An introduction to Transition Town Redbridge

Here is information from Transition Town Redbridge about their introductory event this Saturday:

'"Transition" is one manifestation of the idea that local action can change the world. The aim of Transition is to help you be the catalyst in your community to make where you live more resilient, healthier and bursting with strong local livelihoods, while also reducing its ecological footprint. It’s something that can only happen from the ground up, driven by ordinary people.

Transition Town Redbridge was formulated in 2013 and is hosting its first ‘mini-conference’. An Introduction to Transition Town Redbridge will be talks, discussion and other tasters of how to get involved in our Transition Town.

Time: 2pm – 3.30pm
Date: 25th October 2014
at the ‘Enterprise Exchange’, Top Floor, (3rd floor), The Exchange, Ilford.

Draft Programme
2.00pm Food in Transition
2.30pm The Brixton Pound / Alternative Economies
3.00pm Saving Energy / Cutting Bills
3.10pm The Sharing Economy
3.15pm Seven Kings Time Bank

Please drop in and find out more about Transition Town Redbridge due to have its official launch early in the new year.'

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Deacon Blue - The Living.

Self-sacrifice and distinctive Christianity

I’ve read Andrei Tarkovsky’s Sculpting in Time immediately after Sam Norton’s Let us be human and have been fascinated to find that both have been addressing the same issue; that only by becoming more distinctively Christian can we engage constructively with the crises of our times.

For Tarkovsky, writing in the 1980s, the crisis is that of competing ideologies where the “assertion of class or group interests, accompanied by the invocation of the good of humanity and the ‘general welfare’, result in flagrant violations of the rights of the individual, who is fatally estranged from society.” The individual either “becomes the instrument of other people’s ideas and ambitions” or else becomes “a boss who shapes and uses other people’s energies with no regard for the rights of the individual.” He argues that “the laws of a materialistic worldview” are that “selfish interests ... make up a ‘normal’ rationale for action.” Modern man, he suggests, “is not prepared to deny himself and his interests for the sake of other people or in the name of what is Creator.” As a result, “many of the misfortunes besetting humanity are the result of our having become unforgivably, culpably, hopelessly materialistic.”  This is particularly dangerous because “we seem to have a fatal incapacity for mastering our material achievements in order to use them for our own good” and “have created a civilization which threatens to annihilate mankind.”

For Norton, the contemporary presenting issue is that of peak oil; limits or a peak to the volume of fossil fuels which can be produced leading to a decline in production. Because our “contemporary way of life in the affluent West is built around the easy availability of cheap liquid fuel,” peak oil inevitably means significant change and challenge for our culture. However, it also exposes an underlying predicament, “that exponential growth cannot continue within a finite environment.” Exponential growth – “the continued doubling of a quantity over time” – has been worshipped as an idol within Western society because such growth in water use, food production, steel production, and our economies generally “has led to great abundance in the rich countries, and a much higher quality of life for those who live in industrialised countries.” Our “way of life has been built around the maintenance of exponential growth – and as that way of life crashes into ecological limits, so too will that way of life.” Norton writes that for this way of life to come to an end will be a blessing, because “our present way of life is a terrible, terrible pestilence on creation.”

So, the presenting issues which they address differ but the underlying issue or predicament which they identify is broadly similar. Both also criticise the place that science has come to assume within our society.

Norton argues that the “origin of our frenetically anti-phronetic society” – phronesis is practical judgement - “lies in the political assertion of science at the expense of Christianity.” This has taken two forms; first, “to say that scientific truth is the only truth” and second, that what we gain from processes of scientific investigation is more important than anything else. To make these two assertions downplays “the knowledge and awareness that can come through understanding poetry or art or great fables and stories” and also the passing on of wisdom which “is conducted through the rites and practices of religious faith, the telling of stories and sharing of rituals that embody and express a particular way of viewing the world and asserting a particular pattern of value.”   

Tarkovsky uses a more poetic and ambiguous image to again say something broadly similar:

“Seeing ourselves as protagonists of science, and in order to make our scientific objectivity the more convincing, we have split the one, indivisible human process down the middle, thereby revealing a solitary, but clearly visible, spring, which we declare to be the prime cause of everything, and use it not only to explain the mistakes of the past but also to draw up our blueprint for the future.”

Tarkovsky argues that “the individual today stands at a crossroads, faced with the choice of whether to pursue the existence of a blind consumer, subject to the implacable march of new technology and the endless multiplication of material goods, or to seek out a way that will lead to spiritual responsibility, a way that ultimately might mean not only his personal salvation but also the saving of society at large; in other words, to turn to God.”

Similarly, Norton, after saying that our “way of living – the western way of life, with its excess consumerism and mindless destruction of creation – this way of life destroys life,” then writes that the “vision of Christian life, of full humanity, is that there is a way of life shown to us by Christ which allows us to be all that God intends us to be.”

Their different vocations – of film-maker and priest – then lead them to develop slightly different emphases in the working out of the way that leads to wisdom and spiritual responsibility.

The key for Tarkovsky is to rediscover “the Christian sense of self-sacrifice,” “the Christian ideal of love of neighbour”:

“Concerned for the interests of the many, nobody thought of his own in the sense preached by Christ: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ That is, love yourself so much that you respect in yourself the supra-personal, divine principle, which forbids you to pursue your acquisitive, selfish interests and tells you to give yourself, without reasoning or talking about it; to love others. This requires a true sense of your own dignity: an acceptance of the objective value and significance of the ‘I’ at the centre of your life on earth, as it grows in spiritual stature, advancing towards the perfection in which there can be no egocentricity.”

Tarkovsky’s can be seen as a slightly individualistic conception of the spiritual way. It is one which sees little value in the contemporary Church:

“Not even the Church can quench man’s thirst for the Absolute, for unfortunately it exists as a kind of appendage, copying or even caricaturing the social institutions by which our everyday life is organised. Certainly in today’s world which leans so heavily towards the material and the technological, the Church shows no sign of being able to redress the balance with a call to spiritual awakening.”

Tarkovsky’s alternative to the Church is art:

“In this situation it seems to me that art is called to express the absolute freedom of man’s spiritual potential. I think that art was always man’s weapon against the material things which threatened to devour his spirit. It is no accident that in the course of nearly two thousand years of Christianity, art developed for a very long time i the context of religious ideas and goals. Its very existence kept alive in discordant humanity the idea of harmony.

Art embodied an ideal; it was an example of perfect balance between moral and material principles, a demonstration of the fact that such a balance is not a myth existing oly in the realm of ideology, but something which can be realised within the dimensions of the phenomenal world. Art expressed man’s need of harmony and his readiness to do battle with himself, within his own personality, for the sake of achieving the equilibrium for which he longed ...

Art affirms all that is best in man – hope, faith, love, beauty, prayer ... What he dreams of and what he hopes for ...

In a sense art is an image of the completed process, of the culmination; an imitation of the possession of absolute truth (albeit only in the form of an image) obviating the long – perhaps, indeed endless – path of history ...

Finally, I would enjoin the reader – confiding in him utterly – to believe that the one thing that mankind has ever created in a spirit of self-surrender is the artistic image. Perhaps the meaning of all human activity lies in artistic consciousness, in the pointless and selfless creative act? Perhaps our capacity to create is evidence that we ourselves were created in the image and likeness of God.”

Norton, by contrast, sees a much more significant role for the Church:

“The heart of what the Church is about is worship, because worship is where we learn to be different. Worship is the primary means of making disciples. This is why worship and getting worship right is so important, because worship is where we come into the presence of God formatively, and we are formed differently. We hear the word, we share the sacrament and that changes us ... Spiritually, this is the answer to the predicament which our civilisation faces. This is where we learn the wisdom that is the antidote to the poisonous asophism which afflicts our culture. The Church Fathers said ‘The Eucharist makes the Church’. I want to add ‘The Eucharist heals the world’.”

This focus though does not in any sense mean that he thinks that the church has perfectly fulfilled this role. Instead he writes:

“For all the things that are going wrong in our world the church must confess its own responsibility. It is because the people who have custody of the knowledge of God and whose duty it is to teach that knowledge of God have failed in their task that our civilisation has come to be in the predicament we now have to endure.”

Tarkovsky might well agree. While the Church, not the Arts, are Norton’s main focus, we have already noted his valuing of the Arts. He also writes that “the common recognition that science has too important a place in our cultural life has only been able to be voiced at the margins of society, amongst poets and playwright – those whose scientific credibility is not strong.”

He calls us to “get on with the task of building our cathedrals of justice, forgiveness and kindness in our communities, and walking humbly alongside the Lord, who is with us, letting Him teach us what it means to be human”:

“All of which is saying that the practice, the actual living out of Christian faith comes before the proclamation. The living out of the faith is foundational because that is what gives the words their weight. The practice is something which changes us on the inside and radiates out into our wider lives.”

It would seem possible that Tarkovsky had not encountered a contemporary church practising the faith in the way Norton describes and it would be interesting to know whether such an encounter would have changed his view of the Church. His injunction to “love yourself so much that you respect in yourself the supra-personal, divine principle, which forbids you to pursue your acquisitive, selfish interests and tells you to give yourself, without reasoning or talking about it; to love others” is  a focus on “the practice, the actual living out of Christian faith” about which Norton writes.      
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Olga Sergeeva - Kumushki.

Meltdown .... A PowerPoint presentation

Peter Challen has sent me an interesting PowerPoint presentation entitled 'Meltdown' about the next phase of the Global Financial crash, originally prepared and circulated by Dr Mike Haywood. Let me know if you'd like a copy and I'll forward it to you.

In summary, the presentation argues that ...
The debt mountain, peak oil, population growth, resource depletion, population growth, the pension time bomb and climate change are all interconnected. Remember, only 3 dozen economists correctly predicted the 2008 global financial crisis, out of a profession of 20,000 members. Not one of the World politicians and Central Bankers saw the crisis coming, but all of them claim to know the remedy.
Meltdown did not occur in October 2008, but we were within 4 hours of it happening. It has only been deferred. The reasons for the 2008 crash have not gone away. The US housing market is still in freefall and US and European Banks are becoming increasingly insolvent, although they won't admit it. Economic growth will be stifled by rising oil prices. The bailouts are not working. World Politicians, Bankers and Economists are trying to maintain the status quo but they are losing control. Fundamentally, the real systemic causes of the crisis are rarely discussed with transparency and have not been addressed. Fractional Reserve Banking and universal public ignorance of banking practices are the cause of all our global problems.

The collapse will happen within the next couple of years. The Eurozone or USA will most probably be the epicentre. The interconnectivity of the financial system means we will all be affected. What happens next after the collapse is impossible to predict. History is replete with examples but not on a Global scale. Massive political unrest will prevail. There will be a rise in popularity of extreme left and right political parties.
Peter recommends them as a valuable set of slides, graphs and summaries that might usefully be viewed before the Moving Planet day seminar at St James Piccadilly on September 24 see http://www.st-james-piccadilly.org/.

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Regina Spektor - Fidelity.

Be part of London's biggest bike aerial photo

This comes from 350.org:

 

On Saturday 24th September, bring yourself – and your bike if you want – to be part of a gigantic aerial art image. It'll be London's biggest ever bike!

That's all very nice, but why?

On the 24th, people all over the world will be coming together to take action as part of Moving Planet – a day to show we want to and can move beyond fossil fuels. Hundreds of thousands of people will converge via bike, foot, skates, kites, sailing boats all around the world to show their support for a fossil fuel free future.

Here in London our big bike will show how transport is a key part of this and that our wheels can turn and get us places without using fossil fuels.

When: 12 noon - 3pm
Where: Haggerston Park, nearest Tube station is Hoxton
What: Huge aerial art image of London's biggest bike

Join in the fun and sign up for this action here or RSVP via our FB events page.

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Pink Floyd - Bike.

Bob, God 'n' blood

The current issue of Third Way has an interesting article by Stephen Tomkins exploring the way in which Bob Dylan has consistently linked religion and violence throughout his career.

Tomkins briefly surveys the religious references in Dylan's work from the religious politics of 'With God On Our Side' through "a quiet, persistent interest in spirituality" from Blonde on Blonde to Blood on the Tracks followed by the "Jesus is returning and you're in for it" message of Slow Train Coming before in his most recent work, most particularly Love and Theft, considering "the relationship between love, faith and violence, repeatedly bringing them together in an often incongruous ménage, and often at the most incongruous moments."

Tomkins concludes that the movement in Dylan's work is of the "politics of the earlier records" giving way to personal understanding; "religion, bloodshed and sex not as phenomena of the world out there, but first and above all as part of every human nature, things that we all carry around all the time." The realization found in the work, Tomkins suggests, is "that the line between Us and Them runs through me" and that perhaps "we stand a better chance of getting somewhere with changin' our times if we start by knowing ourselves."

I'm not sure though that this really gets to the heart of why Dylan links religion and violence. It's an important issue because many who are not religious link religion with violence and view the link as a reason to reject religion. Dylan doesn't do that despite clearly linking both, so exploring this theme in his work could potentially open up contemporary and universal debates. It is interesting too to compare Dylan's linking of the two with that of fellow rock star Nick Cave. Cave seems to view love as involving extreme emotion and therefore either inevitably involving violence or at least being inclined towards violence. Love of God, seems to be for him, the deepest emotion and therefore the most likely to result in violence and this is what attracted him to the language and imagery of the Bible, and the Psalms in particular. Cave's linking of religion and violence seems to me to be a better fit with the conclusion that Tomkins draws in his article than are the links which Dylan makes. 

Cave argues for a personal link to do with the deepest emotion that each of us can feel, while Dylan essentially doesn't do personal in his songs because his songs are observational rather than confessional. This, it seems to me, is the trap into which many Dylan critics fall and one which Dylan himself has regularly criticised in those who seek to analyse his songs.

Dylan comes from the tradition of hobo singers (Woody Guthrie) and beat poets (Jack Kerouac) for whom the journey and the documenting of their experience is life itself. Dylan as journeyman, as traveller, is the key insight of the liner notes for Tell Tale Signs where Larry Sloman signs off with a paragraph quoting a myriad of Dylan's lyrics:

"He ain't talking, but he's still walking, heart burning, still yearning. He's trampling through the mud, through the blistering sun, getting damp from the misty rain. He's got his top hat on, ambling along with his cane, stopping to watch all the young men and young women in their bright-coloured clothes cavorting in the park. Despite all the grief and devastation he's seen on his odyssey, his heart isn't weary, it's light and free, bursting all over with affection for all those who sailed with him. Deep down he knows that his loyal and much-loved companions approve of him and share his code. And it's dawn now, the sun beginning to shine down on him and his heart is still in the Highlands, over those hills, far away. But there's a way to get there and if anyone can, he'll figure it out. And in the meantime, he's already there in his mind. That mind decidedly out of time. And we're all that much richer for his journey."
      
Dylan's manifesto for his work is 'A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall'; a song about walking through a world which is surreal and unjust and singing what he sees:

"I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it,
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it,
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin',
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin' ..."

This is a song which has been interpreted as dealing with events that were contemporary to the time such as the Cuban missile crisis and, more generally, the threat of a nuclear holocaust. That maybe so, but I think a more straightforward interpretation and one that is closer to what the lyrics actually say is to see it as a statement by Dylan of what he is trying to do in and through his work. In the song he walks through a surreal and unjust world, ahead of him he sees a gathering apocalyptic storm and he resolves to walk in the shadow of the storm and sing out what he sees:

"... 'fore the rain starts a-fallin',
I'll walk to the depths of the deepest dark forest,
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty,
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters,
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison,
Where the executioner's face is always well hidden,
Where hunger is ugly, where the souls are forgotten,
Where black is the colour, where none is the number.
And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it,
And reflect from the mountain so that all souls can see it ...".

This then is the other key element to Dylan's journey and work; the idea of journeying in face of the coming apocalypse. What we have in the best of Dylan is a contemporary Pilgrim, Dante or Rimbaud on a compassionate journey, undertaken in the eye of the Apocalypse, to stand with the damned at the heart of the darkness that is twentieth century culture.

This is where religion and violence are linked in Dylan's work because apocalyptic imagery and themes run throughout his work and often require Biblical images and stories for their expression. Tomkins uses 'When The Ship Comes In' as a key song in his thesis arguing that it, like 'The Times They Are A-Changin', is about "the whole sixties social revolution, young versus old, freedom versus rules" and he picks up on Dylan's need when "rousing the righteous rabble" to use the "language of biblical violence." He sees this as an inconsistency in Dylan's early work, criticising religious politics while also appropriating its language.

But, while both songs can be understood in terms of the sixties revolution, neither need be understood in that way and the lyrics of neither song specifically make that connection. Instead both deal with rapidly approaching change described in apocalyptic terms - "admit that the waters/Around you have grown/And accept it that soon/You'll be drenched to the bone", "There's battle outside/And it is ragin'./It'll soon shake your windows/And rattle your walls", "Oh the time will stop ... 'Fore the hurricane begins/The hour when the ship comes in", "And like Pharoah's tribe,/They'll be drownded in the tide,/And like Goliath, they'll be conquered" - and when the apocalyptic moment arrives some will be on the positive side of the change and others not. Dylan may well be speaking, as Tomkins suggests, about "young versus old, freedom versus rules" but, on the basis of the lyrics themselves, it is not possible to be definitive because the language Dylan uses is deliberately unspecific. In neither song does he identify the specific nature of the change that is to come and it is this generality which gives these songs universality and continuing relevance because they can be applied to different circumstances at different times. What can definitively be said about both songs however is that they are warnings about a coming apocalyptic change and the warning is to do with which side of that change we will be on.

Understood in this way, these songs then have startling consistency with the songs which Dylan wrote in the wake of his 1978 conversion and which Tomkins describes as 'Jesus is returning and you're for it' songs. In my post Bob Dylan: Pilgrim, Dante and Rimbaud, I describe how from Slow Train Coming onwards Dylan equated the apocalypse with the imminent return of Christ. The return of Christ in judgement is the slow train that is "comin' up around the bend" and in the face of this apocalypse he calls on human beings to wake up and strengthen the things that remain. Similarly, in 'The Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar', he sees the apocalypse coming ("Curtain risin' on a new age") but not yet here while the Groom (Christ who awaits his bride, the Church) is still waiting at the altar. In the time that remains he again calls on human beings to arise from our slumber: "Dead man, dead man / When will you arise? / Cobwebs in your mind / Dust upon your eyes" ('Dead Man, Dead Man'). In the light of this thread in Dylan's songs throughout this period, it seems to me to be consistent to read 'Jokerman', from Infidels as another song in this vein; as a song depicting the apathy of humanity in the face of the apocalypse and one which is shot through with apocalyptic imagery drawn from the Book of Revelation. We are the jokermen who laugh, dance and fly but only in the dark of the night (equated with sin and judgement) afraid to come into the revealing light of the Sun/Son.

For much of his career though, Dylan, while consistently writing in the face of a coming apocalypse, did not specifically equate that apocalypse with the imminent return of Christ. Apocalyptic change in Dylan's work can be understood as generational confict, Cold War conflicts, nuclear holocaust, Civil Rights struggles, and more. The generic message throughout is that apocalyptic change is coming and we need to think where we stand in relation to it. That message is as relevant today in terms of economic meltdown, climate change or peak oil, as to the Second Coming, whether imminent or not.

In Bob Dylan: Pilgrim, Dante and Rimbaud I described through his songs where Dylan's pilgrim journey in the eye of the apocalypse had taken him:

"He travels the paths of political protest, urban surrealism, country contentment, gospel conversion and world weary blues. On his journey he: sees "seven breezes a-blowin'" all around the cabin door where victims despair ('Ballad of Hollis Brown'); sees lightning flashing "For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an' worse" ('Chimes of Freedom'); surveys 'Desolation Road'; talks truth with a thief as the wind begins to howl ('All Along the Watchtower'); takes shelter from a woman "With silver bracelets on her wrists and flowers in her hair" ('Shelter from the Storm'); feels the Idiot Wind blowing through the buttons on his coat, recognises himself as an idiot and feels so sorry ('Idiot Wind'); finds a pathway to the stars and can't believe he's survived and is still alive ('Where Are You Tonight? Journey Through Deep Heat'); rides the slow train up around the bend ('Slow Train'); is driven out of town into the driving rain because of belief ('I Believe in You'); hears the ancient footsteps join him on his path ('Every Grain of Sand'); feels the Caribbean Winds, fanning desire, bringing him nearer to the fire ('Caribbean Wind'); betrays his commitment, feels the breath of the storm and goes searching for his first love ('Tight Connection to My Heart'); then at the final moment, it's not quite dark yet but:

"The air is getting hotter, there's a rumbling in the skies
I've been wading through the high muddy water
With the heat rising in my eyes.
Everyday your memory grows dimmer.
It don't haunt me, like it did before.
I been walking through the middle of nowhere
Tryin' to get to heaven before they close the door." ('Tryin' To Get To Heaven')."

For me the link that Dylan makes between religion and violence is firstly external to us because it is about a coming apocalyptic crisis or change which will be violent. Where it then becomes personal is in how we choose to respond. Dylan's response was:

"I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin',
I'll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest ...
And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it,
And reflect from the mountain so that all souls can see it ...".
  
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Bryan Ferry - A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall.        

Poem: Guilty generation

Guilty generation

There is oil on the streets tonight, oil! It only takes a spark to ignite;
the streets are flammable! Ram raid a van into a wall, wait nervously
for its fuel tank to blow. Spread fire and build barricades on streets
giddily lit by flames as lines of blue lights flash on distant riot shields.
Scaffold poles to smash up shops and passers-by, the sensation of feet
crunching glass, the shells of cars burnt to paintless, tyreless shapes,
the cheering as TVs, gangster chic and dangerware - free shit -
are pillaged. Get free stuff, fuck the system, rip the feds, in a festival
of illegal consumption, a violent Olympiad of lawlessness.
London is burning with more than boredom now. The streets
of London are filled with rubble, ancient footprints are everywhere.
You could almost think that you’re seeing double on a hot, bright night
in Peckham Rye witnessing the decline and fall of the Western world!

The sneer of a wealthy diner from the safe side of a restaurant window
is observed by a young rioter who sees in this look all he is personally denied.
One kick from a boot shatters the glass divide and replaces the sneer
with a look of fear. The thin film between rich and poor has been torched tonight
as night-time riots follow daylight robbery by wealthy elites.
Traders and bankers socialise risk and privatise profits
while trousering bonuses which exceed lifetime average salaries.
MPs fiddle expenses, police take backhanders as journalists hack phones for profit.
Public discourse sneers in a celebrity-obsessed media,
cynical and contemptuous of old values. Mutual assistance abandoned
in favour of solipsistic entrepreneurship, as community is cut
from the big broken society. The already rich at the forefront of the charge
to grab what you can while you can, now the good times are over.

From Salford to Pembury, from the City to Westminster
fear and greed roam unchecked without bothering to mask their faces;
generational fear and loathing increases now the old have power,
money, votes and demographics on their side. A generation is lost -
brooding, disoriented, suspicious - bearing the imprint of a consumer culture
determining ideas of status and achievement. A generation which pays
for the financiers’ calamity while their elders, who have taken early retirement
with generous pension packages and the proceeds of property booms,
spend liberally on their own pleasure and leisure. A generation whose basic desires
for stable jobs and secure homes will be hit hard by a triple whammy
of climate change combined with the loss of cheap fuel and credit.
A generation with a shared sense of deprivation, seeing a democracy deficit
and experiencing a collapse in the authority of traditional institutions.
If it is a crime to live without hope or meaning, then, yes, this generation is guilty.

(This poem has been collaged primarily from phrases and images used in articles published in the Observer - 14/08/11 - and the Guardian - 13/08/11, 15/08/11, 18/08/11 and 20/08/11)

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The Jam - Down In The Tube Station At Midnight.

From where will a dramatic recomposition of society come?

Riots in the UK are to my mind, in part, a symptom of global changes. Last Thursday's Guardian had an interesting article written prior to the rioting much of which I think has relevance to what has happened since:
"we are living through something epochal ... part of a more general social and economic crisis sparked by the financial crisis ...

Every semi-stable form of capitalism also needs some sort of settlement with the wider population, or at least a decisive section of it. While the postwar Keynesian settlement contained an explicit deal linking rising real wages to rising productivity, neoliberalism contained an implicit deal based on access to cheap credit. While real wages have stagnated since the late 1970s, the mechanisms of debt have maintained most people's living standards. An additional part of neoliberalism's tacit deal was the abandonment of any pretence to democratic, collective control over the conditions of life: politics has been reduced to technocratic rule. Instead, individuals accepted the promise that, through hard work, shrewd educational and other "life" choices, and a little luck, they – or their children – would reap the benefits of economic growth.

The financial crisis shattered the central component of this deal: access to cheap credit. Living standards can no longer be supported and, for the first time in a century, there is widespread fear that children will lead poorer lives than their parents. With the deal broken, parochial ruling arrangements in the UK have started to lose coherence."

This breakdown in parochial ruling arrangements has sown itself in a series of scandals; most recently Hackgate:

"Hackgate cannot be treated in isolation. Since the financial "meltdown" of 2007-08 we have witnessed similar scenes, and similar outrage, around MPs' expenses and bankers' bonuses. We have witnessed not one but two media feeding frenzies around the repression of protest. The first followed the police attack on the G20 protests in 2009 and the death of Ian Tomlinson, with the second erupting around the outing of undercover police officer Mark Kennedy, leading to the unprecedented unmasking of another five undercover police officers acting within the environmental and anti-capitalist movements. The refusal of the Metropolitan police to investigate the full extent of phone hacking is, then, the third scandal revealing the political character of contemporary policing."

These scandals are therefore part of a more general social and economic crisis sparked by the financial crisis. What we have then is a significant crisis of confidence in our 'authorities' combined with an awareness that the era of cheap credit which has meant that we could have what we wanted when we wanted. One response to this situation is what we are seeing on our streets; to take what we want while we can because the 'authorities' are compromised.

"The response from politicians, bankers and business leaders is more of the same – more of the same neoliberal policies that got us into this situation in the first place ...

Unless there is a dramatic recomposition of society, we face the prospect of decades of drift as the crises we face – economic, social, environmental – remain unresolved."

Some prophetic words from Sam Norton, written five years ago in a post on Prophecy and Peak Oil, are apposite at this point:

"We live within a Pharaonic system of oil based consumerism, and we are taught that it cannot be challenged, for to do so is to threaten the prosperity on which we all depend. It seems to me that the task of the Christian in this situation is to renew our prophetic imagination and to speak words of praise and hope which enable the development of a community which reflects the freedom of a loving God.

Specifically, I think we must:

i) identify the Royal Consciousness in all its aspects, not just Peak Oil, although that will inevitably be central;
ii) articulate the pain of the marginalised and oppressed who have no present voice or witness;
iii) challenge the claims to power made on behalf of the Royal Consciousness, with a view to demonstrating their emptiness;
iv) labour with confident expectation towards the dismantling of the present structures;
v) develop new communities which break away from obeisance to the Royal Consciousness, and which offer the opportunity of free life in the image of the free God;
vi) articulate a vision of hope, a promised land, on the other side of Peak Oil, which will sustain us through the transition period in the wilderness; and
vii) trust in God."

A prayer for peace in our communities: Gracious God, We pray for peace in our communities this day. We commit to you all who work for peace and an end to tensions, and those who work to uphold law and justice. We pray for an end to fear, for comfort and support to those who suffer. For calm in our streets and cities, that people may go about their lives in safety and peace. In your mercy, hear our prayers, now and always. Amen

In light of recent events FaithAction has connected with a number of partner organisations to provide support to members and to give a reaction to events. they have been working with the Race and Equality Foundation to provide a facebook page (www.facebook.com/pages/Communities-against-violence/247922231904668) intended to give BME groups and faith groups a space to join together in response to current events in London and other UK Cities.

Althought the main news headlines are focused on the destruction. Many communities have come together in 'Riot clean-up' groups. Many Faith Groups were already active with constructive responses yesterday and this has continued today. Some community leaders have been encouraging parents to keep young people close to hand to avoid them being drawn into negative activities and instead families to work together on the clean up.

While a small initiative, it provides an opportunity to keep others posted on how organisations/communities are responding to this situation and could potentially help in developing new communities which break away from obeisance to the Royal Consciousness, and which offer the opportunity of free life in the image of the free God.

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The Clash - London's Burning.

Jesus - catalyst for and predictor of change

The passage from Isaiah quoted by John the Baptist in Matthew 3. 1-12 portrays him as a roadbuilder. His role is to construct a straight path, by tearing down hillsides and raising up valleys, along which Jesus can walk towards us with nothing to obscure our view of him.

What we are looking at is a changed landscape. The way of life and religion which the people of Israel had known in recent years was shortly to change radically and violently as a result of Jesus’ death and resurrection followed by the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in AD70. The message which John brings seeks to prepare the people of Israel for change on a massive scale with Jesus at the centre of what was to occur.

Is something similar underway in our own day and time through the effects both of the recession and the challenges of peaks in the world’s supply of oil and water? We could be looking at a different political and economic situation globally in a very short space of time. Those who cling to the old ways of doing things – pictured here as the Pharisees and Sadducees – could find themselves swept away in the changes which may be about to come.

Are our eyes on Jesus as we seek to negotiate our way through changing times? Are we keeping our sightlines unobscured so that we can see him clearly and receive his leading and guidance?

Lord Jesus, you were the catalyst for change and the predictor of change for your first disciples. Help us to see you clearly in the challenges and changes of our times that you might also be our Lord and guide today. Amen.

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Lifehouse - Hanging by a Moment.

Division & crisis

“The great composer Ludwig Van Beethoven use sometimes to play a trick on polite salon audiences, especially when he guessed that they weren’t really interested in serious music. He would perform a piece on the piano, one of his own slow movements perhaps, which would be so gentle and beautiful that everyone would be lulled into thinking the world was a soft, cosy place, where they could think beautiful thoughts and relax into semi-slumber. Then, just as the final notes were dying away, Beethoven would bring his whole forearm down with a crash across the keyboard, and laugh at the shock he gave to the assembled company.” (LUKE for everyone, Tom Wright)

In reflecting on this story, Tom Wright suggests that:

“there may come a time when Christian teachers and preachers find, like Beethoven with his salon audiences, that people have become too cosy and comfortable. Sometimes, for instance, the selections of Bible readings for church services omit all the passages that speak of judgement, of warnings, of the stern demands of God’s holiness. Maybe there are times when, like Jesus himself on this occasion, we need to wake people up with a crash. There are, after all, plenty of warnings in the Bible about the dangers of going to sleep on the job.”

What Jesus says Luke 12. 49-59 about coming to bring division instead of peace seems a lot like Beethoven’s crash across the keyboard which is designed to wake everyone up. It certainly seems like that for us. After all, Jesus is the Prince of Peace isn’t he? The one who brought peace between humanity and God, and also between Jew and Gentile, through his death on the cross? That’s what the Bible tells us about him isn’t it? That’s how we think about Jesus! Yet here he is saying, “Prince of Peace, eh? No. Prince of Division, more likely!”

Sometimes, we need the piano crash to wake us up to reality and Jesus is never less than real! Here he confronts us with the reality that once the good news about him gets into households there’ll be no peace and families will split up over it.

We have our own example of this reality at St John's Seven Kings at the moment. A parishioner was baptised here in March as a sign of his earlier conversion from Islam. He has experienced persecution from friends and acquaintances as a result and received threats of harm from his family if he were to return to Pakistan. Despite this, he has spent the months between his baptism and last week when he was able to return to St Johns, in Immigration Detention Centres because the UK Border Agency has refused his asylum claim and want him sent back to Pakistan. He is only here because the High Court have agreed to a Judicial Review of the decision made by the UK Border Agency.

So, as we reflect on the reality and pressures of division that can result from hearing and responding to the good news of Jesus Christ, let us pray for success for this person in that High Court Judicial Review which is still to come and for a greater acknowledgement by our Government of the reality of persecution for those who choose to convert from Islam to Christianity and of those who live as Christians in countries where persecution from those of other faiths or none because of their beliefs is commonplace.

Jesus was real about the reality of division and wants us to be too; to anticipate it, to acknowledge it, to face it, to deal with it. It is after all, what the prophets foretold as:

“The warnings he gives about fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, and so on includes a quotation from Micah 7.6, a passage in which the prophet warns of imminent crisis and urges that the only way forward is complete trust in God.”

Jesus sees a crisis coming for those to whom he speaks; a crisis of which his own fate will be the central feature. He will be rejected and killed but will rise from death before ascending to his Father and sending his Holy Spirit on all who follow him. His validity as the Son of God will then be clearly confirmed when his prophecy about the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem comes true in AD 70.

Jesus knows that all this is about to come and “is astonished and dismayed that so few of his contemporaries can see it at all”:

“why can’t they look at what’s going on all around them, from the Roman occupation to the oppressive regime of Herod, from the wealthy and arrogant high priests in Jerusalem to the false agendas of the Pharisees – and, in the middle of it all, a young prophet announcing God’s kingdom and healing the sick? Why can’t they put two and two together, and realize that this is the moment all Israel’s history has been waiting for? Why can’t they see that the crisis is coming?

If they could, they would be well advised to take action while there was still time.”

“Israel, rebelling against God’s plan that she should be the light of the world, and thus eager for violent uprising against Rome,” was liable at any moment to face the complete ruin that finally arrived in AD 70 with the destruction of Jerusalem.

“The church has from early on read this chapter as a warning that each generation must read the signs of the times, the great movements of people, governments, nations and policies, and react accordingly.” And, if we find ourselves caught up in crisis, so be it. What else should we expect?

Except that we don’t currently expect it because the church in the West, like the rest of our consumerist culture has become cosy and comfortable and in need of waking up to harsh reality. What are the signs of our times? Here are a few from the national press over the past two weeks:

• former Bank of England rate-setter, William Butler, now chief economist at the investment banking giant Citigroup, saying that, “We lived beyond our means year after year, and the nation collectively has to consume less.”

• the number of people suffering from the massive floods in Pakistan exceeds 13 million — more than the combined total of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the 2005 Kashmir earthquake and the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the United Nations said Monday. The suffering of people in Pakistan comes alongside the landslides in China also caused by heavy rains which seem part of a worldwide pattern of climate change affecting the poorest nations hardest of all.

• Reflecting on the rise of superbugs which are resistant to antibiotics, Thursday’s Guardian found parallels between our need to conserve the antibiotics we have and our need to conserve the oil we have, because supplies have peaked, and to reduce its pollutant effects.

Overconsumption in the West, the long-term effect of pollutants on our climate, the peaking of energy supplies, the rise of viruses resistant to medication are combining to create a point of crisis which is directed particularly at those, such as the 13 million in Pakistan, who are the poorest and most vulnerable in our world.

If we are to read the signs of our times accurately, then we need firstly to respond with generosity to funding appeals for relief in Pakistan, China, the Niger and wherever natural disasters occur in future. But we also need to review the underlying causes and the need for a radical simplifying of our Western way of life and seeing that “the inevitable and profound changes ahead can have a positive outcome … [leading] to the rebirth of local communities, which will grow their own food, generate their own power, and build their own houses using local materials.” (The Transition Handbook)

Last year at St John's Seven Kings thought about division and crisis through our Dealing with disagreement Bible Studies which introduced us to the idea of peak oil. In September, we have the opportunity to consider these issues further through a trip to Mersea Island where we will hear from Sam Norton, the Rector of Mersea Island, who has regularly blogged about the coming impact of peak oil. I urge us all to think seriously about the underlying causes of our contemporary crisis, praying for those in Pakistan, China and the Niger currently caught up in the effects of that crisis and for those dealing with the reality of division as a consequence of their faith.

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The Clash - London Calling.

Enough is enough: live more simply

This is the sermon that I preached at St Gabriel Aldersbrook and St Mary the Virgin Great Ilford this morning. The Gospel reading was Luke 12: 32-40. It was interesting to hear the engaged and knowlegable feedback from the two congregations. At St Gabriel's, a former City banker said that the sermon made a refreshing change while at St Mary's one post-service comment was to do with the way in which the self-sufficiency of villages in the two-thirds world has been compromised by the adoption of aspects of Western lifestyle.

I began with a quote from Thursday’s Times where a former Bank of England rate-setter, William Butler, now chief economist at the investment banking giant Citigroup, was quoted as saying that, “Effectively, UK consumption – household consumption, public consumption, or both – is going to have to take a decade-long holiday.”

“We lived beyond our means year after year,“ Butler said, “and the nation collectively has to consume less.” “This period of austerity is almost arithmetically necessary if we don’t want to go into national and indeed personal bankruptcy.”

The idea that we need, as individuals and as a nation, a period of austerity because we have lived beyond our means is one that surely has some resonance with Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel reading about the absolute non necessity of wealth and possessions in the light of the coming of the Son of Man and his kingdom.

“Sell all your belongings and give the money to the poor,” are words that we have rationalised away from their plain meaning by arguing that Jesus’ disciples, to whom these words are addressed, were expecting his imminent return and therefore had no need money or possessions. We, we have argued, do not have that apocalyptic expectation and, therefore, while, not neglecting to give generously to others, also have a God-given imperative to provide for our families through our work and the income it provides.

What this has justified in the Western church, as we have reflected the culture around us more than we have the imperatives of the Gospel, has been the over consumption of which William Butler spoke. However, while the church in the West has often been complicit in our consumerist society, there have been key Christian voices who have stood for Gospel values and who have spoken out prophetically against the growth of consumerism in the West and its impact on the rest of the globe.

John V. Taylor, the former Bishop of Winchester, published in 1975 Enough is Enough, a book which kickstarted the simple lifestyle movement with its slogan of ‘Live simply, that others may simply live.’ More recently, Sam Norton, the Rector of Mersea Island, has regularly blogged about the coming impact of peak oil; the idea that the supply of oil has peaked leading to increased oil prices in future with consequent increases in the price of food, transport and utilities. All of which we are currently seeing occurring and which will, in time, necessitate changes to a simpler, more localised lifestyle than any of us in the West have experienced for many years.

Putting his predictions and perceptions in a Biblical framework, Norton argues that continual economic expansion and growth have become the equivalent of ‘god’ for Western economies and are a contemporary example of idolatry. Next month a group from St John’s Seven Kings plan to visit Mersea Island to hear more about peak oil and initiatives to transition from over consumption to a simpler lifestyle. If any of this strikes a chord, a good place to start is this book, The Transition Handbook, which shows how “the inevitable and profound changes ahead can have a positive outcome … [leading] to the rebirth of local communities, which will grow their own food, generate their own power, and build their own houses using local materials.”

The prophetic cry, from those like Taylor, Norton and others, for a greater simplicity of lifestyle, whether from moral choice or economic necessity, is one that has been effectively sidelined during past prosperity but is one that we, as church and culture, desperately need to hear as we face what is predicted to be a temporary period of austerity.

If we were to genuinely hear and respond to their cry for the abandonment of over consumption and the adoption on an ongoing basis of a simpler lifestyle then not only could we learn not to repeat the issues raised by our over consumption but we would be also be returning to the plain meaning of Jesus’ statement that we should use our wealth for the benefit of others.

Remember that this statement that, in the light of his coming kingdom, we should sell our belongings and give to the poor comes hot on the heels of Jesus’ story about the rich man who piled up his riches for himself without reckoning on the crisis of his imminent demise. Taylor and Norton, from different perspectives, are both arguing that, just like Jesus’ disciples, we too face a coming crisis which necessitates the adoption of a simpler lifestyle.

If we hear these prophetic cries, if we learn lessons from the over consumption of our Western prosperity, if we take on board the plain meaning of Jesus’ words then, with John V. Taylor, we will say that “enough is enough!” and will seek to turn a temporary period of austerity into a permanently simpler lifestyle; living simply that others may simply live.

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Bruce Cockburn - Justice.

7 links challenge

Philip Ritchie tagged me with the 7 links challenge:

1. Your first post – Glory Days was a meditation on the song of the same name by Just Jack.

2. A post you enjoyed writing the most – I've most enjoyed doing the Windows on the World series because I've enjoyed taking the photos and having a focus for my photography. Here is the 100th Windows on the World post.

3. A post which had a great discussion – The series of posts which generated the most interesting and continuing discussion was The Bible - Open or Closed? where Philip Ritchie and I had an ongoing discussion about the nature of scripture. The first post in the series is here. The single post that generated the most discussion was my second post about the Holy Spirit in the World Today conference.

4. A post on someone else's blog that you wish you'd written – This is hard as there is so much that is interesting which is being written. Posts that have been influential have included Sam Norton on Peak Oil and Peter Banks on music but the one post that I want to highlight is Some thoughts about the shape of the church to come... by Paul Trathen, simply because I agree with all that he writes in it.

5. A post with a title that you are proud of – The value of pointlessness which highlighted a quote from Armando Iannuci about spirituality.

6. A post that you wish more people had read – My short story A Disappearance, which I rate both as a story and in terms of its conceit; that fast living literally wears out your body. The four posts are here, here, here and here.

7. Your most visited post ever – New Church Art Trail has had the most visits. Encouraging that a recent post has been getting the most attention.

Here's an addition to the list:

8. Your most serendipitous post - Annie & Bernard Walke - I posted about this artist & priest couple at the same point that Paul Trathen was reading Bernard Walke's autobiography and posting about it on facebook.

I tag Tim Goodbody and Paul Trathen.

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Bob Dylan - Saved.

Science Fiction reviews

I've been enjoying some Science Fiction post-Christmas in reading Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow and watching James Cameron's Avatar.

The Sparrow is an unusual Science Fiction novel in that its theme is of a crisis of conscience for Emilio Sanchez, its Jesuit central character. It's a well written story, once it gets going, with an engaging central character who is honest about the deficiencies and the inspirations of his faith. The split narrative works well before meshing at the conclusion to bring together the events of the central crisis and the response to it. This central crisis is genuinely shocking although its resolution is probably a little too easy and dealt with too briefly but the novel, as a whole, provides an engaging and challenging exploration of God's presence and guidance in human exploration and suffering.

Avatar has been criticised as a simplistic eco-fable with good indigenous characters lined up against the evil exploitative humans but this is to ignore the conversion of Jake Sully, its central character. This conversion, supported by the other members of his immediate team, is that which is needed by the human race if climate change and peak oil are to be countered and a narrative and world in which we can be immersed, as is possible in watching Avatar, can have an effect in changing consciousness of the issues. For that to be the case, both the narrative and the world created and imagined have to be of sufficient depth for the viewer to become immersed and this seemed to me to be the case with Avatar.

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Woven Hand - The Beautiful Axe.

Meditation on a green plastic milk bottle top

I wrote the following meditation for today's All-Age service at St Johns Seven Kings which has been planned by our Peace & Justice committee and which focuses on the Countdown to Copenhagen:

Each of you was given, as you arrived, a green plastic milk bottle top. Please hold it in your hand now and spend a moment looking at it.

It is a familiar everyday object; one that we see most days but do not think about. We handle it when we remove it in order to pour out our milk and then replace it to help in keeping the milk fresh. When the milk bottle is empty then we throw it away.

The world's annual consumption of plastic materials has increased from around 5 million tonnes in the 1950s to nearly 100 million tonnes today, which means that we use 20 times as much plastic today than we did 50 years ago. All plastics, including these bottle tops, but also many of the materials used to make the clothes we are wearing and the carpet we are walking on, plus hundreds of the other products we take for granted, are made from petrochemicals and a main ingredient in petrochemicals is oil. Our increased use of plastics uses up the world’s limited supplies of oil more quickly.

It is estimated that only 7% of plastic waste is recycled at present, so 93% of an increasing number of plastic items, including our bottle tops, currently go to landfill. These bottle-tops are a symbol of waste, a sign of our throw-away society. How many do we throw away each week, each month, each year?

Bottle-tops are hard to recycle because there are only a few companies that genuinely recycle them and only a few charities that genuinely collect them. We will have to go out of our way if we are to recycle bottle-tops, just as we also have to go out of our way if we are to recycle items that are not on our Council’s list for collection in our recycling boxes.

It is easy to recycle the paper, tins and plastic and glass bottles that the Council will collect from our homes but more difficult to recycle the cardboard, printer cartridges, bottle tops and other items that will only be recycled if we take them to the recycling centre. Will we do the easy thing or the harder thing when it comes to recycling?

Our bottle tops are green and green is the colour that we associate with the countryside and with environmental care. Our bottle tops can be reminders to us that we can be green, if we do the extra things that make a difference when it comes to recycling or conserving energy or lobbying MPs for Government action on climate change.

Please take your green milk bottle top home as a reminder of actions you want to take as a result of today’s service – like recycling things you currently throw away or switching off appliances that are usually left on stand-by or going to The Wave on 5th December to demonstrate your support for a safe climate future for all. Put the bottle top in your pocket and each time you touch remind yourself of what you have said you will do.

Let us pray ... Lord, we hold these bottle tops and they remind us of our wasteful, throw-away world which is rapidly using up the resources you have given to us. Make us truly sorry for our wasteful actions and turn us into those who conserve the world’s resources and lobby for Governments to stop the waste and stop climate chaos. May we be part of a wave of people around the world seeking and achieving a safe climate future for all. Amen.

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Athlete - Hurricane.

Jesus' wartime stories

Jesus told wartime stories. You can find them in Matthew 25. 1-13 and the other stories which are recorded for us in Chapters 24 and 25 of Matthew’s Gospel. That seems an odd thing to say about a story that is to do with a wedding and which does not mention war but the context in which Jesus told these stories to his disciples was one of trying to prepare them for a coming conflict.

Throughout the teaching recorded for us in Matthew 24, Jesus is telling his disciples about a coming crisis for which he needs them to be ready. This crisis will culminate in an invading army marching into Jerusalem’s Temple and laying it to waste. The wartime scenario that Jesus was describing here actually occurred about 40 years after his death and resurrection in AD70 with the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem by the occupying Roman army.

What Jesus was doing through his teaching and through these stories was to try to get his disciples ready for that coming crisis so that they would respond appropriately. As loyal Jews their natural tendency might well have been to stay and fight but Jesus makes it clear to them that they must get out and run. As a result of Jesus’ disciples fleeing Jerusalem, the message of the Gospel spread around the world. Their message was that all that Jesus did and said was true and that this was confirmed by the coming to pass of his prophecy about the Temple.

How prepared are we, I wonder, for the crises that we face in our day and time and are we ready to use them as opportunities to share and show the good news of Jesus? That is ultimately, the challenge of this story for us.

We can, in a sense, lay this story like a template across the crises that we remember and face and use it to assess whether we are more like the wise or foolish women in our response. Ultimately, in relation to the Second World War we would probably want to say that the country responded more like the wise than the foolish women. Whether we are talking about those who were on the front line or those supporting the war effort from home, the country was prepared to accept and make sacrifices in order that the war would eventually be won.

But that is not always the case in situations of conflict. We could, for example, ask the same question of the current conflict in Afghanistan. If it is true, as senior people in the Forces have suggested, that our troops there do not have the equipment they need for the task they have been sent to do, then it may be that our Government has acted more like the foolish women in the story than those that were wise.

We can apply this story too to crises that are not to do with warfare such as the current credit crunch. The way in which banks have been prepared to lend money to those who have no means of repaying those loans, for example, suggests that they too have behaved more like the foolish women in the story than the wise.

In the background of the credit crunch crisis are the twin crises of climate change and the peaking of oil supplies. Experts tell us that as a human race we have only a short number of years in which to address these issues before these crises hit us full on and it will be too late to respond. As in Jesus’ story, the question is, how will we respond? Will our response be wise or foolish? Will we be prepared or unprepared for the crises that are to come?

For Christians the question of how we respond is also a question of how prepared we are to share the good news of Jesus in the face of the crises that we face now and those still to come. What have we to say as Christians about conflict within our world? About the credit crunch? About climate change and peak oil? Jesus’ call is clear we are to be ready to face the crisis and prepared to share his good news. As we look back this month to honour those who have made the ultimate sacrifice, Jesus’ question needs to echo and re-echo in our lives and world; are we ready?

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Monsters of Folk - His Master's Voice.

Patronal Festival

The Patronal Festival weekend at St Johns Seven Kings was held from Friday 2nd - Sunday 4th October and featured a varied and interesting range of events and services.

The weekend got off to a cultured beginning with 'An Evening at the Opera' presented by the Lantern Light Opera Company. The Company performed a selection of Gilbert & Sullivan highlights including songs from ‘The Mikado’, ‘Pirates of Penzance’ and ‘HMS Pinafore’. Their programme featured amusing comic acting combined with excellent vocal performances and was greatly enjoyed by a sizable and appreciative audience.

From culture we moved to the environment as our Saturday coffee morning featured recycling information provided by the Redbridge Recycling Team, a free Takeway of books, ornaments, toys and all those things people never knew they needed, and the viewing of an inspiring documentary film entitled ‘The Power of Community’ based on the experience of the people of Cuba in overcoming their lack of oil. This provided a lesson for us all in adapting our way of life to reduce our dependency on oil and to care for the environment.

More than a hundred people attended the Saturday evening Barn Dance, which included a fish and chips supper. With participation from all who came, this was an event that was enjoyed right across the generations.

Sunday morning saw the return of former Vicar, Revd. Canon Gordon Tarry, who preached an excellent sermon on St John the Evangelist highlighting his imagination, growth in faith, and ability to see the big picture and commending these attributes as ones for us to also practice. An evening Songs of Praise brought the weekend to its conclusion. The St Johns Choir was supplemented by choir members from St Peters Aldborough Hatch and St Laurences Barkingside to sing two anthems and a wide range of hymns selected and introduced by members of the congregation.

We had a wonderful weekend full of variety, interest and challenge. The events that we arranged were supported not only by our congregation but also by the wider community who appreciated the welcome to be found in this place. We are particularly grateful to the Lantern Light Opera Company, Redbridge Recycling Team, and Gordon Tarry for making this weekend special through their contributions. Our Patronal Festival has reminded us of all that is good about St Johns and challenged us to go forward in engaging with local and global issues as a Christian community with the creativity that ultimately comes from God.

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The Mikado - The Flowers of Spring.

Patronal Festival events

Our Patronal Festival weekend at St Johns Seven Kings is happening from Friday 2nd - Sunday 4th October and includes a really varied and interesting range of events and services:

• An Evening at the Opera with the Lantern Light Opera Company presenting a selection of Gilbert & Sullivan highlights including songs from ‘The Mikado’, ‘Pirates of Penzance’ and ‘HMS Pinafore.’ Friday 2nd October, 7.30pm. Smart dress requested. You will be welcomed with a free glass of wine. Admission free but a collection for Church funds will be taken during the evening.
• Coffee, cakes, recycling information (from the Redbridge Recycling Team) and a Free Takeway of books, ornaments, toys and all those things you never knew you needed. Please bring your own bags. Saturday 3rd October, 11.00am. Followed at 11.45am by a free viewing of an inspiring documentary film entitled ‘The Power of Community’ based on the experience of the people of Cuba in overcoming their lack of oil. Here is a lesson for us all to adapt our way of life to reduce our dependency on oil and to care for the environment.
• Barn Dance – Saturday 3rd October, 7.30pm. Fish/Chicken & Chips supper, Tickets £6.00 (from the Parish Office). Bring your own drink.
• Patronal Festival services – Sunday 4th October, 10am Patronal Festival Holy Communion (Preacher – Gordon Tarry) & 6.30pm Songs of Praise.

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Leo Brouwer - A Day in November.

Dealing with disagreements

One of the things we're not particularly good at doing in the Church as a whole, either at the personal or corporate levels, is dealing with disagreements. Witness the current debates in Anglican Communion about homosexuality or in the Church of England over women bishops. More recently there has been more heat than light generated over two other contentious issues in Evangelicalism; the recent NEAC 'consultation' and the current debate over a critical review of Patrick Sookhdeo's latest book.

When I do 'Marriage Guidance' with couples preparing for their wedding at St John's I always ensure that we cover issues of conflict and get couples to discuss their differing approaches to it in order that they can work out for themselves how to fight as friends. Something similar seems needed within the Church judging by the virulancy of some responses to Christian brothers and sisters over some of the above issues.

At St John's we have recently begun a Bible study series entitled 'Dealing with disagreements' in an attempt, which has not been without its own tensions, to find ways to discuss where and how we disagree within our own church family.

As part of this process we will take forward discussions that began at last year's PCC Away Day of two current controversial issues about which we need to be informed; the issue of responses to homosexuality within the Anglican Communion and the issue of transition in society from reliance on fossil fuels. Both have impacts for local churches and local communities and our PCC think that it would be helpful for there to be discussion at St John's about both topics.

That is not, however, where we are starting our discussions. Instead we are beginning by looking at two areas of disagreement that occurred in the early church (Romans 14 & Acts 15. 1-21). From these passages we are aiming to identify principles for dealing with disagreements that could be applied during our discussions of the two current controversial issues. The final session of the study will then help us reflect on the different ways in which the Bible has been used throughout our discussions and the extent to which our different ways of understanding scripture influence the positions that we take on controversial issues.

If this sounds of interest to you then you can follow a part of the debate online as one of our housegroups are posting summaries of their discussions on their blog. Their first two posts can be found by clicking here and here.

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Elvis Costello - Indoor Fireworks.