Yesterday was pancake day and today sees the start of lent. Jane Williams in the Guardian has written a little on what it can be about – and it’s not all giving up chocolate!

Lent is a chance to take stock and imagine a changed world.

After yesterday’s post I thought it was time for something a bit more positive.

We have a wee group that meets every month or so called ‘Kinship’. It’s half a dozen or so people and I’ve met with the group four or five times now. We’ve had a meal together and chatted about where we feel we are spiritually. That’s it – not rocket science.

At the same time there have been a few folks talking about beginning a new church in Edinburgh built on good relationships. Discipleship is a word we’ve been using a lot – it means something like student – and is based on the name given to the people who followed Jesus around and learnt from him.

It occurred to us that Kinship, this little group, and this new church community thing (that doesn’t yet have a name) are essentially the same thing. We began to talk about our small group being a pilot for a larger network of small groups that meet frequently for food and chat and come together more occasionally to do some bigger things.

I’m quite excited about that.

I’ve found it difficult to blog here. I’ve started lots of posts and felt that for one reason or another I can’t complete them. I’m feeling aware that this is because I’ve set this blog up in the name of VentureFX (the methodist pioneer scheme) and because I’m working with the Methodists in Edinburgh. Previously I blogged whatever I wanted to and it was only me that had to answer for whatever I wrote. Now I’m wondering if I can freely express my opinions here without them being tied to the organisations I’m part of.

My decision is that if I want to do anything meaningful then I have to be myself with everything that entails and that I need this not to be another bland space on the internet where nothing of any real interest or value is discussed.

On that note … can I tell you about the silver plate?

Last sunday I took the service at the City of Edinburgh Methodist Church (CEMC). I worked with Ken and Casey Weatherford and we planned and shared the service between us. We started talking about what we’d do about a month beforehand. In the week before the service I made a video, wrote mediations, climbed a hill to bring down a handful of stones. Ken and Casey worked on their vacation to pull together images, words, songs & prayers.

For about half an hour after the service I only had two comments about what we’d done, both on the same subject. I didn’t use the silver plate they’d put out to bless to collection on. Oh, there was one other thing. Someone didn’t like that we’d used a guitar to lead a couple of songs.

To all the people who came up to me over coffee and said nice things, thank you. But my lasting memory of the day will be that bloody silver plate. I think it may remain a symbol for me of the contrasting world views of those inside and those outside or on the fringes of the church. It’s definitely a symbol of differing priorities. I simply don’t understand why it’s important. It’s not wilful rebellion or antagonism on my part (though next time I’m there it may become so!). It honestly is that I don’t think a silver plate is important. If you think it is could you explain it to me please?

A week or so ago I went to see a work of art at the Barbican with some friends. It was a piece of theatre that combined music, dance, visuals and art by the composer and choreographer Hofesh Shechter and the sculptor Anthony Gormley. I feel as though I can’t really describe the experience of being there, I can say some of the things that happened (a man climbing inside a bathtub and whispering down the plughole, a night vision camera giving us a different vantage point, shot-puts being dropped onto the stage from a high platform, images of seas, waterfalls, collapsing buildings and starlings flocking – I could go on) but I don’t think that really does justice to the experience.

Being there, I felt as if I were immersed in a psalm, one of the tormented psalms where waves of distress and anguish lead the cry to God and are met with alternating silence and hope. I can’t write a review of it in the way a theatre critic would but I can write something. So here is my psalm inspired by this work of art. It will be interesting to know what you make of it.

Survivor

The start of something the end of everything. This is now all I know.

There was a past. There were dreams. They will forever remain dreams. Reality cannot become the hope.

I carry the weight of it. The thing that happened. It posesses me.

It cracks the floor. The sky explodes with pain.

I do not know this world for I am alone in it. There is only me and the infinite sea.

I want to join it, become one with it even though I know that it would destroy me. It is the only beautiful thing left. I want it to destroy me. I welcome the struggle for air as I slip beneath the surface.

Something holds me back. I hold my trauma close. Turning it over in my hands, until the weight seems bearable. One day I may be able to cast it aside. But not yet.

As each wave breaks, the future comes closer. I can’t see it but I know it exists. And that is enough for now.

The purity of the crowd soothes me. I see the others, each carrying their trauma. They are posessed as I am posessed.

We open ourselves. We become the heartbeat, the drumbeat. We are the ocean. We are the stars. We are the swooping flocking mass.

There is no longer any I because I am lost. There is only us. We are one. We are free.

Part of my reason for being in Edinburgh is to help people who might be new to the city to fit in and find friends. I’m beginning by being a newbie to the city and trying to make friends. I’ve been on the lookout for things that are happening in the city which are interesting, creative and joyful. Some of them I’ve been able to go along to, others I’ve not but I hope to soon! These are presented in no particular order:

Granny Greens

A weekly meet up for crafters. I’ve been along to this a couple of times and hope to make it a regular feature of my week! We’ve met in cafes or pubs and taken a project along to do, or sometimes there’s an opportunity to learn something new, and there’s a book group too. I’ve been welcomed every time I’ve been along, a very friendly bunch!

Edinburgh Cake Ladies

Apparently baking is a trend. I’m just glad that the rest of the world has caught up with what we home bakers have always known … that there’s nothing like a homemade slice of cake. Edinburgh cake ladies (and gents) meet up a few times a year to share cakey goodness with one another. I’m already planning what cake I could make to take along to their next meeting!

Out of the Blue

I went to a Christmas craft market at the Out of the Blue Drill Hall, just off Leith Walk. It was so good, I had to text my vintage and textile loving friend from Manchester to gloat Taking a look at their website, there’s loads going on there, arty stuff, music, dance. I’m sure I’ll be back soon.

Edinburgh Printmakers

Edinburgh Printmakers have a fabulous light open space with equipment for any type of art printing you can think of. I went to their open day at the end of last year and came away excited by the prospect of doing one of their courses. Members can use the studio at any time, and that’s a big incentive as signing up to a course gives you membership for a few months so you can perfect your skills.

That’s all for now but I’ve only just scratched the surface. There will be more to come!

It’s the beginning of a brand new sparkly new year and Edinburgh certainly knows how to celebrate a new year. Because this was our first hogmanay in Edinburgh, we thought it would be good to get tickets for the street party. My sister came up for a few days and we met up with some friends too. It felt a little odd paying so much just to be allowed in to a street on which you can stand on any other night for free! But on any other night you don’t get the atmosphere, the sights, the fireworks on the hour every hour and you certainly don’t get hugged by random people who’ve been drinking something out of a lucozade bottle which most likely isn’t plain lucozade! We had a slow wander down the street from Waverley towards the castle. We ended the night with a great view of the castle and the fireworks – which were truly spectacular!

It was great just to be there. I don’t know whether I’d do it again, maybe I’d join the ceilidh Our local friends tell us that the best thing to do is to climb a hill and see the fireworks explode all over the city. Lets do that next year!

Tim took some photos from the night which are here:

Many people were dressed the part!

Five minutes to go!

Happy Hogmanay one and all! May 2012 be a belter of a year for you!

All photos ©Tim Davis 2011

You may be wondering what happened to the advent art …

… technical difficulties.

This was the first time I’d tried using real lino for my linocuts. I got an A4 piece from a local art shop because the polymer block I’d ordered didn’t arrive in time for advent.

Cutting the lino was fine, it is more brittle than the polymer but I like the way you can chip at it, I think that may lead to images with more texture and interest. Unfortunately, the lino is more absorbent than the polymer. I used a whole pot of paint to get those two images. I just kept rollering that ink on and it made no discernible difference to the image that appeared on the paper.

I decided to wait for my polymer to arrive … it got here a few days before Christmas.

Oh well … there’s always next year!

Alison and I had a chat last week, and I was telling her my initial thoughts on edinburghDreams and on the wider remit of VentureFX. (edinburghDreams is the name for the random thinking and plotting that I’m doing in Edinburgh, VentureFX is the scheme the Methodist Church have set up to free people all over to do similar plotting and thinking!). She went away and thought about it and sent me these reflections on our conversation. I think they deserve a wider audience so here they are!

It’s an open question as to whether we can change the Church radically from within. How would we recognise and keep those elements which are truly Godly and let go of those which are not? Many of us are fully immersed in our paradigm of Church. A paradigm which is so far removed from many people’s world view that we struggle to recognise the symptoms of unfriendliness and irrelevance in our Church practices and are baffled and discouraged by our inability to reach out and be relevant to others.

In our quiet inarticulate ways we try to live lives focussed on Christ. But rather than being seen as radical, we are regarded at best as little more than well meaning folk who have yet to evolve into humans fit for a post Darwinian world – pandas, all too clearly nearing  in an evolutionary dead end – leave them alone and they will be extinct soon.

There is a less benign view. Religious organisations and people of faith are justly criticised for condoning or even conducting atrocities, inspiring imperial domination and for abusing the vulnerable. The list could be much longer. Less ‘panda’ more ‘pariah’ – to be attacked or at least avoided at all cost.

We have an image problem of serious proportions. And the tragedy is many decent caring people are impressed, moved and even drawn to Jesus, but want nothing to do with the Church. How then are we called to be Christ’s hands and feet on earth? Do we need a paradigm shift in our understanding of what it means to be Church to evolve beyond the Panda/Pariah model?

Paradigm shifts occur when the weight of evidence calling into question current modes of thinking or practice tips the balance and a new understanding emerges. (The classic example is of the shift from a flat world view to a spherical world view.) Early visionaries are seen as highly dangerous, are often scorned and sometimes killed, so much is such a change feared. There is a sense of confusion and panic as accepted rules are undermined. In desperation some cling to the leaky life rafts of outmoded thinking. Others leap ship, pinning their own frustrated but unrealistic ideals for the future on the mast of the new paradigm, only to find the ship is heading in an unexpected direction.

I wonder if we can discern traces of a paradigm shift within our Church? If so, we are in those scary, early stages. Those who respond most profoundly to the love of God, conscientiously undertaking their apprenticeship as Disciples of Christ and fully opening themselves up to the transforming power of the Holy Spirit will surely be the first to live in the new paradigm. They will have learned to let go of the ‘former things’. They will live fully in the world alongside others of no faith and of other faiths in such a way as transforms those whom they meet – this after all is the promise of the Gospel.

Neither panda nor pariah (there is no animal equivalent as far as I know!) they will simply be People of Christ. Of course, such people have always existed. This is why in general, those who are anti-church will often qualify this by stating that they know some very decent Christians. Perhaps, though, the Church has struggled to prioritise supporting them and the way they live in the world, over and above everything else.

But what of our much loved traditions, personal insights, dedicated service and loyal witness within the Church over the years? Does this count for nothing if we can’t evolve into this unknown future? Not at all, for revolutions, whether in scientific thinking or in models of Church, don’t occur without work within the current paradigm. They emerge out of a misfit between accepted practice and new understandings or experience. All is not lost in this process, but in truth all is not kept.

But rather than worrying about that the Church must be wary of scorning or at worst killing off the visionaries – that is a mistake it has made all too often in the past. Equally those who see clearly the flaws in our current model of Church must be patient with the inherited Church – elements of which encourage and support that which they don’t fully understand but believe is of God.

Paradigm shifts are messy and disturbing. If we are undergoing one, it is, nevertheless, to be welcomed. It is evidence that God still has work for us to do and a future for the Church. One last thought – perhaps the suggestion that we are entering a paradigm shift is a distraction or an optimistic delusion. Might we not be better to work at doing better those things that we know? The answer to this is probably both yes and no. Yes, in as much as God blesses all our efforts. No, in that by pouring too much energy into defending our own model of Church, we may be frustrating God’s..

Behold the tabernacle of God is with men
and he will dwell with them and they shall be his people,
and God himself shall be with them and be their God
And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes
And there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying
neither shall there be any more pain for the former things are passed away.