Tag Archives: alternative worship resources

Rumours of deeper things…

Posted on by
2

 

tents, in high wind

I am heading off with a group of friends to a small Hebridean Island for one of our ‘wilderness retreats’ next weekend.

Spring is here. Yesterday we played our first cricket match of the year (both Will and I out for 0 on a wet sappy pitch) and the garden is full of shy colours. I yearn for wild places.

My awareness of the significance of the wild in understanding myself, as well as trying to understand God, is a constant work in progress. I can make few definitive statements in relation to either. All I can say is that experience is more important than definition. So I continue to place myself in places where I hear rumours of deeper things…

In deep meditation

A few years ago I wrote a series of ‘dispatches’- short poems really- that I tied laminated onto bright card, then tagged to the top of canes. We have used them a few times, laid out along cliff tops or on circular routes around wild headlands. I was reviewing some material for this trip and decided not to use them again, but realised that the dispatches say almost everything about my own hopes and prayers for encounters with God. Here they are;

1.

There are rumours-

Like smoke signals blurred in desert wind
They say

He is here

Not in metaphor
Not whipped up in the collective madness of charismata
Not just politely suggested by the high drama of religious ritual-

Here

Sweating
Breathing
With mud on his shoes
2.

Should I hide?

Should I stay in a fold of ground
And hope he does not walk my way?

I could never meet his eye
Knowing that the hidden parts of me will be
Wide open
3.

How do I prepare?

I have no fine things-
No fine words
My shield of sophistication
Is broken

I am soft flesh laid bare
I am a fanfare to repeated failure

I am herald only to this
Hopeless
Hope
4.

But this King wears no stately form
Wants no majesty

He walks gently
And has a humble heart

And he is-

Here
5.

Put down those things you carry
Sit with me a while
Stop making things so complicated
It is much simpler than that
6.

Start from where you are
Not where you would like to be
Not where others say you should be
There may come a time
When I will warm your heart towards a new thing

But right now
I just want to warm your heart
7.

It is not for you to cut a way into the undergrowth
Or make a road into the rocky places
Rather let us just walk
And see were this path will lead us
You and I

8.

All around you is beauty
See it

Smell it

Feel it falling like manna
9.

Look for softness in your heart
There I am
Look for tenderness
And it will be my Spirit
Calling you to community
10.

My yoke rests easy
If you will wear it

And my burdens lie soft on the shoulders
If you will lift them
11.

You are wrapped up in me
And I am bound up in you

We are held together by soft bindings
Like tender shoot and stake
Like mud and gentle rain
Like worn shoe and weary foot
Like tea and pot

Like universe and stars
Like ocean and rolling wave
Like fields and each blade of grass

There is now
And there is our still-to-come

Coming

12.

And he was gone-

But still I am not alone

The Spirit is stirring the waters

 

Alt worship, old school…

Posted on by
Reply

ohps

 

Aoradh met yesterday for our ‘family day’. We have one of these a month at the house of one or other of our members. Everyone brings something to eat and something to contribute to an act of worship- it was lovely.

Yesterday we sang, listened to music, watched a DVD and spoke about starting again, changing things up. Among all the lovely things we did, what stays most in my mind was something that Michaela encouraged us to do using old school technology in the form of acetates.

‘Alternative worship’ (if you have not come across the phrase before) could be understood as a creative democratisation of worship within the Christian tradition. It involves taking old and new rituals and reinventing them, finding renewal and making new community along the way. It might also sometimes veer towards the highly technical- the joke is often made that if the alt. worship scene has a patron saint, then this is likely to be St Jobs of Apple. Contrast this with when the movement started out, when we all dug out our parents slide projectors and borrowed the OHPs from our local schools. Having said all that, our family days have very little in the way of high end technology.

Michaela’s idea was to take a song – an old Vineyard song called Hungry; She took some of the words- the negative ones like hungry, weary, empty, dry, broken and wrote them on a sheet. She then placed an acetate over the original sheet with other words on – satisfy, restore, arms open wide. The words merged, but remained separate.

She then asked us to think of all the things that were weighing us down; all those hard situations, areas of pain and brokenness, and to write them down on a sheet of paper. We then were invited to take a sheet of acetate and write words of hope, with prayers and promises. Then place the acetate over the sheet of paper.

Simple, low tec, but done prayerfully, in the company of friends it was beautiful.

I have my sheers here now. Depression becomes paired with gentleness, with patience, with grace. Awkwardness becomes paired with creativity and love…

Who needs beats and 5 different projections?

 

Lent, and ’40’…

Posted on by
2

I recieved this lovely e-mail the other day-

Dear Chris,

This is the second year I have used 40 through Lent and I am loving it again but in a completley new way.

Isn’t it amazing how God can speak to you differently even when the words are familiar?



I bought my copy at Lee Abbey a year after I had first seen it; it had called to me right from the start!
It is so lovely to hear that things that you have written are meaningful to others. It is almost like hearing people praising your child.

You can still get hold of ’40’ from Proost.
It is not too late to make your own Lenten journey…



Find me O my father

Make me.

Take me back to you

My throat is cracked

But thirst is more

For you

My stomach craves

A food that feeds only this;

My soul.

So I walk

Desperate

Close to falling

Stumbling

To you

Advent arrives…

Posted on by
Reply

So, today is the first day of Advent.

It is also Emily’s birthday! (More on that later!)

As part of my journey through Advent, I am going to use a comic-book-calendar version of the nativity, by the wonderful Si Smith (see here for 40, more of his art.)

The calendar is available for download from Proost- here, along with all sorts of other advent materials. Go on- it’s worth it!

Here is number one, to wet the appetite…