1000 posts!!!

This is blog post number 1000!

wow.

even I am impressed.

I am writing this in my new house in Durham, surrounded by boxes.

This means that I am no longer curate at Gloucester cathedral or pioneer minister in the city centre or priest to the feig community.

It means that I am getting myself straight before starting my new job at Cranmer Hall.

I think, for the sake of tidiness, that I need to wrap up this particular blog.

I started it before feig even existed in order to keep a kind of log of what I was doing for those who expressed a modicum of interest.

It relates to the evolution (at least from my perspective) of the feig community, and as I am no longer an active member, it seems right for me to stop talking about it.

The guys have set up their own blog here.

And I think I might just start another blog. I keep trying to stop but it won't go away.

So, if you're at all interested, check back in a few weeks time. There may be a link to my new effort.

And here it is (on the day A-level results came out).

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our last night with feig

last night the feig community gathered for a barbeque and final sending off for us.

it was deep. and emotional and far too much went on to be done justice here.

several important people were missing - including our children (tucked up in bed) and George and Nic, Paul and Sara, Chris B, and several people who have been feig-ers over the years and have since moved on. To them and to everyone who was there yesterday we say a huge thank you and a tearful farewell.

It's been an amazing journey to share.

Gloucester Cathedral this morning...

Pre-Greenbelt Feig-Feast

Portland (USA) based group 'Agents of the Future' are going to be facilitating an act of worship at the legendary pre-Greenbelt feig-feast on Thursday 28th August in Gloucester cathedral.

They say:

'All 17 members of Portland-Stone-Groningen-Kassel garage-gospel collaboration, Agents of Future, will be present to facilitate worship that will stretch the sinews. They will be introducing their own unique version of the COLLAB-YRINTH, using the gorgeous cathedral floor to "pave the way", as it were.
Caution: They may frighten those with stronger constitutions and inspire the weaker ones.'

It's going to be huge.

I am gutted to be missing it.

(link here to a Greenbelt interview with AotF)
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The Still Point

StillPoint is a centre for the Practice of Christian Spirituality in Oxford.

explore it here


“At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance,
and there is only the dance.”

- T.S. Eliot, ‘Four Quartets’

Thursday

This morning I was on duty at the cathedral's breakfast club for homeless people.

Had a great conversation with and guy outside about quantum physics - about which I know almost nothing - and God - about whom I know very little. Really good indeed.

In a mo I'm meeting with Matt Rees who has been leading the 'home' community in Oxford.

After that I am going to carry on with an 'incumbent's reference' for one of the feig guys who is going through the selection process for ordination in the CofE. It's such a long and vigorous process (of which this 8-page form is only a small part) that I'm surprised anyone even vaguely odd gets through. Still, if you can't be odd in the church, then you can't be odd anywhere right? odd can be good.

Later this evening we are going along to our final feig. This is happy and sad all at once. It will be great to see everyone and to eat good food and to talk about the adventure that has been the last three years.

More to say. Much more.
but later...

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from the diary of Francis Witts

This made me smile:

Revd. Witts was the vicar of two wealthy Cotswold parishes in the early 19th C.

He was also a well-connected member of the local gentry, Lord of the Manor, a local magistrate. and had not been to theological college (they didn't exist then).

Here is an entry from his diary:

'After breakfast left home with my son in our open carriage with our groom, for Northleach... At a little past 12 Edward and I pursued our course toward Prinknash Park, baiting at Frogmill Inn, where I met Mrs Browne and her elder daughter taking a drive, and had a parley with them. Edward botanised. At 2 we set forward again by Clubberly the Air Ballon at the top of Crickley Hill, Birdlip and Todd's Cottages to Prinknash where we arrived at half past 4 and were kindly welcomed by our excellent friends Mr and Mrs Howell...'

So there we are...

In response I guess it is worth saying that the vicar who does Revd. Witts' job today has a whole heap of parishes to look after instead of just the two, and doesn't live in the splendid rectory (now a hotel), and is available all the time (rather than living the life of a country gent) and is highly trained theologically. Which is good.

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generosity. pt2

on the other hand, plenty of Christians are exceptionally generous with their time, money, efforts, goods and chattles...

as are plenty of people with little or no confessed religious conviction.

992

this is the 992nd post on the feig-city blog.

my hope is to make it to 1000 before this particular blog is left hanging for all eternity.

or something like that...

Generosity

I've been thinking a whole lot about Christians and community and generosity recently.

on the whole it's hard to give, right?

I guess it's a frame of mind. Or rather, a way of the heart.

I'm not sure where, but I think somewhere along the way, our protestant heritage, with all it's talk about 'good stewardship' and 'minding your ego' etc etc, led us to become a little confused about the kind of generosity that is the Christian way.

I believe in an abundant God. A creator who stuffs the earth brim full of life and good things. A God who lavishes gift after gift on all people (look at Jesus' parable of the workers in the vineyard for starters!). This God, in Christ, calls us to follow him wholeheartedly with everything we've got. This starts in the heart and head and is evidenced in the work of our hands.

Quite a few Christians seem to think it is OK to respond with half-arsed measures.

(I include myself)

In the book of Exodus, the people of Israel are told that they mustn't appear before the Lord empty handed. Which meant bringing something of worth, to honor the Lord and the community. It didn't mean coming with the smallest giblet you could find and justifying it with 'we're trying to be good stewards' nonsense.

God doesn't need your gift. The church doesn't need your gift - no doubt someone else will cover it and won't even say a thing!

But surely response to the God that Jesus spoke of with his whole life demands your gift. Not some half-baked, second-rate, zero-effort, cheap-as-you-like, what-can-I-get-away-with gift.
But the most - the full-on, no-holds-barred, best you can offer. All the time, even if you think those around you aren't coughing up too.

When people who claim to know and follow Jesus Christ are generous, and serve with all they've got, they are believable. I'm not sure that anything else quite cuts it.

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Everything is Spiritual

watched Rob Bell's 'Everything is Spiritual' over the weekend.

(cheers Dan!)

I thought it was excellent. An apparently savvy blend of science and Christian spirituality. Well, well worth a watch. It seems odd to me that Rob Bell is attracting criticism from blogs in some spheres of churchworld for aspects of his theology. Too much shouting from a distance and not enough engaging face to face? perhaps...

see this YouTube clip for a taster.

I also enjoyed this...

Carlo Carretto's 'Letters from the Desert'

First published in Italy in 1964, this is the kind of book you can only read short segments because it is packed with the sort of ideas and spiritual wisdom that require hours and hours (or perhaps a whole lifetime) to process.

I underlined most of the book.

Here is one example for you to chew on:

'This is crucial: as long as we pray only when and how we want to, our life of prayer is bound to be unreal. It will run in fits and starts. The slightest upset - even a toothache - will be enough to destroy the whole edifice of our prayer life...

enjoyed this

I read this on holiday: Tribes, by Seth Godin.

He says lots and lots of very worthwhile things - many of them obvious - but then we often miss the obvious. Here's a good example:

'People yearn for change, they relish being part of a movement, and they talk about things that are remarkable, not boring.'

Many pages later he goes on to say:

'Change isn't made by asking permission. Change is made by asking forgiveness later.'

feig book...

I just got home from the good-old two week family holiday up near the Lakes somewhere, to find a mail in my inbox from Kingsway Survivor, who tell me that two advance copies of 'Through the Pilgrim Door' have arrived from the printers in the States.

Needless to say, I am very, very excited.

The book will be available from Sept 4. You can read a little bit more here