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CREATING COMMUNITIES OF WHOLENESS WITH CHRIST AT THE CENTRE
Blog Archives: April 2008 - March 2008 - February 2008 - January 2008 - December 2007 - November 2007 - October 2007 - September 2007 - August 2007 - July 2007 - June 2007 - May 2007 - April 2007 - March 2007 - February 2007 - January 2007 - December 2006 - November 2006 - October 2006 - September 2006
31st March, 9pm
I've lost count of the number of assemblies, only have one more service to create for Holy Week [don't ask about the sermons still to write] and have had too many nights up 'till past midnight, and some great times out with friends and family [hence the late nights to make up time] and Anna still hasn't beaten me at drafts, although she sometimes persuades me to swop sides with her! All of which is just an excuse/apology for the fact that I haven't been blogging for a while.
And now I'm here at last my mind's gone blank about what's actually been happening - except for an urgent need for refreshment. Holy week will bring that - the power of the story - from Palm Sunday to Easter Day - carrying you through. The Year one class at St Francis had it perfectly - they had each done a painting and an explanation - and the first half or so were manically depressing, and intentionally so, the second half were wonderful and joyful. Seeing the two together, becoming part of a story that is a reality, that is life in all its fullness - that's amazing.
19th March, 9.45pm
So much for a weekend blog - bizarrely last weekend was one of the quietest for months and then today likewise, and I've been really resistant to doing any of the work that I need to do to catch up! Just slobbing around and enjoying the down time. Also teaching Anna to play drafts [a game that Adam insists on calling/pronouncing Giraffes] and I'm amazed that she's already nearly beating me. I gave her fair warning that tomorrow 'nice Daddy' will be no more, that it'll be a state of war! And then she wanted to stay up all night with a drafts board practicing her strategy!
We were out playing on swings that I have precariously created and even more precariously hung from trees in our garden [which sway alarmingly when anyone moves!] when it began to snow, just a few flakes, but listening to and watching the children was like a mixture of sirens [the pitch and volume] and Olympic trampolining [all the bouncing]. If you were anywhere within a radius of a mile you would have heard it.
I've done it twice, I'm about to do it again, and each time it makes me about as popular as a bull in a china shop - talking of which I can still remember Archbishop Rowan William's description of Bishop Colin Buchannan as 'the only bull I know who takes his own china shop with him'.
But to get back to the point. We have Chapter tomorrow, a chance for all of the Anglican ministers in Swindon to gather, pray and talk. And as we're hosting it we'll be leading worship and I'm going to ask us to read Psalm 119 - for those who are 'at sea' it has 176 verses and when you read it out loud takes about 20 minutes. Most sane people have never done that, but hey, its Lent and high time for us to show some real commitment.
On a more serious note, when we just read short sections of the Bible we see something - and its always good to read it. But we do have a habit, especially in church, of reading for three minutes and then talking for fifteen - and bizarrely the more evangelical [AKA Bible-based] a church the shorter the reading and the longer the talking tends to be [there are some honourable exceptions so please don't shoot me].
When you actually give time to reading, and especially to reading together and out loud, you get a whole new sense of what God might be saying to us. So if you have 20 minutes read Psalm 119 out loud and hear God in it. Or come along to one of the Easter Services and hear the Passion [the story of Jesus' last supper, arrest, trial and crucifixion] being read - again, its incredibly powerful to hear the whole thing.
10th March, 9pm
Its becoming a weekend blog, struggling to keep up and find time amidst walking hoes, requests for biscuits, feet on handlebars, breached walls of stone and the rest of life [all will be explained in due course - possibly...]
Children's ability to live so relentlessly in the present right up there in your face almost is astonishing. As we've mourned for Sarah and as I led her funeral on Friday and then a special memorial service for her children earlier today I've been stuck again and again by how wonderfully they are doing. How they are, in so many ways, keeping all the rest of the family going, they cry for Mummy and then they ask for another biscuit! Its never easy to mourn with a family, to lead a funeral of shock and tears, to help people though the maelstrom of emotions that follows a sudden and tragic death. But its such a huge privilege - I guess that its at the heart of our church ethos, to be there for people, whether they come to church or not, to be there to mourn and shout, to celebrate and welcome.
I think that it was on Wednesday, at the end of a very long day and a late evening meeting that I got home, and as is my very bad habit, I plugged my lap top back in and checked e mails - it almost inevitably leads to another few hours of work. And that night I found an e mail entitled 'Walking hoes' and I started smiling and then chuckling and then laughing. It should have been entitled 'walking shoes' but that's almost beside the point. I'm left wondering how far the hoes have got?
Alice was going down hill on her bike at an ever increasing speed today. She's never been hugely keen on going down hill, but she's getting used to it. And then a broken reflector fell out of her basket and she started to panic and took her feet off the pedals and waved them about in the air, at which point I began to panic and shouted out 'PUT YOUR FEET ON THE HANDLEBARS!' Thankfully she didn't comply! But [for those who are concerned] she did stop safely, and not in a hedge [that's a special trick of Anna's].
I think that it was in October 1996 that that the shingle ridge between Hurlstone Point and Porlock Weir, it was never repaired and the fields behind them were allowed to flood and become salt marsh. I was down there for a 36hr retreat [reading, praying etc] Monday/Tuesday [another of the many great things about this job] and for once walked west to the breach, and not east, up Hurlstone Ridge and towards Minehead. I was following the sun and keeping to the sea. The tide at over 11m was one of the highest of the year, the waves were breaking over the ridge, from the rising sea to the flooded marsh, and the shingle got narrower and narrower. It was stunning. The kind of place where you are so aware of the glory and power and peace of God, the kind of place from which you don't want to come back, the kind of place that strengthens you when you do, because you've met God.
4th March, 5.00pm
Pulling on my running shoes this morning I realised quite how muddy it was yesterday, my shoes were still caked, inside and out, but then running through the fields yesterday morning was amazing [a stunning dawn] but similar to swimming against the tide, for ever move forward I was sliding back or sideways or just squelching down, and down and down.
Its been a week of lots of visiting [alongside schools, trident, PCC and services etc.], catching up with people and meeting new folk. Its one of the hard things about the job that its so easy to loose out on real time with people. You end up filling every hour with preparation, meetings, gatherings, services. Its all good; and I'm now one of those who wants to bash meetings - and you can get quality time within them, or have great opportunities for communication within a Baptism preparation evening. But its different to just sit down with someone over a coffee or even a meal and listen and talk.
And if its hard to find time to do that, its even harder to find real time to be on your own. But if we're not at ease with our own company, how are we going to be at ease with others, except as a means of escape from ourselves.
There's a wonderful story that we had today of a Pharisee and a 'sinful woman' who both came to Jesus. They come from such different places, offering such different things, and Jesus responds to each accordingly, with comfort and with challenge, but he welcomes both of them, and all the rest of us.
However challenging it is, I can't even attempt to spend time on my own if I shut the door on Jesus.
BLOGGERS NOTE
You'll notice in this blog that I use clauses and sub clauses and square brackets and lots of other grammatical aberrations! Also that I can't spell. Jane sometimes compares my sentence structure to St Paul, going on and on and on... I'm afraid that you're going to have to live with it. I try to edit it all out when I'm writing for print, but I'm going to indulge myself here.