Feature Clip - Singing Silent Monks

the aftermath

So we’re in Telford, slowly recovering energy after a full-on Greenbelt. Post-Greenbelt, ‘just wait til you hear what you missed’ posts can be horrible to read… and they feel indulgent to write. Which doesn’t seem to be stopping me…

I had a great Greenbelt. One of the best I’ve been to, i think. It was filled with the kind of unexpected moments that serve to knock me out of my jaded, comfy, cynical corner of the world.

As always, the very best thing was the people who inspire, provoke and make me feel like i’m at home in the work i’m doing and the place I am. I know I say that every year, but I’m so grateful for the chance to feel normal for a while! The absolute highlight in terms of the program was HFASS bluegrass liturgy, which was captivating and beautiful… it swept me away with its confidence and grace… and serving communion with Nadia felt like such a gift. And Nadia’s talk on Monday gave me my best Greenbelt line – a throwaway line in the middle of sentence: ‘the stranger always messes things up’…

Ikon was lovely on the Friday night. I rely on Ikon to push me into another place, and for the first ten minutes I was anxious that I’d done my dash with them, but then the punch came and I remembered again why i loved them so much.

Being on a panel with Cary Gibson, Heather Cracknell and Nadia Bolz Weber was really fun. i love those women.

And Foy Vance on the Monday night was simply extraordinary. One of the best hours of music I can remember…

And I wondered if we might have it in us to do worship again next year…

We spent Tuesday night in Cheltenham, where we remembered how fabulous it is not to sleep in tents… and yesterday we came to Telford to meet with Mark Berry and Safe Space. We have a great group of people travelling this year [like every year, of course!]. In fact I must go join them for drinks…

the uk trip part 1 ? anticipating greenbelt

So I’m in London – no jetlag to speak of, and the weather is perfect… The tour part of this trip starts on Wednesday, when Nicole and I meet up with half the Australian group to travel down to Cheltenham. The rest of the group will be joining us over the next few days, then we’ll be at Greenbelt from Friday, then make our way to Telford on Wednesday, then onto Liverpool and Brighton before coming back to Melbourne. It’s a big trip this year – lots of travel and new places.

I’m very much looking forward to Greenbelt. I’m sure my list of reasons mirrors many others: Royksopp, Duke Special, The Welcome Wagon, Nadia Bolz Weber, Ikon… I’m looking forward to stumbling across talks and music that i didn’t plan to get to, and finding amazing inspiration. i’m looking forward to seeing those people I rarely get to see, who add such wisdom and fun to my world…

I’m speaking on a couple of panels. The first is a panel on worship and curation, which will be on Saturday at 12 in the Winged Ox. Jonny Baker’s moderating the panel, which includes Steve Collins, Lily Lewin and me. The second is a panel on worship and leadership, moderated by Doug Gay. The panel members are Heather Cracknell, Nadia Bolz Weber, Cary Gibson and me [yes, all women...]. It’s on Sunday, 2pm in New Forms. I’m really looking forward to that…

A random thought for today that i don’t want to lose… Taryn and I walked down to the Twickenham Green this morning for breakfast. We were talking about Antony Gormley’s installation at Trafalgar Square… how hundreds of thousands of people must have walked past and seen it, but millions more have talked about it, clicked on the website… and in response, they’ve felt a bit of inspiration and imagination, and are maybe a little more creative, and proud to live in a city where such things are possible. They don’t need to go into the city to see it; just the knowledge that it’s happening somewhere is transformative – it makes us know ourselves and our world differently.

I love greenbelt. I love the idea of it, and the reality of it. Preparing for it makes me think about things that I wouldn’t think about otherwise. It gets my head into a very different space; one that probably wouldn’t be possible without it. I’m so grateful for the chance to be here again – and believe me, i can’t believe how lucky i am…

We’re travelling down south today to meet with Pete Pillinger and then with Brian Draper tomorrow, before coming back to head into the School of Life on Tuesday morning – and then the tour proper begins on wednesday… I’ll post again when there’s a moment…

the greater strangeness

I want to put this here so i don’t forget it, even though it might not make much sense yet.

One of the intentions for those of us working in the new Culture and Context Unit is that our unit meetings will be biased more towards developing a learning community, rather than spending time catching up and listing events / diary dates. As part of our scope is to help develop the conversation within the uniting church that explores how we can be transformative presence in a post-christian world [and that phrase is proof of the need for new language...], we’ll be creating reference points by exploring a collection of articles and books. It falls to me to sort through which articles and books will help us start that process. I love my job.

While reading an article by Simon Barrows yesterday i came across this quote:

The world’s darkness is beyond human explication. What gives us hope is the strangeness of evil encountered by the greater strangeness (mystery) of grace, gift.

For some reason I really love the language of strangeness. There is nothing that makes sense in this.

One of the things i think we want to explore further next year is about being an alternative presence in systems that hold incredible power – the church is one of those; hospitals, prisons, schools are others. These are many of the places that the work of our unit is focussed. I think we need to do some work on understanding how people can be ‘present’ in a system without buying into the power dynamic within it, so that their presence is not defined by the power dynamic [either for or against], but instead is a different kind of transformative presence. When we watch people who work out of that different dimension, the words gift and grace come instantly to mind…

And today marked the day I recovered a tiny moment to get back to thinking about alt worship… it’s been literally weeks since i had the space to focus on that, and it does feel a little like coming home. The following is the draft of a prayer for an advent candle ritual that we’re developing for communities / congregations, which will highlight the prophetic vision of a transformed world, where prisoners are set free, and communities are made whole:

We are so easily mesmerised by the flicker of the flame
and dazzled by the brightness of the lights
that shine in your name

Yet your light comes not to overwhelm
but to illuminate the world around us,
so that we will see the deep cracks and stains
that mark the foundations and walls of our community.

Dare we pray for the faith of advent?
to pray for your coming
even though we know
that we will never look at the world
with the same eyes
again.

New Car!

We said farewell to Jason’s commodore and picked up our new car today - Mazda 6, 2008 ex demo model.

Very nice :)

the looming memory of god

Sarah sent me this Judy Horacek cartoon in response to the last post. [Judy is a Melbourne cartoonist / illustrator, her work is simply amazing...]

I’m impatiently awaiting the delivery of Robert Wright’s new book, The Evolution of God. I loved this article he wrote for the NY Times:

If salvation is indeed about feeling that you’re on the right side of the law, then you don’t need God — or even, as in my case, the looming memory of God — to seek it. You can be an atheist and feel that there’s such a thing as right and wrong, and that you’ll try to align your life with this moral axis. In fact, I think you can make a sheerly intellectual, non-faith-based case that there is some such transcendent source of meaning, and even something you could call a moral order “out there.” I even think it’s fair to suspect that there’s a purpose unfolding on this planet, leaving aside the much tougher question of what’s behind the purpose.

But, for my money, there’s nothing quite like the idea that what’s behind that purpose is something that can approve or disapprove of you. It keeps you on your toes, and it keeps your life mattering, even when it’s only a feeling, and no longer a belief.

“the looming memory of God… even when it’s only a feeling, and no longer a belief.”

Perfect.

post-whatever

As it turns out,
every map has an artificial edge
prescribed by those
who define its scope;
who draw the thick black line,
however arbitrarily,
around the edges of the world.

But here, at the edge of the map,
where it tells me the road should end
by way of a thick black line,
i can see
quite clearly
that it doesn’t.

And to be sure,
I’ve taken the step;
I am proof that the road keeps going.

I check myself for grief,
prodding my heart and mind with inquisitive fingers
to inspect for bruises.
There are none;
just the feeling,
as i step off the edge
of the much-worn, grubby map,
that i am kissing
a much loved friend
goodbye…

So many conversations this week have been about the inadequacy of language – that it’s impossible to remove language from its context; that what i believe and love most dearly can never be communicated without the listener bringing their own context and definitions to the language i use. It’s meaning can only be guessed.

Which is only a problem if we write, or speak, to be understood by anyone else.

I was googling ‘post christian’ today, to see what there was out there, and i came across this post by Brian McLaren, with a song he wrote called Atheist. I know that i don’t get to make definitions of language, but it seems to me that not believing in the lord who converts by the sword doesn’t make you post christian [and certainly not an atheist] – it just makes you post-whatever-you-used-to-believe.

If I say I don’t believe in God, then I’m actually saying that I don’t believe in any God, not just the ones you don’t believe in either. It does both of our faiths a disservice if we equate them…

They call it a faith crisis
as though it were some kind of emergency
a disaster of catastrophic dimensions.

I wish there another word
that gave this moment
its rightful language of possibility
and hope
and freedom…

CCU Launch

We launched the new Culture and Context Unit yesterday, with champagne and cake…

We whipped some postcards together at the last minute, as a take-away for those who came to help us celebrate. We’re framing the work of the unit around the questions we’ll be exploring, rather than the answers we’ll be offering, so the front of the cards showed some of those.

On Tuesday we had our first staff meeting. I had no expectations of it, or really of the way we’ll work together as a team, but I came out of the meeting thinking that I couldn’t ask for better company to be doing this with. I think this is going to be fun.

awkwardly christian ? in the Age today

I wrote a faith piece for the Age today… [a friend from the UK emailed to say that he's read it online, but i can't see it there. i'll paste it below ].

I haven’t written for the paper for a few months – i’ve been writing for other things – but coming back to this feels really good. I think the Age is my favourite audience. The piece is a bit clunky, and quite possibly a bit too honest, but so be it…

Last Thursday I spent time with some of the men from Port Philip prison. I go into the prison a few times each year as part of my work, and while it’s a very transient population there are always a few men who I see each time I return. When I arrive they’ll come up alongside me and ask ‘Do you remember me, miss?’. And when I leave they’ll do the same. ‘Don’t forget me, miss.’

Every visit to the prison converts me. I’m reminded that the assumptions by which I live my life outside are the product of privilege. What I so glibly think is achievable, for both humans and any God I can imagine is beyond hope inside. Sometimes love doesn’t conquer all. Sometimes justice doesn’t come. There are some places hope can’t exist.

It’s made me an awkward Christian – bad company, I fear, in the circles of faith. If truth be known, by most definitions, I couldn’t be called a Christian. I’m not at all convinced by the being of God, though the event of God – the actions and transformations that have been traditionally attributed to God – entice me. But much as the label ‘Christian’ doesn’t fit, I’m loathe to give it up. It’s not for nostalgia, it’s certainly not because I’m superstitious, it’s not even because I have a need to belong or be part of a group. It’s because I need to be held to an expectation that is way beyond myself, and I’m compelled by the expectation that Christianity has of me: that I will live as though everyone can begin again, and that I will act as though the impossible might one day be true.

Christianity has often been confused with a moral framework, a divinely auspiced golden rule. But at the heart of Christianity there’s something much more radical than simply doing good to another in the hope that will be returned to us. There are some people it isn’t humanly possible to forgive, and some redemptions will always be too hard to contemplate. When I go inside the prison I’m confronted with those things that are beyond human resolution, and I have to make a choice about whether I will give up on someone, or if I’ll believe there is a story of grace and forgiveness that goes far beyond my feelings and responses to any individual. Christianity, with its ancient story of what brings life to our broken world, holds me to a commitment to treat the most dehumanised and the most despicable with grace and compassion. Even though I mostly fail at the task, it calls me to do what I can to re-member, to bring back into the world, those our society would rather forget.

I’m sure there are those who can live with such beliefs without faith, but I know I can’t. Calling myself Christian holds me to what I find impossible, irrational and unreasonable. It’s what makes me able to go back into prison, and to look the men there in the eye when they ask if I’ve remembered them. It means I can tell them that I’m trying the best I can.

these are the random things filling my mind?

I keep coming back to this image from Gareth Holt, part of an exhibition of his work focussed on visualisations of statistics of social hierarchy. The only thing that’s missing in this image is the baggy green tracksuit pants worn by the men screwing nuts onto bolts in the work room at the prison…

Mark Vernon is my favourite writer / blogger at the moment. i loved this review he wrote for the Guardian of Robert Wright’s book, The Evolution of God. I ordered the book today, along with Karen Armstrong’s The case for God: What religion really believes. I wonder where this conversation is happening in australia – the really intelligent, post-christian, ’stretching at the raw edges of faith and theology without any need to defend the idea of God’ conversation… and i wonder, if i find it, if they’ll let me listen in…

It’s time to think about christmas! yes, already! the ‘between the spaces’ basement collective are gathering for a lazy, all things are possible, ‘let’s imagine what might happen in a summer solstice-y, christmassy kind of way’ drink in a couple of weeks… there’s always room for more at the table [which is in one of the booths at the back of the wesley anne in northcote], so if you’re interested in coming along for a drink, let me know.

And this one’s for the tired and cynical, who feel sick at the idea that christmas might ever come again…not just this year; ever. You’re not alone…

i wish i had the faith to search for a hint
already
that christmas might come this year

i wish i had the faith to pre-empt the shops with their bling and glitz,
to be the first to herald the promise
of a new beginning.

but i’m tired.
weary of preaching grace
and love
into places too dark for them to exist.

too sure that the promises we proclaim
each year
are too fragile to place another’s hope in

praying desperately to a god
i so long to believe
that my faith
in this love
will be born again…

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