way out west

into God's presence

A strange one today in one sense because is some ways the title seems anachronistic to me... of a world that has passed. A world of Tabernacles and Temples, of Mountain tops and Buildings... a world when we needed to go to God.  I wonder if the world began to change back in the days of  the time of Exile.

This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon:  "Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce.  Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease.  Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper."  Yes, this is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says: "Do not let the prophets and diviners among you deceive you. Do not listen to the dreams you encourage them to have.  They are prophesying lies to you in my name. I have not sent them," declares the LORD. (Jeremiah 29)

When the exiles had to learn how to sing the Lord's song - how to live and worship God - in a strange land.  How to relate to God, to "enter his presence", when none of the cultural tools where available.  Moreover, the peace of the people of God is dependant on the peace of their captors... their faith has to be rooted in relationship (with each other, with the people they live amongst and with God) rather than in religious observance. Skipping forward we reach the moment when the Tabernacle system is finally over... in Matthew 27 we read "the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook and the rocks split" for me this has always been the part of the story which makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, the part which has most affected me.  Because this is catastrophic moment, a rupture in the whole God/Man system... the moment when we no longer have to enter in to God's presence in the old sense.  Romans 8 goes on to say that "The Spirit of God dwells in you... if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you"... so rather than it being we who need to enter into God's presence rather God enters into our very living... who we are, where we are. I guess for me then the challenge is not to enter God's presence but to be with God in the everyday living, to allow God to dwell in my ordinary experiences... my everything.

Great God,
who constructs the cosmos, dwell in me.
who sets the stars, dwell in me.
who paints the planets, dwell in me.
who separates the seasons, dwell in me.
who dictates the days, dwell in me.
who times the tides, dwell in me.
who made mankind, dwell in me.
dwell in all my being,
dwell in all my walking,
dwell in all my crying,
dwell in all my loving,
dwell in all my thinking,
dwell in all my living.

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Entering the quiet place

Today's reflection is on "entering the quiet" place... I guess the obvious place to start with this is Elijah in 1 Kings 19 - When in fear the prophet runs to the wilderness where after listening to the earthquake and the fire he hears the voice of God as a low whisper a "still small voice"... but for some reason today I'm being drawn to a different kind of silence, the one experienced by Job.  I guess it's no surprise we don't read much from Job, it aint nice!  In these consumerist days do we really want to read - IN SCRIPTURE - a story of a righteous man who feels not only let down by God's silence but "withered" and "used up"... there is no comfort for Job in the right answers and platitudes of his friends rather to him they only seem to deepen his sense of being let down, his feelings of abandonment even torture!  He accuses his friends of "lying 'to do God a service' and making up stories to "'get him off the hook'".  In all his pain and frustration he sees through their words and challenges them saying...

He'd reprimand you on the spot, if he detected a bias in your witness.  Doesn't his splendour put you in awe?  Aren't you afraid to speak cheap lies before him?  Your wise sayings are knickknack wisdom, good for nothing but gathering dust." (Chapter 13)

What I find myself pausing on are two thoughts..
1) Entering the quiet place may be as much about running out of energy to keep shouting at God as it is about a "nice" quiet place.  A few weeks ago I found myself running out of steam, feeling as if my prayers where pointless, my treatment unjust.  I reached a point when I felt I could go no further.  When it felt like the cry of our community echoed the words of Job in Chapter 14...

We're all adrift in the same boat:
  too few days, too many troubles.
We spring up like wildflowers in the desert and then wilt,
  transient as the shadow of a cloud.
Do you occupy your time with such fragile wisps?
  Why even bother hauling me into court?
There's nothing much to us to start with;
  how do you expect us to amount to anything?
Mortals have a limited life span.
  You've already decided how long we'll live—
  you set the boundary and no one can cross it.
So why not give us a break? Ease up!
  Even ditchdiggers get occasional days off.

In fact my actual prayer that night was "Give us a break"!  I felt too the injustice of Job when he looks at others and sees that, "Crooks reside in high-security houses, insolent blasphemers live in luxury" (Chapter 12)... why was their no justice?  Why did God seem to so cruel?  His friends find all sorts of reasons - Bildad says "but God IS faithful",  Zophar that "If you scrub your hands of sin... you'll look around, sit back and take it easy",  Eliphaz acuses Job or "trivialising religion" and that is is all part of God's plan. Then Bildad again calls Job selfish and self-centered and Eliphaz that he simply needs to "give in to God, come to terms with him and everything will turn out just fine"... and so it goes on.  Unsurprisingly non of this gets to the heart of where Job is.  In fact he says he simply cannot find God in all of this...

I travel east looking for him - I find no one;
then west, but not a trace;
I go north, but he's hidden his tracks;
the south, but not even a glimpse.

His great cry is "What did I do to deserve this?"  Finally, not in a still small voice but in a great storm God speaks!  (Chapter 38) He reminds Job of the wonder and design of all creation, the cosmos and the insects and everything in between... finally Job cries,

I'm speechless, in awe - words fail me.
I should never have opened my mouth!
I've talked too much, way too much.
I'm ready to shut up and listen. (Chapter 40)

I admit I once lived by rumours of you,
now I have it all first hand -- from my own eyes and ears!
I'm sorry - forgive me.  I'll never do that again, I promise!
I'll never again live on crusts of hearsay, crumbs of rumour. (Chapter 42)

I wonder if that is the point Elijah reached too, he had beaten the 400 prophets of Baal, done what he thought he could to convince Jezebel and still she wanted him dead... so perhaps feeling betrayed by God as Job did he ran.  I guess the question for me then is when all, including God seems arrayed against us to whom do we listen?  Do we listen to the "wise words" of others, telling us it shouldn't be like this, that we shouldn't think like this and that God isn't really like this?... or are we honest?  God in the end rebukes the friends, saying "You haven't been honest either with me or about me - not the way my friend Job has."  So for me the meditation today is, can I be honest, can I scream and shout at God, can I enter the quiet place not by suppressing my struggles but by running out of steam.. running out of words... running out of easy answers?  Can I get to the point when I simply dry up and have no choice but to be quiet and listen?  I guess that's not far off where I am... be patient with me Lord!

2) An after thought really, through this I've associated with Job, but I know I am often one of the friends... Lord, help me to shut my mouth and allow others  to make their own journey and to reach their own point of quiet.

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When do you bathe?

The theme for Tuesday's reflection/prayer and fasting is washing... so I decided to do mine in the Bath!  Seriously!  While I was lying there a question struck me... My Son has his bath at night, the purpose being to wash off all the grime and dirt he's picked up during the day... which with boys is a lot!  Whereas I bathe every morning, tbh I don't feel right if I haven't had at least a shower (though I am def. a bath man!), I don't feel like I'm ready for the day ahead (the number of times the postman has knocked with a parcel just as I've got into the bath! <grrr>).  I began to wonder when the change happened?  Probably when I was around 16/17 I guess, perhaps when I stopped coming in from school/play caked in mud!  There was def. a shift somewhere, a shift in the main purpose of the washing; from cleaning off the detritus of the day to preparing me for the day ahead.

I suppose the two purposes are important, we have to take time to get rid of the crap, to confess, to cleanse, to be cleansed... but as well we need to take time to prepare ourselves, to shake off the lethargy of the night and wake ourselves up for the day's business... Today I find myself focussing on the later, the bath as the beginning.  I guess one can see both in the sacrament of baptism, the dying of the old and the awakening to the new... baptism is about dying to the old but it is also, more significantly in some ways, about a new life beginning, being prepared for the things to come.  So Baptism isn't the end of the journey, but the start of a fresh stage of it.  In the Jewish practice washing has 3 senses (the first two of which are intertwined) - 1) to be cleansed/purified 2) being prepared to approach God and 3) as an act of hospitality... it's interesting that Jesus seems to combine them in the washing of the Disciples feet... he welcomes them, he serves them but then he also prepares them to follow him, to do likewise.  How could they imitate him if they where not prepared to be first washed themselves?  I wonder if in Jesus question he asks two questions 1) the one we often think of - if they could not allow him to serve them how could they serve others? and 2) if they where not washed, cleansed and prepared how could they then walk with him/God?  As The Message puts it...

If I don't wash you, you can't be part of what I am doing

So today I see a new beginning, today I bathe to be prepared to be part of what God is doing,  We have literally washed the feet of people this year (out on the streets of Telford in the early hours of the morning at sank•tuary) and now it feels like we need to be washed, not just because of the crap we have picked up on the way but to be prepared to face the new day which lies ahead and that we might walk his way.

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The Mystery of the Trinity

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Pirates and Privateers (in praise of half baked ideas!)

...our faith is always under threat from blockage, from those who would control access to forgiveness, to grace, to truth. We need good Christian pirates to plunder and raid these places, to demand that these goods are released for all.

From Kester Brewin's entertaining and challenging series of blog posts "A plea for Christian Piracy" to which Richard Sudworth writes a critique...  I do find the writing and thinking of Kester and Pete Rollins helpful and in many ways inspiring and I have great respect for Richard and am in no place to argue (I'm no way near intellectual or academic enough!) with his critique... so I'm not going to try!  I would say that both Pete and Kester are helpful for me not just for what they say but for the way they say it... they both dwell in a narrative world, they speak in stories and ideas which translate... I can grasp what they are saying and in doing so I can even critique them myself... someone once said that all the best ideas where at some point "half baked"... it seems to me that these blog "discussions" often assume that each speaks in complete and formulated theories and it becomes a case of "which camp are you in" (some of the comments to Richard's post for example)  I like half baked ideas, I guess that's why I find Pete and Kester helpful, not because they offer a complete package for me to adopt or not but because they tell stories which leave space for me to reflect, to work through.

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Leadership/Gifting discussion on Fresh Expressions

As requested I posted the below Blog post as a discussion starter on the Fresh Expressions Facebook page (Here) and it seems to have sparked a bit of a conversation... I'd love to hear more peoples thinking... go join in :)

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Greenbelt 09 - The Long Worship Liturgies

This year Safespace joined with Feig, Grace and Dream to create The Long Worship - a day long (10-6) worship experience focused on Time, past/present/future... as part of the day we prepared 4 small hours liturgies, each around 15/20mins long.  They had three elements - 1) the psalms and themes of the Benedictine Small Hours (Terse, Sext, None and Compline) - 2) an element of the Eucharist/Communion (Confession, Peace, Bread & Wine, Sending) - 3) space to read from the evolving liturgy created by the participants ("The Work of the People" or the Wall liturgy - created from 840 words on cards which could be stuck on the wall a la fridge magnet poetry).  You can download the four liturgies below...

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Sensual Jesus "God rid me of God"

A very interesting post from Brittian Bullock on Religion-less Religion... worth reading and reflecting on.

I’ve taken up the Augustinian question, that Caputo alliterates, “who do I love when I love my God?” And I’m trying to find a working articulation of what exactly I mean when I speak of God. Personally, I am coming to the Johannian (as in the epistle writer) view, that the first name of God, is love. That love, in all its forms, pure love is God. Love is something intangeble…always drawing us into action, but never quite resolving in that event…it requires more of us. God is that which we desire, but also that which desires us and pulls and propells us towards the event of love. Love in this case is so deeply intimate that to describe it impersonal, or unrelational, would be to demote it. Love requires such relating and such personhood.

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Something Beautiful podcast part 2

The second part of my podcast interview with Thomas Mathie of "Something Beautiful" is now on stream here

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Something Beautiful... Me!

I'm not blowing my own sartorial trumpet here... it's just that part one of my podcast interview for "Something Beautiful" is now available for download... listen here - http://www.somethingbeautifulpodcast.com/category/podcast/

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