no conviction

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This challenged me in the uncomfortable way that Pete Rollin’s has done in the past:

In a world where following Christ is decreed to be a subversive and illegal activity you have been accused of being a believer, arrested and dragged before a court.

You have been under clandestine surveillance for some time now and so the prosecution has been able to build up quite a case against you. They begin the trial by offering the judge dozens of photographs which show you attending church meetings, speaking at religious events, and participating in various prayer and worship services. After this they present a selection of items that have been confiscated from your home: religious books that you own, worship CDs and other Christian artefacts. Then they step up the pace by displaying many of the poems, pieces of prose, and journal entries that you had lovingly written concerning your faith. Finally, in closing, the prosecution offers your Bible to the judge. This is a well-worn book with scribbles, notes, drawings, and underlings throughout, evidence, if it were needed, that you had read and re-read this sacred text many times…

you can read the rest at Pete’s blog.

13 years!!!!!!

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As many of you know Burma is a country close to my heart but, despite my father being Burmese, I can’t believe I would not be as outraged and upset as I am by such injustice. Please read below and act as you can. It is unbelieveable that someone can be held under arrest for such a long time with her crime being an overwhelming victory in a Burmese general election.This is a woman that has not seen her children for years, could not attend her husbands funeral and, cannot have communication without the outside world … and the world sits by and watches. Add this to the brutality we saw last year towards peaceful unarmed buddhist monks by brutal armed soldiers and I believe it makes a strong case for UN military intervention.

Aung San Suu Kyi to reach 13 years in detention – protest!

On October 24th Aung San Suu Kyi will have spent a total of 13 years in detention.

On the same day leaders of Asian and European countries are having a summit meeting in China.

We want the leaders to back UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in securing the release of ALL political prisoners when he visits Burma in December.

JOIN OUR PROTEST!

Friday, October 24, 2008

Time:
12:00pm – 1:00pm

Location:
Chinese Embassy

Street:
49 Portland Place, near Oxford Circus tube

We’ll be delivering a giant key to the Chinese Embassy, representing the key to freedom that world leaders hold, if they work together to pressure the regime. The key will have the names and pictures of Burma’s 2,130 political prisoners

The number of political prisoners in Burma has almost doubled in the past year, despite calls from the United Nations Security Council for their release. These people have committed no crime. They have been locked up for calling for freedom.

We have never had a UN Secretary General visit Burma to discuss political problems before, and we have never had European and Asian government joining forces to pressure the regime to release prisoners. They all say they want it. We must make them work to make it happen.

For too long the UN has fallen for the lies of the regime. They must secure real change. The release of political prisoners should be the minimum benchmark for progress that Ban Ki-moon aims for in December.

Join the protest! send a message to world leaders than they must turn words into action. Don’t leave Burma’s democracy activists suffering in Burma’s jails.

This protest is organized by a coalition of campaign groups and Burmese community organisations in the UK.

IF YOU ARE NOT IN LONDON – YOU CAN STILL TAKE ACTION

WE ARE HAVING AN IMPACT

Two weeks ago we asked you to email the UN demanding they work for the release of political prisoners. The UN has received thousands of emails, and last week Ban Ki-moon stated that he wanted to see the release of political prisoners as a sign of progress for when he visits Burma in December. It is the first time he has linked his visit with the release of political prisoners. We are getting this issue onto the agenda of world leaders, but we need to keep it there.

If you haven’t taken the action please do here.

Please also ask your friends to support this campaign.

we’re in the pic

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Tom found this pic from the game on Saturday – to the right of the ball in the back row you can see us all not quite believing the ball is going into the net!

3 p’s

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Yesterday I caught up with Ian Mobsby in London. I am in the privileged position of having Ian as my mentor and meeting with him inspires me and helps me to see things differently.

Amongst loads of ideas and possibilities, Ian chatted with me about my role having 3 faces to it, those of pastor, pioneer and prophet (I know that wine induced blog name of SHP was really God inspired!).

I am seeing the pastor thing starting to occur in my conversations with people in places. The couple who shared about their daughter, others who have shared about concerns over work, and general life issues. The pastor role is one I have always joked I don’t have as I am a pioneer, but it is an important part of the role. When I connect with people to develop a new expression of church, my role is to pastor, not in an elevated way or lone role , but in a way that I serve others and serve others with others if that makes sense.

The pioneer role I can see. This is what I am doing. The going to places and hanging there and waiting to see what happens. I believe it will continue to be a struggle, but those early pioneers (whether we look at faith, railroads, or gold diggers) all had tough times and times of loneliness as they thought about where to go next. As with above this is not a role I do alone, which is why my prayer continues to be another pioneer to share with.

The prophet role is not one that I had seriously thought of. This is a role of, again with others, imaging what life could be like. Re-imagining how Christian faith can play out in contemporary culture. Part of this is also, I think, putting the vision out there and taking a proactive role, but in such a way that i am not seen as leading or seeking my own agenda, but in a way that genuinely and authentically allows others to mould the shape of whatever it is that God creates here.

The final sentence there is one I am enjoying saying to myself over and over again. In a world where we are governed seriously by diaries and meeting targets I believe it is important that I remind myself on a daily basis that this is not my work, I am not to create or engineer but simply to be and to wait and to discover. The creation, or birthing, of this community is God’s work – my job is to search, gather, care and see what happens.

Well I’m off now to search some more …

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Well, after all I said earlier on he day it was an amazing game which ‘we’ won 5-0.
I guess the analogy continues along the lines that if you sat away you may not only miss the pain … You may also miss some of the joy when things go right.
The win was great, the lack of involvement still leaves you wondering if things will continue next week.
I hope it does.

lacking engagement leads to absence

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I am going to the football today to watch Gillingham. For the first time ever in years I really can get no enthusiasm and, if I did not have season tickets and the boys were not depending on me to get them there, I think I would park myself in a bar somewhere and join others watching the England game later.

Why have I lost enthusiasm for the team that I will say I still love? Is it about disappointment of performances, lack of commitment from management and players, pain of mediocrity again? I don’t know, but I think it is a combination of all of that, and more I guess.

A large part, though, in my analysis of this thought pattern is the lack of engagement with the fans of the manager. He walks past the fans each week 4 times (at the start and end of each half) never looking up from the floor. He never looks at the fans, he never acknowledges the support, he never claps the fans; he just walks out looking at the floor and walks in looking at the floor. There is no engagement. It is like he is uninterested. This is the first time I have experienced this lack of interaction from a manager towards fans. Interestingly, this non-interaction occurs amidst the others players usually walking around the pitch and clapping the fans for their encouragement at the end of the match.

For the first time last week the manager came out and no one clapped him. People continued with their conversations. The team had come out earlier and been cheered. The manager came out and there was nothing. There was no engagement. This is the first time I have ever seen the fans fail to acknowledge or clap the manager when he comes out of the changing room. The lack of engagement was telling.

Today I am tempted to stay away. It seems selfish and sounds like I am sulking because I am not being treated in a way that I feel I should be. That could be true but I hope that is not the case.

I think people feel the manager does not care, lack of interaction gives that impression. This belief, whether correct or not, causes people, I think, to become negative and then stay away. I want to stay away today not because I’ve stopped loving my team, not because I have stopped being a fan, and not because I have stopped caring. I want to stay away because I can’t bear the pain of further demise under a management that seems not to care. I want to stay away because I honestly feel unable to do anything to instigate any positive change. In the past I have felt part of the team … we would come home saying how well ‘we’ had played. There is no such connection at this point in time.

I wonder if there is something in this experience that I can learn for church, particularly in a cathedral setting. I remember Adrian, the Dean, saying at the start of my life here that as we process in and out he attempts to make eye contact with people in the congregation. I do this now other wise we walk in and out and could give the impression of lack of interest due to lack of acknowledgment or interaction with the rest of the cathedral community.

It’s easy to be stuck in the ritual of stuff, whether that be training football players or processing down an aisle, or leading a Eucharist. At the cathedral I think we are quite good at engaging with people, but I do wonder whether part of church decline is to do with this over-bearing attention to detail, but dis-attention to personal engagement with other human beings.

Could it be true that some people have not stopped loving God? Certainly people have not stopped calling themselves Christians. I know this because I have met many over the last few years. People are interested in God, but feel totally unconnected and disenfranchised from the church. Feelings that are caused, in part, by a combination of lack of interest in them from those seen to be in authority, but also from a realisation that there is nothing they can do to cause a change.

To move forward people need to feel their investment is authentic. They need to feel they have a say and that what they say will make a difference. As I ponder this while i look to develop a new Christian community with others I realise anything else results in a mediocrity of absence.

Dear Lord …

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I’ve mentioned ASBO Jesus before, the wonderful creation of Jon Birch.
He says what he thinks here (and I for one share the prayer) and there is a discussion brewing at ASBO here.

I know an outstanding teacher!

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Today a husband that’s more proud than normal!
Sarah was awarded ‘outstanding’ in a lesson observation today.
That’s the second one she has – one in maths and one in language.
She won’t tell anyone.
So I’m telling everyone here!

Friday reflections

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It was strange being back in Rochester today and I can’t put my finger on why.

Morning Prayer this morning was just the two of us. That in itself was a unique experience as in my time here there has always been at least 4. Saying canticles and psalms antiphonally together when there are only 2 voices (which means one voice at a time for those unfamiliar with Anglican worship) is quite amazing and seems almost to be a more intimate time with God. I thought it would be awkward but was amazed by how powerful the experience actually was. Often we can feel numbers make a massive difference … but when coming to God in prayer that just is not the case.

I prayed before going out on the High Street and to W/Spoons again this morning. I was particularly nervous today. I don’t know why, but there was a massive part of me that just did not want to leave the cathedral library and sit in the pub and ‘wait’. I prayed for guidance, I prayed for courage, I prayed that I would find someone who would want to talk.

Today I had nods of acknowledgment and later on, after I had eaten a great breakfast, got into conversation with 3 wonderful older gents in their 70’s who were all local and had served in the Royal Engineers. It was great to have a normal conversation about football, Medway and other stuff.

The interesting thing is that once I am out, once I step over thresholds of coffee shops or pubs I am not nervous and feel very comfortable. Certainly I feel comfortable in the places I am inhabiting and it seems to be just ‘right’ to quietly sit and just be myself. I don’t ever feel out of place and don’t pick up that others feel I am out of place either, although I am often greeted with looks of surprise and confusion. Sometimes conversations happen, sometimes they don’t. Conversations seem to be becoming more frequent. Actually, saying that, the last 4 times I have been in I have ended up chatting with people – and I’ve only just realised that through this process of reflection!

So … it’s good to reflect!

Biblical? or to be right?

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I have returned from my first CME residential and have quite mixed feelings about what happens at such events.

Meeting people and chatting ‘after hours’ are always the highlights for me at things like these. A particular highlight was visiting the Little Gem with some Lithuanian priests that had joined us for the conference. This was their first time in the UK and they were keen to see an English pub and drink English beer. As they sat in the Gem and learned that they were sitting in a place that had been a pub since the 1200’s they were amazed. It was great to be able to share the experience.

We had some top teachers – professors Richard Burridge and Ben Quash from Kings College. TBH Quash’s lecture was way above my head and I got totally lost, whereas Burridge’s stuff was quite fascinating. He argued convincingly that the crisis in the Anglican church was not actually about sexuality, but rather a reluctance to discuss around the table the ‘biblical viewpoint’. He used slavery and apartheid as illustrations where both were performed under the ‘biblical’ justification and yet we know they got it drastically wrong.

A taster of the lecture:

So this debate rages between traditional groups and those who want to be inclusive. The former assume that they are ‘biblical’, while the latter sometimes also claim this. This is why tonight’s lecture is entitled ‘Being Biblical?’ – with a question mark – in an attempt to answer the question. The problem with such debates is that it is often hard to hear each other. All sides have a position, with a pressure group, with websites and mailing lists, and people of similar views meet to plan strategy, motions for Synod, speakers to invite and so forth. There is little opportunity for differing views to come together – and even less for a meeting of minds in the midst of tough debate, dare one even say, in the heat of battle? Yet all of these are Christians, and we are talking about how we read the Bible, how we understand and receive God’s revelation and how we try to interpret God’s will for his church and the world. There has to be a better way to seek the divine intention.

you can read more here.

It’s an interesting read, and I think reminds us that to use the ‘biblical’ argument needs to be done so with care, but also and more importantly done in dialogue with those who think the ‘biblical’ thing seems to contrast with your view. If we only talk to those we agree with its very easy to be ‘biblical’ and convince ourselves we are right … the history of slavery and apartheid show us that only too clearly.

My personal opinion is that, actually and in all honesty, our desire to be ‘correct’ has over-ridden our desire to be ‘biblical’. To meet with others of an opposing view gives rise to the possibility that my view may change. If I change my view that means I was wrong. To admit that wrong can sometimes be painful and embarrassing. To asvoid that pain we refuse to meet with certain people, preferring instead to build our own camps to discuss, not biblical truth, but how we can win the argument.

To make real progress we need to talk.