TASK Newsletter - No. 1

After a busy couple of weeks since our launch, we have pleasure issuing our first TASK newsletter to our first wave of supporters. It aims to set out what has been going on, and some of the areas we might befocusing on over the next weeks and months.

Getting started

Our first public outing was on New Year's Eve, when a number of us trekked down to the High Road car/lorry park for an early morning photshot to go into the Ilford Recorder. This accompanied a strong written piece in their first issue of the new year. In this week's Recorder, all three local councillors signed a joint letter supporting the advent of TASK, and recognising the scale of the work required to take things forward locally after years of decline. The Yellow Advertiser has also carried an article in the current issue.

Getting the word out

We have already:

• put up a flyer in the community notice board by the railway station;
• issued flyers through St. John's Church;
• leafleted some of the High Road traders;
• got a link on the local allotment society website and signed up a new supporter in their own website editor; and
• made opening links to the Seven Kings and Newbury Park Residents' Association, who share many of our concerns on the lorry park and other issues.

We now need to start leafleting homes, shops and businesses much more widely and are looking for volunteers to deliver flyers in their own roads and more generally. Those living on the long roads off the High Road may want to volunteer for half a road, and we hope to organise shared delivery. Contact Chris at chrisconnelley@ntlworld.com if you able to help with this key work.

Campaigns

The lorry park - Local anger over the sale of this critical development site was the event that spurred some of us to set up TASK in the first place. We were concerned that the sale seems to have gone to a company that did not make the highest bid or the best offer for community facilities, despite the latter forming part of the planning brief, along with the idea of any construction here being 'outstanding'. Since everything was considered by the Council's Cabinet on confidential green paper, we just don't know what has been going on. Which is another of our problems with the handling of the affair. We are determined to campaign as long and hard as necessary for the purchasing company, now revealed in the press as Swan Housing, to have to fulfil the terms of the Council's own planning brief, which were themselves written in full knowledge that every recent local public consultation on the future of the site has massively favoured community facilities as a key feature.

Local environment and streetscape - Just before Christmas, a group of TASK founders spent a productive morning walking the area from Cameron Road through to Barley Lane with Council officers. This allowed us to identify many of our issues around street dumping, graffiti, broken paving and the scores of other issues that contribute to the feeling of rundown along our main thoroughfare. These were carefully recorded, using camera images where necessary, with follow up action promised. It was also agreed that these walkabouts would happen regularly, every two months, or so. The next scheduled date is Friday 29 February, starting at 9am outside 55 Cameron Road. It would be good to have a wide range of TASK supporters involved so please contact Ali at ahai@deloitte.co.uk if you would like to be part of this next walkabout.

Seven Kings station

Whether you use it daily or occasionally, its likely that your travelling experience from here is likely to deeply underwhelming. The slippery foyer, closed down toilet block, vandalized waiting room and lack of upper walkway windows project a feeling of profound neglect. The good news is that this sorry situation looks likely to change soon, though, following recent meetings with operators 'one' railway who have agreed to sign up to a comprehensive improvement programme. Some external painting has already begun and from January 14, we are promised an extensive security presence on the station, which should make it feel more safe and comfortable for commuters to use it after dark. The idea of station adoption by the local community is also being considered. Watch this space next time for more details.

Website

We are hoping to develop a basic TASK website over the next few weeks and are getting quotes for this work. If you have experience or expertise in this area, though, and can help us set up what is now an obligatory service for any new organisation, please get in contact asap.

Allotment sales: stop press

Council Cabinet were due to consider controversial allotment sales again this evening, on January 14th, and we were going to ask TASK supporters to turn out to support our local allotment society in defence of these heavily used and much loved local plots. We gather though that the item has now been deferred until February. We will let you know more as soon as we know.

Meeting up

We plan to organise a TASK supporters session over the next few weeks, where we can introduce ourselves, get to know each other and plan our various activities. If you have any good ideas on how this might run, or when or where, please let us know. We want to be as welcoming as possible, and involve as many of you as possible. Email Chris with your thoughts.

Our next TASK email newsletter is due out week beginning 28 January. Please send anything you would like included to Chris or Ali by midday on Friday 25 January.

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Mavis Staples - 99 & 1/2.

Divine dialogues - part 4

What we have then in both the Hebrew and Christian scriptures is a both/and. A linear narrative thrust is combined with the laying of fragments side by side so that each fragment adds to and challenges the others. As Josipovici puts it, in writing of the Hebrew Bible:

"This is an extraordinarily simple and an extraordinarily flexible system, which can lead from what could almost be described as shorthand to rich elaboration … Each new element … helps to bring into focus prior elements which we would have overlooked had we not been alerted to them by what follows.”[1]

As Wilder noted the narrative thrust is essentially structure-legitimating, a pledge of the stability of the cosmic order, while, as Josipovici noted the laying of fragments side by side constitutes a refusal of closure (or, as Wilder, puts it “a very dense portrayal of the human experience and existence in all its empirical reality”[2]). Joel Rosenberg in describing the Torah coins the phrase, “a purposeful documentary montage”, which is a helpful summary of what has been set out above. [3]

This both/and is also the conclusion that Walter Brueggemann has reached in developing his theology of the Old Testament:

“A somewhat different ... dialectic is found in his proposed structure for understanding Old Testament theology - the dialectic between the majority voice that is creation-oriented, a voice that assumes an ordered world under the governance of a sovereign God and so serves to legitimate the structures of the universe, and a minority voice that is in tension with the legitimation of structure, a voice embracing the pain that is present ... in the world and protesting against an order that allows such to be. Brueggemann’s dialectical approach, which assumes an ongoing tension between voices “above the fray” and those “in the fray” is fundamental to his reading of the Old Testament”[4].

There is then an internal conversation within the Hebrew and Christian scriptures between the voices ‘above the fray’ and those ‘in the fray’, between structure-legitimation and the embrace of pain combined with lack of closure or pattern. This internal conversation is there not just in the content of the scriptures but in the very forms of the scriptures themselves. Conversation, then, is built in to scripture.

Brueggemann views the tension between the core- and counter-testimony as unresolved in the Old Testament and therefore views God as ambiguous, always in the process of deciding “how much to be committed to the common theology, how many of its claims must be implemented, and how many of these claims can be resisted”[5].

Brueggemann’s minority voice, the counter-testimony to the core testimony of the Old Testament, seems to equate to the protest in relationship that Sacks says characterises Judaism. It is a “radical probe of a new way of relationship that runs toward the theology of the cross in the New Testament and that runs in our time toward and beyond the Holocaust, as Elie Wiesel and Emil L. Fackenheim have seen so well”[6]. Weisel articulates the counter-testimony well when he says:

“I have risen against His justice, protested His silence and sometimes His absence, but my anger rises up within faith and not outside it ... the texts cite many occasions when prophets and sages rebelled against the lack of divine interference in human affairs during times of persecution ... If that hurts, so be it. Sometimes we must accept the pain of faith so as not to lose it.”[7]

[1] G. Josipovici, The Book Of God: A Response To the Bible (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1988), p. 68.
[2] Ibid., p. 54.
[3] Cited in Josipovitch, p. 17. Like Josipovitch, Rosenberg states that this montage “must be perceived as a unity, regardless of the number and types of smaller units that form the building blocks of its composition”.
[4] P. D. Miller, ‘Introduction’ in W. Brueggemann, Old Testament Theology: Essays on Structure, Theme and Text, Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1992, p. xvi.
[5] Ibid., p. 25.
[6] Ibid., p. 26. The reference to Fackenheim is to To Mend the World: Foundations of Future Jewish Thought, New York: Schocken Press, 1982, especially pps. 278 - 294.
[7] E. Wiesel, All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs, New York: Schocken Books, 1995.

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John Tavener - As One Who Has Slept.

I am Legend

I went to see the excellent I am Legend last night. Paul Trathen in his post on the film mentioned the links with the story of Job. These are clearly there in the way that the central character, Robert Neville, loses his wife, child and livelihood but the story references the imagery and narrative of the atonement more fully than it does the story of Job, particularly in that blood provides the resolution for the story. The film contains a strong example of the power of self-sacrifice, something also discussed in the film in its references to the music and life of Bob Marley.

I am Legend has the look and feel of Children of Men, another collapse of Western culture apocalyptic with Biblical under and overtones. Interestingly, in both, science is implicated in the cultural collapse that trigger the stories they tell and it is spirituality that provides resistence and resolution. In science fiction, it seems, the reality that science is not neutral and is not always benign can be explored in a ways that often seem to be ruled out of play within Western culture, given our addiction to technological development despite the issues raised for us by materialism, militarism and environmental damage.

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Bob Dylan - Jokerman.

Advent & Christmas @ St John's

Combined choir at Nine Lessons and Carols by Candlelight

The children at our Christingle Service

The Crusaders singing group at the Tamil Carol Service

For our 'Lights of Advent' event, organised by the Social and Fundraising committee, we set up three gazebos in the Church garden and hung Christmas lights from them before serving mulled wine, mince pies and roasted chestnuts to passers-by. Our aim was to bring some Christmas cheer to our area at the beginning of Advent and to invite people to our Advent and Christmas services and events. We were restricted somewhat by the weather but despite the rain we went ahead and in the dry periods a number of people joined us for refreshments while others took our Christmas leaflets as they hurried home.

Over the first weekend of Advent, the 29th annual Tamil Carol Service was held at St John's. Organised by Winston and Shalini Solomon, this service is a nine lessons and carols in Tamil and English interspersed with musical items and followed by a shared meal. People travelled from across London and the South East to fill the church and enjoy contributions from a children's choir and The Crusader's singing group.

Our Advent Sunday service included the lighting of Advent candles and the introduction of our Advent song. This service was followed by an Advent austerity lunch, organised by our Peace & Justice group, with time for prayer, reflection and discussion on the theme of consequences. In this time we thought about the consequences of what we say, do and buy and of what we don't say, do or buy; how small changes to our lifestyles can have knock-on effects for our planet. Finally, in the evening, we shared with other churches locally in the annual Seven Kings Fellowship of Churches Advent Service which this year was held at St Teresa's Newbury Park.

The combined choirs of St John's and St Peter's joined forces on two consecutive Sunday nights for services of Nine Lessons and Carols at St John's and then St Peter’s. The congregations enjoyed a varied selection of choral pieces, including John Rutter's Star Carol, and joined in wholeheartedly with a number of familiar carols. The bible readings at our service were themed to show how Jesus' birth fulfilled Old Testament prophecies and I spoke about the way in which Jesus is overlooked at Christmas: "If Christ is not born in us as we hear the Christmas story and sing Christmas carols, then the Christmas season will be pleasant but not life changing. But if Christ is born in us then the whole story will be transformed. It will become our story."

Our morning service had seen more candles, this time in Christingles. Thirty children processed through the Church to the crib scene holding lighted Christingles, that they had previously made at home, before singing Away in a manger. Our children also took part in our Nativity Service on Christmas Eve where they formed a nativity tableau before singing See him lying in a bed of straw. At the Nativity Service, we also began to say a big thank you to Margaret Amann who has led the Children’s work at St John’s for 25 years.

There were more carols by candlelight at our Midnight Communion service on Christmas Eve and then on a balloon on Christmas Day, as we reflected that Jesus had come down to earth at Christmas as God’s gift to enable us to rise to be with God ourselves. In total 560 people attended our Christmas services and we raised over £200.00 for the Haven Children’s Hospice and £67 for The Children’s Society, plus gifts collected for children at Barnados.

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Johnny Cash - Redemption.

TASK update

Thanks to Ali Hai for the following update on the initial impact of the TASK group in Seven Kings:

"Excellent article and group photo on page three of today's Yellow Advertiser on Take Action For Seven Kings (TASK). A splendid letter from the Seven Kings councillors in this week's Ilford Recorder, again on TASK.

It appears that TASK is already beginning to have a positive affect on Seven Kings as within the last few days we have heard of and seen improvements relating to: (1) Seven Kings station; and(2) Litter picking, clearing fly tipped rubbish and removal of graffitti. We have also heard that Seven Kings (including Newbury Park) is next in line for a library, although not guaranteed without local pressure including from residents, schools and councillors."

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The Mighty Wah! - Come Back.

Dad's Church Times obituary

Here's a link to my Dad's obituary on the website of The Church Times.

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Sam Phillips - River of Love.

God’s work, putting things right

My first work-based Gospel reflection for Mission in London's Economy is now on the MiLE website. It is based on Matthew 3. 13-17.

From the beginning of Advent the website for Mission in London's Economy has had a weekly reflection on the Sunday Gospel reading read in many churches which use the Common Lectionary. Each reflection is written from a work perspective and is particularly suitable for a Monday morning following the weekend.

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Pierce Pettis - State of Grace.