn’t get rid of the sand. Sand hides ….. it’s like it sticks in unknown places waiting to get you in trouble! Sand would always follow me home …. into every room, every space, every lightly treaded footprint!

Always thinking about what I was to do next.
Scared to enjoy too much what I happened to be doing through fear of what was around the corner

And as an adult
I can still think that way
Still think what horror or delight is around the corner
Struggle to live naturally in the moment
Struggle to enjoy what is happening right here and now
Unable to enjoy the moment
Incapable of fully enjoying today.

And yet today is where it is at
Today is the first teaching word that Christ utters in the bible

Jesus reads these words from Isaiah which announces both a fulfilment of prophecy and what Jesus is all about. These words come from Is 61, a servant song. If we take this literally the passage says Christ is God’s servant who brings into reality the longing and the hope of the poor, the oppressed and the imprisoned.

You see for people like me who live in the future …. or for others who live in the past …. we live in danger of totally missing the present … the now! We become oppressed and imprisoned to what went before or to what might be in the future. Our life is impoverished, small, and empty. We are absent to God, others, and even our selves. We are unavailable to those we love, to the needs of the world, and to the fullness of life that God offers.

Thats no way to live. Because Jesus offers us freedom …. a freedom to be ourselves, to be fully alive, the freedom to be fully christlike. That can only happen in the here and now … today!

We all come with different stuff that means we are the oppressed or the poor or the imprisoned. In the midst of these circumstances, when life gets really difficult, it is easy and tempting to run away, to get stuck in the past, or fixate on the future. Yet, Jesus comes to us today, here, now.  He is not lost in our past or hidden in an unknown future. The only place we can meet Jesus is today, in this present moment, in whatever the circumstances of our life might be.

So … today, the age of God’s reign is here

Today we are church
today we are where God intended
today we are making a difference with God
today we are anointed
to hear the gospel
to have our brokenness healed
and to be set free to be ourselves.

Today ’s good news is that we are able to receive Jesus

Amen.

so … how’s it going?

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a day to contemplateI am in that position where I need to start reflecting again. I have allowed myself to get out of the discipline of writing here as a reflective practice. That needs to start again.
This blog will become, yet again, a place where I will think aloud. It’s a blog in the public domain so please feel free to comment.

So … to answer that title question …
It’s  a challenge!
Leaving a community you have known and loved for 30 odd years and moving into a new community where you know very little and understand even less is a challenge.

So what is my major challenge?
I was asked that recently and had to think.
I think … my toughest challenge … is a feeling of being in this alone.
There is a lot to do, so many opportunities, so many people and organisations to engage with …yet, although I am in a team, … it feels pretty much that I am doing a lot of this stuff alone as everyone here s incredibly busy.

I already know that the life of a pioneer is a lonely one.
In many ways it needs to be.
I have written in the past a lot about the power of vulnerability and I still hold by that. I think ministry of vulnerability is incredibly vital in my context.
Thats has always been the case and I have experience of that.
I accept that is ho this has to be.
In Medway my life as a pioneer was lonely, but that loneliness was in an environment of familiarity. In Greenwich that loneliness is in a place of unfamiliarity and I realised I have underestimated the effect of that.

Being an advocate for change can be quite draining.
Looking for ways to engage with a community hidden behind electronic doors can be frustrating. From limited research and talking with professionals working in this area I am pretty convinced that loneliness is an issue for people … and yet trying to engage with that is hard as people here are protected from people knocking on doors.

Despite the challenge, I am confident. I am convinced that God has called me here for this point in time and that we, Holy Trinity, will find ways to engage with and support this community.

But …. I need help.
So I am looking for a core of people that may or may not already be involved in HT. This core of 2 or 3 people would regularly meet to pray with me about the peninsula. These people would be at virtually everything  we do as well as in time take on some responsibility for running and or planning stuff. Currently I am praying that these people will become pretty obvious very soon.

If you are the praying type … you could pray that too!

the dream on the peninsula …

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htg postcard imageI have now been here for around 5 months. We have made some changes which can be seen on the image of our latest postcard which makes use of one of the photos I took recently of Alex Chinneck’s art on the Peninsula.

In my last two locations I have had a dream. Essentially the dream does not change …. the dream of a new way of living out and discovering faith with other people. The birthing of a new way of being church.

Although the dream does not change, the context of that dream and it’s outworking obviously changes according to the local context.

This is my dream for Holy Trinity Greenwich Peninsula:

I believe there are people, who live, or soon will live, on the Greenwich Peninsula and share a common vision or hope.

These people long, maybe are even too scared to dream, of church being a place which really connects with people outside, but also with them. In a real and obvious way. 

They dream of a church where differences are celebrated and add to the communities flavour.

They are not worried so much about what people believe, but more concerned about how people believe: how they live out faith, how they are Christ-like. How they love the community they are in.

They don’t care so much about worship style, but interested in something that’s authentic and enables them to connect with God where they are emotionally and spiritually.

They really do believe Christianity is a journey, and that we can all exist at different points on the road, or even off it, with no fear of condemnation.

A community that does not judge a person by how they look, sound or by what they believe.

They want to see a community that loves and has people at its heart rather than a program that must be delivered.

They believe a community should be one that meets throughout the week to enjoy relationship with each other and with God, and is not restricted to any one day or meeting.

They are willing to pay the cost that comes with developing relationships.

They want to see this as a place where people belong because they are connected and on the journey, not a place where they can only belong if they turn up at a particular time, day and place.

They want to see a community that really believes in mission, that not only welcomes in strangers, but expects and allows the community to change due to what that new person brings with them.

They believe church is about participation and engagement of the majority, rather than being consumerist and led by a few specialists.

They are tired of being told the same stuff and want to discover together how to live Christian spirituality in their world!

They long for their experience of church to inform their experience of the world and vice versa.

This journey will be tough.

Some won’t want to embark on it. Others will.

I am not looking for something better than church as we know it.

I am looking for something equally valuable.

Something to add to the mixed economy of church.

But I’m putting this out there as I would really love to meet other people that share this vision.

So …. if that sounds like you …. get in touch soon. If that’s not you but you think you know people that it might be for …. please pass this on. Whatever …. please pray for us as we move forward into the unknown! 

Don’t give up on Burma

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Please read this update from Burma Campaign UK …. progress is being made, but there is still so far to go …. this is not yet freedom for the people!….
Dear friend

Like everyone here at Burma Campaign UK, you must have seen in the media the wonderful scenes of celebration at the headquarters of Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy (NLD). As election results started coming in, it became clear the NLD were likely to win a big majority.

Some media reports have gone so far as to say Burma’s struggle for freedom is over, that democracy has arrived. That’s exactly the impression the generals want to give.

A military drafted constitution means that the NLD government will face lots of limits on its powers, and the people of Burma are going to continue to need our support to win their real freedom.

As our Campaigns Manager Zoya Phan said in an article in The Independent newspaper today:

I know the NLD government will be able to make many positive changes in my country, and this is really good news. At the same time however, deep down I know the military hasn’t completely handed over power. An NLD government is going to face many challenges because the army has inserted lots of clauses into the constitution to limit its power. This is designed to restrict the freedom of the NLD government to make big changes to the country. The impression that everything is now OK makes me very worried for the future. This isn’t the end of our long struggle. It’s the start of a new phase of that struggle, and the military are as determined as ever not to give up control. Celebrate an NLD victory today, but tomorrow, we still need your support.

You can read the full article here.
Voters queue in Rangoon
Voters queue at a polling station in Rangoon.
Our Director, Mark Farmaner, has written an article for the Huffington Post which details all the tricks the military have used to try to keep their grubby fingers on the levers of power, and shows why international support will still be desperately needed. You can read it here.

There is no doubt that Burma would not have got this far without the sacrifices so many people in the country have made for freedom, and without the international support they have received. International pressure has played a key role in supporting Burma’s democracy movement. That support is still needed for the next phase of the struggle, so please make a donation today to support our work.

Thank you.
Anna Roberts
Executive Director

PS. In the UK we wouldn’t accept the head of the British Army appointing the Home Secretary and Defence Minister or the military setting their own budget, starving hospitals and schools of funds. Make a donation today to help bring genuine democracy to Burma.Thank you.

we remember

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Today we remember.gasworks memorial

On Sunday we remembered at the Gasworks WW1 Memorial here on the Peninsula. It was a special morning for a number of reasons.

As we approached 11am for the 2 minutes silence I became aware that students in the nearby Scape accommodation came onto their balconies to join us in silence. I was unaware that behind me two London buses had stopped and turned off their engines to join us in silence.

remembrance derekIt was special because we were joined by Derek and his daughter. Derek had recently found out that his grandfather was on the memorial and came to lay a wreath, believing that he and his daughter would be the only two there. The look of joy on his face when he saw the HT community gathered around the memorial and the vulnerable dignity he expressed as he lay his wreath brought tears to the eyes of this community.

remembrance coffeeIt was special because 17 people were there and all apart from one person came back to Cafe Pura for a drink and a discussion based on remembrance. The questions we considered were challenging …. but we like to be challenged! The conversation was good …. but the feeling of community, and the attitude of respect and wanting to hear stories was heart warming. People stayed longer than I thought they would … this time together seemed to be something that people were looking for.

I have hope from Sunday … hope that people outside of HT who live on the peninsula  do value contact and community. I hope we see Derek next year. I hope our young people do not forget what today is about.

But then, as well as remembering those who served us in the past, today is also about hope …. the hope that out of death comes new life … symbolised by the perennial poppy … epitomised in the resurrection of Christ.

A new pattern

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IMG_0099It’s been a pretty exciting week and I am now in a position to share something of what has been happening here on the Greenwich Peninsula. I am also conscious that I have been quiet too long and that I also need to reform the habit of being here more regularly as writing here helps me to reflect particularly when I receive your comments and opinions.

Since my licensing on September 4th I have been doing a lot of listening, praying, walking, talking, drinking coffee, listening, , listening,  more and … err listening! I think there have been a few beers, rums and whiskies there as well.

I have been asking the 12 members of Holy Trinity Greenwich Peninsula (from now on HT as that takes just too much writing!) what they love about HT, what they wish to change about HT and how they think we should ‘be’ in the future as christian community on the Peninsula.

There have been overwhelming common threads, although it is fair to say that there is not one model that will ft everyone. In the main there is general agreement that meeting on a Sunday morning at 11am just does not work for most people. Most of this community disappear at the weekend and those who belong to HT can only make that time every 3 or 4 weeks.

In addition I have heard people say they are too busy and that they do not ever have space to simply be with God and hear God speak into their lives. ‘There is no space to grow or feed my spirituality’ is a comment that struck a chord with me.

From December we will trial a new pattern for 3 months:
Sunday – 6pm contemplative service in the school
Wednesday 730pm meal, sharing bread & wine, and chat in ‘the vicarage’
Friday 730am Prayer and breakfast in ‘the vicarage’ (which I hope will move to the coffee shop)
in addition we will do things in both the coffee shop and the local pub such as pub theo and other things that raise our profile so that we can be a blessing and a support to this community.

None of us think we have the exact right pattern yet … but we are all keen to make a start and try something different for this space. This may or may not be the right pattern … but by trialling it I believe we will learn more about how we can be authentic christian community on this peninsula. I have to admit I am concerned with the attractional pattern we have developed … but I feel also that it is an important part of our process.

I feel privileged to be part of this group. I do not think there are many church leaders who have the privilege of being with a congregation who unanimously and actively are seeking to change so that they can engage both meaningfully and relevantly with the people of their community. I feel excited about what this change will bring. I feel daunted as I lead and encourage these people into we know not where.

so … again … watch this space…. pray with us as we dream of a way forward

9 months ….

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The last time I blogged was 9 months ago.
Christmas Eve.
So today, the 24th of the 9th, seemed to me to be  good day to start here again.

9 months as a time of incubation.
9 months as a time of contemplation.
9 months of space

9 months gone in a flash.
but a habit of ‘no writing’
has seemed to set quite fast

IMG_0020In the last 9 months I have moved, started a new role in a new diocese, and feel excited with a new challenge ahead of me. I also feel quite privileged to be part of a diverse and great team and live in an awesome ‘vicarage’ flat in the Greenwich Millennium Village with the photo being the view from my study desk.

I am team vicar of Holy Trinity Greenwich Peninsula which is part of the East Greenwich Team Ministry and the Chaplain for the Koinonia Federation of Christ Church and St. Mary Magdalene CE Schools. Try saying that after a few rums!

So … my role is to establish chaplaincy in the schools and to grow ‘church’ with the community of Holy Trinity here on the Greenwich Peninsula …. that bit with the O2 dome at the end of it! The area is constantly changing and the constant challenge will be how we serve a diverse growing and hidden population. (I live in an apartment block and have only seen 3 other residents in the 4 weeks I have been here!) An exciting thing, though, is that the bishop is encouraging us to create … so create we will!

I don’t have a lot more to add at the moment apart from feeling amazingly welcomed and loved by both the church and school communities …. so if any of my ‘new’ friends are reading … thank you! … I can honestly say I think I am going to like living here!

As in the past I will blog my story …. so I guess … if you are interested … watch this space!

mission talk

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missionI kind of unexpectedly enjoyed my experience of lecturing at SEITE last night. I say unexpectedly because I cannot remember the last time I was so nervous before I did anything. I suspect the last time was deaconing for the Archbishop in Coventry less then three months after being ordained … with 10 mins notice … name dropping I know … but last night felt just as scary.

Lecturing is probably an over-elaborate term for what was, in reality, a long conversation about mission. But … then I believe the best way of learning is to listen and pull things apart together.

I enjoyed working with my group last night. The people come from a variety of backgrounds, but when we spoke about hopes for this module there was quite a strong vein of thought that people wanted tools to increase their confidence enabling to engage with their community in a more meaningful way. I can work with people like that!

Last night we talked about mission. We argued about what mission is. We asked ourselves whether we were being influenced by a background of a redemptive or an incarnational model of theology. We mused over which parts of our culture we should encourage and which parts we should challenge. Essentially, we asked ‘what does it mean to be a Christian?’ …. and we could not agree … on any of the above really!

That encourages me … as a reflective practitioner who a lot of the time uses a synthetic model of theology to underpin his work … it is important to me that we realise that a lot of stuff is not so much a choice of ‘either or’, but more of an acceptance of ‘both and’ as we look at our response in different situations.

Looking forward to taking the conversation on next week.

reflections on silence (pt1 … maybe)

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DSC_1194I quite like silence … to many who know me that probably comes as a bit of a surprise, mainly because I can be a bit of a loud, annoying and nosey bugger … but silence has become, for me, a place of refreshment and rejuvenation. With certain people it also seems to be a place of real valuable place of meaningful communication and connection.

I have noticed that, for me, silence has become an important nourishing ingredient of my diet … so maybe those people that labelled me ‘introvert’ a few years back really did know what they were talking about.

For some background, I joined the sisters of St Francis at St Alphege for a week. Although they are not a silent order, they respected the fact that I wished top be in an attitude of silence for my 7 days with them … conversations were had at meal times as I feel a meal is supposed to be a social thing …. but outside those times I observed silence.

I have done a few bouts of 3 day silences, and I have often found those difficult to enter into. Surprisingly for me, this time, it was not entering the silence, but leaving the silence, which proved to be a challenge. Do you understand that feeling you get at the end of something where you want to leave, you know you should leave, things are pulling you to leave …. and yet … there is something like a trickle of a desire to simply stay …. to continue to experience the space a short while longer … well that was my experience this time. I knew it was time to go … but something within me wanted to stay.

Leaving silence and re-entering the real world, that I had only ‘left’ 7 days before was a challenge. I seemed to be hyper sensitive to the penetration of noise that seemed to bombard from everywhere. I remember looking quizzically at people with a ‘what the fuck are you even talking about that for?’ question screaming from my brain. That reaction was a complete, and quite shocking, observation for me to perceive.

In this seven day silence of reflection I seem to have become painfully conscious of how some, maybe the whole of our society, but particularly me (as I am only really qualified to talk about myself here … and I’m unique so it could just be me that feels like this .. because we are all unique…) uses the curtain of noise to wrap ourselves in and hide from reality.

When there is noise, rambling, music, words, …. I can listen to that and do not need to listen to myself. If i don’t listen to myself I can fool myself about the reality of things. If I don’t face reality it’s easy to act. Then life is played out on a stage … often with an audience of one!

I wonder whether it is true for many that they avoid silence, avoid that meeting with themself, with no one else around …. their simple, bare, open, honest self …. because they are afraid, really afraid, of what they may find.

In my poem in my last post I wrote

to freeze from running
and face who I may be
uncovering the past aches
that could reveal
                 …………… anything

That last word, ‘anything’, has in reality become a pretty scary word.
I was surprised by what some of the silence has revealed. I have been surprised by some of the stuff that I had ‘forgotten’.
That’s not strictly true … stuff had not been forgotten but so covered, squeezed, rolled and compressed into places where, for years, I did not have to think about them.

Silence gives opportunity to uncover, unsqueeze, unroll and decompress ….. and I will be honest …. that means some of the stuff is going to be quite painful to continue to uncover … but … it also means the uncovering and bearing really does leave me feeling less burdened with a much lighter, sunnier, outlook.

So ….. I move forward ……

(to be continued ….)