Spiritual Life: Better Together

Today's edition of the Ilford Recorder features Bishop Stephen's ninth missionary journey, the first anniversary of the Seven Kings & Newbury Park Sophia Hub and the Patronal Festival of St John's Seven Kings.

These also feature in my 'Spiritual Life' column for the paper, where I say:

‘Better Together’ was the successful slogan of those opposing Scottish independence and wanting the United Kingdom to stay united. Over the past week three groups of which I am part have held events which suggest that we are better together.

commission4mission is a network of Christian artists who exhibit together (currently at St Stephen Walbrook) and support and encourage one another in their creative work. The Sophia Hub locally, which has just celebrated its first anniversary, is bringing entrepreneurs and community activists together to generate ideas for improving the local area. St John’s Seven Kings celebrated its Patronal Festival by inviting past and present members to come together and say how God had been at work in their lives. 

One of the reasons why we are better together is because collectively we can achieve more than we can individually. Jesus began the movement of his Spirit by building a team of 12 disciples. Even God does not operate alone! He said he would be found today when two or three gather in his name. In other words, when people come together to share their skills and talents.

Whether artists, entrepreneurs, community activists or people of faith, we are more creative and more effective when our talents and ideas are shared and used. We are better together.

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Natalie Merchant - These Are Days.

Spiritual Life: Resurrection

Here is my Spiritual Life column for this week's Ilford Recorder:

Death AND resurrection. Suffering AND salvation. This is the journey which Christians make, following in the footsteps of Jesus, as we travel through Lent and Easter.

While it is a journey which in no way minimises the reality and pain of suffering and bereavement, it is ultimately a journey of hope. One which leads to new life, where we proclaim that Jesus is alive and death is no longer the end.

As a result, to go on this journey, builds resilience and endurance in those who travel this way. As we look at our lives, the difficulties and challenges we might face, our Christian faith tells us that this is not the end instead change and new life are possible; indeed, that they will come.

The story of Christ’s death and resurrection takes us forward into a new life. The reality of his presence with us on the way helps us endure and persevere. The combination of the two brings hope for the future. Whatever we may experience in the here and now, ultimately Love wins.   

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The Danielson Famile - Lord's Rest.

St John's in the Ilford Recorder

There are three pieces in the Ilford Recorder this week that relate to St John's Seven Kings. I have written the Spiritual Life column which focuses on National Marriage Week and which mentions the Mothers' Union display that will be in the lounge of the St John's Centre during Marriage Week. 

St John's was one of the three churches that commissioned a painting from Henry Shelton, through commission4mission, as a retirement gift for Fr. Benjamin Rutt-Field in thanks for his ministry at St Paul's Goodmayes and within our cluster of churches. This painting was also featured in the Church Times.

Finally, the Recorder has a piece about the Sophia Course which began at St John's last night as part of the Sophia Hubs social enterprise project which is based in the building. we had an excellent session with an enthusiastic and inspiring group of people all wanting to utilise their skills and ideas for the benefit of the local community.

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Water into Wine Band - Stranger In This World. 

New beginnings and fresh starts

Here is my Spiritual Life column for today's edition of the Ilford Recorder:

Christianity is a faith which is all about new beginnings and fresh starts. Sometimes it is characterised by others as being a guilt trip but what Christianity actually teaches about guilt is to do with acknowledging our fallibilities in order to be honest with God so that forgiveness can by received and change implemented. The word we use for this is repentance which means a complete turn-around in our lives, a fresh start and a new beginning.
 

The start of a New Year is also about the potential for a fresh start and a new beginning. That is, in part, why we celebrate at New Year and why we make New Year's resolutions. The problem, of course, is that we all carry over into the New Year the issues and challenges that we experienced in the old year. If we weren't able to do in the old year the thing that we are now resolving to do in the New Year, simply moving from one year to the next is unlikely to be enough to enable us to make our resolution stick.
 

For Christians, though, we are not on our own when it comes to change. God's Spirit is within to help us make and maintain changes in our lives and (hopefully) our local Christian community or Church are also there to back us up and support us as we change.

Change is actually happening all the time, in us and to us. Change is normal, because we all need fresh starts and new beginnings all the time. This New Year, why not ask God for his help in making a fresh start and seek support from others around you, including your local Church?

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The Relatives - We Need Love.

Spiritual Life: To dance around one another in relationship

Here is my Spiritual Life column for the current edition of the Ilford Recorder:

Explaining the idea of the Trinity - three persons, one God - has always been a challenge to priests and preachers. The shamrock is one favourite illustration - three leaves, one stem - as is water - two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen forming one entity which can be a liquid, a solid and a gas.

My favourite image, though, is not of the form of the Trinity but of its dynamism and dynamic. That image is of a dance as the Greek word for the relationship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit - perichoresis - means ‘to dance around one another in relationship.’ Dance partners interact “within a rhythm which remains the same but in a continuous variety of movements.” At its best, you have people totally in tune with one another for the period of that dance.

This is what the united relationship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit is thought to be in the Christian faith and it means that at the very heart of God is a dynamic relationship in which a constant exchange of love is underway. We could call it the dance of love. Being in relationship with God means, for the Christian, being drawn into that constant, eternal exchange or dance of love. Jesus describes this when he says that he is in the Father and the Father in him. He then extends that same relationship to others too - I am in you and you are in me.

To really know love, Christianity suggests, we must be drawn into the dance of love which Father, Son and Holy Spirit share and which is at the very heart of God.

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Leonard Cohen - Dance Me To The End Of Love.

Spiritual Life column

Here is my Spiritual Life column from today's Ilford Recorder:

'Bill Fay sings that “There are miracles / Everywhere you go.” What we might not then expect is for the song to continue, “I see fathers / Hold a little child's hand.” What Bill Fay celebrates in this song entitled ‘Cosmic Concerto (Life Is People)’ is the wonder of everyday life if we can but see it - seeds being sown by the wind to grow into trees; grandmas and grandpas blowing kisses into a pram; the infinite variation in the space of a human face.

Each moment we are alive is unique and unrepeatable. As another songwriter, Victoria Williams, puts it: “This moment will never come again / I know it because it has never been before.”

Simon Small has written that “Our minds find paying full attention to now very difficult. This is because our minds live in time. Our thoughts are preoccupied with past and future, and the present moment is missed.”

Jean Pierre de Caussade spoke about the Sacrament of the Present Moment. He meant by this God present in what is ordinary and mundane; there in life's daily routine. Simon Small has also written that “to pay profound attention to reality is prayer because to enter the depths of this moment is to encounter God.”

Regardless of whether we see God in the miracle of human existence, we can perhaps agree that, even though life also contains great suffering, there is real wonder, beauty and mystery to be found in everyday life.'

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Iona - Today.

Born again: material and spiritual

Here’s a poem about our first birth:

These are your first lessons in living.

To begin we drag you head-first from your shelter,

away from your food, from your warmth.

We cut you apart from your only known friend.

We take you and beat you until strange gases

rush your lungs and pain jerks your frame.

These are your first lessons in living.

They will stand you in good stead. (Steve Turner)

In this poem life is portrayed as something hard and painful. It says that we are being born into a world where, if we don’t look out for ourselves, we will dragged from everything we enjoy and beaten up. And it says that our first lessons in living when we emerge from our mother’s womb, the placenta is cut and the nurse strikes us on the back to get us breathing are important lessons for us in survival. The lesson to learn is that in a world like this we need to put ourselves first, we need to look after No. 1, otherwise someone else will take what we have and hurt us in the process. It is what scientists describe when they talk about us having selfish genes which get us ready to live in a world that is about the survival of the fittest.

Jesus said to Nicodemus that no one can see the Kingdom of God unless he is born again (John 3. 1 - 17). He went on to explain that a person is first born physically of human parents. In our physical, material existence we do not have to believe in God. We have a genuine choice, we can grow up choosing to believe only in the material world around us and in our own powers or we can encounter God and grow in relationship with him. The world in which we live can point us to God but it does not provide us with absolute proof of his existence. Therefore, we are free to choose.

Samuel Beckett’s great play, Waiting for Godot, features two tramps who spend the whole play doing nothing except waiting for Godot, who of course never arrives. For Beckett, to wait for Godot is the equivalent of believing in God, both are a waste of time. So Beckett in his plays is describing a world without God and what an unremittingly harsh and despairing place it is. In another of his plays, Endgame, two of his characters spend the whole play living in rubbish bins and the last speech in the play sums up Beckett’s sense of what a world without God is like in these words: “all he knows is hunger, and cold, and death to crown it all.” Life without God is the equivalent of living in a rubbish bin or of spending everyday pointlessly waiting for someone who does not arrive.

The philosopher Bertrand Russell once wrote that: “Only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation be safely built.” Russell, like Beckett, is saying that life without God is despair. If we are here by accident, if we are shortly going to die without there being an afterlife and if whatever we achieve in our short life will also be destroyed soon after our death, then a life without God offers us no hope just unyielding despair.

So, for us to believe in God, to believe that both the material and the spiritual exist and are intertwined, involves us in coming alive to the spiritual. It therefore involves a second birth, an awakening to the reality of the spiritual as well as to the reality of the physical. The physical things around us are easy to believe in because we can see and touch them. The spiritual, though, is like the wind - it can’t be seen, although it can be experienced and felt. It is not immediately apparent in the way that physical realities are and so we have a free choice about whether or not we respond to the signs of the Spirit in our world and when we do we are coming alive, being born again, to the spiritual in our world.

Here are some of the things in my life that have made me come alive to the spiritual:

When I stand in snow on a mountain slope viewing a cobalt lake,

I come alive.

When the morning mist forms a white sea on the Somerset levels, islanding trees,

I come alive.

When my daughter nestles up and hugs me tight,

I come alive.

When my wife and I lie, skin touching, sweat mingling in the heat of summer and passion,

I come alive.

When a friend listens with understanding and without advising,

I come alive.

When I sing and dance in the echoes of an empty Church,

I come alive.

When words cannot express Your praise and I sing in tongues,

I come alive.

When I hear the rustle of angel’s wings above me in the eaves,

I come alive.

I come alive to endurance

when I see a hesitant smile form on the face of the Big Issue seller.

I come alive to pain

when I hear a friend’s story of depression and unanswered pleading.

I come alive to patience

when I see a husband answer again the question from his alzheimered wife.

I come alive to injustice

when the Metro contrasts Big Mac obesity lawsuits with African famine victims.

I come alive to suffering

when I see Sutherland’s Crucifixion and read Endo’s Silence.

I come alive to grief

when I remember the aircraft shattered and scattered across Kosovan heights.

I come alive

when I am touched and see and hear

the beautiful or broken, the passionate or poor.

The mystery or madness

of the Other in which God

meets and greets me

and calls forth the response

that is love.

I wonder what it is that makes you come alive to the spiritual in life. Jesus came into our world to bring us to life; to wake us up from the despair of living only in the physical and material. He does this, firstly by showing us what life is like when it is lived as God intended and secondly, by the threatened response that we as human beings make to him. To see someone genuinely living by the Spirit is scary, it turns our understanding of life upside down. We often respond to people who live life differently to us by attacking them and that is what we did with Jesus. We focused on the physical, we nailed his hands and feet to a cross of wood. We thought that by killing him physically we were doing away with the threat he posed to our material way of life.

But God is greater than our materialism and he loves us too much for that to be the end and so he raised his Son from death that we might be saved from material existence and come alive to the Spirit of God himself.

We have a choice - the unyielding despair of a rubbish bin existence or the freedom of life in the Spirit. Which will it be for you? Have you come alive to the spiritual in life? And, if you have, have you gone on coming alive to the spiritual on a day by day basis by looking out for all that God’s Spirit is doing in our world and getting involved?

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David Grant - Life.

Spiritual Life column

Here is my latest 'Spiritual Life' column in today's Ilford Recorder:

In a memorable phrase Desmond Tutu spoke of post-apartheid South Africa as being “the rainbow people of God.” That phrase can and should be applied also to the Christian Church in the diversity of those who come together within it to form the Body of Christ.

For the Church to be seen as a rainbow people of God, the full range of its diversity of views and voices need to be heard. Specifically, in the current debate over the definition of marriage, it essential that the Church, as well as hearing the views and voices of those opposed to the Government’s current legislative proposals, also hear the views and voices of Christians in favour.

I am thinking of those who see a strong Biblical case for arguing that definitions of marriage are socially determined and not divinely ordained. Those who see Jesus as being the ultimate scapegoat signalling, by his death, the folly and fallacy of all scapegoating of those different from ourselves. Those who see a key aspect of Jesus’ ministry as being to include in the kingdom of God those excluded from the religious structures of his day, with inclusion and equality then being a central facet of Christianity. The voices and views of those who see the institution of marriage being broadened and strengthened by its expansion to include people who value the institution and wish to marry but are currently excluded from doing so.

The Biblical picture of God’s people is of difference and diversity united by our common commitment to Christ. We are not and will not be united by our particular theologies, traditions, or views on particular topics. In this current debate, as in all such debates, we need to hear and respect different perspectives while recognising that our particular views will only divide if they are prioritised. It is only when, acknowledging our differences, we recognise that, despite our differences, we are united by Christ that the Christian Church holds together as the rainbow people of God who, therefore, become the Body of Christ in the world today.

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Gungor - Let There Be.

Spiritual Life - Creativity

This is my latest Spiritual Life column for the Ilford Recorder:

“Begin, begin,

let something be.

Make a blot,

a dash, a stroke.

Make your mark.”

I read this poem last Saturday at the Private View for an exhibition I have organized throughout December at the Tokarska Gallery in Walthamstow. It suggests that we understand ourselves and the world as we make things or make things happen; in other words as we use our God-given ability to create. The art we have included in this exhibition offers us that kind of understanding through their expression of creativity.

Earlier in that same week I had been at the 15^th Anniversary Assembly of TELCO, The East London Communities Organisation, where the phase ‘mark your mark’ was also being used. TELCO has made its mark with successful campaigns for a London Living Wage. Last Wednesday, they celebrated jobs gained by local people through their London 2012 Jobs initiative.

A 61 year old lady who had experienced periods of homelessness and who had thought she would never work again was among those who had gained jobs. Our creativity has been given to us by God to make that kind of mark on our communities and on the lives of others; as well as also being for the marks we make when we paint or write.

The key thing is to make a start in some way, to begin to use our latent God-given creativity. In Church recently, many of us have been reading Jesus’ story of the talents in which he makes the same point; don’t sit on your gifts and talents, instead make a start to make your mark!

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Radiohead - No Surprises.

Spiritual Life column

This is my latest Spiritual Life column as published in today's Ilford Recorder:

Richard Baxter has recently had an installation at Southend Museum where each day an unglazed replica of a pot from a different era of human history is submerged in water to be viewed as it decomposes; from the ground you were taken, you are dust and to dust you shall return!


Jesus used the reality of death to teach us about life and the questions he posed include how to live well in the face of the reality of death. The artist Matt Lamb, formerly a funeral director, tells a tale of a man he buried who focused his whole life on working to become a company director only to die of a heart attack at the beginning of his first board meeting in that role. Do those things we are aiming for in this life have meaning in the face of the reality of our death?


Jesus’ crucifixion puts the reality of death (coupled with the promise of resurrection) at the very heart of the Christian faith in a way that is not the case in a society dedicated to prolonging life and avoiding pain. Therefore, one role that we have as Christians is to seek to come alongside people to provide support at times when the reality of death hits home. When we honestly face the reality of death, Jesus’ life, death and teaching say to us, it changes what we value and the way we choose to live in the here and now.


St Paul writes that faith, hope and love remain, while Eugene Peterson paraphrases the final lines of Jesus’ story about weeds and wheat as follows: "… ripe, holy lives will mature and adorn the kingdom of their Father. Are you listening to this? Really listening?"


A version of this piece has also been posted as my latest Gospel Reflection on the website of Mission in London's Economy and can be read by clicking here.


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REM - Everybody Hurts.

Spiritual Life: Big Society

This is my Spiritual Life column about the Big Society which was published in yesterday's Ilford Recorder:

Recently I attended a conference on what the Big Society might mean for the Church, where I heard Jon Cruddas, MP for Dagenham and Rainham, state that he is a big fan of the Big Society. As the Big Society is viewed as David Cameron’s big idea this was a surprising statement for a Labour MP to make, so what were some of the factors that led to this position?

He began with his Irish Catholic, working class, Labour background, which gave him a communitarian disposition. Communitarianism is about balancing individual rights with the interests of the community as a whole and it developed, in the twentieth century, from the Catholic Workers Movement. As a result, the Big Society is not new and has a significant Catholic heritage on which we can draw.

Next, was the example that the Church has provided in his constituency during a period of considerable change. There, the Church has played a central role by holding the line in the tensions of change; tensions which saw far-right councillors elected and then defeated in subsequent local elections. The Church in this situation acted as a just institution enabling the release of virtue and supporting human flourishing.

These thoughts about the Big Society provide a viable alternative to the selfishness inherent in our market-led consumerism and the over-heavy control of the ‘nanny’ state. They suggest that there is a different way of living and being socially; that life is more than earning and spending.

That certainly doesn’t mean that all is well now. Where the axe of cuts is currently falling makes the Big Society less likely. People in our community are struggling because of the withdrawal of 'safety nets'; the least well off are paying the price for the recession.

It doesn’t have to be like that, however. Successful community campaigns in this borough show that people of all faiths and none care deeply about what happens to this borough and the likely effects of cuts in Council services. Jon Cruddas quoted Oscar Romero who said, "Aspire not to have more but to be more." Maybe if we all thought like that, the Big Society could become the cornerstone of a new politics and the new centre ground.

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Eddie and the Hot Rods - Do Anything You Wanna Do.

Spiritual Life: Blessing laptops & mobiles

This is my Spiritual Life column for today's 'Ilford Recorder':

"A VICAR has launched a bizarre bid to attract city workers to his church — by offering to BLESS their mobile phones and laptops." That was how 'The Sun' responded to a service in the City of London where laptops and mobile phones were blessed as part of a service for workers in the financial district of London. David Parrott, the Vicar concerned, said that he hoped his blessing had made worship "lively and relevant to the people who work nearby in the financial district". Mobile phones and laptops, he suggested, are our daily working tools and therefore are forms of technology that we should bless.

What David did generated lots of press coverage but only seems bizarre if you think there are no connections between work and faith. In a speech given in 2009, the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, said "Many Christians are living out their lives as the church dispersed in the world of business and commerce every day. They ... have the daily challenge of living by a set of values that the world thinks are mad. Their counter-cultural work and calling needs to be recognised, affirmed and supported." The counter-cultural perspective of which he spoke is "the vision of justice and righteousness that comes from a creative and generous God."

He added: "All of life is religious and there is a desperate need to reconnect the sacred and the secular. There is no more urgent time than now to break down the compartmentalised thinking that separates trust in God from the world of work. There needn't be a separation between what goes on in church and in our prayers – and what goes on in the office or in the boardroom or on the shop floor."

That is what David Parrott was doing by blessing laptops and mobile phone as daily work tools. Interestingly there is research which has suggested that as many as three-quarters of workers may be interested in ‘learning to live the spiritual side of their values.’ So what David has done may not be so bizarre after all. It may even be that, were the mad values of Christianity (that vision of justice and righteousness, of which the Archbishop spoke) to be adopted and lived out in the world of work, we might see a restructuring of the economy based on a broader understanding of wealth than simply monetary gain and economic growth alone.

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Blondie - Hanging On The Telephone.