Monthly Archives: August 2012

Greenbelt 2012…

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I am half man, half compost- as will be most attendees of this year’s Greenbelt festival.

This is partly the highly digestive social-spiritual mulch that Greenbelt always is, but also down to more corporeal matters;

I live in a place famous for rain sweeping in from the sea and using us as blotting paper, but the rain that fell on the festival on Saturday was something else. Half the site was flooded and thirty thousand feet mixed anything not tarmac to gloop. The less stoical left, but the rest of us had more room to skirt the deepest mire and enjoy still some fantastic music, conversation, art and poetry.

Highlights for me;

Social- meeting up with friends from Lancashire, from Wales, from London, from Leeds etc. Sharing many a cup of tea and catching up with lives lived at a distance.

Spiritual- I managed to miss all the well known speakers like Tony Campolo, Tom Wright. I enjoyed Dave Tomlinson talking about a being a Bad Christian. Jonny Baker was really good on ‘A different world is possible’ too. I also loved being in the old Cathedral for the pre festival feast hosted by Feig (thanks guys!)

Musical- Bruce Cockburn– my guru for decades – was like a comfortable woolly jumper on a dark night. I knew every song, and most words too. Phantom Limb (Country, R and B, Eagles-like harmonies) blew me away. Then there was the folk fest on the last day- dancing in the mud to the Imagined Village (simply brilliant) and the wacky theatricality of Bellowhead. Martin Joseph reduced me to tears with one song.

Art- LOVED Si Smith’s new work on the book of Job.

Aoradh’s contribution to the festival was characterised by technology issues! Our sculpture/soundscape installation became, well, just sculptures as the ultrasonic speakers failed to deliver what they promised. They still looked great though. As the weekend unfolded the ground beneath them turned to deep oozing brown sucking mud, but they remained defiant and proud.

Our talk/discussion entitled ‘Don’t do it like us, making real community in small towns and ordinary places’ was very well attended, and we were bombarded with questions. The power failed for half of it so we had to shout!

Another great festival, that somehow, despite the long distances and the conditions, has nurtured and encouraged me.

Now, need to get down to DIY!

Off to Greenbelt!

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We are heading down south for a few days to be part of Greenbelt Festival in Cheltenham.

This year Aoradh are doing two things- some sculpture/soundscapes called ‘Paradisecasts’, and a talk entitled “Don’t do it like us; making community in real and ordinary places” which will be on Saturday 2.00PM in the ‘Living Room’.

Really looking forward to it all now, even though we have packed nothing yet…

Crash course in Churchianity…

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I heard a story about Church the other day from one of my close friends that made my eyebrows shoot skywards. More on this later…

I have spent too long deconstructing institutional Church in all its glorious contradiction. Initially I did this as someone who had been chewed up by a negative experience of church – burnt out by it all – and then latterly, more from a respectful removed distance. Eventually however, all this deconstructing has to stop and we need to start constructing again, or we are remain caught in some kind of pointless cynical loop.

All things change. The usual human cycle of any project of human organisation always goes something like this; new thing-expansion-slowing down-dissatisfaction-deconstruction-emergence of new ideas-start of new thing. 

Except in Churches, things sometimes seem to go so slowly. It is almost as if the religiosity of these institutions becomes a gate for the flood of change. If the shape of Church is God-ordained, defined by theology, supported by Scripture and managed by the chosen ones then how could it ever need to change?

My answers to this question, thought over long and hard, are as follows;

  • Change will happen, even if you try to ignore it.
  • The institutions of Church are human constructs, not divine templates floated down on angel cushions.
  • Church arises in a particular time, place and culture- it answers the questions of this place, and everything about it is shaped by these requirements.
  • But then the time place and culture have moved on, and there is a danger of disconnection.

Sure, many will suggest that culture may change but not The Truth, but I am afraid I do not agree with this either. What we once held as absolute gospel truth on all sorts of things has shifted- the divine right of Kings, remarriage after divorce, the place of women (even though this is still a work in progress.)

Back to the story;

My friend grew up in a Church in the north of Scotland and she frequently visits her parents there still. The Church they attend has a room at the back, with a glass partition between it and the main auditorium. The sounds of the main Church building are piped in by speakers on the walls, but otherwise the room is a smaller version of the main Church- plain, unadorned, lacking in any distractions such as toys or books.

It is known as ‘The Training Room’- where young people learn how to behave in Church. When to stand and sit, how to keep silent and when to sing, how to dress and to maintain proper decorum.

Initially I was shocked. How far have we come from the Jesus way of putting the kids first (see Matthew 19.)

But is this so very different from what we all have to go through in entering Church? We learn first of all to conform- to how to behave; to what is correct. Later on we may be able to question some of the edges of what we have become, but the pressure to conform, to belong, is too great.

Perhaps this might serve us well in part. We DO have things to learn, and we learn best in our collectives. However, these collectives also need to be learning, changing institutions and this is not an easy thing to achieve. In the worst case scenario the choice we have is to accommodate or take the nuclear option- and leave.

Leaving is no panacea of course, because as individuals or small groups setting out on our own we will start to form our own Training Rooms.

The open question for all of us is; how do we remain open, questioning, teachable, lovers of the way (not sitters on the pew?)

I have some flickerings of an idea as to how we might do this- and it is about being a sent people, not a gathered people. It is about going with love, not staying with doctrinal truth.

Hmmmm.

Rained off…

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Should have been playing cricket today at the historic West of Scotland ground- but it was cancelled as this morning there was some rain in Glasgow. Of course, as soon as it was cancelled the sun came out!

The finer details of cricket, and the significant effect that climactic conditions has on the ball, will understandably be lost on most, so instead I thought that it might be entertaining to hear a more basic (and unfortunately hilarious) cricket story.

The following is a clip of the wonderfully eccentric David Lloyd, former England player, coach and now commentator- known the world over as ‘bumble’. Lloyd played in a famous series against England crickets oldest enemies, Australia, in 1974-75, were he faced one of the most feared fast bowlers in history, Jeff Thompson.

It did not go well;

Spiritual Capitalism…

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(Thanks to today’s Minimergent.)

We’ve all imbibed the culture of unrest so deeply. We just cannot believe that we could be respected or admired or received or loved without some level of performance. We are all performers and overachievers, and we think “when we do that” we will finally be lovable. Once you ride on the performance principle, you don’t even allow yourself to achieve it. Even when you “achieve” a good day of “performing,” it will never be enough, because it is inherently self-advancing and therefore self-defeating. You might call it “spiritual capitalism”.

Richard Rohr

Following the Mystics through the Narrow Gate 

Significance- lessons from Ecclesiastes…

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I am 45 years old. My first career is possibly over, my second uncertain. Any hopes I had of making a way for myself through music of some other public magnificence are long gone.

In many ways, particularly for blokes, life is about a search for significance, ascendancy, personal power and the recognition of our peers.

Sooner or later (no matter how much of the above list you manage to manufacture) we all come to the conclusion that this is futile. Success is fleeting and always nuanced, and the pursuit of power extracts a price from our humanity. ( I saw that all toil and all achievement spring from one person’s envy of another. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. Ecclesiastes 4:4)

So in the wreckage, what still stands?

This is the big question of those of us entering the second part of life. It is all too easy to fall into the way of Ecclesiastes chapter 1;

1 The words of the Teacher,[a] son of David, king in Jerusalem:

2 “Meaningless! Meaningless!”
says the Teacher.
“Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless.”

3 What do people gain from all their labors
at which they toil under the sun?
4 Generations come and generations go,
but the earth remains forever.
5 The sun rises and the sun sets,
and hurries back to where it rises.
6 The wind blows to the south
and turns to the north;
round and round it goes,
ever returning on its course.
7 All streams flow into the sea,
yet the sea is never full.
To the place the streams come from,
there they return again.
8 All things are wearisome,
more than one can say.
The eye never has enough of seeing,
nor the ear its fill of hearing.
9 What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
10 Is there anything of which one can say,
“Look! This is something new”?
It was here already, long ago;
it was here before our time.
11 No one remembers the former generations,
and even those yet to come
will not be remembered
by those who follow them.

The book of Ecclesiastes plays with these themes constantly- the meaningless futility of life, and the inevitability of death. The success/failure of the wicked, and the success/failure in equal measure of the devout. The limitations of wisdom, and the fickle search for success.

If the words were authored by Solomon (as traditionally held to be the case) they seem all the more poignant. They are the words of a 4th C BC King of excess, who had it all, turning towards the end of his living, confused still about the worth of a life. Not all the monuments or pyramids or songs could convince him that his life was worth anything more than that of any other animal.

Reading this as a young man, I wanted to rebel at the cynical emptiness of it all. Surely God has a great purpose for me- am I not part of his great plan? I am not the great part of his plan?

Now I find myself relaxing into it as truth- although like all of these things, only a partial truth.

Because if the legacy we leave on this earth is not about our youthful appetite for stuff, for power, for significance; if it is not about hard measurable, visible outcomes- a deeper, less quantifiable legacy might still be possible.

The measure of grace that we stain our situation with.

The love that we give and receive.

And for this, I turn from Solomon to Micah, chapter 6;

With what shall I come before the Lord
and bow down before the exalted God?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old?
7 Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousand rivers of olive oil?
Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
8 He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.

Walking humbly with God- this is the journey I now try to make.

Significantly.

UB40…

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Today I ‘signed on’ as a unemployed person. This entitles me to a small Jobseekers allowance, because of my contributions paid as contributions from my wages over the last twenty odd years.

I feel a song coming on;

I grew up in a Britain in which employment was a huge blight on society. This song became a kind of anthem for a generation, speaking about how people become less important than statistical processes.

I was reminded of this as today I received three letters from the benefits agency. They make absolutely no sense at all. Seriously- I would defy anyone to understand what they are trying to tell me. I understand something of the system, after all it was my job to support others through the morass previously, but even I was rather flummoxed. See what you think;

I am pleased to tell you that we can pay you jobseekers allowance from the 29th of July 2012. (Good, although I already knew that.)

You are not getting any more job seekers allowance because your partner is working for 24 hours a week or more (she is not, and we have told them several times, and in several ways that she is not.) If your partner is working for 24 hours a week or more you are not entitled to jobseekers allowance based on how much the law says you need to live on. (Huh?)

We cannot pay you jobseekers allowance from 30th January 2013. 

I could go on, but I am sure you get the point.

Official speak, designed to give information in a way that is all about the information giver, not the information receiver. Information given to manage comeback.

Perhaps they can give me a job redesigning their letters?