New Aoradh website…

Posted on April 26, 2012 by Chris Goan

The community I belong to in Dunoon has an updated website! An update has been long overdue.

The site started out a number of years ago on a Joomla template, set up by my mate Andy Prosser, and he helped me move it over onto WordPress, as I was much more familiar with the WP platform so could play with the templates a bit more.

Incidentally if you are looking for someone who can provide some affordable, trustworthy web development work I can highly recommend my mate Andy. He used to be an IT project manager, but stepped away from all of that in order to do youth and community development work with a Christian group called Fusion. However, to support his family whilst doing all this, Andy still keeps his hand in with web development- he is currently working with another friend of mine who is setting up a local food and produce business. They joy of the internet is that where ever you are in the world, Andy can still do the job!

Drop me a comment below and I will pass on his contact details…

Ghosts…

Posted on April 24, 2012 by Chris Goan

One of my old schoolmates posted this on Facebook recently. I must have been around 8 or 9 when it was taken. I will let you guess which one of this fine group of students is me. Mrs Ellis’s Class, Croft Primary School, circa 1975.

The fact is, I remember very little from my childhood. Through the joys of Facebook, a number of folk have made contact with me, and invited me to join other school pages/groups for secondary school too. They always seem to know far more about my school days than I do.

This might be because I have a poor memory, but also is something to do with poor memories. Mine was not a happy childhood- neither at home nor at school- too much difficulty, awkwardness, bullying and violence in both places. The end result was that childhood for me was all about insecurity and isolation. My lovely big sister had a rather different experience- she was cleverer and far more articulate than me so could hide her insecurities much better. I have spent the last 30 years slowly trying to rediscover me. It is a work in progress, and looking back at these ghosts makes it seem a lot closer.

However, the trip down memory lane, painful and fractured as the memories are, forced me to count blessings too. The secondary school that I attended (not the one above) was a rather experimental ‘Community School’- located in the middle of our small Nottinghamshire town, with ice rinks and sports halls, day centres and adult education all mixed in. The building was open plan and teachers and adult learners mingled with us all on first name terms. The experimental nature of the school did not survive long- scandals over the so called teaching of swear words and loose discipline found the front page of The Sun, and there was a conservative fight back after Thatcher came to power.

But something of this school made me who I am. The fierce sense of social justice, the love of English literature. These are friendly ghosts. They can stay.

The radical nun’s habit…

Posted on April 21, 2012 by Chris Goan

There is a rather astonishing row being played out in the media between the Vatican and a group of Catholic nuns in America, called the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. This is no fringe movement, but rather is the largest organisation of Catholic nuns in the US. The LCWR is a social justice lobby and has been active in promoting civil rights (including Obama’s controversial health care bill.)

The current swing towards conservatism in the Catholic church, which has undoubtedly led to a move towards much greater central control on all sorts of matters of faith and liturgy appears to have found a visible battleground.

What then are the concerns of the Vatican about these dangerous nuns? This from the BBC;

…issues of “crucial importance” to the church, such as abortion and euthanasia, had been ignored.

Vatican officials also castigated the group for making some public statements that “disagree with or challenge positions taken by the bishops”, who are the church’s “authentic teachers of faith and morals.”…

…It says the group is undermining Roman Catholic teaching on homosexuality and is promoting “feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith”.

The radical nuns do not concur. Sister Simone Campbell, head of of the Leadership Network has been reported here as making some of the following statements;

“I’ve no idea what they’re talking about,” Sister Simone Campbell, head of Network, a Catholic social justice lobby, told the BBC.

“Our role is to live the gospel with those who live on the margins of society. That’s all we do.”

Sister Campbell suggested a difficult time ahead: “It’s totally a top-down process and I don’t think the bishops have any idea of what they’re in for.”

Who is this radical dangerous firebrand? See for yourself;

I fear for this woman, and for the Catholic church. May they find a path towards a generous, open orthodoxy.

And may this kind of radicalism increase exponentially!

Where is the new ideology?

Posted on April 17, 2012 by Chris Goan

It is an old academic political discussion- the end of Ideology– by which I mean the end of the time of battling grand political/economic theories that inspired and fuelled our attempts to understand and shape our society. Thatcher put an end to all that in the UK- not because she had no ideology, but because she cleared the field of all opposition. Capitalism and ‘The Market’ triumphed and gifted us with the so called free movement of capital, trickle down, neoliberalism and globalisation.

Over the next 20 years, nation after nation fell in line, cajoled by the promise of great wealth or manipulated by powerful organisations who needed scarce resources or a new market.

None of this is a surprise, but what is more noticeable is the lack of viable alternative. Sure there are voices of protest- not least the Occupy Movement- but to demand change is not necessarily the same thing as proposing an alternative (I know that the OM are in discussion about all sorts of issues, but I would suggest that no real coherent alternative ideology has yet emerged.)

There was an interesting article in the Guardian today by Aditya Chakrabortty. Here are a couple of quotes;

When the history of how a good crisis went to waste gets written up, it will surely contain a big chapter on the failure of our academic elites. Because just like the politicians, the taxpayer-funded intellectuals at our universities have missed the historic opportunities gifted to them by the financial collapse. And it will be the rest of us who pay the price…

…So have the non-economists grasped their moment? Have they hell. Look at the academic conferences held over the past few weeks, at which the latest and most promising research in each discipline is presented, and it’s as if Lehman Brothers never fell over…

Chakrabortty did a search of recent sociological and social science conferences and academic papers and concluded that pretty much the disciplines were not interested in challenging the core assumptions of the dominant ideology.

So where is the challenge to come from, if not from the academic elite? And more importantly, where are the alternative ideologies going to emerge from?

I watched the two Che Guevara films recently- a time when ideology believed that revolution was possible and even worth killing for. Revolution meant overcoming the ruling elite, empowering the poor and dispossessed and bringing egalitarian justice to society. Whilst I abhor the violence, most of us will instinctively feel the pull of these ideas.

Most of us too will have heard the spoilers- the voices that suggest that such ideas are unrealistic, unobtainable, work against human instincts and have been proved to serially fail because of the repeated failures of communist regimes throughout the world. Therefore the only option left is to continue as we are- with a few tweaks to satisfy the left field.

I want to raise my own voice in protest at this hopelessness. I want to invite my friends into a journey to find a new kind of ideology. We are not there yet, but I think we have some clues;

Start small. Start local.

Buy less, want less, make more.

Reduce waste, increase sharing and holding things in common.

Increase joint social enterprise.

In all things be aware of the impact on those who have little.

In all things be aware of the impact on the environment.

For me, the other academic/social/political group that has been near silent in the offering of a viable alternative is this one- the Church. Because as I look at the economic list above, it seems to me to be also a SPIRITUAL list. Without the life of the Spirit within us, we are mere animals, scratching and scraping at one another for the meatiest parts of the carcass.

So perhaps it all comes down to the word Love. If Economics are subordinate to love, then what might the theories look like? If political science was shaped by love, how might we organise ourselves differently? Even as I write this I feel the rise of cynicism, but- love remains.

I think this is the ideology of the Kingdom of God, and the viral vitality that we can and should bring to all these debates. And we do not have to wait until the universities write papers and hold conferences- because we can make our own small economy now- here.

An inspired life- Nick Vujicic…

Posted on April 10, 2012 by Chris Goan

I hear the words ‘Motivational Speaker’ and instantly want to run the other way with my hands over my ears shouting “OMMMMMMMM” as loudly as I can. Motivational speakers are for salesmen and pyramid selling schemes and in all other areas of life should be politely shown the door towards the nearest soup kitchen to learn some silent humility.

Then my mate Andy sent me a clip of this bloke, and I had to eat a slice of my own humble pie;

Posted on April 8, 2012 by Chris Goan

this fragile tent

I wrote this piece for our Aoradh Easter gathering… He is alive!

It was still dark when Mary left the house.

Not that she had been sleeping. The house was full of fear since Jesus had been taken. Fear of the soldiers coming by torchlight and beating on their doors. Fear that they too would face a long lingering death on a cross.

But there was something worse than fear- worse even than death. When they killed Jesus, everything that Mary had hoped for- everything she had believed in- had fallen apart.

All she had left was a dead body.

To prepare for the grave.

She would have gone sooner- but yesterday had been a religious festival, and the pew police would have been out in force to prevent anything that looked like work. Particularly this kind of work, for this kind of man.

So she carefully closed the door…

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Preston Passion…

Posted on April 6, 2012 by Chris Goan

When we visited out old church in Preston a couple of weeks ago, they were all talking about this up and coming event in the old bus station in the city centre. Lots of my friends were involved in the choir, or the crowd scenes. Today it was televised on the BBC, and the whole thing was quite remarkable. Those in the UK can watch it again here.

The Passion was a retelling of the Easter story using three short films set in Preston- a mayor dealing with riots in 1842, women waiting for the return of sons from the first world war, and a young girl (above) who was caring for her brothers and sisters because her mother was drunk. In the mix was a live performance of music and dance based at the huge Preston bus station– itself a rather famous example of brutalist architecture from the 1960s.

It made me cry lots. In a good way. It was possible to visualise an incarnate loving God permeating everything. In the muck and gristle of human existence. And to see this in the TV in these supposedly secular and post Christian times was wonderful to an old Christian like me.

Some of the places in the films were so familiar too- Michaela and I met a couple of hundred yards from one of them.

If I was to be at all critical, the black gospel bits at the end seemed tacked on, almost like the only way we Brits can do celebratory spiritual music is this way. I love this music, but it just seemed a bit cliched. Having said that, Preston has a sizeable Afro-Caribbean population so perhaps I am being harsh.

Well done Preston, and well done the BBC.

First firing of our Kiln…

Posted on April 4, 2012 by Chris Goan

Regular readers will know that about a year ago, I took a road trip down to Derbyshire to collect two kilns and a load of pottery equipment that we intended to install in our cellar. It turned out to be a lot harder than we thought as the big Kiln, weighing in at over half a ton, had to be extracted from an outbuilding at the end of a garden, carried in over and around rockeries, garden ponds and bushes and then lifted into the back of a hired van. Without a couple of Michaela’s uncles (both ex miners and used to moving big things) we simply would never have moved it.

When we got it all up here, the first challenge was getting it out of the van- stop forward some more friends, and we somehow got it on the ground without killing anyone. However, getting it down the cellar stairs was a whole different challenge.

I was discussing this problem when out for a curry with a group of blokes- one of whom, Dave, is in charge of the men who work on the hillsides keeping our electricity lines safe and functional. Dave sent round a couple of his workers, along with a winch, a ground anchor and a special sledge they use to move generators and the like into inaccessible places. They had the Kiln in the cellar in no time.

Then we discovered that the cost of wiring in the Kiln was not as simple as we had hoped, costing roughly 4 times what we had paid for the kilns and equipment! However Michaela and Pauline managed to get a grant towards this, and invested the earnings that they had already made through their craft workshops.

Meanwhile, I installed worktops, shelves, lighting, and we painted the whole cellar white to make it all a bit less murky.

After all this hard work, and kindness from friends, you will understand how exciting it was to fill the kiln with Pauline’s pots, and fire it up.

Pauline and Michaela will be running workshops soon- so if you are up for a combination of a break in Scotland and some pottery- let me know!

Spiritual maturity and the pursuit of significance…

Posted on April 2, 2012 by Chris Goan

We humans are so contradictory. Sometimes we are driven to destroy anyone or anything in our pursuit of personal gain. At other times we are capable of such incredible self sacrifice in pure service of the other. Always we hope that life is more than mere bio mechanics- it has to mean something.

For men in particular, this contradiction often creates some kind of deep void that we spend a lifetime’s journey trying to fill. We believe that the only good life is a life a success. And ultimately success has to be measurable against the failure of others- against the poverty of others, the lack of creativity in others, the lack of godliness in others, even the lack of love in others.

The problem is that success is so fickle- life moves the goalposts constantly and so we feel constantly diminished.

The void remains.

I read this today;

It’s a gift to joyfully recognize and accept our own smallness and ordinariness. Then you are free with nothing to live up to, nothing to prove, and nothing to protect. Such freedom is my best description of Christian maturity, because once you know that your ‘I’ is great and one with God, you can ironically be quite content with a small and ordinary ‘I.’ No grandstanding is necessary. Any question of your own importance or dignity has already been resolved once and for all and forever.

Richard Rohr

It seemed to me that there was a deep spiritual significance in this. What is this thing that we are becoming as we seek to live deeper, more meaningful, more loving lives? Is it really to be bigger, or is it more about recognising that we are small?

Small that is, like a beloved child, whose achievements might be indeed be celebrated, but in no way make us any more (or any less) beloved.

If only it was so simple.

But then again, I am still immature. I have a lot of growing to do yet.

Preparing for a new season…

Posted on April 1, 2012 by Chris Goan

What a lovely weekend. The sun mostly shone and the days were long.

Everything seems to be breaking down at our house though- the (new) car, the mower (so the grass will grow a little higher) and the bikes- but we spent a long time mending them, and so at least we have one form of transport.

This morning we spent a few hours down at Castle Toward, working on the cricket pitches, scraping out the moss and lichen and deciding which strips might be the best ones to use this year.

I think this sport-as-analogy-for-life is way overused but still this feeling of preparation seems right as Lent draws closer to Easter. Everything is possible again.

For William it may well be. He has been picked to play cricket for a regional under 13’s side. I took him to practice at a posh private school in Helensburgh the other day and watched proudly as he spun his leg spinners into the stumps of his team mates and then crashed the ball around when he came to bat. The boy has real potential.

As for me, this new season is more uncertain. A career ending to be replaced by uncertainties. It is hard to plan or to make choices.

All I can do is to prepare the pitch.