abbotsford.org.uk

Gases of a more noxious kind

Here's a wee thought from one of our bloggers:

Methane is 21 times more powerful a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide..
Methane emissions cause nearly half of the planet's human-induced warming.
Methane is produced by a number of sources but No1 worldwide is animal agriculture.
85% of methane is produced by the digestive processes of livestock.

Then there's the whole issue of the use of land to graze animals and produce animal feedstuffs - e.g. huge increase in soya and grains grown for poultry production

I'm not suggesting that everyone changes to a vegetarian or vegan diet but how about reducing the 'carnivore footprint' and thus the 'carbon footprint' by eating less chicken or reducing consumption of dairy products - say a couple of meat/chicked/cheese free days each week?

And, while we're on the subject, but not lesses what has just been said, did you see that programme a few weeks ago about factory farmed chicken, how they have hardly any feathers, how they as so heavy with meat that their legs can't support them, that they live on top of each other as they only require by law the space equivalent to three quarters of an A4 sheet of paper. A few were talking about it at church the other week and these carnivores said the debased way we care for these chickens alone would put you off eatig chicken for life. I've still to ask if it has done so for them.

However Sainsbury's have given an assurance to move away from factory farmed chickens by 70 million each year. If you want to find out about the most ethical stores a chicken then this website may help (and surprise).

They are also selling eco-bulbs at three for a pound. Three 60W bulbs for a pound. That's a good deal.

Text Images

Images are beginning to come in. Hope the wee reflection below helps whet the appetite.

Text Images

It was today
after the flume
that glorified helter skelter
when the face glowed
with a toothless grin
(the tooth fairy has taken her first one)
and eyes burst with bravery
that I noticed transfiguration.

It wasn't the event itself.
No, no.
While that was cool
transfiguration dances on cool.
It was what was now possible.
After one flume tried
the world just stepped up a gear

It's all about the level at which you engage the world.

Try a flume,
or kite flying,
or hand gliding.
Get the taste
and see what's now possible.

So what's next?

Chocolate Teapots is posted below

Chocolate Teapots

Transfiguration. So where do you start with that? Personally I don't go down the line of an exact historical event but a metaphor that maybe the church needs to give it credibility. But for the wrong things. The chruch maybe needs credibility for Jesus being divine, for being God, for being a heavenly being and not of this earth.

Hmmmm.

Anyone wonder if that's maybe focusing on the wrong thing because the more I read Jesus words and read what those on the edge of the church understand of Jesus, that divinity isn't that important. What is important is what happen when Jesus comes down the mountain, which is the bit we theoretically don't get on Sunday (but might read anyway) that Jesus has far more to do with compassion, caring, healing, and including people back into community. There is just sooooooo much more in the Gospel about Jesus helping folk, eating with them round a table, speaking to the excluded, and refashioning the way we do community, giving us new priorities and new folk to be the priority, than any miraculous godly thing.

God is in human form and probably always has been. The Gospel is all about giving worth back to people. But that's not what the church has been seen to be doing or what the legasy of the church has been. I know folk have been doing that all through the ages, but it's the minority.

So, transfiguration. It's a cool story, unusual, weird but there seems to be a big bit of historical psychology behind it that might be worth unraveling sometime. However, that's not what we're here to do with Chocolate Teapots. Any words that stick out? What colour is the passage for you? And a song, any leap to mind? Or a symbol?

Looking for volunteers

I'm on the scrounge again wondering it there are two folk out there who might be interested in reading something for Sunday. I've got it more or less worked out and can send you a draft by email. It's going to be fabulous. There could be the additional bonus of playing with some sand but if that makes you think again, we can leave the sand to the side.

I'm afraid that the plethora of old hymns we've been finding ourselves singing over the last couple of months hasn't been kept up this week but we'll return there, no doubt, during Lent.

Text Images

This idea has just been fabulous. Each week we get more and more images as folk really do engage with the texts and see symbolism and windows into the story all around us. Brilliant.

The album could become quite unmanagable so I think we'll start a new album each season so that after next Sunday, we'll begin again with Lent but filing away the previous season.

Follow-up

As a wee follow-up to last Sunday when we thought about some new inventions which were no exactly believable but were in actual fact true such as the spider escape ladder from the bath etc, I found this which really is something I think we should all have. Indeed it beautifully combines some of today major issues of deforestation of rainforests, CO2 and global warming. Quite fantastic. But what is more amazing is that it is real.

I offer you a challenge... are there any more inventions out there that offer a unique insight into humanity.

The cost of a loaf

The price of the bread I buy has gone up. But 13p. Just like that. I wrote to the manufacturers asking why and that I was now considering buying a different loaf.

They replied that they were sorry to hear this but that since there was now a global shortage of wheat because farmers that once grew grain for food are now sowing their fields for bio-fuels and this area of land was growing exponentially, they were finding it more and more difficult to source wheat for bread.

Also noted was that the expanse of rainforest that is destroyed in order to grow crops to make into bio-fuels is larger than any decent or even half-hearted eco-person would desire. They are being grown in an unsustainable way.

It's one of these grand ideas that has become the baddie it was meant to thwart.

Maybe I should use my breadmaker again.

Text Images

To help thoughts and images collide.

Following is a strange term to use with Jesus. It’s a bit like the blind leading the blind. Did Jesus know what was round the corner? Did he have it all mapped out and clear cut with rehearsed lines to rehearsed situations?

Or did he simply trust?

Following is a strange term to use with Jesus. It implies a leader who has already passed that way and with heads down we stare at the footprints and play a game of journeys. Had Jesus moved through this way before?

Or did he simply trust?

Following doesn’t mean the one out front knows where they are going. It’s just that they have the trust and faith we would like to have, enough faith for us to trust. They live more on impulse, initiative and intuition. These are the ways of God-living. To move from beach to roadway, means moving from knowledge to intuition, living in faith not because you’ve been here before, but because you haven’t. Knowledge doesn’t help. Faith does.

Chocolate Teapots for 27th January 2008

Matthew 4:12-23

How crucial are the call stories of the disciples? Lately I've been re-imagining them since they have come up so often in the last few weeks and recognising in them the very essence of living the faith. You see, you don't get away with following without following. And if you are following, in the true sense of the world it means you are walking in the shadow of someone else, not knowing where they are going. If you knew, you wouldn't strictly be 'following'.

From the very beginning it's about moving on but it never seems to be a once and for all but a continual adventure. No disciple settled down again. Jesus didn't go 'back home' as far as we know but was known, and said himself he had no where to lay his head. So there is absolutely nothing about settling down.

Now hold that thought and now remember the hymns we like best and sing with more gusto. They are the familiar ones. Obviously. We grew up with them. But the questions I need to ask (myself) is do they move me on in the faith? Because it strikes me that needs to be the question we ask of all the 'tools' or expressions of the faith that we use to affirm us and proclaim who we are. Does it move us on for that is what following means.

So, to take that a little further, are we willing to go into unfamiliar ground? Move from the beach to the roadways, from the table to the cross, from the tomb to the garden and life differently. This is something Jesus always insisted on. Think of the Rich Young Man. He did everything right: he was holy, well behaved, gave his money away but that wasn't what it was about. Jesus basically said to him, 'well just go and do something different. Go and step out the box.'

To me this means that unless we actually take up the faith in the contexts of today living, then we haven't yet left the beach. Why is it we still can't have fairtrade tea and coffee in the church as a matter of principle, or change our bulbs to eco-lightbulbs as a matter of course without looking for excuses about mercury? So my take on this weeks call stories is more prophetic and earthy, calling for choices, always choices to follow in the trus sense of the word, into the roadways with jesus, as even he didn'd know where they would go.