Running the stall at yesterday’s boot fair was a pretty incredible experience. The team were amazing and engaged at various levels with various people.

The team did around 15 Ruach card readings which was a real surprise to us. I mean … we thought all along that the cards would attract people, but I guess we were surprised by the level of interest from people so early in the season. It seems the images and the style of reading attracted a variety of people – some who had a history of Tarot, to others just interested in the cards and wanted to engage with some way.

We offered the 4 winds of change reading where a card represents something from the persons character, another an aspect of their life’s journey, another a season of their life and finally a blessing card which is a gift of scripture from God. Reading after reading I heard people say things like ‘yes that’s right’ or ‘I would have chosen that cards as it’s so true about me’. Most people allowed us to pray with them before they went on their way, feeling blessed by God for the rest of their day.

More encouragement came from people who we met last year returning to get their Psalm Reading and then some of them engaged with beads or the Jesus Deck.

A highlight for me personally, apart from seeing the amazing team work together, was spending just a little time with a recovering heroin addict. This man asked for a blessing, so I anointed him with oil and prayed he would have strength each day. For some reason this man had a profound impact on me throughout the rest of the day which rests with me today as I write. I don’t know whether it was his childlike desperation, or his desire to move forward in his life, or just his simple trust that a few words from me and a dab of oil on his forehead could make any difference. I don’t know why this guy is still in my head … but if you are the praying type please pray for R … God knows who he is … and heroin being the evil bastard it is, it will not be easy for this guy.

So – a great first Boot … people were blessed ….. we were good news …. come see us next week!

I wrote a few days ago about the World Vision decision around having an inclusive recruitment and employment policy (in this case accepting people in same sex marriages … I mean … whatever your view … why wouldn’t you?!)

I wrote how lots of evangelical leaders slammed into World Vision, telling them that their very considered view and action was unbiblical, heretical and downright evil. Some even suggested that Christians should cancel their subscriptions … those monies going to children desperate for support, help and aid.

Two days later World Vision reversed their decision … so effectively saying; we love and accept everyone and all are welcome to join us …. oH!!! … hang on … no … no actually we don’t’.

The reversal of the decision was very sad. Frustratingly sad.

Jamie the very worst missionary writes much better about this than me here.

So, why am I bringing this all up again. Well … it seems that somehow Jamie had a telephone conversation with the CEO of World Vision yesterday.

The fallout from the inclusive policy was 10 000 cancelled sponsorships.

Take that in!
10 000 people cancelled their sponsorship of a child in desperate need.
10 000 children who had started to rely on that financial support had it whipped away in a flash.
And why ? …. because 10 000 people, no … axctually … let’s correct that …
10 000 Bible Believing Christians …
felt very strongly that upholding their view of scripture to be far more important, far more vital, far more honourable than ensuring the poorest and weakest children in the most deprived parts of the world have vital funding to ensure they eat, are educated and housed.

10 000 children are at serious risk of being plunged back into extreme  poverty because people wanted to have their one sided Christian belief upheld.

That type of Christianity is so fucked up  – how can such action be anything like Christ like?
really??!!
10 000!

I am really feeling ashamed to call myself a Christian.
I think i’ll stop using that term …. because if this is Christian I don’t understand it or want to have anything to do with it.
Nowhere in the gospels do I see justification for such narrow mindedness meanness.
I want to distance myself massively from such behaviour!

Because …. Seriously … 10 000 kids!

(PS .. there is no apology for anything in this post …. if you find yourself angry and shocked by the use of a certain word above … may I humbly suggest that being angry about starving children being used as pawns in this argument to be far more worthy of our anger than some word that I use because I am not clever enough to think of anything else!! (well … that’s what my mum always told me anyway!)

Last Friday was a pretty amazing day. I simply have not had a chance to write about this yet. I also like things to settle and see what stays with me after such a packed day. The stuff that is lingering will appear below.

Along with a few others, Liz and myself represented the gathering, who were invited to the Archbishops Day Conference on Religious Life and Renewal at Lambeth Palace. It was a great opportunity to catch up with old friends and connect with some new people from both traditional and new monastic communities.

I was particularly encouraged as Archbishop Justin asked in his opening speech …. ‘what needs doing? What institutional changes are needed? How does the church, how do the churches (we are not all Anglicans here) obstruct you, hinder you when we should celebrate and support? What re-imagination do we need?’

He started by saying religious communities throughout history have been a major influence on renewing and energising the church. He also said we need a wild and spirit led burst of imagination …. hearing those words, from the Archbishop, in an 800 year old building in the seat of ‘the establishment’ were both pretty radical to hear … as well as incredibly life and permission giving. Once again, it seems, we have an Archbishop that wishes to bless ideas and imagination and wants to see creativity ….  I resonated with that ‘imagination’ word particularly as I believe God called my attention to imagination prayer the week before at the Contemplative Prayer day.

In the question and answer time with the Archbishop two things have stuck with me. When asked about permanence of religious communities and church, he said that he preferred to talk of stability. Permanence is affected by the external stuff and so is out of our control; but stability, said Archbishop Justin, is internal and we can live with that in our heart. So, rather than looking at being permanent, we should be searching for that feeling of stability.

The Archbishop also talked about how communities could celebrate the new and spontaneous as it appears. He urged each community to work out how they can do this as they perform their dance of the prophetic and the creative.

We broke into groups after both key note speeches in the morning and afternoon. I felt I heard one loud message very clearly which I will be taking back to the gathering …. that many communities experience shows that we can only grow as we rediscover our radical mission purpose. Part of this will involved the transformation of places of pain into places of hope.

This was backed up int he afternoon when Fr Etienne from the Chemin Neuf Community challenged us to think about the ‘charism’ that the gathering offered and how that might be released for the renewal of the church and the community. That’s a really interesting and deep question that I have come away with …. and something that we, as the gathering, will need to ponder … but hopefully not for too long … so we can get on and make a difference.

This was a great day …. and I give thanks for all those involved in planning. There are some comments from friends below …

I have been shocked more than I thought I could by the reaction of some, mainly evangelical church leaders, to the news that World Vision has decided to hire people who are in loving same sex relationships. Some leaders are actually saying people should boycot World Vision, as in stop sponsoring amazing child poverty relief and education programs, which make an amazing difference, just because World Vision are going to have an open recruitment policy.

I am not sure if this makes me angry or sad or both.

I could write lots but Rachel has written excellently here … so go read …Rachel says:

And it puts into stark, unsettling relief just how out-of-control the evangelical obsession with homosexuality has become. Organizations don’t get “farewelled” for hiring divorcees. People don’t get kicked out of their churches for struggling with pride or for not wearing head coverings when they pray.  (See “Everyone’s a Biblical Literalist Until You Bring Up Gluttony.”) But when it comes to homosexuality, Trevin Wax and many others have decided “the gospel is at stake.” 

That paragraph sums up what really concerns me. This seeming obsession with sexuality that people have lost the plot to such an extent that they are actually recommending a course of action that would result in children starving … that is so painfully ridiculous to comprehend.

Anyway … be sad …  be angry …  be whatever … but pray for World Vision!

Oh … and you could always sponsor a World Vision child!

We saw The Commitments tonight as a family. It was a pretty impressive show … i’m probably biased as it’s made up of a lot of music greats that I grew up with through school. It was also incredibly funny in places, which made it a ‘feel good’ kind of show.

I won’t give the storyline away … but I think the underlying themes are quite interesting and reflect a little of what I have been discussing with a few people for a little while. Interestingly, I think those themes are themes of accepting and being true to who are you along with a ‘commitment’ to doing the things that you enjoy and make you come alive.

I guess those two underlying themes could be described as the aspirations of many of us … to really honestly be ourselves and to do what we love doing. To link with other thoughts, both those require a pretty massive amount of vulnerability. Being real means being vulnerable … it’s much easier to wear our carefully crafted masks and pretend we are something that we are not.

On occasions, Richard Rohr’s thoughts just seem to drift in and gently bounce of the clouds of my thinking and add a little more substance. Today is one of those days as Richard Rohr writes:

Paul says it so well: “I shall know even as I am known” (1 Corinthians 13:12). In other words, you need to let yourself be known nakedly by God, no pretense, no dressing up. You are who you are who you are! No trying to make yourself something other than who you really are. All God can love is who you really are, because that’s the only you that really exists. All the rest is just in your head.

I can add …. that one person that Richard talks of as the person we really are, the only one that God can love …. well God already loves that person … completely. That’s real, unhinged, unstringed, decadent, elaborate, extravagant, foolish, ‘asking for trouble’ kind of love ….. but … hey … that’s the God I follow!

I loved reading the Archbishops Presidential Address to Synod …. some personal highlights to draw out:

the church is not a closed system because God is involved and where he is involved there is no limit to what can happen, and no limit to human flourishing.

The love has to be demonstrated and the trust has to be earned.  But the love cannot be demonstrated if it is refused and the trust cannot be earned without the iterative process of it being received and reinforced in the reception.

A church that loves those with whom the majority deeply disagree is a church that will be unpleasantly challenging to a world

When it (church) works well it works because love overcomes fear.  When it works badly it is because fear overcomes love.

The speech is worth reading in its completeness …. but the above quotes are highlights for me. They excite me because they talk of a church that is gritty and real … a church that wants to get its hands dirty and make a difference …. but a church that knows, in order to make that difference, it needs to unite and accept its diversity of opinion.

We don’t all agree but we are all on the same journey… we can all still love each other and move forward together! I don’t think Archbishop Justin is saying for one minute that we compromise or pretend …. that’s the gritty bit … he suggests that this will be hard and messy because moving forward together does not mean we all have to agree with each other. In our disagreement we can trust each other. When we trust each other we can achieve.

When we enter into competition or can’t accept disagreement we allow fear to prevent that achieving.

Round our dinner table last night we touched on this in a lateral way. My family got frustrated with me as I talked of being tired of hearing and writing clever sermons, or people making interesting points, or maybe even scoring points. I said I was tired of people who feel leadership is about ‘do what I say’ and ‘respect’ rather than how can we achieve this together to make a difference in this place. I said I was tired of people that want to control and dictate rather than let go, enable, set free and let God.

I just want to see transformation.
I don’t want to see revival across the nation, I don’t want to see churches packed out, I want to see people meeting Christ, people realising that no matter how crappy and hard their lives are that Christ does, will and can make a difference; not because Christ will take it all away and make it all better but because Christ stands in the crap with them and walks with them through it.
I want to see my little hard pressed forgotten and looked down upon community of Gillingham shine in the realisation of a grace and love that says …. ‘come … you are welcome … no need to change … no need to jump through hoops … no need for anything but yourself … just come’

If we can embrace love and overcome fear … well who knows … with God there is no limit to human flourishing …. so some of that dream might actually happen.

Want to join us???

I have been thinking more about the ‘humble of a child’ line of Jesus. Quite soon after writing my post on ‘distracted by God‘ I realised I had forgotten all about play.

In the examples I gave of the Shibboleth and the busker I think I missed something. The children didn’t just have the time to be distracted, they didn’t just divert their attention to what was in front of them, they didn’t just engage with what was before them. They played.

With the Shibboleth, they ran their hands down it, they dropped things in it, they balanced on it, they jumped over it, they tried to stretch across it. With the busker children danced, they sang, they jumped up and down. Children play.

When Jesus says we need to be humble like a child …. is there something about play that we have lost in our relationship with God, each other and the world? To play, or to experiment takes a certain level of vulnerability … especially for an adult. Sometimes, for an adult to ‘play’ in front of others there needs to be a certain level of humbling.

I remember 2 years a go buying a cuddly toy with my daughter, for my wife, in the Bear Factory. The Bear Factory is one of those shops where you can choose and make your own cuddly toy. Unbeknown to me at certain times during the day a member of staff in the Bear Factory will stand on the counter, call all the customers to attention and get them to sing the Bear factory song … which has actions! I mean, that is my worst nightmare …. worse than those cheesy action songs you get in some churches that when you look around realise the children are not joining in and that the children leaders, alone, are enjoying themselves!

So …. i am in the  shop at ‘that time’, with my daughter, trying to but a stuffed cuddly penguin for Sarah, with everyone singing and doing the actions to the bear factory song. I didn’t join in. I felt vulnerable and I did not want to look stupid or feel silly.

But afterwards …. and this IS the really annoying thing … I felt silly anyway! I felt silly for not joining in. (I mean what is that about??!!) After all, it was just a bit of Christmas fun. I probably looked the odd one out, just because I could not forget I was an adult, humble myself, and sing a song with a few actions for 60 seconds. I did not play. Because I did not play, in some way I missed out on something!

In the early days of my ordained life I used the terminology of ‘play’ to describe my role … ‘to play and create with God’. Actually, it shocks me to realise I had forgotten that language. Alongside losing the language, I think I also stopped playing; and for me that means stopped creating, stopped messing about with ideas with God and others until something happened.

For the last few weeks I have been pretty much immersing myself in grace and vulnerability readings and videos. There is a Jean Vanier video on Work of the People that talks about the need to be a child and the need too have fun.

A key part of that play is a requirement to live in the present. This is something, again, that children seem to find easy to do. Forgetting yesterday, and not worrying about tomorrow, means they can live in, play and enjoy the present. Personally, I am starting to trust and so stop worrying about tomorrow … forgetting yesterday is a bit more of a challenge!

Vanier is an amazing guy who talks really powerfully. The clip is 17 minutes long, but it is worth watching and dwelling on …. if you click on the pic you should be redirected … (on testing it you may need to click again!)

…… life is about relationship and fun …. not about winning medals.

A while ago I posted a link to this vulnerability talk from Brene Brown that has become viral. What I hadn’t noticed is that Brown also did a Q & A session 2 years after the TED talk which makes pretty good reading around this whole subject of vulnerability.

Some quotes that grabbed me and that I have pulled out to reflect on further:

‘your worthiness, is a birthright and not something you have to earn’
‘When you lose your capacity to care what other people think, you’ve lost your ability to connect.’

I believe that first quote, I really do! I know i am created in the image of God. I know I am accepted totally as I am. I know there is nothing I can do to change that acceptance. But …. living that out in my life, in a world that bombards us all with ‘targets’ and ‘must have experiences’ and ‘this or that item to perfect our lives’ … a world where the establishment views those who are ‘different’ with some suspicion and fear of what may happen …. all combines to make it all so so hard. So … I believe this … I believe my worthiness is a birthright …. but living like I believe it … that’s a whole different ball game that I am trying to get to grips with.

That second comment though, caring about what people think … that one has hit me hard! My whole life is about connecting with people, building relationships, and becoming friends.

Over the last 7 days I have been struck by how much I value friendship. Friendships have become incredibly precious and important to me. One particular friendship seems to be moving to a whole different level of trust and respect, which is both humbling and exciting. This really has filled me with a great joy which seems to echo a ‘thank you God’ in some way. Another person who has become a friend has recently moved away. My respect and admiration of this person grew quickly. I have been surprised at the sense of sadness and loss that I feel over that person leaving. Friends, real friends (and I don’t use that term lightly as it takes a long time, usually, for me to see and to call a person a friend) are incredibly important to me.

But … and there is a but here … i have not linked the connectedness I talk of above with a concern of what others think. I do care what friends think. Somrtimes I will go as far as to say I will worry what my friends think. I would fiercely fight the corner for a friend. I would really hate to upset a friend.

But … I do work with an attitude of ‘if this is what I am called to do’. In practice that will mean that I don’t want to upset people ,, but if, in the course of what it has been agreed I am here to do, I do, then so be it!’ I don’t mind upsetting people  …. i don’t like it, and would rather avoid it, but sometimes things reach a stage when to move forward disagreement and upset seem to be necessary.

I look to Jesus and to Paul, or earlier to Moses, Daniel, Jeremiah …. and they all acted like they did not care what others thought and just got on with the job. They all had opposition, they were asked to stop what they were doing, they upset those close to them and loved ones …. and yet they carried on regardless with the stuff they were called to do.

So …. ‘When you lose your capacity to care what other people think, you’ve lost your ability to connect.’ I’m not ure if I am grasping this statement well. I am mulling over the implications of those words to myself as not only a pioneer but also as a normal adult person.

So … that’s where I am going to end …Brown says a lot more  – go read.