abbotsford.org.uk

Whitecrook Learning Event

Well, it seemed to go well. We did some good stuff. We met a few people. We had a blether. And here's some photos to prove it.

Standing tip toe on Mount Nebo

Points are available if anyone can tell me where Mount Nebo is and why it is significant.

Here's Sunday's taster and if anyone would like to volunteer to read some of it then you'd get even more points. I think I'm going to start the Abbotsford Reward Card so people can get points every time they volunteer or answer questions correctly. Did I ever tell you about Nectar points from Sainsbury's and how they have changed the way they are calculating them which to my mind is a twisted injustice?

Anyway, about Sunday... I'm not telling you it is going to work. you'll need to subscribe to Mucky Paws for that or come to church on Sunday. It doesn't make all that much sense without the context so see you at the weekend!

Standing tip toe on Mount Nebo

Look I can see for miles
I can see a man
feeding a crowd
from a single basket
I can see for miles

I can see for miles
I can see a low table
and a band of followers
eating and drinking
bread and wine
in silence
I can see for miles

Look, I can see for miles
I can see a man head hanging
arms stretched
body broken
on a cross
I can see for miles

Look, I can see for miles
I can see a garden in the dawn
and a small crowd of women
round the cave-side
running
I can see for miles

Look, I can see for miles
a sea shore
a fire
fish cooking on a spit
and a savour
resurrection
I can see for miles

Look, I can see for miles
a gathering of people
in a building far away
generations removed from here
still following
trusting and believing
I can see for miles

CAOS learning event

CAOS will be at Centre 81 in Whitecrook on Saturday, part of the Whitecrook Learning Event. It's gong to be great. We're doing three workshops from puppet making to illuminated writing to something else I can't remember so if you'd like to come along and see what else is happening, and there is lots of all ages, then just pop along between 11 and 3 on Saturday.

We've also got the film of the CAOS day in the town centre. I'm trying to find a way to put it on the website for all to see and working on that. If anyone knows how them just let me know. Do I need to use You Tube? That wouldn't be bad. Maybe a good platform for advertising ourselves, as if anyone would notice amongst the zillions of other videos. Anyway, watch this space.

Shine

Just back from Greenbelt with about a dozen and a half Abbotsfordites. Lots going on, a few fermenting ideas and stuff to check out over the next wee while. I have to say there was no big idea this time, nothing that set the fire on heather (!). Should I be concerned that the church, even in this traditionally radical, edgy, questioning place is perhaps not got the edge at the moment? But I am sure that is only temporary. I hope so, for the sake of the church. All the alternative worship stuff I went to was all the same as it had been 10 years ago. What's gone wrong? Where's the stuff that makes you think and questions everything?

But there were some fine, fine moments that really did make you think and threw everything in your face and silenced you by the way they hit you right bewteen the eyes and broke open the whole story-faith-life thing. The biggest and bestest highlight was the remarkable 'Believe': four Old Testament tales of women. Harrowing but quite, quite remarkable. Stunningly brilliant retelling of well known and not so well known tales that changed everything for me Thank God someone was telling these stories as adult stories and not childrens stories any more. I think we control them when they are chidlren's stories: Noah and the ark, Moses and the Red Sea etc. But these very stories are meant to bring us into the question and confront us. 'Believe' did just that. (click here and then click the listen to this item button to hear an interview with the actress Linda Marlowe on Radio 4's Woman's Hour.)

I wonder if Abbotsford needs a Greenbelt conversation with those who have been and those who weren't. There's sometig niggling in me about being the church fit for the next few years. What questions, community, agenda do we need that will shape who we are. Every time I come back from Greenbelt I want to explore these things because we all know the church as it is can't last for ever. It always evolves. Anyone want to be a theological Darwin or Dawkins?So anyone up for a conversation about the radical Jesus, the wayward followers, the community along the edge?

Greenbelt

There's a good number of us off to Greenbelt tomorrow. We'll all come back googly eyed and we'll all be walking six inches off the ground teaming with ideas on how we can be the church. At least I hope we will. That's what Greenbelt does for me anyway. It holds open a whole lot of ideas and stories and insights that make the church possible again. It proves worship is changing and tapping into new forms and lives within the imagination again. It affirms all that we already do and offers the next steps on the journey. It's not  about wiping the slate clean and starting again but quite simply opening up different horizons and the invitation to experiment and explore starting from where we are. I have no idea what we'll come back with this year but watch this space. (Probably foot rot.)

CAOS: it's own thing of beauty

Here is a work of art. It's the CAOS cupboard cleaned out yesterday and all the playscheme tucked away into boxes and shelves. I think this photo should hang on the inside of the cupboard and remind people what is possible.

Eco moment

I had a nice wee eco moment with Barbara on Sunday (can you admit to that so publically?). We were talking about the tuna we've been collecting from the homeless group she helps out and Barbara was saying that when they hand out the sandwiches they keep them dry by wrapping them up in poly bags, but since so many folk are reusing the bags the group is having trouble sourcing enough.

Certainly I've noticed a whole lot more people re-using bags.

I've found a few and added them to the fish box.

Today's service

So how was your day today at church?

I don't think I was actually there. It felt very strange to me today though the Gap were a little happier with the hymns since they chose most of them yet still didn't give them full marks!

Favourite bit was the sand stories.

Sunday's Hint

I looking for 5 volunteers is there are any out there...

The bible tells a number of water stories that call people onto the way. In these moment by the water people find a new direction, stories from the margins of sea and land, where one journey simply moves into another. This place becomes a marginal place, a crossover place where we will watch land and sea meet. And you are invited, immediately following the five stories during the hymn, or following the blessing at the end, to come forward and leave a footprint, on the waters edge, symbolising that our faith is always calling us to new journeys, new truths, new insights with a God who frees us to travel.

Voice 1   
I met him on the water’s edge,
knee deep in the river,
facing the Baptizer,
whose hands were upon his head
pushing him down into the water
as it gurgled over him.

I met him on the water’s edge
this God of freedom,
liberator of my soul,
and called me to walk his way.

(pour water over font bowl onto the sand)

Voice 2    I met in the desert,
A wilderness dry as dust,
hand on rock,
looking beyond himself,
willing with all the faith he could muster,
for the water to explore from the stone,
and it did.

I met him in the desert,
this God of exodus,
who watered my soul,
and said, “Follow and believe.”

(pour water over font bowl into the sand)

Voice 3   
I met him on the shore,
hungry for breakfast,
sitting by the fire roasting the fish,
we couldn’t catch.
“It was the wrong side,” he said.
I jumped waist high into the waves
and pulled myself onto the beach
to sit with him.

I met him on the shore,
this God of resurrection,
who spoke in my soul,
and called me once more.

(pour water over font bowl into sand)

Voice 4   
I met her at the well,
preparing a drink for the stranger,
hot in the noonday sun,
carrying a history she wanted to hide,
head covered,
shy under the sun,
yet thirsty for renewal.

I met her at the well,
this God of living water,
who quenched my soul,
and set me free to live.

(pour water over font bowl into sand)

Voice 5   
I met him by the sea,
calling the runaway
to proclaim the Good News
to a different town,
watching as the messenger,
struggle to hide amid the storm,
the waves,
and that giant fish.

I met him by the sea,
this God of universal salvation,
who stirred my soul,
to spread the message to other shores.

(pour water over font bowl into sand)

CAOS summer scheme

And so it draws to a close. 4 weeks of craft and games and building a wee society with lots of good stuff. Everything from circus skills to windsocks, origami to sandcatsle competitions, Olympics to recycled badge making, archeology to street games. It's not been small.

And the biggest thank you possible to the huge team of volunteers. Something like 35 of them. That's almost (but not quite) a quarter of a Sunday morning congregation. That's almost phenominal. It's definitely brilliant. Each one of you.

So that's that bit over. Now onto the next bit: 30th August at Centre 81 in Whitecrook for a community day. We'll see you there...