abbotsford.org.uk

In the beginning

Here's a  wee gathering litany for the first Sunday in the year. I'm interested in what you would add to it's list of perceived beginnings (serious and funny). What would make good additions to this litany?

Voice 1: In the beginning…
Voice 2: …was the letter
Voice 3: …was the sentence
Voice 4: …was the book

Voice 1: In the beginning…
Voice 2: …was the King James Authorised Version
Voice 3: …the revised edition of the Hymn Book
Voice 4: …the Psalms of David

Voice 1: In the beginning…
Voice 2: …was the Westminster Confession of Faith
Voice 3: …the Apostles Creed
Voice 4: …the book of practice and procedure of the Church of Scotland

Voice 1: In the beginning…
Voice 2: …was the reformation
Voice 3: …Calvin’s Institutes
Voice 4: …John Knox

Voice 1: In the beginning…
Voice 2: …was the gathering round the Word
Voice 3: …the adventure called ‘The Word’
Voice 4: …the birth of The Word 

Voice 1: In the beginning…
Voice 2: …was the Word
Voice 3: …just the Word
Voice 4: …only the Word

 

Chocolate Teapots (January 3rd 2010)

John 1

We covered this passage last week at Christmas Eve and it is perhaps a good thing to let these words connect us between last week and this week, an old year and a new year with timelessness.

But here is a word about the Word. Can we bring it to life? What word shall we chose this new year to give the gift os life to? Justice? Peace? Forgiveness? Grace? The Word holds these other words, or perhaps it is more true to speak of it the other way around, God being vulnerable now that the divine is in human skin, that these words hold The Word. But does speaking them bring them to life? If only! Being shaped by these words, bring them to life: letting the hope of them steer what we do, the longing of them empower our living.

These are the words that need no voice, just a person willng to enact them and be shaped by them. Incarnation.

So what hymns dare we sing that call us to live The Word. How can we speak this anciant passage in the contemporary world? It's new year. Let's start afrech with suggestions and ideas and thoghts that will help build worship round this passage. Over to you...

Mucky Paws - Volume 7 (Year C)

Mucky Paws is a monthly mailing from Abbotsford of some of the liturgies and creative bits and pieces that we tangle and experiment with Sunday by Sunday. It comes out at the end of each month and is a free collection of things that have worked for us over the past month and some that haven't worked for us, but may do for others.

And we are happy to let others get their mucky paws all over it to adapt, recreate, edit these ideas to suit their own culture and traditions. It doesn't cost anything, just the time to send a wee email to us asking for a copy. But it is as equally easy to unsubscribe when you realise you can do far better yourself. This is the 7th year of Mucky Paws and it gets posted right round the world (and comes back every so often too).

Once you've used something, all we ask is that, if you have adapted it, then post it back to us to see how different cultures and traditions engage with liturgy and word.

Chocolate Teapots (Dr Who edition)

I haven't yet seen tonight's episode. I'm about to sit down to the last episode 'Waters of mars' to get all the background again for tonights episode which I'll watch tomorrow but what about all the connections, the prophecy, the time - all those theological themes we speak about so much at this time of year...

Looking for connections to Sunday's service - good grief it all comes round so quickly this time of year - so how can we make it a Dr Who Christmas this week and next...??? The whole idea of prophecy and time, the twists and turns of decisions that keep the universe in balance, of incarnation, of journeys, of Kairos time. It works for me at least.

Let's have a discussion and see what happens for the afterglow of Christmas and the turn of the year. Anyone up for Dr Who prayers!? Or Dr Who hymns?! Already got Star Child. Any others?

Midnight Hour

Possibly to be used in that crossover between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day:

when there is one foot in the day and one in the night
when one side faces the darkness and the other the light
when there is one moment in yesterday and another in tomorrow
in the crossover
is the birth place

when one foot is on this edge of the border and one in the other
when one side says ‘yes’ and the other ‘no’
when there is welcome on one hand and denial on the other
in no ones land
is the birth place

not in homes of the rich
or in corridors of power
not in banqueting halls of the wealthy
or in landmarks of affluence
but in gaps
in borderlands
in stables
as a displacee
is the birth place

when there is no longer time for past or future but only present
when there is no longer time for regrets or dreams but only waiting
when there is no longer time for Then but only Now
among us
within us
between us
today…
Christ is born

Chocolate Teapots (December 24/25th 2009) - Part 2

John 1:1-14

Behind the story comes John and his philosophical pictures. Poetry, which is the language of faith. It's as if all eternity becomes focused in one moment in time. Everything heavenly, which I suppose we coud picture existing outside time or within every time, get's tied down to one spot in time, something 4, 40 or 400 dimentional become 3 dimentional. 

But it is the earthiness of the passage that gets me. It's like 'How Clean is your House' backwards: it starts off all pristine and clean and perfect and celestial and the idea is to have it as chaotic as possible as if someone actually lives there. or suddenly there's a baby loose about the place and it all gets mucked up pretty quickly. Enfleshing something does that. Think of an artist who has this idea and then tries to turn it into an object. Its not going to happen in your front room that has to remain clean and tidy for all eventualities, but in the workshop where you are allowed and even expected to make a mess. This is incarnation. This is enfleshing. This is Word, idea, logos, becoming reality. Messy. Murky. Mucky. 

You can't get away with clean doctrine with this one. Someone has said John's Gospel starts with doctrine. Fair enough but it fairly quickly gets knocked about a bit and brought down to earth. I can understand earthy. I don't always get doctrine. But then, isn't that why the Almighty did birth in the first place?

Chocolate Teapots (December 24/25th 2009) - Part 1

This is in two parts this week

Luke 2:1-20

It's a great story but not one I'd go to the wall over the historical accuracy. It is just such a completely perfect God-picture. It oozes with image and meaning and faith. And it is stuffed full of one liners that we so casually forget and ignore: 'there was no place for them'; 'do not be afriad'; 'let us go now to Bethlehem'; 'they made known what had been told to them' to quote but a few. This is the way of faithfulness, of belief, not in historical accuracy but in meaning and what this story leads us to do and be: make room for the stranger, it's God!; fear not, just go!; go to the place at the heart of the story, God's there!; proclaim and make known, it's not your story to preserve!

Forgive us for preserving the victoriana of the nativity. But more than that, forgive us for leaving the incarnation out of Christmas when we keep mangers at the heart of things rather than the justice, the vulnerability, the fear and the heavenly risk this is, and all thes things are on God's part! God has let go. God who cradles life has let it go and set it, vulnerable and fragile, in the world to see what will happen to love.

Solstice Time

 

Well that we might light a light
for the night is almost at it’s longest
and the day but a fleeting memory

Well that we might light a light
for the winter solstice is upon us
and the darkness has stretched to it’s fullness

Well that we might light a light
for long shadows have silenced the land
as heaven sits on the brink of birth

the baby now stirring
the mother now quickening
the stable now welcoming
the world now waiting
the flesh now warming
and the dark now hesitating.

Well that we might light a light
for we stand against the darkness
knowing it has not got long to go

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Magnificat

I feel full of the good news
taking it’s shape within me

I feel God dance in me,
every step, a longing for life

God has looked upon me
and filled me with new life,
a blessing full of the most radiant light
I am the most fortunate person in heaven and earth

What God has done in me
will never be forgotten
the holy one
the creating one
has set my life on a new direction
so different from every other life in creation
and I will be their trust in the transforming one

God’s promise is restless within me
surging with expectation
labouring with heaven
and generation after generation will find their story
in mine

For this birthing will be God’s strength
here in me is the justice that will bring down the oppressor
that will laugh at the proud
and give the stolen kingdoms back to the poor
This birthing will bring together the hungry in celebration
round the banqueting tables of the rich
and leave the rich starved of their wealth

God has journeyed with landless people
and found in this birthing
where the longings of the ancients
have been heading
and will now be fulfilled

I am
Blessed by God
Blessed by God’s promise
Blessed by God’s promise broken open in me
in the screaming lungs of a child
born among us