re:connect

Am I creative?

Posted on June 8, 2019 by commaandco

This video answers with the now well-known Biblical point that since God is creative and made mankind in his image – then yes, each human is creative. While this video is good news for artists who are Christian, they are the ‘usual suspects’ type of fine arts – when you ask many people if they are creative they reply “I’m no Picasso.” But that was not the question. The question is not if you are a painter – it is if you are creative.

For the less-obviously artistic, Creativity can be (amongst almost infinite varieties) giving thoughtful gifts, creating peace, making a good home, gathering a group of friends and keeping everyone in contact although they’re widely different personalities, it can be starting a business, cooking well, making a tiny amount of money stretch to feed and clothe a family, having a baby and envisioning a life for them, can be mentoring someone younger when you see the potential in them, it can be wisdom or using colour well, writing which conveys emotion and truth, making others feel good about themselves…….

Creativity creates an atmosphere which is better or ‘asks the more beautiful question’.

Focus/Influence

Although everyone is creative, there are different levels of concentration or focus. For example, writing.

Private: You can journal daily – this helps you think.

Personal: Then you can write to others – this stretches the field of influence of your words. You are now writing for an audience. You may get some articles or poems published without receiving payment. You write with consideration. What themes matter to your intended audience? You have to consider basic skills of editing, putting words together so that other people can follow your line of thinking. You are reading other people’s writing, and responding to it – gradually, you join the community of writers. You can recognise good or poor writing with others and then gradually in your own work.

Public: You develop your craft of writing (poetry, scriptwriting, articles) to such a level that people who don’t personally know you will make sure they’re in the room to hear, or pay for a piece of paper with your words on it.

Artistry is intentionally practicing your creative talent, studying it, learning, collecting necessary tools and working repeatedly until it becomes more natural to make in that medium, with those tools. In the process of doing this, the truly gifted will develop their own, distinctive styles and techniques.

A problem with Christian Art

There is a book whose very title sums up the problem: “A profound weakness: Christians and Kitsch” by Betty Spackman.

This weakness stems from thinking that because you feel you have an idea from God, therefore however you express it, it is perfect. Those untrained in any branch of art will just use the obvious metaphor, in unthought palettes and materials, inexpertly and expect others to think it is perfect; whereas the trained artist/writer will receive the idea or message and then consider how to express it best, possibly trying out different variations on a theme. The cliche or Kitsch does not make the viewer think, it is hackneyed and lazy, not inviting us into wonder or further, deeper thought. Whereas the artist thinks how to express in a new way, not just a repeated image from the past, and this helps those coming to it, to see with fresh eyes. (Often the first thoughts for how to represent will be the cliches – it takes longer to think through something else.)

If you imagine someone who has begun writing poems recently, in their journal – they are private writers. But then when they feel they’ve been inspired by God and try to instantly become public writers – there is a lack of talent and originality. There is no skill with rhyme or rhythm, somehow the words say nothing we haven’t met before on a greeting card. Where there is an unwillingness to learn or consider great work by others, the original gift is not developed. It’s like a gardener who has been gifted packets of seed by an expert gardener going around, twenty years later, with the packets of seed still unsown, trying to enter them for the Royal Horticultural Garden Show at Chelsea as a finished garden. The work of sowing, cultivating, raising, planting and maintenance has been ignored.

Point

Consider if other people keep telling you that you have a gift for something – something which seems quite natural to you. It may well be worth considering looking for great exponents of that talent, developing your skill further – in case that creativity is not just for you, your friends and family to enjoy – but is for others, further afield.

Thank you

Thank you to Alabaster Co for making this video with beauty.

Posted in Creativity | Tagged Alabaster Co, art, Christian, Creativity, gift, making, personal, private, public, talent | Leave a comment

Gardens as a place to reconnect

Posted on May 2, 2019 by commaandco

Appropriately, for this blog titled reconnected-place, there is good news about spaces to reconnect with God through nature: the Quiet Gardens Movement. Very generous people have recognised that space in nature can be a wonderful place to ‘read’ God’s mystery in the soundless words that creation speaks about its Creator – and provided garden areas for others.

“The natural environment of gardens with their mixture of tending, cultivating and sanctified neglect, are places that draw me into the heart of God. They are places where I can dwell deeply, through being in the slip-stream of prayer, contemplation and renewal, and find life again in all of its abundance. Through the work of the Quiet Garden Movement, I pray that this will also be true for many other people, and I remain grateful to those who open their gardens so that others can slow down and rest in God’s abundant love in Jesus.”

The Rt Revd Graham Usher – Bishop of Dudley

Find out more about spaces set aside for prayer and contemplation, through the Quiet Gardens Movement at http://www.quietgarden.org

Many of the gardens are in England, but there are also some across the world. On the website, you can find out if there’s one near you.

Posted in Contemplation, Prayer, Uncategorized | Tagged calm, connection, creation, nature | Leave a comment

What next after Church?

Posted on December 9, 2018 by commaandco

Steve Aisthorpe is interviewed on this Nomad Podcast – starting at 8 minutes into the podcast.

Steve is interviewed on the research done by the Church of Scotland on people who have left Church but still consider themselves to be Christians. Discussion ranges over stereotypes of why people leave church (mostly untrue) and the dire consequences for their spiritual wellbeing (also mostly untrue).

After the interview, the three regular presenters discuss their own personal experiences post-Church. Absorbing and important discussion.

Posted in Effective Church, Spiritual formation | Tagged Christian, church, church attendance, denominational, fellowship, leaving, outside, post-Church | Leave a comment

Church-leavers’ viewpoints – a gift to the church?

Posted on August 6, 2018 by commaandco

A secondhand copy of Alan Jamieson “A Churchless Faith – Faith Journeys beyond the Churches” (2002) has just thudded onto our doormat, and is being read with sighs of recognition and interest. This is an extensive survey of people in New Zealand who were once deeply engaged in Evangelical, Pentecostal and Charismatic churches – often in leadership – but who chose to leave church. At the same time, they did not lose their faith, but continued a vital relationship with God. What’s going on with this?

Interestingly, in a blogpost he writes:

“leavers are your friends. They will tell you things about the church that the satisfied church members never will. They will point out the sort of things that stop outsiders engaging with your church but never tell you. What these disgruntled potential leavers tell you won’t come easily and it will be painful to hear. But reflect on it. Sift what is said. What do you and the church need to hear? What is more about the person’s own journey and needs to stay with them? What can you consider as you plan and build for the future of the church?”

(it should be noted, that he immediately goes on to say that it’s not wise to put church leavers into places of authority to lead new initiatives back within the church: leavers are on a faith journey/transition which they need personal time for.)

If you are a church leader: is there an exit interview with folks leaving churches, people who were in leadership? If not, you are missing vital insights.

Many years ago, I heard an excellent talk, by a church leader, Paul Kyle, who said that when someone said something critical about his leadership, no matter how obviously fuelled by personal dislike or selfish immature attitudes – he would take that criticism to God in prayer, and ask “Is there any truth in this?”. A model response.

A Squibble of Thread

Posted on July 9, 2018 by drew24x7

Last week I came across an article in the business news that the New York Stock exchange were developing systems to time stamp trades at a nano scale – that is accurate to the billionth of a second. They have found that day trading – traders who only trade while the stock market is open, and cease trading at the bell – is generating so many trades at the close of the market that the only way to make sure that the trades are handled in a fair way is to time stamp the trades to an unprecedented accuracy, and actually process the ‘valid’ trades in the seconds after the market closes.

This article reminded me of an illustration that Admiral Grace Hopper (one of the pioneers of computer programming) used to explain the limits of computer systems…

I have here some lengths of string … each length has two knots… roughly 30cm apart…

if you would take the string out of its bag and hold it in front of you… that space between one knot and another… that is roughly the distance that light travels in one billionth of a second…

So the NYSE time stamp system would be sufficiently accurate to indicate that a trade had occurred in the time light would travel from your left had to your right hand… it’s a truly mind boggling scale of accuracy.

The morning I read this article my devotional readings also included Psalm 19, and I was struck by the exponential relationship we have with timescales.

Geologists looking into the deep past of our planet talk about the Precambrian SuperEon, and the periods of the current eon – including the Carboniferous, Jurassic, Cretaceous… these geological time scales are immense covering millions and billions of years…

In Human history timescales were marked out by the rising and setting of the sun – giving us days; the phases of the moon – our months; and the changing of the seasons – years. A common measurement in the old testament was that of a ‘generation’…

Over the past two thousand years the christian church has marked out the year – with seasons of Advent, Christmas, Easter, harvest, and depending on your tradition the feast days of saints…

Just under 300 years ago James Harrison’s sea going clocks were used to measure time with unprecedented accuracy (and reliability) so that navigators could calculate longitude and thus traverse the ocean for trade… The one o’clock cannon here in Edinburgh was used to synchronise these navigation clocks on ships that traded across the world.

A hundred years later – the industrial revolution and steam power saw the introduction of national train travel… and time became standardised across the United Kingdom.

And since then each advance in technology provides new developments in measuring time scales. The radio time pips, the speaking clock, international atomic clocks, Global positioning satellites – the list could go on.

We can soon find that daily we are fighting against the clock. Dare I ask how many people here take work home to meet deadlines and timescales that maybe a few short years ago would have been achievable in our ‘working’ hours.

The Psalmist gives us a different perspective –

He sees beyond even a geological time into a theological time scale.

Before humans were created, the earth has been declaring the glory of God… creation speaking without words… but the message, the word, has been going throughout the earth… in all of this time.

Over periods, Eras, Eons and SuperEons the whole earth has been telling of the glory of God.

And God has placed eternity in the hearts of mankind – his timescale is that of eternity.

The challenge for us is to keep our focus, our hope on God’s timescale while we attend to timescales of the business of the day…

So today if you feel pressure to rush, or growing anxiety over time…

Take a moment…

Be still…

Be counter cultural…

Seek Gods timescale, enter into his grace – let his peace come to you.

Take a look at this squibble of thread again, measuring off the billionths of seconds, and know that you have the whole depth of eternity available to you in God, through Jesus Christ.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The Final Question: “Did you learn to love?”

Posted on July 8, 2018 by commaandco

What if, when you die, God asks you one question about your life and it is this: “Did you learn to love?”

This was a throwaway line by prophet Bob Jones, in a video interview with Mahesh Chavda – but for me, it is THE line for today. Bob was recounting how at one point he physically died . “When I went to the Lord in death, He asked the saints that went in before me one question – that’s all He’ll ask you, when you go home, is:

“Did you learn to love?”

“If you’ve learned to love, then you’ve fulfilled everything He wanted you to do.”

I’m thinking that possibly the best way to answer that huge question, looking back over all our life, is to be asking it of ourselves, daily. Letting it become part of life. The motivation in every situation. “How can I learn to love in this?” “What would love do?” “What is the loving thing to do, today?”

It goes to the heart of it all. Because it’s not just what you’re doing right on the outside – it’s your motivation, your thinking, your ‘angle’. In the 1980s there was a pop song “It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it”…

So there we have it: a question (if not THE question) for today and for life.

What’s our answer?

Posted in Spiritual formation | Tagged after death, assessment, exam, life question, Love, motivation | Leave a comment

Where is the chew in church?

Posted on July 7, 2018 by commaandco

Wouldn’t it be interesting to go to a church meeting where, after an opening song, the pastor announced that the congregation would be writing the sermon?

I think that would get most people’s attention. The idea is that the congregation would be invited to take 10 minutes to recall snippets from any sermon they have heard over the years – something said which has stuck with them and been useful – and write it down, anonymously. (Pens and paper passed around, after 10 minutes collected. Perhaps taken outside the room, for piecing together in similar themes – or perhaps not, if the pastor is brave, as an open show of transparency).

After that, perhaps another song or something to let people settle down and think that this temporary madness has passed.

Then the pastor/worship leader announces that there will now be a chance to write down anything you are finding so interesting that you are thinking about or reading about it this week – and it can be ‘secular’. (Pens and paper passed around, again, then safely gathered in.)

At the usual time for the sermon, the papers can be read out, slowly, with some seconds of silence between each, to allow for the fact that they will be disjointed thoughts, not a connected sermon. This also gives space to laugh. Because some folks will write that they are absorbed by the gorgeousness of the pastor’s tie, or why their football team lost this week – or some other such fun comments. When people discover it’s fine to laugh at this, it gives a great common shared experience, a cameraderie. Life is, indeed, full of seriousness and sadness and joys and pratfalls – none of this is new to God.

Then allow 5 minutes of ‘chew time’ afterwards – silence.

Then a prayer or song and out the door, to coffee and chat. (There will be plenty to chat about).

It could be interesting to do after a major celebration, such as Christmas or Easter – on the subject of what have people realised afresh about this season, this year? (If there is nothing, perhaps the pastor might like to take that on board as a challenge for next year).

And at some point later in the year, when/if people are beginning to seem a bit passive in church, why not rouse the sleepers with an announcement at the beginning “We’re going to write the closing hymn together”. Out with the sheets, for people to write down what they’re thankful for, today, at the start of the service.

Then, at the end, a joyful reading of what is written, as a psalm of thankfulness. (Expecting, again, that there will be thanks for things serious, funny and thought-provoking).

All of this isn’t something new or bizarre: the word “liturgy” means “the work of the people”. Such a service gives everyone in the congregation a say in what is done and said.

Would you like to go to such a church service?

Posted in Creativity, Effective Church | Tagged active, church service, discussion, energising, liturgy, sermon, taking part, writing | Leave a comment

BILL VIOLA – “I’m going to say what it really means, what it is to me”

Posted on April 30, 2018 by commaandco

In this 28 minute interview, Bill Viola, the well-known video artist, talks about his practice and life.

It’s wholly appropriate to have a artist in this medium explain himself through the same medium, video. In fact, he found out the reason for one of his key motifs, water, through another interview, some time ago, when he told of an almost-forgotten near-drowning incident when he was 6, where he saw a wonderful world and light at the bottom of the water, felt drawn towards it – and only lived because of his uncle rescuing his body. At which the interviewer commented that that was probably why water occurred so often in his work – which startled Bill, but made sense to him, “Of course!”

In this interview, he explains that, for him, video is like “an electronic water”, as it flows – the electrons flow in circuits.

“And of course, then the brain and your body becomes also connected with electricity. We’re speaking now and I’m gesturing with my hands, because the electric waves that are in my body, coming from the pumping of my heart and stuff are allowing me to move them. ‘Cos it’s all flowing…. and the synapses in our brains are firing.”

When he first saw an early video camera – brought into school just before he left for college – the light in it seemed like the light in the water which he’d seen and felt drawn towards, when he nearly drowned – “the light had come back to me” It was profoundly moving, when the camera was switched off, he was nearly shaking. When he got to college, he immediately searched for and signed up for a videomaking workshop.

Through observation, he noticed how droplets of rain on his glasses each were like a lens, reflecting what was going on around him – and from this, created the piece “He weeps for you” in which ‘tears’ or droplets of water are slowly released, in deep close-up.

Throughout college, he privately read writings by mystics, particularly finding himself absorbed and moved by the poetry of St John of the Cross – making a piece on this later, he hesitated to name it with religious terms (expecting this would be ridiculed by art critics), but finally decided to call it what it was: “Room for St John of the Cross”. That marked a “turning point” in his naming his pieces exactly what they meant to him. The response? “Man, some of the critics just went crazy – you know, here I was, like, a contemporary artist, you know, and I’m making a piece about a Catholic saint – in the Middle Ages!” “That was the moment I took my stand; I said I’m going to say what it really is, what it means for me.”

The dying of his mother – unexpectedly, after 3 months in a coma – was profound as he was present and he describes it as beautiful, deeply sad and mysterious. When she had taken her last breath, he looked at the body on the bed and felt it was not his mother, but like a pile of laundry. After that, he broke the habit of a lifetime and brought his family videos into his workspace, realising that the everyday things of being with family have to be as much part of life as making famous art. In fact, right after his mother’s death, he took 3 months off work, despite a pressing deadline from funders – and every morning, sat replaying the footage of his mother, “like a prayer”. She was not going to take a breath again, but in the video, he could see her and almost be with her.

Later, after his father’s death, he made a series of works on the theme of “Passions” – grieving, crying themes.

This is a good video interview, it feels leisurely, not rushed, and very personal. We hear about his early works and which works were particularly important to him (although of course all were absorbing) – which pieces carried an importance for more than one work, but for years.

A really good starting point for finding out about Bill Viola’s life and work, from the start.

Posted in Creativity, Video | Tagged art, Bill viola, death, life, making, moving image, Spirituality, St John of the Cross, Video, water | Leave a comment

Found in Translation

Posted on April 8, 2018 by commaandco

Randomly, in my bookshelves, I re-encountered “Subversive Spirituality” a book by Eugene Peterson – best known for his translation of the Bible into modern-day (American) speech: The Message translation.

While being a pastor, Eugene had spent a year on translating the Bible book of Romans into this everyday language. Then, he felt it was time for his pastoral ministry to end – and within a month of this happening, he was contacted by a publisher and asked to translate the whole Bible similarly. At first, he wasn’t sure that he could accomplish such a massive task – but as he began, he found something interesting – it came easily to him, he had a sense of harvest.

For a long time, as a pastor, he had been reading the original Greek and Hebrew of the Bible, then translating it into words and ideas which modern day Americans in his congregation could understand.

I love that description of a sense of harvest. That, later in life, what we have been doing naturally in life, as part of who we are, and how we think, becomes a flowing out to others.

Question to ask ourselves: what am I translating? What is the work of my life?

“If I were going to set up a seminary curriculum, I would spend one whole year on a couple of poets. I would insist that students learn how to read poetry, learn how words work. We don’t pay enough attention to words – we use words all the time, but we use them in a commercialized, consumer way. That consumer-oriented use of words has little place in the church, in the pulpit, in counselling. We’re trying to find how words work, their own work.” – Eugene Peterson, “Subversive Spirituality”

Posted in Book Reviews, Creativity | Tagged church, Eugene Peterson, life work, poetry, Training, translation, words | Leave a comment

5 Reasons people don’t go to church

Posted on March 22, 2018 by commaandco

There’s a great deal of interest and research about why people don’t go to church – this presenter at Greenbelt asked her friends to give their personal reasons, anonymously. Here, she reads out the results. Here are the honest thoughts of real people, worth listening to.

Offputting things included: flags, overstrong orange juice, never getting to be Mary in nativity play, church locked the doors at the back of the building during the service, they don’t believe in God or Jesus, they felt they had to believe before they went, they enjoyed the peace but felt it would be hypocritical to go as they didn’t attend Sunday service, they didn’t want to go on their own (one vicar arranges for people to meet newcomers from local train station and walk with them to church), can’t find somewhere they feel at home (she suggest shop around), they feel rejected by the church because they’re gay, when they asked questions in church growing up they got fobbed off……

Posted in Effective Church, Video | Tagged church, don't go to church, non-attendance, reasons, Video, why | Leave a comment