Yesterday evening I was asked to do something with the group of folks that meet in the evening at CEMC. I thought I’d introduce them to the idea of prayer as creativity – through music, dance and art. Here’s what I used:

The soundtrack …

Roll away your stone – Mumford and Sons

All this and heaven too – Florence and the Machine

Wonderful life – Hurts

The opener … 

This video from 24/7 Prayer

Talking about my thing …

I talked about how I love using poi in worship. I know its a bit corny but I like it! Don’t know what poi is? Check this out.

Someone else’s story …

I saw Richard Passmore at a conference I went to last year and he told this story:

Abs and Flow

Talking about their thing …

I got everyone to talk about when they’d experienced flow – being connected to something bigger than themselves through creative activity. One lady shared a remarkable story of how God inspires her to sing, and gives her the words and the melody – fab!

Do something …

Then there was about fifteen minutes left for us to pray – and I asked people to do in not using words.

There were a couple of things to do. One was simply to take paper and pencil or pens and draw something, or you could drop ink (ok. food colouring!) in water – like this:

A while ago, on the recommendation of a friend, I did an online test called strengths finder. You answer a load of questions really quickly and then it gives you a list of your strengths based on the way you answer questions. I’m posting the results here because I’ve recently been in conversations with others who’ve done it but I can never remember what my five things were!

Ideation – fascinated by ideas

Input – collect stuff, information, experiences etc. and file them away because they may one day be useful.

Learner - enjoy the process of learning, gaining skills and competencies.

Connectedness – understand we are connected to something bigger than ourselves

Includer – wants to include others

For those of you who know me – does this sound like me?

Last night we started our new worship service, called the Gathering. Here’s a story I told as part of it.

I want to tell you all about how I came to be here, in this city. You see I came for the festival and never left.

I came here to the festival with a bunch of my mates and we were having a great time. One morning, fairly early on, we were out on the street and a group of lads just bundled past us. I thought at first they had been out all night and just kept going long into the next day. That’s the kind of thing that happens at festival time. But then I thought no, they’re performance artists. Maybe some avant garde student company, because they all started talking at the tops of their voices, garbling some strange languages. I thought that right up until one of them cornered me and my friends. He spoke to me in the language of my heart, the language of home. He said “Whey hinnies, have youse heard about this gadgee Jesus? We’ve bin gannin aroond with him for like three years. letus tell yers aboot him.” When he spoke it was like fireworks in my heart, I had shivers up and down my spine and I knew that nothing would be the same again.

So I stayed in the city and some of my mates stayed too. And all we do is we hang on the words of those who knew Jesus. We listen to the stories they remember him telling and the things he did. Some of the things he said were weird and hard to figure out. We do talk about what he meant by those things, I reckon people will still be trying to figure it out in thousands of years time. And now we’ve got stories of our own too – people being healed and all sorts – you wouldn’t believe it. We’ve really been looked after by those folks who followed Jesus. Even though our jobs and families are miles away, we’ve been accepted into people’s homes and there’s been plenty of food to go around, no-one goes hungry. People have even sold land and property to make sure that everyone has enough. We meet together every day, we go out into the city and pray and then come back and share food. The meals together are the best time. You know what? It just keeps getting better and bigger, more people are joining us all the time.

I know this can’t last. At some point I’ll have to move on. It may be that I’ll go back to my home town and my family, I do miss them. But maybe God has other plans for me, maybe I’ll be sent somewhere new. But I’ll always remember this time as special. This time. This city. These people. This God.

Gemeinschaft: a spontaneously arising organic social relationship characterized by strong reciprocal bonds of sentiment and kinship within a common tradition;

I don’t speak German, so when I went to Germany last week to meet German methodists who were interested in church planting, I had to do a lot of listening. Most of the time, what people said was translated for me into english. But if it wasn’t then I found that if I listened, I could pick out the odd word and that gave me a sense of the whole.

One word I became familiar with was Gemeinschaft. It means community. I felt I should look it up because often with a straight translation there are nuances that you miss. I think I missed a lot because when I found the definition above I realised that Gemeinschaft is exactly what I want, its more than community or friendship. it’s what I feel I need, what’s missing right now. That’s not to say I don’t see it in the very near future, but we’re not quite there yet.

I think if I moved hundreds of miles to a new place and immediately fell straight into that kind of community, then I would never be able to relate to those who do find it hard, who do struggle to fit in. So I think that on some level I need to wait, but I’m getting impatient! Every time I go somewhere I am the new person, and its hard work, to always be new. I think back to the communities I’ve left behind and I miss them. So I want to try and find the Gemindeschaft here because I feel like I need that.

And if I need it, so do others. So when I’ve found it, I pledge not to stop there, I want to find the people who need community and be open enough for them to feel at home with us.

One of the most powerful things about last week’s worship at ECG was the chance to hear stories not sermons. In that vein, here are three stories that might tell you a little more about me, if you let them.

Three stories

One

I had a new dress. I liked it, but it was a complete departure from my normal clothes. It wasn’t black for a start, it didn’t have the names of any rock bands on it, it contained no leather, denim or lycra. It came from Laura Ashley. Nowadays you’d say it had a vintage look but at the time I just knew it was safe and chaste, and I liked it all the same. It was blue linen with a white lace collar. It buttoned up the front and had a full long skirt. I felt like Judy Garland in the Wizard of Oz.

The minister in our methodist chapel was a good guy. He was incredibly supportive of all these young folks who filled up the church with their doc marten boots and guitars. He told us more than once that we were not the church of the future, we were the church of today. He fought for us. But he couldn’t remember our names, so when several of us lined up at the front of the church to be received into membership, each of us was holding in our cupped hands a slip of paper with our full names on, just in case.

I think there were vows made that day, but I don’t remember any of the exact words. What I do remember is kneeling at the rail holding a tiny sip of juice in what looked like a shot glass and seeing ahead of me, not the orange varnished woodwork of the church furniture, but a vision of a twisted, bloodied and mangled mess of a body. It stayed with me only a fraction of a second, but I can still recall it vividly today. If I tried, I could probably reproduce it in paint. I’m not sure I want to.

Send down your Holy Spirit on these gifts of bread and wine that they may be for us the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Two

With friends, gathered round a table…

We all knew our parts, what role we played in this community. I knew that I was the bringer of cold meats, and occasionally cheese. Every week, our little group gathered and spread out our offerings on a go-pak folding table. Someone would always bring freshly made bread from their bread maker, dotted with sun dried tomatoes or onion. Someone else would make a fresh salad. Others made sure that there was proper coffee, hot tea and milk. The rest of us brought something from the abundance of sainsburys; cake and quiche, taboulleh and houmous, scotch eggs and mini pepperami. Add to this table a single glass of merlot and a slice of that fresh warm bread.

It would always take some time to gather everyone, from the kitchen, from the bathroom, and to get the kids to leave the room with all the toys in. As we settled round the table with our plates, conversation would usually turn to Doctor Who or Formula One or running or house buying. We did talk about Doctor Who a lot.

We would call for hush, possibly the only time of quiet and calm we would have that day, and someone would pick up a bible, turn to a part that told the story of Jesus last meal with his friends, on the very night when he was arrested and simply read it. Then we’d tear chunks from that bread and feed one another and pass the glass to each one in turn.

One of our friends would usually leave just before this point, he would get up and wander out of the room, and that was fine. He would return when we were safely completed the solemn moment and when the chatter had returned. Then one time he didn’t. He stayed and shared with us. His wife whispered her thanks and amazement to me shortly afterwards. When he first joined us he would say very firmly that he wasn’t a Christian, then after a couple of years of questioning and becoming addicted to nooma videos and becoming a father and joining with us for communion, he began to say that he was becoming a Christian. I think that I am becoming a Christian too.

Sharing that meal got us as a community into a lot of trouble. I think it was worth it – if only for my friend. I would do it again.

Three

Or would I? Maybe not. It would be harder now.

Four days ago I took part in an amazing, holy, spiritual act of worship. I’ve never felt the intensity of God’s presence through the words and actions of communion quite so markedly before. I drank in the stories of the disciples last days with Jesus, closed my eyes and felt the confusion and anger and elation and despair of that revolutionary week. We had designed the worship so that there were layers to be held together, an ancient layer where we lived the story of Jesus out in our minds, and a today layer where we held that temporary community of believers together in the familiar with symbolic words and actions of memorial.

The unexpected joy of that act of worship for me has left me with a sadness that’s almost overwhelming. How can I form a community of believers and disciples here in this new place and never be able to lead them into that place of memorial and salvation? My previous little group of friends were essentially independent, but now I’m part of a tradition and that tradition has particular requirements about how this memorial and meal are to be commemorated. I don’t fit those requirements, I’ve not done the right kind of training and I’ve not walked through the right doors. I’m pretty sure God has told me not to be ordained – how can I go against that? Something has to break here and it might just be me.

How can I describe the experience of the past week?

I could say it in simple terms. I went to a conference in Scarborough called ECG. I went with some other pioneers from VentureFX and together we ran a theatre venue for the week. We worshipped God and there was some bible study and seminars and I did craft with folks.

That doesn’t really do it justice though.

Let me put it another way.

Sometimes you start on a piece of work, say an artwork, and you begin with the inkling of an idea. You make sketch after sketch and hone your idea and it bends and twists and takes on a shape of its own. Often, at the end of that sketching process, your plan looks very different to how you imagined it at the start. Finally you’re ready to begin, you take up your tools and you begin to carve, paint or mould what will become the final piece. It can be a long lonely process, some bits work as expected, others mean you need to improvise as you go on, changing some things that didn’t look quite right the first time. Sometimes, at the best times, it seems to flow.

Now imagine that work as a community. Not an individual creating an artwork but a community creating a time when we can stare out in wonder at the infinite God and encounter the intimacy of sacred space.

That’s what happened this week.

It happened with ancient tales and personal stories, with songs and art, with mirrors and post-its. You may think those things are not especially holy, but they are just the tools of the artist, not the artwork itself. Each person contributed something of themselves, something nobody else could have brought, and each time something new was unfolded, it added to the richness and vitality of the whole. It flowed.

What next though?

What happens next is that we here in Edinburgh attempt to become that kind of community. There are a few of us who have begun to sketch. We saw the germ of an idea and we’re refining it and honing it, we’re drawing and redrawing parts of it in pencil and it’s already gone through several different shapes. Fairly soon we’ll be dragging our paints and canvas out of the cupboard and immersing ourselves in creating something unique and wonderful. We’re going to call it the Gathering. Come and make something beautiful with us.

I like twitter. I love the eclecticism of subjects that sit side by side. There are job ads and competitions, events being publicised and people talking about tv. In the midst of that you get some serious tweets sandwiched in-between the mundane.

In the last few days there’s been a bit more focus on some serious subjects. Last night, I did a search on a tag that was trending, #ididnotreport and read too many heartbreaking stories of violence and abuse that have gone unnoticed because they weren’t considered serious enough or because women thought they would not be believed. If you’re feeling brave, go to twitter and take a look.

I love the way twitter gives us a chance to share our experiences and feel like we’re not alone. Linda Grant has written up the storm of tweets she unintentionally stirred up on international women’s day earlier this week when she wanted to demonstrate how much contemporary women owe to the feminist movement.

It bothers me that much of the church has not caught up with society on seeing women as independent and as leaders. This is not from twitter but I’ve also read a number of blog posts recently on the lack of female church planters. This is probably the best. Mostly these articles are from American perspective but there is sexism in the church here too – look at the anglican church still trying to find compromises for those who won’t accept women as bishops.

I like beauty but I find it a bit oppressive. There’s something daunting about walking through the beauty hall of a department store. I feel that if nobody tries to stop me to get me to sample something then I mustn’t seem like I care about how I look. However if they do stop me, it always feels like an imposition.

When I talk about beauty, what I mean in this instance is the beauty industry, that creative, greedy industry that churns out creams and serums and makeup.

Its easy to be cynical about beauty, it’s manipulative, it idolises youth and sets us all up to fail. Yet, last week I had a couple of beauty treatments – nothing major, just tidied up some stray facial hairs and had an eyelash tint. I bought some new makeup and made myself try some new things that I wouldn’t usually try. And I felt so much better for it. It did give me confidence, and made me feel stronger.

Here are some links to beauty related posts. Some of them are things that I like that inspire me, and others are the things that aren’t so good about the way we think about beauty. I think we need to hear both sides.

There are two youtube streams I watch occasionally to get tips and hear about new products:

Lisa Eldridge is a makeup artist who I’d occasionally seen on tv or in magazines. I really like her videos, the before and after looks are stunning – but she does sometimes use very expensive and hard to find products and I don’t know if I buy something cheaper will it have the same effect.

I also like Lauren Luke, I like it that she’s a normal lass from South Shields who started by copying celebrity looks from magazines on herself and posting the results online.

Here’s a commercial for a new beauty product; Fotoshop by Adobe

And here’s a thoughtful piece on beauty in China. I noticed a similar thing in India, where the paler skin is considered more beautiful and whitening creams were advertised on the tv. I wonder if they find it strange to see adverts for fake tan for us pale folks?

Last week I made a poster. This poster. It’s not the most original poster in the world but I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. Someone asked how I’d done it. I gave the simple answer, which was to find three stock images, layer them one over the top of another then write the text in a grungy font. easy right?

(BTW it will be a good day out. You should think of coming!)

But actually what I spent most of my time doing was reflecting on the content of the event and thinking of how that could be represented in image. So I looked for urban images, I thought I’d find one of London because that’s where the day is taking place. My random search for ‘urban’ images brought up a picture of broken glass and I liked the patterns in the image so I picked that one out. A search for ‘margins’ made me think of school exercise books where I’d doodle in the margins, so some lined paper became my third image. I tried to simulate that doodling in the margins but it looked naff so I diminished the lined paper so you should only really notice it if you’re looking for it. I spent ages moving the text around and trying out different fonts. All the while I was completely absorbed. I find creating anything to be a completely immersive experience.

It’s the same with dressmaking. I made a skirt the week before last. It’s really simple, just a straight skirt in tweed with a few simple details. easy. But it came about because I’d been to the fabric shop months ago and couldn’t put out of my mind the racks of rich scottish tweeds and tartans. I saw someone wearing a lovely woollen skirt on George Street that had box pleats all round, It looked great and stayed with me. I didn’t want a pleated skirt but I could put a box pleat in the centre back instead of a vent pleat. I finished the inside with blue silk and a satin binding. That’s something I’ve been wanting to do for about a year too.

When it comes to creating I find it easy to start with a vague idea and add elements as it goes along. It’s the combination of all those different ideas that makes the finished article unique. It’s the same when it comes to projects. I’ve been writing up a project proposal to use part of the building at the City of Edinburgh Methodist Church as the base for an arts community. I find it easy to come up with the basic idea – that can be expressed in a sentence. But I think I want to see it evolve slowly and add in different elements as we go along. That seems to me to be the creative thing to do. I’m meeting with some folks tonight and I think my main job is to convince them to trust me to be creative and to say yes even though not all the elements and ideas and people are in place.

I love these fashion animations. I love the ‘is it a photograph? is it a video?’ vibe, the colours and quirkiness and the girl stroking a sheep.

Some fab art at streetartutopia.com

and finally …

Lego Church!!