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I had a great time at Greenbelt with Mark, Lou, Nathan and the rest of my family, Tam, James, Callum and Abi. There were some magic moments and some tragic moments but, overall, a thoroughly positive experience! It was really good to meet the people behind the names that Mark keeps talking about! I have come away with loads of questions, some of which I'll share with you (feel free to respond!)...loosely based around fruit.
The last thing I did before we came away was to write a lead article about fruit, based on the familiar passage in Galatians, for our church newsletter. (I'm also one of the leaders of a charismatic church in another life...still another kicks off again tomorrow when I will be sitting back in front of my computer at work getting 1400 A level students onto the right courses and into the right classrooms...ugghh!) I digress. After an amusing couple of hours pitching our tents on Thursday evening - including a 300 metre steeplechase carrying a half-erected tent over various fences - we found a nice clear area to set up camp. The following day we were surrounded by a large church group (Church of t' Martyrs) and flags with giant tomatoes became our homing beacon! Fruit again.
It was interesting spending time in and around the New Forms cafe and getting more of an insight into emerging church. It provoked some thoughts - most of the worship was pretty similar - probably not surprising - but what does/should the fruit look like? How is it preaching good news to the poor; proclaiming freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind; releasing the oppressed; proclaiming the year of the Lord's favour? - or is it merely providing a space for those who would already class themselves as Christians to gather around a different expression of worship? - a constant feature of church history. I'd love to have heard/hear more stories of changed lives and communities - I'm sure they exist! - or am I looking at it in the wrong way?
As ever, Pete Rollins and the Ikon guys provoked cerebral activity and spiritual disturbance. I really value their free expression and am particularly grabbed by the idea of "faithful betrayal". I'm busy trying to burn the box I've put God in (probably I'm the one in the box!) and move into the open spaces of freedom to exist with the Truth, knowing that it is far greater than my understanding.
I've gone on too long, but I'll finish with a fruity analogy that was planted in my mind as I woke this morning...There comes a time in every child's life when they meet the betrayal that a tomato is a fruit. Their whole mental framework for classifying fruit has to change when they understand that it is not about sweetness, but how the seeds are carried...
With the rapidly approaching Bi-Centenial Anniversary of the abolition of Slavery in Britain... Freedom Day March 25th 2007... this news from the BBC is deeply saddening! This is not the time for more action plans, committees or 'road maps', no more stalling... this Government seems able to act quickly enough when it wants to, NOW is the time to act for peace and humanity Mr Blair! Let's see if in two hundred years time the name Blair is synonymous with peace or with war!
UK warned over child trafficking
Trafficked girls and women are often forced into prostitution The government is not doing enough to prevent the trafficking of young people into Britain, a report by two children's charities has claimed. Many are smuggled in from south-eastern Europe to be used in the sex trade, slavery or for begging, it says. Unicef UK claims ministers need to do more to help victims once they arrive. But the Home Office says it is committed to combating the "appalling" trade and has made trafficking punishable by up to 14 years in jail. The United Nations estimates that some 1.2 million children are trafficked across the world each year - with about 246 million youngsters also thought to be involved in child labour. In the UK alone, between 1999 and 2003, some 250 children were rescued from trafficking. But Unicef UK says that figure is "the tip of the iceberg" because there is no coherent system of collating how many people are involved. In a joint Unicef and Terre des Hommes report called Action to Prevent Child Trafficking in South Eastern Europe (SEE), author Mike Dottridge says the trade can only be combated by addressing the root causes of the problem. He makes the claims after visiting Albania, Moldova, Romania and Kosovo. He says awareness-raising campaigns often waste valuable resources that could be used to look at why children are trafficked and how to stop the process. Child protection systems in SEE countries need to be improved to check that youngsters crossing borders are not being trafficked. Youngsters vulnerable to trafficking need to be given life skills education to teach them how to make decisions and give them greater self esteem, says Mr Dottridge. Agencies, such as the police, immigration officials and social services should be trained to help them identify trafficked children. And, if the UK government is serious about tackling the trade, it must sign up to the European Convention on Action Against Trafficking in Human Beings and ratify the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, he says.
Andrew Radford, deputy executive director of Unicef UK, says: "There are a lot of children falling through the net. If a child is picked up who is being trafficked, they might end up in a detention centre with asylum-seekers or a foster home. These options don't give them a secure place to go. They leave them scarred and vulnerable and at risk of being retrafficked. The trafficker might contact the child. The child might think the trafficker is their boyfriend or worry about what will happen to their family back home or that even a voodoo spell might be put on them." Mr Radford says trafficked children need a "reflection period", where they can be offered counselling, rehabilitation and a chance to decide what they want to do next. "They might have a distrust of authority. We need time for the children to recover. They may need time to decide whether to cooperate. We need to make sure that children who are rescued are only returned to their country of origin if it's safe to do so and make sure they don't fall into trafficking again. The traffickers themselves are very well organised, very flexible and very ruthless, yet the systems that are in place to deal with them are inflexible and unharmonised. We want people to write to their MPs to bring the issue higher up the political agenda."
However, a Home Office spokesman said Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker was addressing the problem by chairing a ministerial group on human trafficking to combat the threat posed by traffickers and to ensure victims are protected. "The Safeguarding Vulnerable Persons Team was recently created at the Home Office to coordinate our specific response to child trafficking," the spokesman said. Ministers were working with "key stakeholders" across relevant government departments and in the voluntary children's care sector to develop strategies. "Teams of social workers have already been established at ports, and asylum screening units set up to help identify the particular needs of separated children who may have been trafficked and to help develop plans to safeguard their welfare and protect them from the traffickers," he said.
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Just got back... knackered... from Greenbelt! (some photo's on Flickr) I didn't get to see a whole lot... so immediate highlights were...
Lowlights...
... more relfections anon!
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I haven't had time to Blog post-'V' so I'll save those up for later... so much to catch up on! For now though I am joining the legion of Greenbelt 'no-posters' or at least promising to try to take advantage of the wi-fi... anyway... don't forget to come and join us on Monday morning (9am) in the 'New Forms Cafe' if you are at the Festival... Also just come and find us... no doubt at some point we will be found in any one of the following... sitting next to Ian Mac blogging in 'New Forms', lying on the grass outside the Tiny Tea Tent if the suns out, feeling all important in the 'Contributors Lounge', supervising Nat in the Children's area, sampling the joys of Organic Beer, hanging out and grooving around to various musical delights and no doubt joining our fellow worship leaders chillin' and meditating in an Ancient/Future Stylee!
Greg Colby (Exploring Emerging Embracing) from Aus began by using our Deep2Deep meditation (see sidebar) but has gone on his own journey of discovery re. St Brendan... he posts his thoughts here... as part of their service on Brendan Greg produced these pebbles for participants to take away, the design is based on something produced by Wild Goose Designs... who also make this Peat impression (though these days made of resin) that I bought in Ireland. It's incredible to hear how many people have been bitten by the Brendan bug... for some we were a starting point for others they came across him in another way... it just seems God is using the Brendan narrative at this moment as a symbol of Emergence... letting go of all that makes us comfortable to go with God...
Technorati Tags: alt.worship: Blogging: Emerging Church: Mission: Spirituality: Worship
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