The Parish Meeting

I am reading (again) the biography of Rev. Alan Ecclestone by Tim Gorringe. Ecclestone's regular practice of the weekly parish meeting was seen as a revolutionary approach to parish life. It was a simple but wonderful thing that tied together the daily lives of the people of the parish with a search for a deeper understanding of faith. They would read plays together and then go and see them. International visitors would come and speak. Striking workers would come and speak. They would follow themes and dig deeply into the big issues of the day.

He saw this parish meeting as integral to the way the parish lived. It wasn't an interest group "but was the way in which the church lives". It was for all - there could be no hard and fast rule of membership as "Every baptised person is a member ..but all are in different stages of admitting it".

The parish meeting has a lot to offer the church today. Many of us are hungry for community, for a real encounter with other people and for a deeper engagement with the issues of the day and the riches of the world and its cultures. It's something I would like to develop at St Mary's West Derby.

Satan - the sifter !

A few wods from Walter Wink: "Perhaps in the final analysis Satan is nor even a "personality" but a function in the divine process, a continuum..... interesting stuff and helpful. In Unmasking the powers he writes convincingly about our choices being what makes Satan the dinine agent for good, or Evil.

Ascension Day

Ascension Day and Jesus ascends to heaven from earth. A day to reflect on what it all might mean. Some thoughts:

Walter Wink suggests that the heaven of popular culture (when it is interested in it - being death denying it isn't that much interested) is regarded as otherworldly, transcendent. It is a place which the dead go to if they are good. He suggests however that we conceive of it as aplace of "withinness" - the metaphorical place where the spirituality of everything is located. Angels, Cherubim and Seraphim but also Demons.

He goes on to say that because Heaven is where God resides it is a place of possibilities. Hope.

Holiness and the Cow

We need to rethink our approach. Being a Christian often is reduced to being nice - at least in the UK. Being nice is very nice but is not in itself Christian. For those of us feel called to try harder in the journey of faith what do we do. Do we spend more time reflecting on our lack of love for grumpy George next door ? Well it's all worth doing, but why is our search for God so individual and narcissistic ?

This article from the New York Times reminds me that what we eat is as much a legitimate part of our spiritual journey.

Myths - religious and secular

We are driven by myths, both religious and secular. Big stories that have power to give meaning and purpose. We Christians understand that in some ways our faith is myth (emphatically not in the sense that it's not true - it is true although some elements of the story may not be historical fact) and that it is a good and liberating.

John Gray's book Black Mass is provocative and disturbing, but very good at reminding us of how to look at the thoughts, myths, delusions that underpin our world. His recent article on The Atheist Delusion in the Guardian challenges those comfortable atheists whose books sell so well. Let us all be challenged. Thank God for sharp minds.

Flat Earth News

Nick Davies has written an excellent book: Flat Earth News (Chatto and Windus, 2008). As with good journalism the quality of a book about the failings of journalism is in the research and the detail. He has done his work and cares passionately about a trade that is such a force for good ... or ill. Much of the latter, alas.

The violence of Waterboarding

Giles Fraser makes the point that the most powerful Christian in the World - George Bush has rejected moves to stop the US from torturing by waterboarding. It's a gruesome torture, that's been around since the Spanish Inquisition which involves tipping someone upside down and pouring water in to their mouth so that they nearly suffocate - or drown.

Cheap resurrection joy will not do. It's not the whole story to say that God has sacrificed his Son because we are naughty and now we are free. We have to confront our darker side - our propensity for violence and for degrading others who dare to be a little different. Fraser reminds us that the human urge to find scapegoats to hold our fragile community together goes deep. I pray this Easter for an honest confrontation of our complicity in torture and cruelty and violence and a delight that our God is to be found in then face of the tortured victim. Brother George Bush - listen please !

NB Painting of waterboarding at Cambodia's Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, by former prison inmate Vann Nath.