You can see this weeks photo at Photo Friday … this week I am submission number 45 ‘Shiny Rob’!
photo friday: arranged
Reply
MBS – a special gift
Today saw one of the highlights of my year – working on the Dekhomai stand at the London MBS festival.
This year was no different in amazing me on a variety of levels. Firstly the diversity of stuff that is available from treatments, to therapies, dietary stuff, books, music and so on. Loads of stuff sold to help us achieve a better and healthier balance in out lives. This leads me on to the next ‘amazement’ which is how much people are prepared to pay. Some of the stuff was priced anywhere between £30 and £80 for anything between 15 and 40 minutes of whatever treatment, therapy or reading that was being purchased.
Another amazement is the openness of people that come to events like MBS. Today I was humbled as I spent time with a couple that had traveled from the midlands to the festival because, as far as I can make out, they were having a tough time and so were searching for answers to help them. As we prayed with them I offered a picture I thought God was giving them and it seemed to make sense to them. Later they both independently had a Jesus Deck reading and amazingly both were drawn to the same card. I don’t know the chances of that but the probability of both choosing the same card from the pack must be pretty slim.
I think my biggest amazement though, which seems to happen every year, is how Good seems to draw people together at MBS who have a connection. I had some link with everyone I prayed with today. One came from Weymouth (my home town), another was a youth worker (ex job), another suffered from back ache and the list could go on. The connections were too numerable to be coincidence.
Today I have massaged feet, listened to people, prayed for healing, made prayer cords and read Jesus Deck cards with people and it has been an amazing day! I am buzzing with this real sense of having been part of something quite special today. It really is a privilege to be able to offer the gift of prayer to others who are searching.
in court
Today was a more interesting Wednesday than normal. The day started with my normal routine Wednesday study time but today I stopped after lunch as I had to go to court to be a witness in a case that I am surprised got all the way to the county court, particularly as the incident allegedly happened in November 2007.
We met the barrister at around 1.30 and then waited to be called. After the barristers went in to the court room at 2.30 I was then left waiting for over an hour before I was called to give my evidence. At the end the judge kindly gave me permission to go but I asked if I could stay as I wished to see the outcome of the case. She kindly agreed and I can say that the person I was giving evidence on behalf of had the case against him dismissed. It was great to see, in my opinion, justice done in the court.
I don’t want to talk about the case as I don’t think that would be right but it was an amazingly interesting 4 or so hours that I spent in the courts. The number of conversations overheard was fascinating and the stress that many were under in family or small claim situations was clearly, and sadly, tangible. People were fairly emotional but despite this there was a strange air of calm about the place.
My main relfection from today is all around the idea of justice and how people can view the same incident differently. Today there were many people going into rooms to disagree with each other but, quite interestingly, willing to trust and abide by the judgment of one person after he or she had heard all the evidence from both sides. I think we take this for granted but I feel this is a massive plus of our society. Most of these people had very large grievances and yet – after being heard they were willing to allow someone else to make a decision that they would abide by.
Although some may ague that it is sad that most of these arguments could not be sorted out before hand, I think today has shown a real strength and credit of humanity and its trust of each other.
Free Gap Year
I still keep in touch with youth ministry and miss that kind of work …. sometimes!
I saw this free gap year opportunity on the Isle of Man on Ian’s blog. It looks great and there are 11 spaces – you can contact Ian via his blog for more details. The video gives a taster of last year. Why not pass this great opportunity on to a young person you know.
Penetcost … 24 hours on
So yesterday was Pentecost.
The 50th and last day of the Easter celebrations.
As if to emphasise the point, we returned to ‘ordinary time’ in Morning Prayer today and seemingly the excitement of Pentecost is all forgotten.
But should it be?
I had the pleasure of preaching at the 1030 Eucharist in the cathedral yesterday morning. During that time we looked briefly at a number of the meanings that could be associated with Pentecost. For me, though, the major application of this occurrence is that we are living in new times. In the ‘old times’ the Holy Spirit was only available to prophets, priests and kings.
In these New Times, however, we can all be filled with the Holy Spirit so that we can join with God’s mission of transforming this world. In that case – 24 hours on, and actually for every day, we can continue to live in the excitement of Pentecost.
mbs next week!
Next week I am again going to be helping out on the Dekhomai stand at the London MBS fair.
Being part of this is one of the highlights of my year and I’m really looking forward to being part of Dekhomai again this year on Thursday and Sunday.
If you visit the Dekhomai website you can see the new postcards, one on the Jesus Prayer and the other on silence, designed for this year – I think they are pretty impressive.
who you gonna call?
I think I’ve blogged about these guys before – they are very funny and creative with no aim other than to give people a good time and raise a laugh and a smile.
I see something of the joy of the Kingdom of God in their crazy and funny antics.
Watch the video and then go to their website to see other ‘missions’ that they have done.
how have we got this government?
NB: This is a political questioning post that some of you may wish to avoid as I question how we have arrived at the government that we currently seem to have.
I also want to state here, as it says in my profile, that the views I express here are my own and in no way reflect the cathedral, the diocese or even Christianity – these are my personal views and questions
It intrigues me that Mr Clegg said before the election that the party that came third in the election had no mandate to govern the country. He said this amidst reports, and Labour Party fears, that Labour would come third in the popular vote. At the end of the day, Labour came second in the popular vote and second in the number of seats in the commons. It was, in fact, the Liberal Democrats who came third in both the popular vote and the number of seats in the commons.
Is it just me or is there a certain irony here? The party that came third, the party therefore whose policies were firmly rejected by the country is now able to have MP’s at all levels of government. In addition Liberal Democrat policies, which were also firmly rejected by the voting public, are being brought to the table and will be passed through this government using the alliance majority.
It seems to me that the desperation for power from Cameron has resulted in the adoption of policies that clearly no one voted for. That strikes me as a very poor position to be in – surely, if anything, Cameron should have bitten the bullet, established a minority government and then returned to the polls later to get what would have surely been a majority.
There are already many things about this coalition that concern me – not as a biased Labour supporter but as a member of the voting British public. There are strong talks of saving cuts and democracy and a new breed of politics, but already early signs suggest control and wastage. Two such actions are:
1. The changing of the name of the Department for Schools Children and Families to the Department for Education. The dropping of the link between family life and education is a worry in itself – but at a time when cuts are looming did we really need this added expense of a name change with its associated costs of a new website, new letterheads, business cards etc etc.
2. The attempt to move from a 50% +1 MP to a 55% of MP’s to carry out a vote of no confidence and dissolve parliament. This clearly takes away the constitutional and democratic right of the house to have control under a false guise of stability. This is a clear attempt to override the wishes of MP’s and make it harder to challenge the government – and not just this government … all future governments as well. Cameron justifies this by saying he has made a ‘big surrender’ in giving up his right as PM to call a general election when we all know this was not really a big surrender, more a concession to those Liberal Democrats who no one voted to ahve the authority they re exercising in our political structure.
3. This new politics look to be a massive retrograde step if we look at the cabinet – mainly white, mainly male, very Etonian and Oxbridge. it seems to me that we have merely replaced the deal done in a restaurant with deals done at school and uni.
Not sure if that was a rant … but it’s over! But I would be interested in other’s comments – for example, does anyone else see the irony of the 3rd party having so much influence over our politics?
waiting (again!)
The gathering now has some form of web presence if you have missed out on that – there is a link to our facebook page on the right hand side of this blog page, and you can find an ‘in process’ web site here. As far as the gathering goes I am thinking through how we exist. As we only get together once a month at the moment it is easy to think of the gathering as merely an event, and that is definitely what we wish to avoid. We wish to be a growing community, a church, and to do that we need to do more than just ‘worship’ together.
I feel at the moment that I am missing something. I have taken some time out today to think and ponder over stuff in a prayerful way. I’d like to say that I had ‘a moment’ or ‘epiphany’ experience – but I didn’t! In fact, if I’m honest, the day has been ‘bloody hard work’ and I don’t feel that I have anything to show for it. To make it worse I really thought today would be a key day!
I’m stuck!
I’m waiting!
I’m fairly frustrated!
After yesterdays services a thought did strike me and I wondered if this situation is similar in some ways to those disciples who were stuck between Ascension and Pentecost. They were told to wait for the gift of the Holy Spirit. They are living in the excitement of seeing the resurrected Christ and his ascension; and then they have to wait. Looking at the first few chapters of Acts as I did today I think it becomes pretty clear that the disciples here were just blindy obedient.
By that I mean that they followed the instruction to wait, but that they did not really know what this ‘Holy Spirit’ was that they were waiting for. In some ways they just accepted that they had to ‘wait and see’ as they had been instructed. I wonder of they were frustrated too?
I look to those early chapters of Acts with more frustration if I am honest. They seem to be saying I have to wait more. The one action I can see here is that the group ‘met continually for prayer’. So I guess that is what we have to do. As a community of the gathering who living apart in the 21st century with different work and lifestyles, rather than living in 1st century Palestine quite close together, then we need to think how we can pray continually as meeting in the same place is not going to be possible. Maybe we need to agree to pray at set times wherever we are, adopting a kind of monastic approach to prayer through being united in prayers together at a time so that we can be united in our absence from each other. Or is that just fancy words to try and sound like I know what I’m doing?!
MY conclusion? : I’m still stuck – but I hope this waiting thing moves on soon.
a trad day of the pioneering sort
The day has been an interesting day in the life of a pioneer – because it has been quite traditional rather than pioneering.
My day started with me presiding at the 10.30 Eucharist in the cathedral. Two things still massively hit me about doing this. First I am always amazed at how great a privilege it is to be able to lead people in worship in this way. presiding at the Eucharist in such a special place on behalf of some quite special people is quite an honour. Today I made a few errors but the congregation are very forgiving but that did not distract me from how special this is, and I still can’t help but be close to tears or have a silly grin at different parts of the liturgy. The second thing that still surprises me is how nervous I still get at singing the 3 lines of the Eucharistic prayer. I have got over the embarrassment of singing publicly, but I am still incredibly nervous and spend ages in the car before the service singing the lines over and over again. Today I did not think I was coping very well with th singing but an encouraging smile from one of the younger members of the congregation helped!
After this I traveled to another church in the diocese to take a baptism – this was the first I have ever done (well that is if we exclude the doll I baptised in Sarah’s Year R class soon after my ordination!) At first I weas nervous about doing this – not because of the service itself but because this wsa a baptism at 1.00pm, and so being outside the main church service. It is difficult to welcome the child into the family of the church when the rest of the family are not there.
It was, however, an honour to be able to support this family in this way. The family would not call themseleves church goers but when we were chatting last week we got on to talking about why they wanted their child baptised. The mum immediately said words like ‘something inside me tells me it is the right thing to do – we never even had to think about it, it just seemed natural!’ I believe that ‘something inside me’ is the Spirit of God and as we baptise we have to trust that God is working in these situations.
Following the baptism I moved back to the cathedral for Choral Evensong as it was my turn to read one of the readings and lead the prayers. Another fairly traditional service. Today, however, I was struck by the number of people that were present and the ya they seemed to be ‘engaged fully’ with all that was going on. I’m not sure what I make of Evensong – often the thought of it does not appeal to me, but when I am there it is pretty obvious that God is powerfully present through the music and liturgy. When I attend I enjoy this old service and find something quite mystical in the language that is intriguing.
I am home after what is pretty much a pretty traditional day – but a day where as a pioneer I have been challenged and given food for thought.
The Shiny Headed Prophet 