maggi dawn

Pentecost Worship: don't despise your body

Come and join us for worship. I'm presenting the Daily Service tomorrow (Tuesday 29th May).  9.45 a.m. on Radio 4 LW.

We're in the week of Pentecost, and our theme is on the experience of life with the Holy Spirit. Tomorrow's service is about flesh and spirit. The reading (which I didn't choose!) comes from Romans. I never preach/speak on Romans unless the lectionary dictates. It's complicated and not something I naturally gravitate to. But it's one of the things I like about the discipline of lectionaries and thematic plans that you are forced to engage with parts of the Bible, and the Faith, that you might otherwise leave on the back burner...

To "listen again" on the website go here after the service is over and scroll through the page to find the link to Tuesday's service:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/programmes/dailyservice/index.shtml

New Year Resolutions

I have three New Year's Resolutions this year. I think I will keep them to myself for now. But I was well impressed with this entry from Ian's Messy Desk about ways to improve life in general (and make it more likely I shall achieve those three goals)

From research by University of California psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky. Most of these may seem obvious, but you might feel better knowing they are "scientifically proven".1. Count your blessings. One way to do this is with a "gratitude journal" in which you write down three to five things for which you are currently thankful—from the mundane (your peonies are in bloom) to the magnificent (a child’s first steps). Do this once a week, say, on Sunday night. Keep it fresh by varying your entries as much as possible.

2. Practice acts of kindness. These should be both random (let that harried mom go ahead of you in the checkout line) and systematic (bring Sunday supper to an elderly neighbour). Being kind to others, whether friends or strangers, triggers a cascade of positive effects—it makes you feel generous and capable, gives you a greater sense of connection with others and wins you smiles, approval and reciprocated kindness—all happiness boosters.

3. Savour life’s joys. Pay close attention to momentary pleasures and wonders. Focus on the sweetness of a ripe strawberry or the warmth of the sun when you step out from the shade. Some psychologists suggest taking "mental photographs" of pleasurable moments to review in less happy times.

4. Thank a mentor. If there’s someone whom you owe a debt of gratitude for guiding you at one of life’s crossroads, don’t wait to express your appreciation—in detail and, if possible, in person.

5. Learn to forgive. Let go of anger and resentment by writing a letter of forgiveness to a person who has hurt or wronged you. Inability to forgive is associated with persistent rumination or dwelling on revenge, while forgiving allows you to move on.

6. Invest time and energy in friends and family. Where you live, how much money you make, your job title and even your health have surprisingly small effects on your satisfaction with life. The biggest factor appears to be strong personal relationships.

7. Take care of your body. Getting plenty of sleep, exercising, stretching, smiling and laughing can all enhance your mood in the short term. Practiced regularly, they can help make your daily life more satisfying.

8. Develop strategies for coping with stress and hardships. There is no avoiding hard times. Religious faith has been shown to help people cope, but so do the secular beliefs enshrined in axioms like "This too shall pass" and "That which doesn’t kill me makes me stronger." The trick is that you have to believe them. Link: Eight Steps Toward a More Satisfying Life: Ian's Messy Desk.

AN ACCEPTABLE SACRIFICE

I have a chapter in An Acceptable Sacrifice (Eds Dormor and Morris), which is now coming out mid-January (earlier than the planned date).  It's a collection of essays from different disciplines, but all responding to the vexed question of the church's traditional doctrine and homosexual relationships. The book opens with my chapter on hermeneutics, and two chapters by an Old Testament and a New Testament scholar, between us looking at how to read the Bible and how to treat the passages that seem specifically to address the issue. There are also sections on the Church and the history of marriage, the Church and sociology, and a very interesting chapter on human sexuality written by a consultant obstetrician.

Get the book at the reduced price of £8.99 from Ekklesia and you will also be contributing to charitable causes: Buy AN ACCEPTABLE SACRIFICE PB from Ekklesia and raise money for christian peace and justice work.

or for the RRP of £10.99 from Amazon UK

ISBN-10: 0281058512        ISBN-13: 978-0281058518

evil as nothingness

I've been re-reading around the set texts for the courses I contribute to here in Cambridge. Some of them are texts I know so well I could quote them in my sleep - and that's a dangerous place to get to, as you can lose your freshness and start missing things because you think you know it too well. It's a good discipline to go back and try to read again as if you don't know the text. Often a new angle, or a different aspect, will strike you on a fresh reading. 

One of our regulars - unsurprising for anyone who knows their way round modern theology - is Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics.  There are things I like about Barth and things I don't. But one of the things I do like is the way he talks about evil as nothingness - not a personified creature (with or without horns and a tail), but more like a kind of cosmic black hole which sucks into itself and negates everything that is loving and kind, positive and good. I have never been face to face with anything that resembles a comic-book devil. But I completely relate to the idea of evil as a kind of vacuum of nothingness.

Here's a clip from the Big Man himself:

[God] knows the Nothingness. He knows that which he did not elect or will as the creator. He know Chaos and its terror. He knows its advantage over his creature. He knows how inevitably it imperils his creature. Yet he is Lord over that which imperils his creature. Against him, the Nothingness has no power of its own. And he has sworn faithfulness to his threatened creature...

He would rather let himself be injured and humiliated in making the assault and repulse of Nothingness his own concern than leave his creature alone in this affliction. He deploys all his glory in the work of his deepest condescension. He intervenes in the struggle between Nothingness and the creature as if he were not God but himself a weak and threatened and vulnerable creature…. This is how God himself comes on the scene.

—Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III/3, 358

Jesus and interesting Heresies

The Way started up again this week. Under the title "Who is Jesus", we talked about the tension between the means we have of knowing about Jesus and the difference between that and knowing God in some connected, spiritual, living sense. It's probably impossible to have the knowing without the knowing about, but it's very easy to get lost in knowing about and lose connection with the knowing. We also thought about reading scripture and the problem of projection; and about what sense we make of the relationship between Jesus in history and the Christ we believe in now.

The Way meets again on October 23rd, and Andrew will be starting off a session on "Decisions, Decisions (or, What would Jesus do?)". This is normally only for Robinson members; anyone else needs to ask me in advance whether we have room for guests. 

Leaving Church

I promised myself that I would blog more of the books I read - so easy just to put them down and read the next one.  Over the summer I've read a pile of books, some for work, some for review, and some just for me! One that I read purely for my own interest was Leaving Church: a memoir of faith - I think I saw it pre-viewed on Prodigal Kiwis blog and ordered it right away. This is the book I quoted from in my Greenbelt talk back in August.

Leaving Church is an account of Barbara Brown Taylor's own journey into faith, ministry, and then Ordination; then her experience of life as a parish priest, first in a big city and later in a small rural town. Eventually, the story begins to track how and why she leaves the life  of a Parish priest, and what are the good and bad things about that experience. I trust (given the title) that that is not too much of a spoiler.

One of the reasons I love this book is because it traces the ambivalence that any Priest worth her (or his) salt is bound to live with - loving God, loving the Church and yet being painfully aware that commitment to Church brings as many constraints as it does freedoms, as many handicaps as priveleges.  Taylor puts her finger on the tension between living out what you believe you were called for, and living within the expectations that others have of a priest (almost invariably not the same thing!) To be a priest with any authenticity you have to be fully human, and yet very often it is the Church community that works against that necessity. Sometimes people will not accept ministry if you are not a priest, and yet they won't accept your humanity if you are.  Taylor also relates beautifully and tenderly the tension of living with a sense of calling, and the way in which that can so easily spill over into sheer workaholism and the inability to say "no".

The title, "leaving" might just as easily be read as "finding" - it's not a negative account at all, more an account of how, in order to continue a journey of faith and simply of human life, the season of ordained ministry had to be put to one side.  One of the reasons I like the book so much is that - unlike so much other rhetoric among Church leavers that is very simplistically anti-priest and anti-institution - she offers considered insight into the tensions of faith communities and their leaders, and shows how sometimes those communities disallow our calling first to be human, and only then to be ministers. She doesn't claim to have left the Church because she didn't believe in it any more, nor because she didin't believe in what she had done thus far, and she doesn't hold the Church in any kind of contempt. Rather, she relates the complex reasons why a clear shift in role and direction became desirable for her, and what she learned along the way. There are plenty of people who will give a bitter account of why they left, trashing where they have been before. It's refreshing to read someone who gives an affectionate and grateful account, despite finding in necessary to leave all the same.

I think anyone interested in Church would benefit from reading this - priests and leaders and ministers of course, but perhaps also those who take different roles within Christian communities - if we could think together about our mutual ministries and what our various roles give to the community, perhaps it would be possible to break down in some places the undesirable divide between the "professional" and the "rest" and start living as communities of truly interdependent people? Either that or I imagine that I and many others will eventually follow the path that Barbara Brown Taylor has found essential.

theology of priesthood

Tom has been doing some thinking on the way orders of priests have developed in the Church of England - rightly pointing out that OLM, NSM and Stipendiary have to a large extent becme hierarchies of priests (in fact long before I was ordained I remember having a discussion with someone about the new "OLM" idea, and thinking that theologically, either you are a priest or you aren't...

Anyway, his thinking is creative and good (IMHO) establishing the difference between priesthood and specific roles within the Church. It probably won't interest readers who are not Anglicans/don't believe in priests anyway, but for those to whom these issues are alive, Tom is worth a read. (And, Tom, I'd like to read more as you develop the idea) Link: Bigbulkyanglican: Priests today.

Edit: Definitions: an OLM is an Ordained Local Minister - for a definition, the Guildford Diocesan vocations booklet is clear and concise.

Stipendiary means that a priest is given enough material benefits that they can manage without having a paid job and concentrate their energies entirely on the Church and her mission. A stipend is not a salary, and it's not much to live on, but that's partly the point! Receiving a stipend also usually means promising not to receive any additional income from other sources.

NSM means non-stipendiary minister. In practical terms re. ministry within the Church setting that can either mean someone who devotes all their time and energy to the ministry but for whatever reason does not need a stipend, or it may mean someone who has a paid job, either full or part time, and devotes whatever time they can above and beyond that to the Church. However this definition fails to account for the fact that many people become NSM's because they feel that their priestly ministry is specifically lived out in the mission context of their "secular" setting. There is a debate there that needs to be had more thoroughly - it would be valuable a) to challenge the idea that the work of a priest is confined to the CHurch, but also b) that there is any distinction between the vocation of an NSM who is a priest-at-work, and the fact that all Christians in work have a vocation, both to their work and to the context in which they do it. But for this blog, at least, that's a debate for another day!

The development of all these categories, like everything else in the physically manifest church, has been affected both by theological reasoning and by practical necessity. Any revisions to them should also take both of those things into account, since we do actually live on earth and not in heaven.

liturgy and language ii

Mark raises some good points in his comment on the post below:

...parts of the Eucharistic Prayer were extemporised in the early church. So this is part of our tradition, and we might be wise to think about how we appropriate it for present times...   There is also a great difference between top down liturgy where the words are handed down by elite committees, and bottom up - where in an organic community new and vibrant liturgical voices are heard in the places where liturgies are authorised... in the words of the 1989 New Zealand Prayer Book liturgy might be a deliberate attempt 'to allow a multitude of voices to speak'.

I agree that we should hold planned and authorised liturgies in tension with local colour and some degree of spontaneity (see my post Planning v. Spontaneity for more on this). But I suppose another element in this is that we need a corporate voice. It's very difficult, in a society that recognises the importance of individual voices, within a world that is culturally varied yet closely in touch across cultural divides, to find a way to speak as one body. That is precisely the current dilemma for the Anglican communion. It seems that many CHristian communities take it as unquestionable that we should adopt a policy of freedom of expression in liturgical settings. But going back to what AKMA said in his post, we shouldn't underestimate the value of having some core at the centre that we can all "say" - that we can speak as one body, not as a collection of individuals all of whom want to define the terms. In addition, there are issues of beauty-as-truth involved here - liturgy that emerges from multitudes of voices can be beautiful, but all too often it turns into a homogeneous mush. That's a strong reason for placing a high value on our artists, our poets, our theologians and our liturgists. There are weaknesses as well as strengths in a democracy of expression.

Reading the Everyday

John Davies on top form in Third Way this month. Challenging the seductive idea that we need to rebel against ordinariness and seek the extraordinary - in life and in faith - he looks at how, if we take the time to read the ordinary, the local, the unremarkable, there are riches of life to be found there. The link to a downloadable pdf of his article is on Urblog.

St Paul - a postmodernist in a black poloneck?

This account of AKMA and Margaret's conversation on Bultmann and Barth is well worth a read this morning: AKMA’s Random Thoughts.

Who is Jesus?

Full Term is almost upon us. This doesn't, alas, mean we are all on holiday still.  Research Period is coming to an end (alas alas, the writing is just flowing along nicely!), and in Cambridge-speak, Term is a long-ish period of time (which starts before Full Term and runs up to a few days before Christmas) when those of us who live and work here year-round attend to the multitudinous tasks that relate to our teaching, such as lecture prep, auditions and interviews for applicants to Cambridge, and all the piles of admin which, as for everyone else in the Western world, has multiplied beyond reason since the invention of machines that were supposed to make life easier.

But during "term" there is a nine-week stretch, called "Full Term", when the undergraduates are with us. Those nine weeks are always manic, when a six day week is normal and a seven day week not unusual. (Incidentally, Full Term is officially only eight weeks long, its actual dates number eight and a half, and in reality it's nine weeks plus a weekend. But then this is Cambridge, where May Week is in June...)

I've managed to have a VERY disciplined summer - keeping work very focused inside tight boundaries, getting a decent amount of writing done, and monster amounts of the tidying-up kind of work processed. Literally reams and reams of old paper have been dealt with, shredded and recycled, and I have rediscovered the table underneath. In between whiles I've had the appropriate amount of much-needed rest, and a good bit of fun, so I think I'm physically and mentally ready for this academic year to crank into high gear.

One of the things that is new for me this year is that a course I have supervised, taught clases, and given lectures on for a number of years has completely changed its focus. We are no longer looking at the Background to Modern Theology, and instead we are looking at one of the main building blocks of Christian Theology - Christology, which in non-jargon language means the theological study of the figure of Jesus - who was he, and how has he been understood, interpreted and appropriated, in different ecclesiastical, geographical, social, aesthetic or political contexts, both in the present and at different periods of history. It's an exciting area of study, although I do in some ways lament the demise of the old course, which was much more in line with my own research interests.

Mostly by coincidence - or maybe because of its centrality to Christian thought - we are also kicking off this term's meetings of "The Way" on October 9th with a session called "who is Jesus?". We'll be looking at some of the same Christological issues, but giving them space to fly in the context of personal faith - or, as is the habit of "The Way" - also the context of our doubts and uncertainties.  Come along...

Love is of God

Without the love of our parents, sisters, brothers, spouses, lovers, and friends, we cannot live. Without love we die. Still, for many people this love comes in a very broken and limited way. It can be tainted by power plays, jealousy, resentment, vindictiveness, and even abuse. No human love is the perfect love our hearts desire, and sometimes human love is so imperfect that we can hardly recognise it as love.

In order not to be destroyed by the wounds inflicted by that imperfect human love, we must trust that the source of all love is God’s unlimited, unconditional, perfect love, and that this love is not far away from us but is the gift of God’s Spirit dwelling within us.

Henri Nouwen

I read this quote on Sunday Papers.  I was thinking on the way home from a trip away last weekend that the Church is often so over-concerned with monitoring our experiences of love, deciding whether or not they are "allowed", that we lose the freedom to accept love as and when we find it. Instead of knowing ourselves loved, we worry ourselves sinful.

Sometimes the Church is so cautious, behaving like a huge institutional police officer checking up on whether our relationships are "sinful", that we become obsessed with sin (which usually means sex in this case) and miss the real point of the deep love that can be shared between human beings, which is about being known and loved. 

Of course, love is a complicated thing, not only to work out in real life, but to think or write about. Peterson says:   ..."Love" is one of the slipperiest words in the language. There is no other word in our society more messed up, misunderstood, perverted and misused as the word "love." ...It is often used by the same person in the same conversation in self-contradicting ways - seriously and frivolously, soberly and sentimentally, thoughtfully and teasingly. It is used in the worship of a holy God and as a euphemism for loveless sex. It is used to reveal heart intimacies and commitments and as a cover for telling every sort and variety of lie.  (Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places , p310  hat tip to RF for the quote)

I don't deny that love, and human relationships, are fraught with complications, but all the same I despair sometimes at the way the Church is anxious and cautious about love to the point of being obsessively nosey. It saps the joy and possibility of knowing love when we do see it, and it leaves us prey to a very inferior understanding and expectation of what love is. Some of the friendships where I have most encountered an epiphany of God's love have not been in Church circles, but among circles of friends who do not share "churchy" morals. This doesn't mean that they are immoral. Far from it. They are people who have discovered the freedom to be thoroughly human, to give generously of themselves out of hearts that are full to overflowing with life. This is love, and if it is love, then it is (by any decent Christian definition) "of God".

As Nouwen says, without love - the love of friends and lovers and siblings and parents and children - we die. And despite the imperfection of human love, I think we need to accept and celebrate it where we find it instead of analysing it and legislating it to death.

"spirit-led worship"

"It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech."
-- Mark Twain

Sermon-givers, worship leaders and spontaneous pray-ers, take note.

Update: Simon Marsh writes a good counter-balancing reply here

beere, wyn, and jollitee...

...as Chaucher might put it. Or as we have it here in Cambridge, it's May Week. Ball tonight, Garden Party Sunday, concert Monday, more Balls, more garden parties, in fact, one long party.  I shall, of course, take the opportunity to enjoy several moments of this myself. But previous experience leads me to expect that there will be some pastoral moments this week. Indeed, my diary is already filling up.

The expectation of this week as one long, fantastic party is scuppered for some people by overwhelming feelings of tiredness and let-down. Post-exam tiredness is a bigger monster than many anticipate, and coupled with that is the realisation for some that they are leaving Cambridge for good in a few days' time, and anxiety about the next step, or anxiety about not knowing what the next step is. Especially if the next thing is dependent upon exam results, there's that living on a knife-edge thing, not knowing whether results will launch you into option a) or option b, c, d, or right back to the drawing board.

The week between the end of exams and the beginning of results is filled with the diversions of parties, May Bumps, croquet, concerts and all sorts of other things are great fun on the whole, but for many a great cloud of tiredness descends and a few bumpy days result. For a few, the tiredness and tension combined with the impression than everyone else is happy and carefree becomes overwhelming, and produces as personal crisis. If you (post-exam readers) are feeling low, talk to someone. Sooner rather than later. For a day or two, drink more tea and less wine, and get some sleep. A lot of sleep, in fact. It does get better, I promise you, and life will look brighter and happier a few more days down the track.

Riding monsters

Alan has been writing about Parker Palmer, and blogging some great insights about a different way of conceiving of leadership. Here's a clip:

Quoting Vaclav Havel, Parker Palmer suggests “The power for authentic leadership, is found not in external arrangements but in the human heart. Authentic leaders in every setting – from families to nation-states – aim at liberating the heart, their own and others’, so that its power can liberate the world.” (p.76)

“A Leader shapes the ethos in which others must live, an ethos as light-filled as heaven or as shadow-filled as hell. A good leader is intensely aware of the interplay of inner shadow and light, lest the act of leadership do more harm than good.” (p78).

“Those of us who readily embrace leadership, especially public leadership, tend toward extroversion, which often means ignoring what is happening inside ourselves. If we have any sort of inner life, we ‘compartmentalize’ it, walling it off from our public work. This, of course, allows the shadow to grow unchecked until it emerges, larger than life, in the public realm, a problem we are well acquainted with in our own domestic politics. Leaders need not only the technical skills to manage the external world but also the spiritual skills to journey toward the source of both shadow and light.” (p79).

Overcoming the power of these shadows sides in our leadership is a demanding task. Anne Dillard gives us a picture of what is needed – “in the deeps are the violence and terror of which psychology has warned us. But if you ride these monsters down, if you drop with them farther over the world’s rim, you find what our sciences cannot locate or name, the sub-strata, the ocean or matrix or ether which bouts the rest, which gives goodness its power for good, and evil its power for evil, the unified field: our complex and inexplicable caring for each other, and for our life together here. This is given. It is not learned.” (cited p80)

Dillard’s process is inward and downward toward the hardest realities of our lives, rather than outward and upward toward abstraction, idealization, and exhortation (p80).

Palmer states that” if we do not understand that the enemy is within, we will find a thousand ways of making someone ‘out there’ into the enemy, becoming leaders who oppress rather than liberate others.” (p80)

Go here for more:Riding my monsters inward and downward.

Don't go anywhere without a woman

I just read over again some of Rachelle's post from earlier this year, where she tried to envision how women might realistically be made equals in the church. Not just ideologically, but in practice. Nine ideas that could transform the leadership structures of the Emerging/Emergent Church (yes, I know the Emergent rhetoric about not believing in leadership structures). Rachelle's post is stirring stuff. I like this one in particular:

7) Don’t go anywhere without a woman. Make sure they get invited to the pub, the hooka outing, the cigar fest — whatever. Invite them with you to talk to your publisher. Everytime you write an article, recommend a female pracitioner/writer to the magazine editor. Make sure every conference gig you get has women speakers — hell, make it part of your speaking contract. Make sure the sole woman on your planning team isn’t the secretary/administrator. And if you see women getting run over by predominately male voices in anything you are at, stop the conversation and kick open the door.

Link: Be Careful What you Wish for… -:- urban abbess.

mennochick

Mennochick reports that of 179 blogs listed at emergingchurchblogs.info, only 11 are written by women. Better still, she gives links to a few of them. (blush blush, including mine!) Mennochick's own blog, and her links to a few others, are really worth a look. Lynne, Dan and Rachelle I already knew about; The Hard Soap Gals are a new one to me, and v. interesting. Link: mennochick.

lindisfarne

Our journey past the Angel of the North on Friday was en route to Lindisfarne, the Holy Island, discovering among other interesting facts that you can drive all the way from Cambridge to Lindisfarne on one tank of petrol.  It's years since I'd been there, and it was fun to explore it anew with my son. And we looked at the Island from all angles - the Celtic saints, the Viking invasions, the Tudor ransacking, and the present day.

Holy Island is sometimes described as one of the "Thin Places" - a location where it seems as though the divide between earth and heaven is somewhat suspended, mysteriously making it easier to touch God there.  Although I'd always be glad to have some kind of epiphany if one is available, I find that I have an inescapable scepticism about such claims.

I have to say that the religious artefacts, peace gardens, retreat houses etc., on the island do less than nothing for my capacity to have an epihpany, although I'm happy that they seem to do the trick for other people. 

Where I think I could feel some sense of time meeting eternity was on the beaches, and in the unspoiled, uninhabited spots on the island.  But then, when you think about it, that's exactly what the early Celtic saints  were after. Not a driftwood cross, but a bit of driftwood; not a retreat house, but an actual retreat...

ecclesiastes

Ecclesiastes is a rather wonderful, and very ancient book of Wisdom. I preached on it a few months back at a wedding, and was at pains to deflect the idea that it's a depressing book. "Vanity, vanity, all is vanity" is the writer's strap-line. And he does tend to over-egg the pudding a bit on the futility of life. But it's a mistake, I think, to read this as a cynical and depressing account of life - rather, it's a way of putting things in perspective.

It's often read from the assumption that what it ought to mean is that it doesn't matter what happens on earth, because everything will be put right in heaven. But, on the contrary, what the writer really seems to say is that here and now really does matter. Live in the present, he says - enjoy the actual life you have, it's the only one you've got.

It has something in common with the popular saying, "Life is short, and then you die" - which, like "vanity vanity" can be given a bitter edge, but can also be simply a mandate to get on with life, to enjoy it to the full while we have it. Life is a gift, but you only get it once.  No rehearsals.

Ascension - why wait?

Jesus said to his disciples, "Wait here in the city until you are clothed with power from on high."

It's hard enough waiting for something when you know what's going to happen. Remember the feeling of waiting for your birthday, or Christmas, when you were a kid? But it's even harder waiting for something when you don't know WHAT is going to happen, and you don't know WHEN it's going to happen. That's what the disciples had to do - just sit still and wait. "Don't leave the city until..." Why did Jesus make them wait? I think it was as much the sitting still as the waiting that was the point of the exercise. Just waiting a while, if you were getting on with other stuff in the meantime, wouldn't be any big deal really. But having to sit still - not rush about or distract yourself with other things, just reach a place of stillness - meant that when the Spirit came they were ready to handle it.

Why did they have to wait for the Spirit? Maybe it wasn't for any other reason than they had to wait until they were still enough to be able to take it in.            

The Evangelical Universalist

Can an evangelical be a universalist? I received a sales pitch for this new book, and at first thought it must be a wind-up. But it seems it is a real book, by one Gregory MacDonald, who argues the case for universalism (no holds barred) as consistent with an evangelical point of view. I notice that "Gregory MacDonald" is a pseudonym, which may suggest that the author anticipates trouble ahead?

Da Vinci Code

I was thinking of blogging on this.

A N Wilson, in his customary style, has neatly macheted the whole spin into a pile of shavings with his column in the Observer:

"I think it's absolutely brilliant of Sony to have made this fifth-rate thriller into a great international controversy and make everybody feel as if they need to be having conversations about it. This was one of the most tedious films I've ever seen. It was supposed to be a thriller but it told you what the answer was to start with. There was gratuitous violence, especially involving the mad monk, but no build-up and no suspense. It simply hopped from one four- or five-minute adventure to the next.

Also, it is blatantly anti-Catholic at a time when we're all trying to learn to be more polite to one another. It's fairly easy to imagine what would happen if it were about the holy prophet. All the cinemas would be in little heaps of ash by now. I wasn't in the least offended, though. I just thought that it was silly."

And as far as church reaction goes, Real Live Preacher has said all I wanted to say. The extremists in the Church have already guaranteed the success for a number of productions that is disproportionate to their artistic merit, either by denouncing them, or by attempting to use them as "evangelism" - Jerry Springer the Opera, for instance, or Mel Gibson's Passion. I shall probably go and see the movie of the Da Vinci Code as it will save me the trouble of having to read the book. Fiction is fiction. If it isn't that significant, it won't change the world. If it is, wake up and listen.  Way to go, Gordon.

future (and past) of the emerging church

Malcolm is talking sense as usual, this time on the Emerging Church, where it fits into the bigger scheme of things, and what might happen next...  Go Read it here

religion

church as third place

I love Steve Collins and his thinking on church. I spend a lot of time thinking about Church and space. GO read his latest offering here: catapult magazine.

catapult magazine: unite.learn.serve

gone fishing

Simon Peter is pretty famous for being the Disciple who, after the dream had come to a crashing end with the death of Jesus, decided to go back home and pick up where he left off.  "I'm going fishing," he said.  The others went with him. "Come on, guys," you imagine him saying to them, "it's over. No more religious superstardom. No more changing the world. We can't do any of it now he's gone. We need to get our feet back on the ground and just keep on keeping on. "  So they go back to their trade. And it's right there while they are fishing on the lake (though with singular lack of success) that they meet Jesus again.

This story is nearly always preached with a kind of negative spin for Peter, as if going back to fishing was giving up too easily, as if he should have stayed and waited longer.  I guess if you do that thing of adding all the gospels together into one account, you might think that Jesus had said "stay" and he decided otherwise. I don't think it's quite that clear.  It was Luke who had Jesus saying "stay in the city"; this story comes in John 21, and may well be a later addition to John's gospel (if you read it you'll see that the book appears to conclude at the end of chapter 20)
But in any case, if you were Simon Peter, what would you have done?   

I don't find much solace in meditating on whether it was an indication of despair or bad faith that made Simon go back to his fishing nets. More to the point is what happened when he did: he was found by Jesus.  Here's the moment of solace - when you are lost, and don't know what to do next, no matter whether you wait in the religious space for Jesus, or whether you go back to your everyday situation, he will find you there. Let's face it, most of the time we have no idea what the "right" thing to do is, let alone whether it has God's seal of approval. Most of the time we make the best decisions we can manage at the time, and get on with it. Some of the time we barely even make a decision, life just happens to us.  But the point is that it's not up to us to find God, it's God who will find us. And his finding us doesnt' depend upon us being in the "right" place. Whether you make a good decision, a bad decision or just a humdrum everyday OK decision, wherever it lands you, He will find you there.  And when he does, he will restore you, bless you, and give you your breakfast.

(This idea was sparked off by a rather good sermon last night, given by the Rev'd Dr Simon Perry, at Churchill College, where  Churchill, Fitz and Robinson College Chapels had a joint service.  He didn't exactly say this, but he kind of set the framework for this idea to grow. )

mind, body, spirit - dekhomai

Jonny and co have set up a new blog at dekhomai
Looks really cool. Go visit and find out what it's all about

WWJD? HDIK?

Following on from the conundrum that inevitably follows from my post, Love Is our Doctrine: This post from Howard is good

we haven't only left Kansas, we've left the planet

some nicely worded thoughts from my friend Chuck Fromm here

kiss hank's ***

satire on door-to-door salesman style evangelism. It bites. If you don't like swearing you probably won't like it.  Hat tip to Richard

my heart is not raised up too high...

My heart is not raised up too high,
my eyes don't search beyond the sky,
I do not seek what can't be known,
nor fret myself over mysteries.

But I have calmed and soothed my soul
like a child at rest in its mother's arms;
like this child sleeping by my side,
my soul in God knows peace and calm.

All you who love and trust your God,
in this God shall you put your hope;
for there you will find unfailing love
from this time forth and forevermore.

Words and music by Maggi Dawn (c) 2006 Kingsway's Thankyou Music 

same-old same-old?

women in ministry: is EMERGING really doing something new? or just same-old same-old?
I found out from the ever-well-informed Jonny Baker that two US cyber-friends, lilly and rob, seem to have started a great buzzing conversation on the observable absence of women in the so-called 'new' forms of church (emerging., emergent, alt, pomo, whatever ). Lilly & Rob both dared to air the observation that there were very few women in leading or speaking positions at 'Mayhem' (a recent conference for emergent types in the US). I wasn't at Mayhem, so can't comment directly on that particular event, but can't help noticing that Lilly and Rob's thoughts have been picked up and blogged on at fluidfaith, chris marshall, and others, and in the extensive comments that followed, quite a few people have been taking a pop at Lilly.

The debate is just as fiery, and contains all the same arguments to and fro, as it has for decades. It's not a very new conversation, this one. I can't help following the conversation with a wry smile :} I've heard this stuff over and over since I hit the shores of grown-up ministry 25 years ago. Despite the opposition of some men (and, it must be said, with the positive and pro-active endorsement of many more enlightened men), and despite the general culture of the church, which is not encouraging for women, I've figured out ways of doing what I do anyway. I'm not a frustrated, sad, hairy-legs caricature of an angry woman. I'm actually a very happy woman (and no hairy legs either). And in philosophical terms, I go for continental diff/erence (e.g. Luce Irigaray), not for US gender-equality. But the fact remains, there's a glass ceiling and we still need to bust through it.

The following are not my views, these are mini-headers for some of the arguments for and against. Please hear relaxed, ironic, this-is-just-how-it-is tone of voice, not angry ranting voice. ;)
Arguments FOR women in ministry:
1. women can be good at absolutely anything (they have as much range & variety of natural gifts as men).
2. women can think and get degrees same as men can. For every clever man, there's a clever woman.
3. women are good communicators
4. keeping them out is a failure of justice
5. jesus included women
6. etc - there's lots more
Arguments AGAINST women in ministry:
1. women have very particular giftings, different from men. They are better at making coffee and looking after children
2. Eve sinned first, not Adam; she then seduced him into sin. He wouldn't have sinned without her, ergo women are inherently more sinful than men. (*no, of course it's not true, but it's one of the arguments levelled against women in ministry)
3. St Paul told them to keep quiet. (*actually, DID he? but that needs a couple of essays to unwrap)
4. "We have no objection to women - it's just that we don't happen to have any good women speakers here. As soon as they show up, we'll let them speak no problem." (no, you wouldn't - you'd want a first-timer to be already as good as Mike Yaconelli)
5. "It's not so-and-so's fault he's a man - he's so good at what he does that if he was a woman sure he'd still be doing it." (get real - he's good at it because he's been practising it for the last 20 years; you've just forgotten how bad his first sermon was)
6. Women are better at emotional stuff; men are better at intellectual stuff.
7. "Of course we aren't against women in ministry - it's just that at THIS STAGE in your life, you should be concentrating on (looking for a husband/procreating/staying home to look after your kids/staying out of the limelight and growing old gracefully). Delete as applicable.
7. etc... there's plenty more.
Undercurrents to these arguments:
1. (some) Men get scared when women are good at things.
2. The Church gets nervous when women break the old fashioned gender types - whatever might happen next?
3. (some) Men like the 'boys club' atmosphere (that's why they leave women out when they "network" - i.e. go for a beer.)
4. (most) Men don't like mopping floors and washing the dishes. But it's better to give it a theological spin.
5. ... etc. There's plenty more.