Christmas Bazaar

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Wizzard - I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday.

Strange ways

Our journey's through life and faith are often strange and convoluted. That certainly appears to be the case for Ann Rice, whose Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt I have just finished reading.

Brought up a cradle Catholic, she exchanged her belief in God for the belief that there is no God while at University in response to her imperative need to read authors that were banned by the Roman Catholic Church. She married a convinced atheist and became famous as the author of popular Vampire novels. Her novels, however, reflected her search for meaning within a personal life touched by tragedy. The combination of her personal search and the research for her novels returned her to the history of Rome and beyond this to the mystery of the survival of the Jews. In 1998 she returned to the Catholic Church. Eventually this led to her own search for the historical Jesus as she read extensively on the subject with the result being the first two novels in her Christ the Lord trilogy.

The first of these is written in simple, sparse prose with the story told in the first person. The storyline incorporates some of the miracles found in the apocryphal infancy gospels but these are mainly restricted to the period in Egypt. The remainder is an imaginative fleshing out of the minimal Gospel stories of Jesus' childhood. Very little happens in terms of action but Rice's dramatisation of Jesus' growing understanding of who he is and what he has to do is effective and moving.

Rice's personal story and the novels written since her return to Catholicism seem to be a reminder of the continuing potency of Christianity in its ability to inspire artists and their work.

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Martyn Joseph - Strange Way.

Memorable Musical Moments Meme

I was tagged by Banksyboy for this meme:

Think of eight memorable musical moments, not necessarily all time favourites, but those when, for example, you felt compelled to wait in the car when listening to this amazing song on the radio because you just had to know who it was by. Or the piece you heard on the tv in a drama that drove you straight onto iTunes to download... (remember once we spent the princely sum of 6s 8d on a vinyl single?!). Optional details for each song give where, why and Spotify or youtube links ...

1. King Crimson's In The Court Of The Crimson King - heard on late night radio in bed under the covers as a child when I was supposed to be asleep. Had to wait 9 minutes + to find out who it was it by. It seemed to go on forever and I was lost inside it. (View)

2. Instantly loved the sound of Norah Jones' Don't Know Why when I chanced to see the video on one of the music channels - pity the rest of the album wasn't quite up to the same standard. (View)

3. Watching The Jam play In The City on Top of the Pops. 60s cool with 70s relevance. (View)

4. I've watched lots of chick flicks with my daughters and have to report that A Walk To Remember is one of the best; genuinely moving, well acted story with a soundtrack by Switchfoot who I'd never heard before watching the film. Dare You To Move is a classic track which all our family still listen to - one of the few songs that we all respond to. (View)

5. Listened to Randy Stonehill's cover of Strong Hand Of Love on a Greenbelt compilation cassette and had to hear more of Mark Heard's wonderful lyrics and music. Heard is aptly celebrated in Bruce Cockburn's Closer To The Light. (View)

6. Came across Buddy & Julie Miller via their cover of Mark Heard's Orphans of God on the Strong Hand Of Love tribute album. (Listen)

7. Wings of Desire either turned me on Nick Cave's music or reinforced that interest - can't remember which. Also loved the opening poem by Peter Handke and was thrilled to hear the version by Van Morrison on The Philosopher's Stone. (Listen)

8. Heard Larry Norman's Sweet Sweet Song Of Salvation on a Key Records compilation then got Upon This Rock followed by the rest of his early Seventies output. Humour, honesty and intelligence combined with great musicianship and tunes. One of a kind. (View)

I tag Philip Ritchie, Sam Norton and Paul Trathen.

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Noah And The Whale - Love Of An Orchestra.

Windows on the world (78)

Bradwell, 2009

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The Low Anthem - Cage the Songbird.

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.

Gospel Reflection

My latest Gospel Reflection for Mission in London's Economy can be read by clicking here. Based on Jesus' words about the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem (Mark 13. 1-8), I write about the sense that nothing we build as human beings lasts.

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Todd Rundgren - The Walls Came Down.

c4m webpage update (28)

This week I have begun adding summaries of the presentations given at commission4mission's recent Study Day to the c4m webpage. To date, my introduction and the presentation by Peter Judd, Cathedral Dean, have been added. Peter Judd shared stories of commissioning a range of works from artists such as John Piper, Mark Cazalet and Peter Eugene Ball.

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Bruce Cockburn - World of Wonders.