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Design a season

Australians (or perhaps one Australian) have been toying with the idea that they could slip in a further season ot two into the year. Works for me. Of course Scotland just needs one season: the wet one (you can have the ones we don't need).

But that could work for the church too. We have a great variety of lengths of seasons: Advent is 4 Sundays, Christmas is no more than 2 and Pentecost is 24 Sundays which is more than 6 months! This year we're goig to introduce a new season called the Time of Creation which is a fairly new invention. It runs September to the beginning of October taking in Harvest. So that got me thinking: what other seasons ought we have in our lectionary: justice; hope; peace?

Do't forget the recipes because all of those suggestions are going towards shaping a new lectionary year. But the seasons will help sculpt it too. These are all going to be  used because this year I aim to sit down with groups of people and work out a new shape of the year that engages with us more, speaks into our own context and helps us tell our story in the midsts of the bigger story of God, gets more people involved in shaping things, and links in with other things going on. So there will be many more ideas and stuff to think about. For now: edible liturgy and design a season. Over to you. You've never let us down yet.

Greenbelt

There are a number of us off to Greenbelt later in the week for our annual doze of dreaming what the church could be like (and in actual fact is like: it's just a bit here and there, usually there, because it isn't often here).

Personally, I go for new ideas, not things to do in worship but big ideas of how to engage better. I've picked up a good number of things in the past ranging from labyrinths way back in the 90's to creative engagement in worship that shapes the life of the congregation. (Where have we see that, then? I hear the congregation cry). Last year, however was a bit flat. there were no big new ideas but the same old same old. My fear is that emerging church will be the big thing again. But it's not where I am. Don't understand 'emerging church'. We're already doing that all the time.

And the worship was disappointing last year, again the same old same old: all variations on a theme. nothing startlingly refreshing. However IKON wasn't there last year. It is this year. On the first night. 2000 folk in the most ambigous, freshest, theo-dramas. I just can't wait.

Also some good thinkers there too to go and listen to: Rob Bell, Sixpence none the richer, Ockham's Razor, Gene Robinson, Douglas Alexander, Kester Brewin, John Bell along with an Ancient Future Mass, Goth Worship, and a zillion other things that are just going to be brilliant.

So why aren't you all going?

Recipes

I'm looking for themed months or even just days to build a new kind of lectionary around. This is quite serious (though the suggestions don't always have to be) and part of it is looking at "edible liturgy" where we take the theme of the day or coour of the season and create community over table fellowship (as Jesus was particularly good at) ie food. But it would be great to have appropriate food, that helps us engage a little more with the theme.

I haven't worked out all the themes but would like suggestions on themes and food to go with them. For a starter here's some themes: Pentecost, Ecology, Justice, Light, Solstice, boundaries, travel, Incarnation, Waiting, Sanctuary, Wisdom...

Add your own if you wish and siggest appropriate food.

Over this next year we're hopefully going to be working on building a new lectionary for ourselves (thats the passages suggested we read that tell the story of God each week and help us move though the whole bible) and I'll explain a whole lot more about that later, but just gathering ideas and possibilities together at the moment. So food and themes for the now...

Looking forwad to tasting your suggestions.

A prayer

God—

You can’t win, can you?
We pray for compassion (but on our terms)
we pray for mercy (but only for us)
we pray for justice (but as we understand it
and as always you turn it round
and confuse us
by challenging our understanding
by offering it first to the least of these

We pray for our world
hiding behind what happened this week
we pray for those angry
and we pray for those hurt
we pray for those who will a better world
and we pray for those who have to build it
Hear us as we discern your vision of compassion
and strengthen us as we seek to follow it

Living the Questions

A few of us were at a Living the Questions expo of sorts. Jeff Procter-Murphy and David Felton have been in Iona and then today in Glasgow. We saw some of the new stuff from LtQ and met others who are of like minded in their aproach to the Bible and the church and theology: less literalist and more questioning and finding the more you live in the faith, the less you are certain about.

So it inspired me a bit to think more about resources for our own church community and find local congregational people and time to begin writing some of our own suff, more culturally contextual, more local, more real for the people here, that can shape more clearly what Christianity in the 21 century could be like.

So watch this space if you'd like to be part of that reworking. We'll start in the autumn to build material in the same vain of a more post-critical faith community where we don't take things as they have always been but rework them so they have meaning for us today and lead us into practical faith actions in the community and world.

I'm looking forward to that challenge. Anyone with me?

Sanctuary - An Act of Faith

I've replaced the prayer that was posted here by a statement of faith that may be part of our worship on Sunday. It covers the same theme as the prayer but is an action and strikes me it is a better thing to do since it is symbolically doing something rather than being passive. We have a baptism on Sunday so the font is in the middle of the sanctuary

This is a statement of faith but includes a simple action of pouring water into the baptismal bowl and letting it overflow. This is the water that symbolises welcome, a sanctuary. Perhaps this is an aspirational statement in that it recognises what the best in our faith calls us to do, and knowing the reality in some instances, is very difficult, yet that is not to deny what is valuable and compassionate in our faith journey. So a simple statement and action for us that possibly speaks to the best of who we believe we can be.

(Each speaker pours water into the font bowl letting it overflow a little)

For the hungry who need a place shaped by bread and justice,
I make a place of welcome

For the hurt who need a place shaped by safety and patience
I make a place of welcome

For the terrorised who need a place shaped by light and hope
I make a place of welcome

For the displacee who needs a place shaped by memory and home
I make a place of welcome

For the silenced who need a place shaped by voices and time
I make a place of welcome

For the culprit who needs a place shaped by humanity and compassion
I make a place of welcome

For the sick who needs a place shaped by healing and care
I make a place of welcome

For the follower who needs a place shaped by dreams and promise
I make a place of welcome

For a faith that is shaped the love of God
let us all make a place of welcome

(Invite people to come forward if they wish to pour some water as a symbol of welcome, even as it may be aspirational)

 

The essence of gospel

"Our justice system demands that judgement be imposed, but compassion be available." Kenny MacAskill Justice Minister Scottish Government

With the freeing of the man who is known as the Lockerbie Bomber it does focus us, if we wish it to, on what compassion is and what punishment is. Biblically when we talk of punishment, it is always remedial. Eternal punishment is an oxymoron because punishment as God applies it is there to show us the error of our ways and set us on a better path. To punish someone eternally defeats the purpose of punishment.

There also seems to be a cultural difference too however, where some need the perpetrator to die without having freedom, a punishment that fits the loss of those families who have been hurt and have lost someone. Others, according to Mr MacAskill, "pride themselves on their humanity. It is viewed as a defining characteristic. The perpetration of an atrocity and outrage cannot and should not be a basis for losing sight of who we are, the values we seek to uphold, and the faith and beliefs by which we seek to live."

I think in many ways this is a defining moment. It is certainly a faith moment for me where compassion and hurt meet and the choice made in undoing the tangle illustrates who we really are deep down.

Ian Galloway convenor of the  Church and Society Council of the Church of Scotland always hits the nail on the head for me: "But to them [families of the PanAm victims] I would say justice is not lost in acting in mercy. Instead our deepest humanity is expressed for the better. To choose mercy is the tough choice and today our nation met that challenge."

The essence of gospel.

That may not work for many people. I understand it may not work for many who are directly affected. I remember the night it happened, I remember watching the TV news unfolding at 9 o'clock that night. But I don't know how it feels for families who lost people. So I'll never say, in the eyes of those involved, what happened today will ever be understood as the 'right' decision.

But our values and principles and law and morals ought not be worked out when you are steeped in the hurt. We work those things out as community in the cold light of day. Nor is it a majority decision but a decision that wants to create the best of humanity and shapes a redeeming pathway for the worst of humanity.

To choose to show mercy to those who hurt you is the defining moment of gospel. Perhaps for a moment we have done that.

Building Our Common Future

I received this White Paper from DFID (Dept for International Development) which this and many other congregations have been asked to read and comment on. I'd like to do that as it is a while paper on 'eliminating global poverty' and people of faith have something to say about and many are trying to live that kind of lifestyle (albeit not hugely successfully) as our MP has recognised.

So I wondered about doing the weekly discussion night again for a number of weeks taking a chapter at a time discussing and commenting on. We should start that fairly soon so how about Thursday 10th, 7.30, church. The paper can be found here or on the DFID website (there's a sort version here) and there is even a wee video from Douglas Alexander though he looks a wee bit scared.

Talking of Douglas Alexander, he's coming to St Augustine's Church, High Street in Dumbarton on Friday 4th September at 7.30 to talk about it. Everyone is invited. I hope to go. Anyone else?

Chocolate Teapots (August 23rd 2009)

Psalm 84 and 1 Kings 8:1-43

Bit of a big story with lots of ctachphrases in it this week. Solomon's temple is complete and he prays, as you would. But there is a key verse about God not being able to be contained within these walls. Solomon recognised that God's House wasn't big enough. In fact talking about size in front of God is just plain stupid.

Big is not a God word particularly. 'Everywhere' is a God word. 'Infiltrated' is a God word. 'Nook and cranny' is a God word, but not 'big'. The word is just too small for God, too limiting, too much about size. Size isn't everything and it ain't nothing when you talk of God. God is so huge God is in the space between atoms. God is so huge, God fills the space between your breathes.

This is more about God being everywhere rather than God being big. It's a passage that allows us to recognise the holy, thin, sacred places that reveal themselves through our living with each other. Events of God. Love events, justice events. The real places of sanctuary and sacredness are the places as far from the church as the sun is from the moon, where we stumble over God and realise God has happened in the breaking of silence, in the keeping of sielnce, in the holding of thoughts in the breaking of bread where ever that may be. Events dear boy, events. The temple cannot hold God because God is the event of living. Put God in a church and God dies because God is the event, the happening, the loving, the forgiving, the caring, the shouting, the faithing...

So we need a couple of hymns tht suggest God isn't the church but the event of being the church. Or is there a symbol, an image that offers that understanding? And what about a contemporary reading: a way of engaging with the event of God, stories of the God event, parables or passage about God in the event. 

Easy one this week!

Woods of wisdom

Tom took these images from the Muir Wood National Monument last year. John Muir was one of our wise men today during the service, John Muir: the first ecologist from Dunbar and moved to California.

"When you try and pick out anything by itself you find it hitched to everything else in the universe" said John Muir.

Below the woods is an image from the service today of the gallery of the wise we revealed as we spoke their wise words into the world. Nice moment.