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