How do we discover Jesus in our own darkness?”
hat tip to Jean VanierThe Skeleton Key full
questions to Hold
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Category Archives: Zzzz … Old Stuff
Questions to hold through Lent
I have been into this idea of a question to hold for a few weeks now since I posted this The Brood rip Napoleon Dynamite download
short reflection. Being unconvinced of the set time for God approach and an in-disciplined person when it comes to the blog I wondered what I could do through lent, that didn’t mean a daily reflection, but was more in line with connecting with God through the concepts of living your life as a life of worship, and praying constantly. So I hope to post some questions to hold as way to help me focus, and I wonder if anyone out there also wants to offer any questions to hold. No answers just questions!
A question to hold, for me is a pathway of prayer, it connects with images of prayer that are about silent connection rather than rambling words. They are questions that cannot be answered by intellect or study or theology but by the practice of holding and living, and discovery. My favourite question to hold and one that sustained me and help me survive our the years has been “what does it mean to be still and still moving?”
As we move from Ash Wednesday deeper into Lent, I have been exploring Luke and one commentator sees in Luke’s gospel the God who is in the connections we cant make. I love this concept particularly challenging is the idea that God is in the connection or process when we are often conditioned in seeing God in the person (which is also true) So my first question to hold is
Who is the God who makes the connections we cant make?
Slipping through the net
Through the detached youth work we have been in touch recently with a couple of young people who left school to work, as quite lively Afro Samurai: Resurrection move young people they held down the job for a while or were one of the first to loose their job when the factory made cutbacks. These were always the type of young people who are always going to pursue work rather than training, or college, and possibly the most likley to struggle in the workplace. The issue is – if they were in training or college and left there would be a natural process for connexions to pick them up but for those in work there is no system, and I would argue that it may be these young people that are more in need of tracking. It took me five people and two phone calls of 20 minutes to find the right connexions advisor to put them in touch with, but if the yp dont visit, they will not be picked up unless they start trying to claim a benefit, (which at least one is adament he wont do) Talking to the advisor to question how they would get supported or if connexions would know if they lost lost their job the simple matter was they wouldnt, for at least a year till the next check up point. Talk about a big gap in the net for young people.
A desert reflection
I recently read a book by Simon Parke called Desert Depths, which is the story of a vicar visiting a desert monastery. Each of the brothers/sisters has a name that they have come to own and this is the theme I want to use
First – A question to hold – by this I mean it is not a question that you should seek to answer by logic or theology but simply to hold, in your heart.
How do you approach mission – a desert or oasis?
As we pray today spend time reflecting on the names given to the residents of the monastery in the book
Peter the fool is the abbott, “seeks enlightenment above grace, expertise above mercy, wisdom above love,”
Dalip the empty – who cared, gave advice, and felt he was put on the planet to help others, yet in the desert came to realise it masked an inner emptiness, and though he got to know his soul and changed he didn’t change his name because “instincts remain” and “the desert likes accurate names”
Santos the flighty the hermit called so as he searched from one idea to another for enlightenment never realising the depths any.
Bernadette the chisel – in her there is “a critic a judge, who judges her and others, it drives her to do but never says to her ENOUGH”
Lets pray for one another and the journeys we face, our defaults and the surfaces of our lives that this week God may show us new depths.
Finally when you reflected on the names was your instinct to identify yourself with their names or the reasoning for their names? As you hold the question we first set How do you approach mission – a desert or oasis? Remember the “the desert likes accurate names”
Blessings
The Sacrifical God – a case for Universalim?
James Henley one of the students on CYM had a great reflection as we sat around the dinner table so I asked if he would put it together as a guest post. James blogs here Monster-in-Law move if you want to check it out.
I had some interesting thoughts (mainly questions) during a conversation over lunch at CYM about heaven and hell, and in particular to do with universalism. Although I’m not completely sold on the concept of universalism, I also equally think that our conventional reasoning around heaven and hell needs to be thought out more thoroughly. So here are some of my thoughts…
The conventional Christian understanding of the end times is that God is so perfect that he can’t have sin – evil, bad stuff, imperfection – in his presence. So by accepting him and the cross we are purified of this sin and so as perfect, complete people, we can enter his presence.
But if the major theme across the whole gospel is self-sacrifice – the sacrifice of God sending His son to be confined to a human body, and then the self-sacrifice of Jesus dying on the cross for us – then why would the same God not make the sacrifice of allowing sin into His presence? Surely, that wouldn’t be one sacrifice too far? If we believe in an omnipresent God whose presence is all around us in the world – then surely He is already in the presence of sin in the interactions he has with us. Even if God isn’t “walking amongst us†as he did in the garden, in order to be with us – in everything – he also must have to be in the presence of all the bad stuff in the world?
James
Down with Colds
Down with colds! Down with colds! Down with colds! Down with colds!
Colds are rife in our family at the moment, and just hoping that they dont develop into more flu stuff. So as for me and my household we say…….
Down with colds!
Raw Christain Mission v culturally loaded evangelism
I have an inkling that much of what we call mission (youth or otherwise) in the UK (west) is not rooted in sound missiology but rather unconsciously influenced by western culture. In an individualistic consumer driven society where people gain identity from brands and their positioning in the world, much of the mission we undertake is individualistically focused and even some of the service based community initiatives are consumer driven they can consumed either by the participants or those receiving. We have lost the missionary call to go to communities and grow expressions of church within the community, we have lost the art of balancing our service to the community with the building of intentional relationships, lost the balance of speaking of God and being Christlike. There a number of possible reasons:
– the cumulative effect of culture on the church
– it is short cut and costs less in terms of time and commitment
– we are in the in-between time where there are still churches so the focus is on the individual and calling them to join existing communities of faith
– in a similar vein a failure to embrace the reality of the current state churches/ and most denominations resulting in a rearranging of the deckchairs on the titanic
mentality rather than a willingness to get out of the boat
– existing communities of faith wrongly think that they reflect the wider communities they are placed in
– a lack of discipleship and cheap christianity
– a focus on teaching and singing rather than space for mission and experiments in being inclusive faith communities
– a selfish desire not to been seen as hypocritical that dis-empowers us from action and challenge.
The reason for the title for this post is that we have lost much of the raw reality of Christianity (VERY aware I am sitting in my comfortable house on my laptop typing) and as such the raw missionary impetus to go and be and see what happens. More that this the need to deconstruct our faith before we go, and to go whilst we are still deconstructing, to go with our questions, so that our being reflects our questions and so allowing what happens to be fresh and raw.
I sit here thinking okay so how does this work in the real world? If i brought this to a local church what would the response be? Well first if they were up for the challenge the focus would be on the deconstruction bit; as teaching is overly loaded in most churches and familiar and comfortable – I expect they would opt for a series of teaching weeks to get their heads around it and then maybe something would happen. This is not raw Christianity, it would be sanitised, packaged. After the death of Moses God tells Joshua and the people (all xxx thousand of them) they have three days to prepare and then they will enter the promised land. Can you imagine trying to prepare to go to war, emigrate, move your whole family and community in just three days? All the time still grieving for a leader who has died and being unsure of the guy taking his place. These people went with questions, they went with their whole worldview turned upside down, they went with little preparation all of which caused them to go with faith.
Finding Time
I usually take a bit of time out at the start of the year to reflect on life etc, and the main reflection is that I am aware of the lack of time I have had in the past year, to reflect for myself and the likelihood of finding time this year is scary. Looking back on my blog posts I think there were too many posts highlighting what others have said or passing on news and whilst the original posts are important there is a quote below from Henry Thoreau that comes to mind.
“when our life ceases to be inward and private, conversation degenerates into mere gossip. We rarely meet a man who can tell us any news which he has not read in a newspaper or been told by a neighbour; and for the most part the only difference between us and our fellow is that he has seen the newspaper or been out to tea and we have not. In proportion as our inward life fails we go more constantly and desperately to the post office. You may depend on it that the poor fellow who walks away with the greatest number of letters proud of his extensive correspondence has not heard from himself in a long while.”
Whilst it seems a contradiction to use the quote, it serves to remind me of the need to find time.
New Year
Happy New Year.
I have pretty much stopped melting and apart fom a twitchy eye and slightly slurred speech and back to normal.
I believe in Santa !
Not posted anything for ages – but just came across the following from G. K. Chesterton.
What has happened to me has been the very reverse of what appears to be the experience of most of my friends. Instead of dwindling to a point, Santa Claus has grown larger and larger in my life until he fills almost the whole of it.
It happened in this way. As a child I was faced with a phenomenon requiring explanation. I hung up at the end of my bed an empty stocking, which in the morning became a full stocking. I had done nothing to produce the things that filled it. I had not worked for them, or made them or helped to make them. I had not even been good — far from it. And the explanation was that a certain being whom people called Santa Claus was benevolently disposed toward me.
What we believed was that a certain benevolent agency did give us those toys for nothing. And, as I say, I believe it still. I have merely extended the idea. Then I only wondered who put the toys in the stocking; now I wonder who put the stocking by the bed, and the bed in the room, and the room in the house, and the house on the planet, and the great planet in the void. Once I only thanked Santa Claus for a few dolls and crackers, now, I thank him for stars and street faces and wine and the great sea. Once I thought it delightful and astonishing to find a present so big that it only went halfway into the stocking. Now I am delighted and astonished every morning to find a present so big that it takes two stockings to hold it, and then leaves a great deal outside; it is the large and preposterous present of myself, as to the origin of which I can offer no suggestion except that Santa Claus gave it to me in a fit of peculiarly fantastic goodwill.
— G. K. Chesterton in The Tablet 2
I wish you all a happy Christmas –
Keep believing in Santa…