The Last Piece of the Jigsaw.

Yesterday we had a memorable Nativity Service @ St Hacket's. It's always a busy service here - we hold it in the hall, so 200 people is a tight squeeze! The kids did really well and we drew Right Christmas to a close by handing over a cheque for £8050 to the Gulshan Literacy Project. Three times what we'd planned.

Earlier last week there was a tiny part of me which - despite the amazing total - was a wee bit disappointed that we hadn't broken £8k, as then we'd be able to feed the entire school for a year (350 kids).

On Friday when I went into the local primary school for the Christmas Assembly, the school administrator reached me a Christmas Card with a cheque for £500, written by a Bangladeshi family with a child in P1. I haven't met them yet, but would guess that they are Muslims and the donation is part of the charitable giving associated with Ramadan. There's something heart-warming that the last piece of the Right Christmas jigsaw should have been supplied in this way. There's a lovely large photo of some of us in today's Press and Journal - the broadsheet newspaper in this part of the world - made all the more special because Joseph and Mary are with us, and this year Roo was Joseph (and sang his wee socks off!).

I've been working hard all week to get up to speed for the Christmas services (like many of you, seven in about a week) and hope to be able to take the foot off the gas for a few days now that things are in the bag. Now that the prep is out of the way, I'm really looking forwards to leading worship this evening and tomorrow morning.

Hope you and yours have a relaxing and blessed few days, wherever you are.

Much Love

FBL

Realising a Right Christmas

I am going to allow myself to enjoy these moments, and this entry, without worrying about pride. I think we've earned it, in our little congregation.

A few entries back I wrote about our Right Christmas campaign. This all started at Harvest time when I was preaching about the mustard seed, not just how it grew, but how the bush it became turned out to be a safe place for the birds to nest. I planted the central ideas of Right Christmas - choosing to simplify the way we practice it, and re-directing the cash towards people who really need a present at Christmastime - and stood back.

And boy, has the seed grown.

We've had a brilliant few weeks in the church. Lots of people have reassessed their priorities; lots of groups have organised low-key fundraisers to bring in some cash. We've been talking to the community about what we're trying to do, and found many people outside the church willing to lend a hand. There are far too many stories to tell, but for a flavour, here are just a few:

A kid's magic show with a local amateur magician drew in 50 children and parents and raised £200.

Instead of sending Christmas cards to neighbours, one couple sent them invitations to a fundraising coffee morning. There, as well as getting a 'fine piece' (i.e. good stuff to eat!) they got information about the school we're supporting in the slums of Dhaka, and the hundred children we hope to feed for a year. They raised £600.

I played a gig in our local cafe - Tarts and Crafts. It was an ideal venue - intimate with 30 or so folk there - and cosy on a cold winter's night. I had a ball playing. I used to play a bit on the folk scene in Glasgow, but this was my first 'solo' set. I told them they were very generous pitching up for two hours of Kum-By-Ya...! We raised well over £200 and forged better links with the community, and I even got a bit of street cred with the lads on the fringes of the church!

One group of women organised a Body Shop party and donated the profits - £100

One family are going without a starter for their Christmas meal, and another aren't having crackers. Small savings, but added up, they make a difference.

One elderly couple wrote to their family and asked them not to give them presents, but donate the money to Right Christmas instead. They raised £370.

Another family are organising an informal concert in our Hall for anyone who wants to come and do a 'turn'.

The kids in our teenage groups baked cakes for Sunday after church, and agreed to spend less on their Christmas party so funds could be re-directed to the campaign. Together, the young people of our church have raised about £200.

Our Christingle Service picked up on the theme of Right Christmas, and having gone through the usual patter about what it signifies, I suggested it could also represent our lives - our world of relationships (orange), the love (red ribbon) and protection that surrounds us, the good things (fruit/sweets) that we enjoy, and the hopes (light) we have for our futures. Then I reminded folks that many people in our world don't have these things. I showed them a series of slides where the Christingle is stripped of its adornments, one by one, until all that's left is the empty skin of the orange. Then I spoke into the Right Christmas theme. We raised £650 that evening.

I could go on.

We'd set ourselves the target of providing milk for 100 students at the school in Gulshan for a year, plus meals for the poorest kids. To do that we needed to raise £2300. Each Sunday, in Blue Peter fashion, I've put up a graphic of the 100 kids as little paper dollies, and depending on how much money has been raised that week, I've been able to colour them in. Last week I had to revise the graphic to include 200 kids. This week I've had to expand to 300 (the school takes 350 kids).

All told, we've raised more than double what we were hoping to raise and are sitting at £5000 with a considerable amount still to come, and Gift Aid to claim. It's not inconceivable that we might be able to feed the whole school for a year. I have such a warm glow telling you about this. I am proud of my people and what we've been able to do.

I am always my own worst critic, though. I have thoughts like "Ok - this isn't sustainable; it's charity not justice; what happens next year?" but whatever's lacking in what we've done, the simple fact is we've done something tangible to help these kids. And I feel good about it. So much of what we do in ministry is intangible, it's great to do something which has clear, measurable results.

This year Christmas feels right, and not just because we've raised the cash. It's because the cash is a side product of a congregation-wide re-think about the whole season which has seen many of us less frantic and stressed than in previous years. This is good. And we've had such a good time doing these things, with very little stress associated.

I know that charity isn't the gospel. But in the Christingle service I quoted not just John 3:16, but 1 John 3:16-18. We speak of love coming down at Christmas. But what is love?

"This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth."

It's only a start. A drop in a pond. But it's done in the name of Christ and it's sent ripples round our little world, and the little world of Gulshan Literacy Project in Bangladesh.

God, I'm grateful for what you've done through this.

St Hackett's - I'm proud of you.

The Food Of Love?

The American writer and minister Frederick Buechner says that we need to pay close attention to those special moments in life when something brings a sudden tear to our eyes.

He’s talking about those moments when, inexplicably, and sometimes embarrassingly, we find ourselves getting misty-eyed for reasons we don’t fully understand.

It could be something beautiful that does it; a sunset or a starry night, or the sight of a newborn child.

It could be something that stirs our souls – a piece of music we love, or a smell or sound or taste that fills us with nostalgia for a past we’d long forgotten.

It could be something we see or hear or read that awakens something within us – some nameless hope that we’re only faintly aware of in the back of our minds most of the time.

Buechner argues that when we find those sudden tears coming from nowhere, for no particular reason, God’s trying to tell us something.

Towards the end of last yearI taped the BBC Choir of the Year programme because Roo's piano teacher was conducting one of the choirs, and though I enjoyed their performance, two other choirs stood out for me.

The London Bulgarian Choir came out in traditional costumes and blew everybody away with their verve and incredible close harmonies. There's a plaintive element that tugs relentlessly at your heart strings, but the harmonies are sweet as honey. It's an intoxicating blend and on the strength of this performance alone I went and sourced a CD on the net so I could listen to more.

Chantage - the eventual winners - performed a remarkable piece called "Christ's Love Song", written by the composer Richard Allain. It's an incredibly complex piece, breaking into 13 parts at one point, but for me it's an aural picture of what it means to be held by the mystery of Christ's love.

Why the tears? Well, once again, it's the ability of music to point us beyond ourselves to the one who is the beginning and end of all things. The more meditative Bulgarian pieces, and Christ's Love Song, speak of the profound yearnings of the human soul, and the sweetness of our ultimate union with God.

And what's God saying?

Your heart is good, my son, and one day its longings will be fulfilled.

London Bulgarian Choir: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GEDbKe038o

Chantage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0QMkE8-B4M

The Golden Compass

Before long the much-anticipated film “The Golden Compass” is going to be released, and there’s every chance it’s going to be this year’s Christmas blockbuster. If you enjoyed watching the “Lord of the Rings” or “The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe”, chances are you’re going to like this movie every bit as much. Having Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman as two of the main characters won’t hurt box office performance either!

The film is based on the first book of Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” trilogy and though it’s meant to be a series for children, the themes it deals with and the writing itself are equally challenging for adults.

The heroine of the book is Lyra – a wild young girl, living in a parallel universe to ours. When we first encounter her she’s living in the Oxford of her universe under the care of benign academics, but in time we learn that Lyra has a destiny which is to take her not just to the snow-capped ends of her own world, but (quite literally) through the fabric of space and time and into other worlds.

In Lyra’s world, the church Magisterium rules everything with an iron fist, but it’s as corrupt and misguided as any totalitarian regime could ever be. An alliance, working against the church, is slowly forming and its ultimate aim – and Lyra’s destiny – are one and the same (look away now if you don’t want a plot spoiler!). Lyra’s great task is to destroy the ‘Authority’. Her destiny is to kill God.

In the final book of the trilogy “The Amber Spyglass”, Lyra, helped by her friend Will, achieves her goal. She finally comes face to face with the Authority (who, in his dotage, has relinquished control to a power-mad angel called Metatron) and watches the Ancient of Days crumble into dust before her very eyes. His death paves the way for a new era where the power of the Magisterium has been broken and everyone is set free to be a citizen of what Pullman calls “The Republic of Heaven”.

Unsurprisingly there’s been a strong outcry against these books in some Christian circles, and it will be interesting to see whether Pullman (a vocal atheist) has been able to resist the studio’s inclinations to tone down his anti-religious message. Not much chance of an anti-God movie doing well in the huge American market!

No doubt there will be angry protests by well-meaning believers (think Ted and Dougal outside the cinema saying "Down with that sort of thing"!) but I think a better way to proceed is to engage with these books and films and enjoy them for their brilliant storytelling, but to critique them.

It strikes me that Pullman is very obviously setting up a straw man (straw God?) so he can knock him down. Whatever the church’s admitted failings in the past and present, the story the church is charged with preserving is not one of dominance, arrogance and military might, as he implies.

At this time of year Christians celebrate the very opposite: that the God whose word brought the cosmos into being was contracted to a human span. As Paul writes of Christ in his letter to the Phillipians, “he did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant. Being made in human likeness. and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death - even death on a cross!”

Whatever validity there is in Pullman’s criticism of the church, and however poorly the church has lived up to its message, the core of Christian faith is unalloyed. The unsearchable, unknowable God, at one point in history, shed his glory, gave up his divine rights and lived among us in human form so we could understand him better. Does that sound either authoritarian or coercive to you?

Enjoy the books, and enjoy the movies, but remember, Pullman’s offering us only one side of the story.

Now I'm Here

No, I haven't fallen off the edge of a cliff. Two weeks holiday, then two weeks catching up from the holiday, and here I am in Mid November - postless as an ugly kid on Valentine's Day.

Yesterday I had a little time to slow down when I attended an Alternativity event in Kintore run by Maggie Lunan. Among other exercises, Maggie got us each to choose a figure from the Nativity Scene and 'have a conversation with it'. (Try that at General Assembly Morning Worship, Moderator Elect...!)

If we were given the opportunity to ask one question of that person, what would it be? I went for a King. And being inclined to excess, asked him three questions:

1) What on earth took you all the way from your home, and that network of relationships and responsibilities, to go looking for God knows what on the tenuous advice of a flighty star?

2) Were you disappointed when you discovered the child was in a cave/stable rather than a palace?

3) How did you explain what happened when you got back home?

That in itself was food for thought. But then Maggie then asked us how these questions spoke into our lives and I found myself wondering, with Protestant guilt, whether there was anything even remotely strong enough about my desire for God to make me up sticks and leave home as these men had done.

That thought sat inside me heavily like too-much home baked brown bread, 'til later in the day when another voice reminded me gently that in choosing the path of ministry, I'm already on a similar journey - walking by faith; following the glimmers of light that illuminate my path; making tough choices about how to spend not just my time but my life; struggling on in pursuit of something (or someone) I've only the faintest notions of. Sometimes the desire is faint and flickering; sometimes almost extinguished; but here I am on the road - far from home; and the miles I've put in speak more truthfully about my desire to follow and find than any words I can muster.

Dreaming of a RIGHT Christmas

It's been a better week. No less busy - just better. Thanks to all of you who dropped by with kind thoughts and words of encouragement. We've got a holiday coming up and I'm looking forward to getting away from the parish for a while and 'getting my head showered' as we say in Ireland (ie. getting some p and q).

Part of what's turned things around is the excitement I feel at a project we've just embarked on at St Hackett's. We've called it Dreaming of a Right Christmas, and it's based on an idea that's been rattling round in my mind for a few years now. Last week I preached on the Parable of the Mustard seed, and it seemed like the God-given time to pursue this seed of an idea with my congregation.

How is it we've managed to turn Christmas so completely on it's head? We tell the story each year - the story of God giving those who were spiritually poor the most precious gift of his Son - and we turn it around so we can give more stuff to people who already have more than they'll ever need. We rehearse the Santa myth with the kids, forgetting that St Nicholas was all about blessing the poor in his community. Other than going to church a little more often, is the way we celebrate Christmas as Christians any different from what everyone else does? Don't we end up as overdrawn and overfed and overstressed as the next person?

We've decided to commit to doing things differently this year, and Right Christmas will help us in two ways. Firstly, we're going to encourage people to simplify and de-stress; to make better choices about how they use their time and money at Christmas. We're going to direct them to ideas and resources that are more in keeping with the true meaning of the season.

And secondly, we're going to undertake a wide range of simple, easily organised fundraisers to generate revenue for a particular project so we can give a Christmas gift to those who really need one. At the moment we're still discussing our options, but it seems likely that we'll be supporting a children's school in Gulshan, a poor suburb of Dhaka in Bangladesh.

I've challenged the congregation to take up the gauntlet, both as individuals and groups that meet under our auspices, and find ways that they can raise some finance towards this goal. It's exciting to see what people are already coming up with - a sponsored slim (!), initiatives where we cut down on Christmas cards (something we're trying to involve the local Primary school in), running a fundraising puppet show, carol singing. Who knows where this is going to end...? I'm not sure, but I hope and pray that our efforts can become a sign of a Right Christmas in our parish and beyond. I'll keep you posted!

FBL

One of those days

Some days you wake up and it's all just too much. At times in this job, life and work seem frighteningly co-terminous, like a Venn diagram where the two circles are so overlapping they're practically one.

I know that ministry is demanding, but this isn't the life I voted for.

Today I pulled myself out of bed with little or no energy for living; the tiredness spawning ten negative thoughts before breakfast. I am tired, not physically, but spiritually and emotionally. Tired of the drab grey shawl of responsibility which I wear as though it were my very skin. Tired of walking this lonely road with few companions. Tired of myself and what I seem to be becoming. Tired of carrying the weight of things I haven't managed to get done. Tired of feeling like my life is out of my hands. Tired of looking for a life in the middle of all of this. Today I could weep - and indeed have wept - at how utterly drained I feel.

Rosie, who knows me better than anyone, had the good sense to hear me out in the few moments we got together after breakfast. She is a wonderfully caring and strong person and I'd be lost without her. But this malaise runs deep. And my secret worry is that the problem isn't to do with ministry - it's to do with me, and my inability to order things well enough to follow this vocation and still lead a rich and fulfilling life. I don't think I'm any busier than anyone else in this line of work. Why is it I find it so hard to make room for those things that are life-giving?

I held all of this before God in a few quiet moments in the study this morning. It was good to be still for a while, though it felt like a guilty luxury. And in that stillness an unexpected memory surfaced.

It's the memory of a song I haven't listened to for years; a song called 'King of Birds' by REM. And what I was remembering wasn't just the song itself, but hearing it performed live when I saw them on the Green Tour back in about 1987 or 1988. Back then they were in their ascendency - all brash noise and jangling guitars - but in the middle of this raucous set they toned it right down and played this haunting, minimalist piece with Peter Buck on pedal-steel guitar. It was a truly magical moment - they held us in their hands and we knew it. Though you can find it on Document, nothing will ever compare to hearing it live in that context for the first time, and I doubt it would resonate with you in the same way.

Why that memory, though?

God, I need that surprise: that sudden connection with beauty. I need it to fill the cavernous, empty auditorium that is my soul and shock me into the realisation that something new and glorious and transcendent can happen to me again.

For whatever reason, that song (and one or two others) holds out for me a sonic vision of another world to which I know I belong, and which I'm heartsick for. The world where I am truly me, and you are truly you, and "all will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well".

I caught a glimpse of that world today, from this dark place I'm in. And though it's not an answer, for now it's been enough.


Follow the link to see King of Birds performed live by REM.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49AMohGRtow

Creed

Every now and again I visit a wonderful place down near Perth called "The Bield". "Bield" is an old Scottish word with resonances of shelter, rest and refuge and it's a great place to go when you need a dirty weekend away with God.

http://www.bieldatblackruthven.org.uk/The%20Bield%20at%20Blackruthven/Welcome.html

As part of the programme, there's the option of attending devotions in the wee chapel, led by the staff, and I always seem to come away with something rich from those times. In the middle of another busy week (are there ever any quiet ones?!) I simply want to post a poem I heard there which has stayed with me ever since. It's by Adrian Plass and it's called 'Creed'.

CREED

I cannot say my creed in words.
How should I spell despair, excitement, joy and grief,
amazement, anger, certainty and unbelief?
What was the grammar of those sleepless nights?
Who the subject? What the object
of a friend who will not come,or does not come?
And then creates his own eccentric special dawn:
a blinding light that does not blind.

Why do I find you in the secret wordless places
where I hide from your eternal light?
I hate you.
I love you.
I miss you.
I wish that you would go,
and yet I know that long ago
you made a fairytale for me:
About the day that you would take your sword
and battle through the thicket of the things I have become.
You’ll kiss to life my sleeping beauty,
waiting for her prince to come.
Then I will wake,
and look into your eyes,
and understand.

And for the first time, I will not be dumb.
And I shall say my creed in words.


Two things I love about that. God's determination to "battle through the thicket of the things I have become", and the prospect of finally, one day, finding the right words.

TODAY'S GLOWING EMBERS OF TRUTH: Know thyself? If I knew myself I'd probably run away....

The Invisible Man

Reflection on this Sunday's gospel:

Dives and Lazarus
Luke 16:19-31




A voice from the other side

What I like most about this place
is that it’s always
just the right temperature.

That other place was so hot at times;
the sun would bake the earth to dust,
and the wind would lift it
and lash it into our faces
like it were punishing us.
Punishing us for being poor;
or maybe, just for being.
But there’s none of that here. It’s perfect.

And the light.
How can I describe the light to you?

It’s like that golden hour after dawn, or before dusk
when shadows are long
and the sun spreads its glow
across everything it touches, like spilt honey.

It reminds me of those evenings
when work was finally done
and we’d gather in that warm light;
sitting by the fire and sharing the little we had together.
Laughing, despite ourselves.
We had to laugh.
Sometimes it was all that kept away the tears.



It’s funny how some things stay with you.
Stronger than memories,
but less powerful somehow,
because here they can’t hurt you any more.

The hours of scraping a living off the land,
days of planting, picking and gathering –
well they’ve disappeared,
along with the sore back
and the calloused fingers that went with them.
I know that they happened,
but I can’t seem to recall much about them now.

But I remember my wife’s smile,
and the way she looked away from me shyly
when I first picked up the courage to talk to her.

I remember when we first made love
the evening we were married by the tribal elder;
sloping off to our tent like naughty children
with the laughing eyes of the villagers upon us.

And I remember our firstborn;
the wonder of seeing her thrust into the world;
a precious gift from God.
We passed her between us as if she were the first of her kind;
shockingly new.
And we loved her with everything we had within us.

But I remember too
the day the men came.
Men with strange speech
and odd clothes.
Smiling,
but never with their eyes,

I remember their shiny jewellery,
their expensive shoes,
and the way their eyes looked around them
even as they spoke to us.
Sizing up our people
scoping out the settlement.

I remember when the first of the trees fell,
and their machines started ripping up the landscape
we naïvely thought was ours.

“Making space for cattle” they said.
How many cattle do these rich people need?
How big are their bellies to need so much food?
Why should their hunger matter more than ours?
Why are their desires more important than our livelihood?

It’s easy now to see that I should have acted differently,
but an anger burned within me
that I couldn’t contain.
A rage for my people.
And for justice.

Without thinking I ran in front of one of the great machines
to make them stop this madness,

I heard you scream.

I felt you slip away.

And here I am.


There was no trial;
no media interest, of course.
We are the poor.
And our lives don’t count in that world.

All that happened was a sharp word from his boss
because this kind of thing isn’t good
for public relations.

The driver’s excuse?
He didn’t see me.

But he sees me now.
And I see him.

There he is,
Down there, across the chasm,
Along with all the others who in different ways at various times
Didn’t see.

Didn’t see the persecuted
Or the poor, or the lonely.

Didn’t see the beatings, or the bullying, or the exploitation.

Didn’t see what was blindingly obvious right under their noses;
or the plain wrong in what they were prepared to do

Didn’t see the process of cause and effect
which means that someone halfway across the world
can make one decision
and turn the lives of the poor upside-down.

And the irony is,
although they see us now,
the invisible ones they managed to ignore all their lives,
they still don’t see!

They ask for mercy, still blind to the fact that they showed none.
They seek help for their loved ones,
forgetting that their choices destroyed the lives of others.
They ask for someone to come back from the dead
so their family might believe,
when of course, someone already has come back from the dead,
and they didn’t pay a blind bit of notice to him.


It would be easy for me to be angry,
but somehow that emotion can’t exist here,
like fire can’t burn without oxygen.

Or maybe I could speak –
Send over a few words of comfort.
Because seeing them as they are now,
I bear them no malice.

But instead, I think I’ll keep silence and pray for mercy.
Because I already have
the only thing I ever wanted from these people.

To be seen.

A wonder-full weekend

Mission accomplished. We're safely back in St Hackett's after a bonzer weekend with our young people.

As I said earlier, this was a new departure for us, and we were more than a little nervous that everything would come together and the kids would enjoy it. As the one delegated to do the 'spiritual' bits, I felt a bit out of my zone because I've plenty of experience with primary children, but little with teenagers. But I needn't have worried.

"Where are your young people at?", you ask. Or at least, I make you ask, for the purposes of this discussion!

By and large they're delightful kids. Few, if any, would call themselves Christians, though almost all have been brought up in the church. Some are still accepting of that, others are beginning to feel the magnetic pull away to other things that seems to kick in at around the age of 13/14. They're media savvy (though we banned phones for the weekend, much to their horror!) and the girls, typically, are very image conscious. There's also a wide range of maturities as I found out when we did a session on the question of God's existence and discovered that two of the younger secondary kids still believed in Santa Claus. We are sheltered here, in St Hackett's.....!

So how do you hold all of that together?

Well on Friday night, as an epilogue after a late tea and some fun and games, I told them the story of Punchinello, by Max Lucado (http://members.aol.com/Crucible2/Punchinello.html) I've used that story in many different contexts from schools to Eventide Homes and it's always well received because issues of self-image and acceptance affect us all. Despite all the excitement, they listened really well.

Then on Saturday morning we did the session on God's existence. We split into three groups and each was given something/someone whose existence they had to deny and another thing/person whose existence they had to defend. Discovery - it can be just as hard to defend Nicole Kidman's existence as that of Santa Claus! Then we did the same about God, looking at evidence for and against. I got them to fill in (anonymously) a wee card saying what God was to them at that precise moment and that exercise was interesting enough to warrant another entry of its own.

After that we looked at the question of 'what is God like?' with video clips from Prince of Egypt, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Dogma, It's a Wonderful Life and Ice-Age 2. Using these clips we identified the attributes we thought God must surely have. I especially like Alanis Morrisette's turn as God in Dogma - a God who's (a) gorgeous (b) has a sense of humour and (c) can't do a handstand to save her life.

By the end of this session we began to touch on 'wonder' as one way in which God connects with us, and we explored that later in the afternoon after a visit to the Leisure Pool in Inverness. We thought about what wonder was, and when we'd experienced it our lives. And then I made the point that it can be very ordinary things that bring us wonder, using clips from Amelie (where she returns the box of childhood treasures to Bredoteau) and the inevitable plastic bag scene from American Beauty.

All of this set the scene for worship on Sunday. I knew they were a bit worried about it all ('there won't be any singing, will there?!) and so I deliberately made things a little more circumspect. As I've said in the last two posts, sometimes you see things more clearly when you don't look straight at them.

I started by telling them a story by Frederick Buechner called "Message in the Stars" (The Magnificent Defeat, Harper Collins). Basically, God shows his power unmistakeably by making the stars spell out messages in the sky. At first people are amazed and change their behaviour, but after months of this they get disaffected/bored. The point? That wonder itself isn't enough. We need to make a connection with God.

So we tried to make a connection - a Lectio Divina on Psalm 139, which again, they were remarkably still for. Next I showed them a range of a dozen thought-provoking images I'd gleaned from the net and printed onto postacrds, and invited them to choose one and think about it for a few moments to some meditative music. Then I led them in a reflection which helped them think about why they'd chosen that particular picture, and what God might be saying to them through that.

The next part of the service was the bit I was most unsure about. I'd given each of them a smooth black stone on their way in, and now I asked them to let that represent something that was holding them back from connecting with God. I asked them to come up, place it in the middle of the wee table in the centre, with candle and cross, and take away a square of chocolate to savour and 'taste and see the goodness of God'. Again, we filled the space with some ambient music and to my delight most of the young people made a response. I kept my eyes closed at this point so as not to make them feel at all pressured by me, but there was a big heap of stones and very little chocolate by the end, and I'm pretty sure they took it seriously. One of the most popular kids followed me up after I went first and that was a real answer to prayer. He kind of broke the ice for the others and gave them permission to act.

And finally (!) I'd prepared a card with each person's name on it and placed them around the room. While music was playing, we were to go and write something unconditionally positive about each person we'd shared the weekend with. Mine's presently pinned to my noticeboard for when I need reminding that at least some people in St Hackett's like/appreciate me!

So that was it. No huge decisions for Christ, but - I believe - lots of little ones. And these little things count. Fun was had, relationships strengthened and suppositions challenged. And we all enjoyed it so much - leaders included - that we'll definitely do it again.

But not for a while, ok.....?!

Shell shocked

Most of my week's gone on getting things together for our FIRST EVER St Hackett's Youth Group weekend. Remember that episode of Father Ted with Graham Norton as Father Noel Furlong? Arran jumpers and singing 'The Whole Of The Moon' at 3am in the dingiest caravan in Ireland? Well that's not going to happen.....!

Anyway - little time to blog this week, but a supplementary to my last entry. If you're joining us at this point, the question was "why is it that some things are better seen when we don't look straight at them?"

I still haven't processed that, but let me submit the following as supporting evidence:

Yes indeed - a shell. Drawn by me several years ago. Nothing exceptional about it except that I really can't draw for toffee and this is probably the best piece of art I've ever produced. It is unmistakeably shell-like.

My spiritual director at the time had given me a little task to do. She asked me to draw something, anything I liked, but to approach the task in an unusual way. She asked me not to focus on the edges and contours of whatever it was I'd chosen to study, but to look at the space around it. At first I thought she was bonkers (and told her so) but by the end of the session I knew exactly what she meant.

It was difficult at first, trying not to focus on what was so obviously in front of me, but looking at the space rather than the shell, softened the whole process and led to results I never thought I was capable of.

And I know now why she gave me that exercise. At the time there were a lot of things looming large in my mind, and she'd often tell me 'not to hold them so tightly'. Drawing my shell was an object lesson in how much better (and easier) things can be when we approach them with a little latitude. Makes sense?

TODAY'S SHIMMERING INSIGHT OF GLORY: You found God? Great!! If nobody claims him, he's yours in thirty days.

Starry, starry night

I'm writing at 1am in the morning, having just spent an hour reading the sky and smoking cigars. It's about as balmy as it gets in northern Scotland in September, certainly comfortable enough to be outdoors at midnight without risking your extremities to hypothermia. And tonight the stars were brilliant. St Hackett's parish is far enough out in the sticks to miss the worst of the city's sleepless glow, and for once the veil of grey clouds had parted long enough to reveal the night sky in all its glory.

I remembered other nights like this. Lying on my back at the fringes of a student beach party somewhere in the South of England, years ago. A special memory because we lay there for hours watching shooting stars, dozens of them, tear their way across the sky. Every now and again we'd spot something consistent and slower moving: a satellite traversing the heavens with purposeful precision. To my shame, at the age of 21, it was the first time I'd ever seen those things, or at least noticed them.

I remembered too walking back home with Rosie late one night while on holiday in the Hebrides; breathing in the pure sea air and avoiding the ditches at the roadside by the most phenomenal starlight I've ever seen. We wished that the low, wispy clouds would blow away so we could see things more clearly, and then we realised that these clouds were actually pinprick galaxies filling the darkness between the constellations with their gentle light

But tonight's experience was of a different kind. The background wonder was there as always, but allied to it was a determination that for once I wouldn't just experience, but learn. I nipped indoors, printed off a webpage that showed what I should expect to see in the night sky in our part of the world, and returned, torch in hand, cigar in mouth, to do my homework.

Mercifully, the plough/big dipper/Ursa Major was obvious. Low on the horizon by midnight. From there I traced Draco's tail swishing just above, fainter but still visible; her triangular head standing proud and poised to strike. Ursa Minor was harder, but once I found Polaris she showed herself, while up above her, Cepheus cut a precise rhombic form. It took a while, but once I'd spotted Cassiopeia's sideways 'w', Perseus and Auriga fell into place just below, and off to the east were the Pleiades whose name I only knew from the book of Job.


And it's there that I want to rest for a moment, because that cluster of stars, more than any other I think, illustrates the principle that some things are better seen when not looked at directly. When I set my focus just to the side of the Pleiades I saw the individual stars resolve out of the corner of my eye, and they seemed to shine brightly. When I looked straight at them, they faded and several seemed to disappear altogether.

And there's something in that, isn't there? But rather than post some half-assed idea to round off this little episode of "The Sky At Night" I'm going to think about what that 'something' might be and get back to you. Twinkle twinkle for now.

The Nearly Man

I saw him sitting there on the church steps as I drove past on my way home. A young man, I think, but all I saw clearly was the garish pink polo top he was wearing. Cresting the hill I swung the car left, passing his stationary Audi, and slowed to a halt in our driveway, just a hundred yards from where he was sitting, head bowed, outside my church. People only come to our churchyard for one thing during the day time; to lay flowers and remember the dead.

I cut the engine and sank back into the seat, realising I'd a choice to make. I sat there deep in thought for a good few moments, well aware that this would probably look weird to Rosie if she'd happened to look out the kitchen window.

Part of me - the efficient, jobsworth part - tried to play it down. It was none of my business... he probably wanted to be left alone to grieve... there was work I needed to be getting on with. Yadda yadda yadda. The coward inside me nodded and reminded me that I could be walking into a difficult situation here. Maybe he was on something; maybe it was my case he'd be on, because I was a minister and God - this God who's building he was sitting outside - had stolen someone precious from him. What if I ended up in the firing line?

But despite whatever reason those arguments contained, I knew, viscerally, what I had to do. I had to get out of the car and walk round to see that stranger. I don't wear the cheesy wristband, but I know that's exactly WJWD. So screwing up my courage I trudged round to the front of the church, without answers or anodyne; but by the time I'd got there the steps were empty and the car was gone.

Who the man in the pink polo shirt was I'll probably never know, and maybe the conversation we never had wouldn't have been life changing for either of us. But as I think about it, maybe the encounter was all about that choice I made in the car; the choice to risk vulnerability in the thin hope that somehow I could be an angel, a messenger of God to him.

Maybe next time I won't be so slow to spread my wings.

TODAY'S TRANSLUCENT PEARL OF WISDOM: Life consists in what you do, not what happens to you. Things happen to a stone.

Slow Work?

Ok - so why the title?

Well the phrase "slow work" comes from a poem by Jesuit priest and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. I came across it a few years ago and felt a deep resonance with what he's saying.

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are, quite naturally,
impatient in everything to reach the end
without delay.
We should like to skip
the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being
on the way to something unknown,
something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through
some stages of instability –
and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you.
Your ideas mature gradually –
Let them grow,
let them shape themselves
without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today
what time and grace and circumstances
will make you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
And accept the anxiety of
feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.

For someone like myself, in transit between old certainties readily received and new convictions hard won, these are good words to hang on to. These things take time. It's ok not to have all the answers. Take it one step at a time. Trust that God is there, leading you. There's something about this that has the absolute ring of truth for me.

I remember as a kid feeling my way into the sciences at school. In the first few years of secondary education they'd tell you about atoms and you'd assume they were hard little spheres, like mini marbles. Then, later on, they'd explain that they were more complicated; that inside the atom was this core with protons and neutrons, and orbiting around them in different 'shells' were the electrons - tiny planets spinning around a tiny nuclear sun. Then, just when you'd got that into your head, they confessed that it was even more complex! These electrons didn't actually move in shells, but existed in probability clouds around the nucleus. I remember these grey forms seriously illustrated in dense textbooks - some looking like smoothed-over Charles Atlas dumbells, others like the petals of some cosmic uber-flower. Better still, Heisenberg told us that we couldn't know an electron's position and speed at the same time anyway. And that's before we get into quarks and mesons and bosons......


And here's the point. You can't jump from A to Z in one effortless bound. There's a whole lot of learning you simply have to go through before you're ready for Z. There's slow work to be done. You have to take each model, flawed though it is, and get it into your head before you're ready for the next one.

Moving between models is painful (just ask Rod Stewart). Certainties have to be divested and unknowing has to be embraced, and that inevitably brings some instability. But in the long run, the work is worth it because a better model, a deeper understanding, emerges which allows you to do more and think better than ever before.

For years now I've felt that instability in my theology as I feel my way towards an understanding which can cope with all that I've had to leave behind. But at the same time, in my spirit, I have a growing sense that what lies ahead; indeed what already surrounds me, is far better than I've ever known. A God more embracing, more loving, more generous than I could ever have believed. At times I catch glimpses of that God, and on occasions rarer still, I might even reflect something of him to others. For the hope of knowing more about that kind of God, I can accept the anxiety of feeling myself in suspense and incomplete. Thanks, Teilhard.

TODAY'S WORDS OF PROFOUND WISDOM: There's always an easy solution to every human problem: neat, plausible and wrong

*SPLASH*


There we go. I'm in. And the water's not nearly as cold as I thought it'd be.....


I've entered blogging the way Roo, my son, goes swimming. Eyes screwed up and holding his nose with one hand, he jumps off the side because he knows he has to (and deep down, wants to) but he hates those first few seconds of heart-racing, mind-throbbing bodyshock. In that sense, he's just like me.


Roo wants to swim. I want to live, and not lose my life in the torrent of 'things that must be done' which threatens to sweep away even the least ambitious of ministers. Despite being a rural Scottish charge, life at St Hacket's in the East brings to mind Dutch boys with fingers in dams, rather than chin-scratching strolls beside still waters. So this is my attempt to slow down for a while and drag to the bank some of the ordinary treasures of life which could all too easily go floating by.

If I find some, you're welcome to share them with me. Better still, you could stop by and lend a hand hauling them out of the water. I promise to share my sandwiches with you when we're through. (I'll explain the Blog title next time).

TODAY'S WORDS OF PROFOUND WISDOM: God often visits us. It's just that most of the time we're not in.