Reverse Contextualisation

I was interested by a comment someone made today about Ambientwonder. We'd been at a Diocese run event today where we were asked to give a taster of one of our events. In itself a bit surreal given that our events are a bit like noticing the tip of an iceberg of all that goes behind it - relationships, how we create stuff, our values.

The comment I referred to was along the lines of AmbientWonder is trying to contextualise faith into a contemporary culture with no experience of church or the Christian Story. Our event today was trying to take our outworking of that into a place whose only experience is of formally expressed Christianity.

So how do you translate backwards without it having the same effect as putting a phrase into one of those internet translation sites, then doing it again and seeing how different the final phrase is from the one you first put in!

I suppose another question is does it matter? I think it does. It's hard to have a dialogue from two positions without something in common. The person doing differently has the capacity to imagine and articulate, perhaps, both positions. And why is a dialogue important? I think dialogue enriches both perspectives. I've been reflecting on this post from Pete Rollins which gives a clue to where I'm coming from.

The Poppy - A weed in all it's Glory

Poem from tonights Remembrance event

I am a bastard.
The illegitimate son of your battlefields churn.
I am a displaced vagrant
Whose home is anywhere but nowhere
A roadside Verge, a cornfields garland.

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row

I am a Lord
Who ties a million Afgahan farmers to their fields.
Am I religion?
The peoples opiate; dulling, stilling, numbing,
Binding and escaping, luring away from freedoms grasp.

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row
That mark our place and in the sky
The Larks, still bravely singing, fly

I am a warriors head
Bloody, Bowed with glory crowned.
I am the offering to death, a symbol
Of forgetfulness to aid you
In your selective remembrance fest.

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row
That mark our place and in the sky
The Larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below
We are the dead.

I am your lovers kiss,
Your loyalty, faithfulness, inspiration missed.
I am your offering O Goddess
Demeter of fertility and Diana of the hunt.
Give me your life, your prize and death.

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row
That mark our place and in the sky
The Larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below
We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow
Loved and were loved and now we lie.

I am your eternal sleep
Embossed upon your aged churches seat.
I am your temporary rest
Forget, remember, catch your breath.
Numb or still I am Christ your promise kept.

We are the dead and shall not sleep though poppies grow.

c Paul Cracknell 2009, after John Mcrae

Remebrance and the importance of choice

I'm enjoying preparing for our Remembrance event on Sunday evening. I'm doing the response stations and feel drawn to offering people a chance to connect with organisations working for peace (including the white poppy people) but also to undertake a ritual for repentance of the church's involvement in encouraging people, well boys actually, to join up during, in particular, the first world war.

I'm very aware that this is a personal response and is quite controversial but I think its ok to offer it as a station as people have a choice whether to engage with it - there will be other ways to respond. I hope people see that when they join in - otherwise we could be in for a stormy ride after the event!

So Guy in a Skeleton Costume...

...Comes up to a Guy, in a Superman Suit...Runs Through Him with a Broadsword!

So say the Mountain Goats - one of my favourite bands in all of existence. They are heading over from the North Carolina to our wet and windy shores for only 2 gigs in October. And I'm going! I'm gloating here... you may not realise this, if you haven't yet discovered them, but this is a gloat.

But, true to the spirit of the blog, there is a spiritual angle to this. The Mountain Goats' new album is called "The Life of the World to Come." Sound familiar? That's it there, at the end of the Nicene Creed. But not content with leaving it as a subtext, John Darnielle has namede very song on the album simply with a Bible reference. No this is not some hipster gesture - the songs are woven with meanings of the passages.

If you want to know more, then there is an amazing interview with the lead singer on pitchfork. In it, he's incredibly candid about his relationship with Church and faith, saying "Seriously, I get weak in the knees when we go into the Apostles' Creed. I think it's the greatest thing." Well worth a read.

In the meantime, if you haven't yet heard the Mountain Goats, fire up Spotify, or whatever it is you use to listen to music, get hold of Tallahassee, The Sunset Tree or... well, anything by The Mountain Goats and listen to it. Then, when you're finished, listen to it again - it usually takes a little investment to get the most out of their music.

Apparently, this album has leaked onto the net already... I have been well-behaved and chosen not to listen to it. But by its very existence, it may have found its way to the top of my list of scripturally inspired secular albums. Up there with Plague Songs and... well... I guess Slow Train Coming at a push. Anyone got any better suggestions? Comments please!

Wonder against Wonder

So, some of you (especially those of you who were at Greenbelt) may be interested to see this article on Apprising Ministries about the whole festival. It's critical of the inclusivity demonstrated by the various groups representing at #GB09, mostly those that are "LGBT friendly", but also the "ecumenical and... counter-reformation" ideas knocking round (I'm sure there were people who complained about Martin Luther on the grounds that he was 'counter-papal').

And, about halfway down the page, what's that? The blurb about Ambient Wonder, which I wrote with my own fair keyboard. Tempted though I am to write something scathing/witty/deconstructive as a response, my "inclusive Christianity" (I often worry what an 'exclusive Christianity' would look like) leaves me inclined to consider the writers of 'Apprising Ministries' my brothers and sisters in Christ... and bickering within the body of Christ is rarely helpful.

In fact, this whole scenario has caused me to reflect. It's made me consider the power of one voice. In the past, the preacher had Authority. And he found his authority in Learning, or Tradition, or his particular interpretation of Scripture. Before the reformation, there was only one Authority on earth, and that was the Roman Catholic Church (well, for most British folk anyway).

Imagine you're a 17th century guy. You've got a family, and a plot of land to work, and some of those stupid trousers that seemed to make sense back then. One day you're told that you're no longer Catholic, but that your faith will be more or less unchanged in all other respects. You'll probably go 'oh, alright', and carry on much as before. Then, a few years later, the head of state/church decides to flirt with some protestant theology. I say 'flirt'... you'll be killed if you don't go along with it... So you go along with it - after all, what they're saying kind of makes sense, and you've never been given a chance to read the Bible for yourself anyway (you can't readin English, let alone latin).

And then, a few years after that, a new monarch decides that, no, we're climbing back up the candle to Anglo-Catholicism again, and that anything else is punishable by burning... you're going to be getting a bit fed up with this idea of one person claiming to have 'authority', and wonder if your own views aren't just as valid. That's probably why so many denominations started springing up.

Fast forward to now, and I express some ideas on a website. Ideas that I may not have held a few years ago, and almost certainly will be a bit embarrassed by in a decade's time. Meanwhile, thousands of other bloggers express other views in a similar manner. Some of them disagree with me. It's not that I don't believe what I say - I believe it wholeheartedly, passionately, and honestly. But I accept that I'm on a journey, and one that has taken me places I never expected in the past, and one that contains a whole bunch of unknown in the future. Isn't that exciting?

So when another website openly criticises words that I've written (words that were, admittedly, a little theologically flimsy... but deliberately referred to 'Meditation' 'Sprituality' and 'Daily Lives' within the context of Christianity), it's not so much that they're criticising my beliefs (criticise away!); it's more that it's flattering it's that they deem them significant enough to criticise at all... as if someone, somewhere is treating the words I say with Authority. But they'd be wrong. I have no more authority than the next blogger. Only One Person wields complete authority. I'm just trying to get a little closer to Him.

Best for Manchester Awards/Notions

I was up visiting a friend in Manchester last week, and killing some time in the PopCafe (eating a delicious veggie burger), and picked up a couple of the myriad of flyers for gigs and arts events around the city. I liked the design (with quotes in different colours interlaced with one another), and one of them seemed to have a vaguely Christian spin, which I thought was interesting, so I clung onto them.

When I got home, I thought I'd check out what the significance of the flyers was, so I grabbed one of them, and typed the title "Best for Manchester Notions 09" into Google. It was only at this point that I realised that the flyer had none of the information that you'd expect - no website, no venue, nothing. In fact, it seemed to have little to do with the other flyer at all.

I found myself looking at this blog entry, which kindly informed me that yes, indeed it was a spoof. Curse my eyes for not seeing this sooner! No one seemed to kno0w anything about it. Sanctus1 didn't claim responsibility, but wished they could. Eventually I found that the artist had fessed up, and provided a little information to the spoofee (?) "The Best of Manchester Awards", here.

Turns out the artist is interested in "anti-advertising", buying billboard space only to fill with not-advertising, thus giving people a break from the constant bombardment of 'Buy This!' or whatever. And, seemingly with a Christian(ish) message. It seems to chime beautifully with the subversive, counter cultural spirit of the gospel, which we often lose track of.

So, in the comments section, if you please, does anyone have any thoughts on challenging ways of presenting this faith of ours? The other day, I was moved by the sheer ambition of Phillipe Petit in "Man on Wire" - he smuggled a wire up to the top of the World Trade Centre, strung it between the two, and tightrope walked between them just because he though it would be an act of beauty. What acts of beauty can we commit?

The Medium is the Message

"All we ask is that you do it regularly (every day potentially) and do it mindfully / being open to encountering God through the activity. This is your act of worship, as it were. It might be helpful to keep some form of record of what you've done - either a journal or photographs or some notes/doodles."

Thanks to everyone who made it to Ambient Wonder on Sunday. There were plenty of new faces, some of whom had travelled a fair old distance, and it was lovely to meet together and share our experiences of the last few weeks, whilst barbecuing between rainstorms.

For those of you who weren't able to make it, the evening centred around the activities that people had been doing over the last few weeks. We charged everyone on the mailing list with a challenge, to be done in the spirit of the above quote. This was everything from 'create an image' to 'treat someone like it's their birthday'.

As we discussed how people had got on with their tasks, there was a really tangible sense that God had been speaking through the activities. Here are a few examples...

Tim had been asked to fast. And in a spirit of creativity, chose to forgo his early morning Sudoku routine. Instead, he read a passage from the Bible, and wrote a poem reflecting on it. If you'd like to read what he came up with, all 18(!) of the poems can be read here.

Heather, meanwhile, was coming up with an image over the course of a few weeks, and created the masterpiece shown above...

And finally, Ali wasn't able to make it to AW this week, but just to show that she had been taking part in the task of 'Silence', she posted about it on her blog, here.

If you have any thoughts or comments, or reflections on your own experiences, we'd love to hear them - comment below!

Prayer for Ambient Wonder

On Sunday evening we reviewed the past term's events and prayed about where we've come from and where we're feading. Here are the scribbles, prayers and thoughts we wrote down,in no particular order:

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Very good that AW has moved out into bigger spaces of St Stephens and St Luke's main worship events. Good to continue to find opportunities to move out of St Augustine's Sunday evening slot.

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Thankful for this great space to be in (physically in the hall and the wider church that gives permission and freedom)

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AW has enlarged my life - my experience of God, my relationships with others and has increased my reach as a person.

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Drawing disparate people together.

Giving voice to the frustrations and longings of many.

Trying - even when we fail.

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Community.

Mission.

Challenge.

Going beyond only being a group twice a month

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Thanks:- God enabled us to do new stuff -> experimented, taken some risks (e.g. St Stephen's, Greenbelt, Diocesan Music Day.

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Thanks:

- we've seen people encounter God's kingdom

- we've seen people become more integrated

- people who wouldn't otherwise have come, stayed and created church

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What would it be like to explore our common life together, other than through running events?

Could we explore an Ambient Wonder 'way of life'?

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Allow us to help each other get to the place of the 'Unknown' - don't let us forget that you made it possible, make all things possible.

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Steps to other places, places we have never thought of, places we are scared to go, places we don't know will be there, places You want us to go to.

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Let your breath fill our sails and move us in the direction You envisage for us.

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HOW - let us be inspired

WHO - help us to be inclusive

WHAT - keep our creativity wild

WHY - keep our motivation pure

Help us to know what is in your heart for others.

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Father God, I pray that you will lay us open, cut us open and place your desires in us, help us to cry with your eyes and let our hearts ache. Then fill us with your creativity....

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We need to go down as well as up

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Creativity flows and our Creator God flows through us.

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giving away power is liberating and makes more space for our sould

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The Tallis scholars music links us so much with the past - looking forward is difficult - we can't see a clear path - it is scary and yet exciting

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I pray that we will find freedom and grace in AW, and not burden and frustration

I pray that we will challenge ourselves others and our own expectation

I pray that AW will draw many or at least a few really close.

I pray that truth will be self-evident in what we do.

In the name of Christ, Amen.

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exciting to be moving out of words. Experiment with silence, colour and simplest music and movement. To be wordless, music should be without words.

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May children find their place

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Somewhere where the scales drop from people's eyes and they see our wonderful glorious God, for the first time.

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Make us community (as we are tonight)

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Let us be the door through which people come to meet You and You show yourself to us

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The beauty of You

the glory of You

The Ambient Wonder of You!

You are an amazing God and I thank you for the touch of your hand on AW.

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Out of chaos comes a beautiful You.

Help us not to loop past You. Keep us fixed on You. Sometimes smooth, sometimes scratchily but always making a mark.

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Grace

opening up

surrender --finding a path

/ \

my ideas my ego

narrow view fitting in

the journey's to the centre....

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Kenosis ? Apophatic - Cataphatic. How link?

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May AW be something that shapes the whole of our lives

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A theme: WORKING TOGETHER. Everyone who comes is involved in making something as a community effort e.g. a joint painting

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To see God as You are. Revelation.

(Christ Sight drawing)

To see the world, our time, lives, purpose, place as You see them.

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Encounters without resistance (drawing)

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A theme: LIGHT

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A place to respect the past but look to the modern - EXIST IN THE NOW (the only place we can ever be)

Meet, recognise and be moved by Jesus in our time, our place, our culture.

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So I wonder if we could continue to pray and continue the conversation? How about it?