So tomorrow is the day!
According to Pastor Harold Camping, the rapture is tomorrow … the end of the world!
Funnily I overheard a child telling his mum today that he had heard the raptors were coming back to eat us.
Not sure which is preferable!
I was going to write about this and then saw Maggi has written a great post …. and she is far more intelligent than me and a much better writer … so go read wisdom over at Maggi’s blog.
Last night the worship guild of the gathering ‘met’. This is an open group of people that get together to think about and plan the main monthly gathering. Last night’s topic was ‘ancient roots’. We speak of the gathering as ‘an ancient future church seeking to travel Christian faith together’ and so when we were planning topics earlier in the year someone thought we ought to explore those ‘ancient roots’ together.
Last night we chatted a lot about practices that have helped Christian communities through the ages and then thought about how we might experience then as the gathering. The result will be a slightly different gathering again on June 12th as we seek to ‘try out’ some ancient practices. Some of these will be experienced as a group, while others will be experienced privately. As always, we will be giving everyone who wishes to the opportunity to contribute what they wish to contribute.
So … why not come along and try the examen, or spend some time using Lectio Divina, be surprised in what you hear God say through current chart music or even experience the joy of creating something new.
June 12th. 4.15pm in the crypt at Rochester Cathedral …. maybe see you there!
I thought yesterday was quite an interesting day if you were an O2 customer. There was a theft, or vandalism (or if you re into conspiracy theories … MI5 took down the network in connection with terrorist threats to the queen) or something that meant that the O2 network was ‘down’ for around half a day.
It was interesting because I got sucked into reading peoples comments on the support website. I went to see what the status update was and there were demands after demands for compensation, comments on how disastrous this was, and people very angry because they were unable to send or receive texts. I liked this comment in particular:
Comments = hilarity.
“Send everyone a text to tell them the network is down” – genius, pure genius.
“I pay £25 a month and I want compensation” – What are you going to do with your 83p? Don’t spend it all at once!
“I have a child in school” – generations of children went to school every day before mobile phones were invented. Most of them came home in one piece. They’ll be fine.
It’s almost worth the outage for the funnies. Good work, people – your self-inflicted misery is hilarious!
and this one really did make me laugh:
I have a date tonight and was meant to confirm the time and place… I’m stuck at work with just my phone on me that doesn’t work… what am I meant to do… is o2 going to compensate me for lost social life.. or even physical endulgence..
and the most sensible of all:
‘shut up … it’s only for one day!’
I was interested by two things in all this –
It seems we are becoming more and more of a ‘compensation’ culture. The cries for compensation on the support website are loud and numerous numerous, even though the person above asks ‘what will you do with your 83p refund?’ It seems we have come to expect a service and we don’t get that service then we have a right to be compensated. I don’t think that is a particularly pleasant side of our culture. I’m not sure what is says about where we are going as people … apart from always looking to transfer blame for our stresses onto other people. O2 gets blamed for a lot of stuff on the website … such as a persons decision to leave the arrangements for a date to the very last minute!
More interesting, though, is that it would seem that a large number of people, myself included, have allowed ourselves to become quite dependant on our mobile phones and communication structures. I wrote a while ago about the practice i notice when just sitting around of people, by habit, taking out their mobile phones every few minutes to see if they have missed a message. A friend responded that he felt connected and in community through his phone which is why he often checked. I guess if people feel connected through their phone then that would explain the anxiety for many yesterday … they were unconnected, they could not text, they could not be texted, they were no longer under the illusion of being in control – they were alone!
Did so many people really feel alone yesterday … is that why there was so much stress flying around?
I enjoyed meeting old friends at the ‘Contemplative spirituality and fresh expressions of church: building contemplative ecclesial communities out of contextual mission‘ day. (Fraser noted the title was too long to tweet – hence my cyber silence yesterday!)
As always a particular highlight was catching up with old friends and listening to their stories of how they struggle with ‘this stuff’ in the places they are called to be. It was also exciting to meet new people and hear new stories. I guess my only complaint for the day would be that it was not long enough to enable as much sharing and catching up as I would have liked – but that is not really a criticism as I thought the day was an excellent day and I returned feeling refreshed, challenged, encouraged and reassured.
There was a lot in the day, but some comments i particular that I recorded as I wish to think about them more:
A need to ‘receive from the space that only God can inhabit‘ – David Cherry
‘We do not think ourselves into a new way of living, but rather we live ourselves into a new way of thinking‘ – Ian Mobsby
‘Maybe we need to have the courage to let come what is waiting to come‘ – Ian Adams
I can’t say too much in reflection or response at the moment as I need to think on these, and part of the reason for putting them here is so that I don’t lose them and maybe hear what you think. Podcasts of the talks will soon be posted on the Moot website so that you can hear them for yourself. If you are interested in this and never knew about the day then you might want to sign up at the fresh expressions of the sacramental traditions website.
Thanks Ian, Ian and others, particularly Lou, who worked amazingly throughout the day so it ran so well.
Great weekend – the highlight being spending Saturday with good friends to celebrate terry’s 50th birthday …. in Krispy Kreme … different we know – which is why we did it!
I know they are a big company and everything and its ‘in’ now to knock big companies – but the staff, especially Jess, made this an incredibly lovely experience. WE laughed, made doughnuts, drank great coffee, ate doughnuts and laughed more!
If you want a party with a difference which is well run – try out Krispy Kreme! Also, if you are part of a charity check out their fundraising offer where you can buy doughnuts from them cheap to sell at events and make money.
found this on James Lock via Digging a Lot
It shows the radical Christ we need to be following:
Christ said:
‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind’
this is the first and great commandment.
The second is like it
‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’
On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets’
There is a lot of love there!
At Sunday’s gathering looking at creation, Howard wrote our opening liturgy which I really enjoyed. I think the way this sounds with the language of ‘openness’ gives some idea of the sort of community we wish to become: a community that travels together, not pretending to be sorted or having all the answers, and not pretending that things do not hurt, but a community that is open to God and each other.
The gathering ‘way’ is for half the group to read aloud one line and the other half to respond with the second line:
We gather together to explore
May we be open to see new perspectives
We gather together in awe of the world around us
May we be open to new insights
We gather together confused by things that happen
May we be open to hear new questions
We gather together to be encouraged
May we be open to each other
We gather together to journey
May we have the space to find our path
Over the last two weeks I have had the privilege opportunity to baptism 4 children, 2 in the cathedral and 2 in a parish church in Gillingham. This were both great events, special events and events where God is clearly at work.
I guess I am writing this here as upon reflection I have been surprised by how my view has changed … and I don’t think I really noticed the change.
A few years ago, and even longer, when I was youth worker at Holy Trinity Nailsea I remember being involved in changing the baptism policy of the church. They baptised everyone that asked for it which a number of us felt was wrong. We decided we should offer thanksgiving services, and then if people wanted to come back for baptism they could after a course of preparation. I think we were wrong to do that … and I also believe the church in Nailsea has put right our mistake.
I think our concerns were centred around people not understanding, parents not having faith, people not coming to church and so on and so on and so on. I think it came from a (wrong) understanding of having a faith that needed protecting, maybe even with a belief that only people who went to church regularly should have their children baptised… otherwise it would be a mockery.
As I read back through that I shiver! My excuse is that I was a young fiery evangelical man who was a little over exuberant on rules rather than compassion and grace. In my fieriness I had thought too much on what we do at baptism and not enough on what God does.
Baptism is, I believe, a free gift from God. God parents or the person being baptised make certain promises … but that is only a minor part of what is happening in baptism. Baptism is a sacrament, which may be described as an outward sign of something that God is doing invisibly and mysteriously. The more I reflect the more I am coming to believe that baptism is more about what God does rather than what we do. God plays the major role in some mysterious way that we do not fully understand …. and if that is so, then who are we to deprive anyone from that free gift of God?
So … I have changed my mind …. I wanted people to know … as some ‘out there’ think I would never admit to being wrong 😉
the gathering err gathered again yesterday in the crypt of Rochester cathedral to look at the theme of creation.
This was a landmark event for the community as this was the first gathering we have had that I did not curate or ‘lead’ as one of the families within the community took on responsibility for this.
We took a Godly Play approach to the creation story and people wondered about certain aspects of the story. We then adapted our normal ‘open space’ approach and had a number of different stations to help people contemplate the theme of creation within our lives. Some of the stations looked at how we are created (Psalm 139) others took a St Julian of Norwich hazelnut meditative approach, others encouraged us to create (using Psalm 8) as well as say sorry for when we have abused creation.
As well as helping us to think more about the creative side of God I think we started to see that we as a community can be a creative bunch of people as well.
The next gathering will be on June 12th with the theme of Ancient Roots
I watched a disturbing film last night at the Other Cinema.
It touched on some harrowing themes around the sanctity of life as the plot centres around the fictional situation of clones being grown to supply major organs for others.
At times I was close to tears, at others frustrated by the lack of action or ‘revolt’ amongst the characters while at other times i felt quite sick. Throughout the film the ‘donors’ were told that usually after the 3rd or 4th donation that they would ‘complete’. Donors did not die … they completed … because they were not really human.
We had a great discussion after this film which drifted to the possibilities and how life is treated or looked at in society today. I guess the question or fear, with the technology for cloning already available and used everyday in agriculture, was how is the current balance on this topic between fiction and real possibility? We are possibly already in a situation where we place different values on different peoples lives – the reactions over Bin Ladens death, the way protestors are treated by police, the values exposed by labels that people give to others … such as Chav, scally, townie and so on.
This could be a great topic and discussion to take up in pub theology.
The Shiny Headed Prophet 