abbotsford.org.uk

Random penance

I'm giving up worrying about hymns. The hymns fit and that' s the end of the matter.

I'm giving up imaging every problem is my responsibility. I can't remember causing half the problems so they can't all be mine.

I'm giving up thinking the whole ecological crisis is mine alone. I'll share my blue bin with anyone.

I'm giving up believing my pew was given to me by God for my bottom. It was given to me by God to make friends with a stranger.

I'm giving up supposing communion is going to be all that it ever was in the past. Bread is bread and that's communion enough.

Anyone else want to add to the lenten list? Feel free.

Lent pictures

I think we should do the Lent images again this year. I don't think we should tie them up with the Psalms each week that we'll be using in church but maybe more general lenten themes, a different one each week, simply to make an album we can reflect on.

I'm going to suggest initially to think about justice/wilderness. The two go together in many ways in my mind. The road less travelled, the more difficult route, the single line of footprints. It always seems a more lonely road to travel, the justice road. That's my starter for ten but please don't let my limited imagination prevent any broader interpretation of that.

If Justice/widlerness is the first week, then what shall we do in the following weeks...? Inbox open for suggestions.

Chocolate Teapots (March 1st 2009)

Psalm 25:1-10

The Psalms aren't normally preached from. However, this Lent, we're going to be taking a few of them and breaking the rules. Which isn't a bad thing to do in Lent. None of this sneaking into the background and dieting. This Lent, we stand up and are counted. Or rather let God be counted. God's the one who has some buiness to attend to this season. And it starts now.

And this business of God's has been around for a while. The Psalm is a bout remembering and the Hebrew idea of remembering was not just about recalling past events. Remembering was taking something promised in the past and enfleshing it in the present. It wasn't a nostalgic trip down salvation's memory lane. It was a call up, a big shout for justice. Making real the promised word. For those with the power sometimes it's better to have a bad memory!

But in truth it is only the oppressed who know how to start Lent properly. Radio 4's Thought for the Day was fabulous this morning. Latin America know how to begin Lent. They have carvivals, where children become kings and queens, where the carnival challenges authority and social etiquette. Everything is set loose in carnival, "fools are celebrated as great philosophers, young boys are made bishops, and the poor treated as though they were kings."

Remember that idea of remembering: it brings something out of the past and makes it effective today - the topsy truvey world where the poor sit at the head of the table, the wanderer becomes a saviour, women speak first the words of recognition "My Lord", bread and wine become a banquet, and the economic recovery plan of choice is a carpenter's cross. This is the back to front business plan of God which unfolds this season: carnival, the promise to transform and renew. Hey we're going to have a lent like never before!

Dare I suggest hymns?
Better: costume themes?
And who will drive the float taking the elders down to the communion table this week?!
Somehow I don't quite see that happening.

Pity.

A Franciscan Benediction

To start the week (and almost Lent) this is from Inward/Outward. A brilliant site that posts fabulous thoughts each day.

May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half truths, and superficial relationships, so that you may live deep within your heart.

May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression and exploitation of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.

May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation and war, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and to turn their pain into joy.

And may God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done.

Source: unknown

ichthus

The fish is complete. Transfiguration.

But can you believe that I forgot to mention it during the all-age part! Good grief!! I even had it written down.

Look now for it will all be gone by next Sunday. Too shiny for Lent.

Glory full

This is better.

In purple and peach sunsets
there is a glory full of heaven

In a child’s conversation about the taste of ice cream
there is a glory full of heaven

In the silence of sharing an emotion far beyond earthly words
there is a glory full of heaven

May our souls always be open to the hidden glory
O God
of life lived fully
our senses alive to the tangible touch
of what sends our souls
beyond this world
knocking on the door of somewhere else

Yet forgive our eyes for ignoring
those who lives are so bound up
with poverty or depression
that there is no living to be done
no glory to find
buried so deep it is out of touch

Forgive our faith for imagining
this glory cannot be shared
cannot be opened up in others
through compassion and kindness
support and company towards folk
pulling away the brokenness
and setting free all that still lives

May our living reveal the light
that is filled with hope
of what is possible
and longs to be made real
transfigured and renewed
not as some flame glowing in the dark
but the light in which to see each other anew

Hear us
God of light
and God of glory

Travelling in glory

Because I've hardly posted this week and I've nothing else yet completed for the service tomorrow (does that panic anyone?), here's the gathering. I wouldn't normally have posted something this dull but there is nothing else as yet...

From seashore to mountain top,
from lonely place to hillside,
from touching lepers to touching glory,
this has been the reign of God.

From baptism’s water to mountain top glory,
from calling disciples to the healing of many,
from synagogue exorcism to transfiguration,
we have moved in the glory of God.

The revealing,
the making known,
the unfolding,
the manifesting,
the unveiling,
the unmasking,
of Jesus.

From the Jordan to the present,
from the beginning to here,
from the Galilee to this place,
let us gather in the transfigured light of God.

Thanks to Tom for the photos

CAOStory

It's the end of year one (ish) for CAOS and we had our AGM tonight. We heard the story and then what the story will be in the coming year and all the things Hannah, our Community Artist will be doing. And then we did the smallest bit of forum theatre which was a good laugh as weel as a wee bit of a learning experience too. And then we ate. So no change the the tradition there then.

Here what CAOS is about which was found on our thank-you card last night.

CAOS is a story. It’s a work of art in itself, a means of life, always growing and never finished, moving like a dance, flying like a promise, embracing like a friend. It’s a story where people renew the whole world, locally, in ways where stories become the energy that makes ideas and where those ideas shape the future. CAOS is the story. In regeneration you begin with a story. This is the sacred beat of CAOS. Story brings together need and hope, a place where present and future converse, ‘once upon a time’ becomes ‘now upon a time’. You can’t dream a future and not begin with a story. CAOS is the story. CAOS is also the dream.

Chocolate Teapots (Feb 22nd 2009)

Mark 9:2-9

I like the story of the transfiguration because to read it you need all the poetic elements of our language: allusion, intuition, metaphor, numinous-ness, evocative-ness. It’s like rolling down a sand dune: bits and pieces come and go but the thrill of the moment takes over but only lasts for seconds. Forget ever trying to get to grips with this in any logical, physical, intellectual way. That strips the story of it’s purpose, if not its meaning as well.

It is the turning moment, Jesus now faces Jerusalem and crucifixion. So he’s on a mountain high here, and high on a cross in a few weeks time; he’s all glorified here in light and glory, and on the cross there is a more gory glorification; Peter recognises who Jesus is here; it take a roman soldier to do that at the crucifixion: ‘truly he was the Son of God’. Its like Jesus is saying, “Right, here’s the evidence that I am the Son of God. I’m giving you transfiguration now because during what is about to happen, you may not be quite so convinced.”

So we’ve got two ends of the story, this is the beginning. That we know the end enables us to live in the follower’s great paradox: the glory and the suffering, the power and the weakness, the divinity and the humanity. Told you, you needed poetry to get this one.

So, poetic hymns?
How on earth do we read this story in the community on Sunday to make it engaging?
What symbols have brought us here to this last Sunday in Epiphany?

Love is the touch

Just someimages from yesterday. We had a baptism (that ultimage symbol of welcoming and including) and later in the service we invited folk to dip their hand in the same water and leave a handprint on the news stories from the week. The theme was about living like Jesus who livced among the outsiders which is a bit of a poke in the eye to the way the church often works by making people insiders. Sacramental water doesn't so much bring people in but the real story is inviting us to live as Jesus Followers: on the outside. It was a symbolic act of becoming outsiders and being where love touches in the world, where the lepers are, where the bentover woman is, where Zacchaeus is and most of the folk we know...