The ultimate Christmas…

Posted on November 9, 2011 by Chris Goan

A repost from ‘Christmas is Free’.

This was the name of the Sunday supliment in last weekend’s Herald newspaper.

A strange title indeed, as buried on page ten in an article entitled ‘A time for others’ was a discussion about the work of Alternativity– in which development worker Margaret Paul was quoted as saying this-

We know that our communities women bear the main burden of Christmas and what should be a happy time can be very stressfull, especially where money is concerned.

Some women see Christmas as a chance to make things up to their children because they live in poverty all year round.

The article also quotes a Samaritans volunteer, who said

People can be very affected by the imagery portraying the perfect Christmas when the reality is that it is different for everyone.

So much more so if you are on your own, or unwell. I know many people who just want to shut their door on Christmas, and wait for the season to pass on by.

What then might be the ultimate Christmas for these folk, and for us?

Does it depend on a colour coded table, set in front of a huge log fire in a picture post card cottage covered in snow? Do it need to be punctuated by the sharing of the perfect presents around the designer tree? All of these things are good- but are they really the measure of what is ‘ultimate’?

My ultimate Christmas celebration involves family, friends, food and an appreciation of the coming of the King of peace.

The rest is just decoration.

Biutiful film…

Posted on November 9, 2011 by Chris Goan

I have just watched this film…

It is the story of Uxbal – a single father who struggles to reconcile fatherhood, love, spirituality, crime, guilt and mortality amid the dangerous underworld of modern Barcelona — all before his life is over. He must deal with his loving but unreliable, reckless, and bipolar wife (from whom he is separated and who poses a threat to the safety of their children), and a large group of illegal immigrants for whom he obtains material so that they may not be deported. In the middle of all of this, he is diagnosed with terminal cancer, which he tries to hide from his two children.

It is a gut wrenching masterpiece of cinematography, and is soaked with a wonderful kind of broken loving humanity.

It also tells the story of globalisation, and the poverty on the frontiers of capitalism.

Watch it- but be warned. It will open something up inside…

Bonfire pics…

Posted on November 6, 2011 by Chris Goan

We are just back from a lovely evening at Simon and Helen’s. Here are a few pics…

When my morning comes…

Posted on November 6, 2011 by Chris Goan

Here we are, sat drinking tea and listening to music. Sabbath blessings abound, and outside the foghorns are still sounding on the Clyde.

Specifically we are listening to a CD sent up to us from our old friend and neighbour, Terry. Terry is a lover of Bluegrass music, and regularly digs out music that he thinks I will like- he is usually right.

This time he sent an old Iris DeMent album- The way I should.

The first track made me cry- it somehow hit the Sunday morning spot. It is saturated with longing and hope- all the more so as it is associated with the kindness of a friend.

See what you think- click here to play…

When my mornin’ comes around, no one else will be there
so I won’t have to worry about what I’m supposed to say
and I alone will know that I climbed that great big mountain
and that’s all that will matter when my mornin’ comes around

When my mornin’ comes around, I will look back on this valley
at these sidewalks and alleys where I lingered for so long
and this place where I now live will burn to ash and cinder
like some ghost I won’t remember
When my mornin’ comes around

When my mornin’ comes around, from a new cup I’ll be drinking
and for once I won’t be thinking that there’s something wrong with me
and I’ll wake up and find that my faults have been forgiven
and that’s when I’ll start living
When my mornin’ comes around

The fastest fireworks ever!

Posted on November 5, 2011 by Chris Goan

Apparently the display of Fireworks just up the road in Oban did not go so well last night. The display was supposed to last for half an hour, but…

Ooops.

Go down to the house of the potter…

Posted on November 3, 2011 by Chris Goan

Paul turned up at our house this evening with a potters wheel. It was fun getting it down into the cellar as it was very heavy.

This is part of the slowly unfolding project that Michaela and Pauline have of converting our cellar into a working pottery. I know nothing about using clay, but I have to say that I love the idea of something so basic being shaped into lovely things down there.

Particularly using this functional basic object that still somehow manages to be beautiful…

It was a lovely old wooden thing, with a treadle and fly wheel. The kind of thing that has been used to shape clay for thousands of years- certainly since the times of Jeremiah-

1This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: 2“Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message.” 3So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. 4But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.

5Then the word of the LORD came to me: 6“O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter does?” declares the LORD. “Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.

(Jeremiah 18 NIV)

We used to sing songs asking God to mould us like clay- shaping us into the perfect pot that he would have us be.

Now, I think that my prayer is more that God would still fill me up and use me, misshapen and rough as my pot surely remains.

May I be ugly, imperfect, but still useful.

Still formed out of the good old earth.

Christmas and cynicism…

Posted on November 2, 2011 by Chris Goan

An auto post from here.

Because of the direction I started down a few years ago now in trying to break out of the Christmas consumer driven craziness, I find that some things make me angry.

Those advertisements on the TV- with celebrities who supposedly do all their shopping for celebrity friends in some most unlikely store like Argos or Lidl. And then there are the advertisements aimed at parents through their children. I could mention some brand names, but it perhaps would not be fair as they are all up to the same sort of thing really.

After the anger comes other emotion that is most unflattering- smugness– the vaguely superior feeling that I am somehow ‘different’- not like them. Of course this is nonsense- we all live in the same consumer driven culture and it is so hard to go against the flow. Advertising works- on all of us at some level.

Then there is this other more corrosive emotion called cynicism. I think this is the worst of all. It drives us to sit back, sneer and to do nothing. It is not a force for anything but inertia. It sucks the joy and the wonder out of anything it comes up against. It is the enemy of life.

I think that our lives are journeys- through all sorts of stuff- towards the unknown. They are marked by many boundaries and transitions. We do not make these journeys alone, because we are communal beings. Neither do not journey without meaning because we humans search for the depth of things- we are spiritual beings. Therefore the celebration of season- birthday, feast day, wedding, funeral, etc- is ever more important.

As a person of faith I might have a particular reason to celebrate Christmas, but I also recognise that the role of the Church in mediating our transitions and life patterns has been largely broken. Christmas is little to do with Christ. Whilst some of us might lament this in our own lives, it is simply not something that we can impose on a mostly secular society.

There is that saccarine sweetness that is sold to us in Christmas card poetry and Hollywood films- something to do with the ‘spirit of Xmas’. Which is usually conjured up with pictures of shiny faces, snow scenes, candles and of course, that greatest modern consumerist invention, Santa Claus.

Oh dear, there I go again.

What then is left? After the anger and the cynicism what remains?

These are no small questions, because life is lived in the asking of them.

I have my own partial answers- which I try to work out creatively with my family and friends and small community. I am sure that you do too.

But first I need to set aside the cynicism, and find inside of me some wonder.

Ancient artefacts…

Posted on November 1, 2011 by Chris Goan

We took a trip to the Burrell Collection the other day.

This is an incredible accumulation of objects- ancient Greek/Roman, impressionist paintings, Sculptures, swords and armour, fragments of 400 year old tapestry and 1000 year old stained glass windows.

It was all gathered together by William Burrell an extremely wealthy Glasgow shipping merchant. He spent his life gathering it all, and then left it to Glasgow council, along with money to build something to house it in, which had to be in a rural setting. It took the council another 40 years to find somewhere- eventually settling on Pollock park. The collection is so big that only a fraction of the artefacts can be displayed at a time.

Which asks rather a lot of questions about the nature and meaning of art and antiquities. What drove this man to accumulate so much stuff? We who visit Pollock Park may well benefit from his obsession, but can this kind of single minded avarice ever be a good thing?

Burrell might well have been a great bloke (we was known also for his philanthropy) but his legacy seems to be to be rather mixed.

He also collected a number of religious objects- the earliest printed Bibles, fragments of reliquaries and carved statues that somehow survived the zeal of the reformation. Fragments that adorned books made in the great monastic houses.

As I stood and looked at these objects I wondered about what they meant to the people who first beheld them. Where they power statements even then, or were they objects of wonder that drew people to look towards the heavens and worship? Perhaps even then they were both.

The one above (a collection of Nuns carved in Germany around 600 years ago) looks like the carver wanted to display the subjects as full of joy and fun. I wonder if people disapproved?

Investment in icons is unlikely ever to be enough- they can become idols in the beautiful blink of an eye…