novice blogger

Irena Sendler

2010-03-22T02:51:00.000-07:00

This is Irena Sendler, who died aged 98. She was a plumber in the Warsaw ghetto. She saved 2,500 infants and children by smuggling them out in her toolbox and van. She kept a list of their names in a glass jar under a tree in her garden and after the war tried to reunite them with relatives. She was nominated for the Nobel Peace prize the year it was awarded to Al Gore - not a bad bloke of course but not someone who actually put his life on the line for peace like Irena. She was German - I think Irena means peace (I checked that with Bob because his mum had the same name).

The return of the carrier pigeon

2010-03-16T05:15:00.000-07:00

Yesterday my computer broke. The hard drive ground to a halt.
Thankfully Bob being a super computer wizard managed to save all the files to his wacky filestore system. But for now I'm without my usual computer which sounds odd because it's only really half my life, or less, that I've had a usual computer. I'm a self taught computer user and a Bob backed up one. He is my computer guru. Without him I'd still be using an Amstrad (maybe someone reading this still is). But when they break down I know nothing.
At least with a carrier pigeon you could give it a bit of TLC, put it's wing in a sling, give it as leg brace made from matchsticks and a bit of polly-filler to eat. But I can't think of anything useful to do with a broken computer. Maybe if we all used carrier pigeons more there would be fewer now making a great deal of noise in the trees around here as they get a bit amorous for Spring. Maybe I should start a campagin for the return of the carrier pigeon as a medium of communication. Perhaps someone could do a tweet on that!

A fresh expression of Lent

2010-02-26T04:11:00.000-08:00

I went to a meeting on Wednesday (and survived - nice beetroot soup and chocolate brownies) about Fresh Expressions. It's a phrase that winds me up when used in connection with the church. Let's face it most of the so called fresh expressions are already well past their sell by date. And what should we call what's left: stale expressions? Can't really see anyone going for that. It all sounds like a coffee outlet to me or as Hannah sometimes says 'the church trying too hard to be trendy'. Added to which I'm often grumpy in Lent. It's not the giving things up, as I rarely do. It's more the notion that Lent is Lent and we should all get on with it. Just like some Bishop said Advent is about sin, so Lent is a time for the church to pontificate about what Lent is and stuff. I advocate letting it all hang out in Lent. Seems to me Lent is bonkers. Half way between Christmas and Easter is just when all the things we put off until after Christmas and all the ones we want to get in before Easter colide. Then there's Lent groups and Lent lunches and Lent prayers and Lent this and that. So how about letting it all hang out in Lent. Here's a few words about Lent being bonkers to get you started:

Lent is bonkers

Lent is bonkers:
you and me God
belting round the universe
sometimes this way
sometimes that.
There’s those who say
‘Be quiet’
And I say ‘Naff off’.
There are those that say
‘Do it this way’
And I say ‘Not on your life’.
Folding paper,
painting faces,
holding string,
sticking notes on everything,
I cartwheel across
from one planet to another.
But there’s a day coming:
you and me God
we know this day,
when everything hangs
in the balance
and the Life Giver
gives it all up
that we may live on.
I’ve got it in my sights now:
my heart is racing,
I can’t stop it.
Lent is bonkers:
so much for forty days and nights.
When only one counts
this is the One we can count on.

JAL: 26.02.2010

Sad and speechless

2010-02-12T04:06:00.000-08:00

I've just posted a piece on the Women in Ministries blog at http://womenministrynetwork.blogspot.com/2010/02/treatment-of-women-in-yarls-wood.html
about the treatment of some women detained in Yarl's Wood Immigration Centre. You may have seen the hunger strike there reported in the press recently.
The events described by Mojirola, a detainee from Nigeria with three British born children, are appauling. I'm sad but speechless.
The forgein secretary seems to think it is OK to hide information about the abuse of a British resident on the grounds that it might negatively influence our relationship with another country, as reported earlier this week. I wonder what country wants to continue such a relationship. It's like a person deciding not to report her/his brother-in-law for domestic violence because he might not speak to him/her again!
Doubtless the home secretary will now find some way of fudging the issue about the abusive treatment of women in Yarl's Wood. These are our sisters.

These are our sisters,
wonderful sisters:
resourceful,
persistent.
We will not forget them.

Sad but wise

2010-02-11T02:23:00.001-08:00

Over on Jane's blog she's wondering about being sad but wise. It seems to me that one of the wonders of a trinitarian God is that God can be many different things at once, so here's a few words on that subject:

Sad but wise

Sad God, wise too,
I also weep with you.
I examine myself and see what you see,
Or at least some of it.
I am sad but wiser.
I look at the world and see what you see,
Or at least some of it.
I am sad but wiser.

Sad wise God,
Who in Jesus
Wisely but sadly called Lazarus back to life,
Call us back too,
That both wise and sad
We may make a new start
Amongst your kin and kindom.

JAL: 11.02.2010

Cell and cloister

2010-02-09T06:48:00.000-08:00

As we walked round our cloister (other people call it Greenhead Park), the walking buddies reflected on some of the seven sacred spaces. It is currently being redeveloped - hence the keep out sign.

In our own homes, we acknowledge, different spaces fill different functions. The cell is really important in the kind of lives we lead. To have our own personal individual space is a priority. We decorate it as we like. We may have more than one area that fills this function: bedroom and study can be different sorts of cells. These are definitely luxuries for many people in our culture. Early monastics slept in communal spaces, but few of us share with large groups on a long term basis now, unlike those living in poverty in poor families world-wide. New monasticism in our own homes is one thing, but how to keep it fair and just is quite another.

So we kept walking. Our daily route has become our cloister. Others join in sometimes and we meet and greet as well as walk and talk. Too many things at once can leave you breathless. We pass the diggers in the park and the squirrels cross our paths too. Our cloister is public space but we only greet people we know and that isn't very many. Once again we see the private side of life in Britain rather than the wider communal understanding that the early monastics had. Even so, it has made us think about our own spaces and how we use them, our hopes and dreams and what we would like to change.

God you call us through the wood;

through the wood you speak to us.

May we, your wood-wise ones,

touch wood with you,

hang onto your promises

and help shape the dreams of community

that only cross-wise commitment brings.

More new monasticism

2010-02-04T08:53:00.001-08:00

I've been getting more excited about new monasticsm this week. I've been reading several things about 'seven sacred spaces': places which are important to community building. These are found in both the early monastic traditions and the current 'fresh expressions' (yes I know it sounds like a coffee outlet) of monasticism.

They are:

Cell: a space for the individual to grow, pray, rest and reflect;

Chapel: a communal space for worship and liturgy

Garden: a space for physical work and the growth of what the community needs to thrive;

Refectory: an eating and serving space;

Cloister: a moving and greeting space;

Scriptorum: a sort of study/library space;

and Chapter: a sort of communal conversation space.

Some writers suggest that these spaces have now largely become individual or relegated to the private sphere. We have our own spaces and shared space is more for business and commerce, leisure and learning. But is it sacred: a place to encounter God?

Well any space could be of course. But I began by thinking about the spaces I use and their meaning to me. I agreed with some writers that Cell is now more meaningful to me than Chapel. George Lings suggests we are breeding a race of 'de-churched hermits' who do their spirituality in their private or personal space but less so in public worship and litury and chapel space, partly because our churches are not often winsome enough to do this anymore.

I think I might be a de-churched hermit. It's not a bad thing to be, but it might have it's limitations. However, it can also be very attractive. Sometimes I just don't want to leave my cell.

Of course there are other sacred spaces in our house. The corridors do act as a sort of moving and greeting space like a clositer as George also suggested - but then we have big corridors! Garden has grown in importance as a sacred space, especially in this house as it has a nice but useful garden. Refectory can be on our knee in the sitting room as often as at table in the dining room - such a common trend but it doens't mean it's not sacred.

I'm going to continue thinking about these spaces for a bit and talk to others about them. If you want to leave a comment that would be much appreciated.

God of space,

outer, inner and virtual,

space us out with your presence

that we may connect with each other

and with the earth

and make community a place

where all may live on.

New Monastacism

2010-02-02T03:13:00.000-08:00

There was a programme on Radio 4 yesterday in the Beyond Belief series on New Monastacism. My monastic friend, Bob Warwicker, drew my attention to it last night. You can still catch it on the BBC i-player (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00qbw64#synopsis).
Three people were discussing their views on Fresh Expressions of Monasticism, like the Northumbrian Community and Western Bhuddism. As a Reformed Nun if there's one thing that will drive me bonkers is all this Fresh Expressions talk. Sounds like a coffee outlet to me. Fresh Expressions of Religious and Faith movements is an oxymoron. Religion and Faith are constantly articulating fresh expressions. If they weren't they'd be dead (come to think of it....). Seriously, the only live faith is a fresh one. Reformed Nuns rule OK because we have been exploring and reforming what it means to make a life time faith committment all of our lives - as has any other person serious about their faith. Problem is too many people visit the tombs of religion and faith and expect to find the living there. No chance.
In a month when being Benedictine suddenly became more hip again, St B was by no means turning in his grave. He was roaring the praise of God in the countless company of heaven, like any sensible creative saint.

Then this morning Hilary told me about the Slanket - it's blanket with arms (http://www.theslanket.com/). Just the kind of habit for a new monastic. Check it out!

In good time

2010-02-01T03:41:00.000-08:00

In these hasty train catching days it's easy to miss the connection. As things stand, I'm still amazed by the number of awesome moments over the last two weeks which sometimes leave me too weak for words.

There was an article I wrote about prayer in Reform in January (see http://www.urc.org.uk/ for Reform) in which I mentioned my tendency to pray the hours. This habit goes back to my days with Benedictine Nuns in the 1980s, as does my ulitmate wish to live on a roundabout in a hut and grow vegetables. This articles resulted in an avalanche of correspondence about prayer. Well aside from breathing it maybe one of the most widely practiced human arts: 90% of people say they pray (obviously 100% say they breathe at some time or another). So in some ways I shouldn't be surprised by the volume of correspondence. But I do want to say thanks. Thanks to all who wrote, or texted, or phoned or even just thought about it. It humbled and amazed me.

It has been a time of gifts. As I walked around the park with Angela and Hilary today (that was 2 miles in 33 minutes!) I saw a leaping squirrel. It reminded me of this written in 2008:

Acorn time

It’s acorn time again:
A bounding squirrel zigzags across the lawn,
mouth full, tail flashing like quicksilver,
finds a spot and looks around,
then quickly buries the treasure for harder days.

Darting Spirit,
may the treasure buried in us,
be the store we draw on in difficult times.
May acorn time remind us of the unexpected hoard
that is contained within each person.
Give us a Vision4life so that
like the squirrel, we may find
with surprise, the gifts we each have
and unearth them to share with our community.

Among the dead

2010-01-23T08:04:00.001-08:00

On Jane's blog she had a joke by a Bishop (I think his name was George) about how he didn't want to get up and go to church. The hymns were dreary, the sermons were dull, the people hated him, but he had to go: he was the Bishop. I think I need to met George before too long. I'd like to tell him he doesn't have to go. I know many people think they do and faithfully go on doing it. But I do not share this view. On Monday I hope to go to Cardiff where I have been asked to share some bible studies using RB (of course) for a Council for World Mission group on Evangelism in Europe. Well, of course I was surprised. But I'm going, even if I'm not giving the bible study they wanted: What does the bible say about evangelism? I told them I couldn't do that because I didn't know. I said I do some RB and they said I could if it wasn't too scary.

That's what it has come down to. Not being too scary. The dying church doesn't like its gospel too scary. Back in Bethany (where else) the neighbours are still talking about Lazarus and the scare they got when he came out of the stinking tomb, bandages flapping. Me, I'm with Lazarus. I hope to meet George sometime and invite him along.

Among the dead

Whisper softly,
speak in hushed voices
but do not disturb the dying.
Be respectful,
keep your eyes lowered,
as it dies little by little.

But you,
you who have already been in the tomb
three or four days,
who have smelt your own stench
and then emerged
at the call of the Life Giver:
you are not afraid.

For you,
you who make up words
who use your own given name
and dance on graves
flinging bandages about
celebrating release:
you are not afraid.

You already know
that body is not here.
There’s no point in seeking the living
among the dead.

JAL: 23.01.2010

Rejoice

2010-01-22T04:17:00.000-08:00

Bob came back this morning and said 'Our bins have been emptied'. This is a joyous event! The first bin emptying of 2010 - due to challenging conditions. So here's a prayer for bin emptying.

Rejoice greatly

Rejoice
Rejoice
Rejoice greatly:
our bins have been emptied,
been emptied
been emptied.

We rejoice for the emptying of bins,
the cleaning of streets
and the sorting out of communal space.

When the snow came everything stopped
and the white washed out our collective memory
our rubbish and mess,

But now our lives are getting back on track.
The council workers are getting back on schedule
and our neighbourhoods are getting back in order.

Mindful of the need to sweep our lives clean,
to recycle what good there is in what we’ve done in the past
so that we may make a better attempt at today and tomorrow,
we ask you to refresh us in our efforts to make good our community.

And so we rejoice.
happy to have a chance to try again
and to have empty bins to refill carefully.

JAL: 22.01.2010
The first stanza in italics should be sung lustily in the style of Handel.

Rocking the cradle

2010-01-15T08:11:00.000-08:00

Over on Jane's blog she is blogging about her sermon this morning on the parable of the woman looking for the lost coin, and prayers for Haiti. So here are more prayers to add to the world's prayers for Haiti today.

God is sweeping

God is sweeping up the dust,
clearing away the rubble
checking every pile
that was once a house or school,
hotel or office block,
for the precious ones
who are lost.

God will keep on sweeping,
checking, looking, weeping
as the numbers mount up
and the mass graves are filled.

God will keep on rocking,
rocking the world
in the cradle she has made.
She only asks that we help
to rock as we can.

Today, please help to rock the cradle for Haiti.

God of all,
give us life
one more time.

JAL: 15.01.2010

Learning to talk

2010-01-05T03:07:00.000-08:00

'Learning to talk is very important', parents in NE Sheffield agree. This was the stunning conclusion of my PhD. Learning to talk is also very complicated and so you can appreciate why the appointment of a Communications Champion by the current British government has aroused my interest, despite heaps of snow in West Yorkshire.

Dr Jean Gross, the new CC, was reported across the British press yesterday. The Daily Mail went with 'Middle-class parents too busy to teach children how to talk, says "communication champion",' Whilst the Guardian had 'Parents too busy to help children learn to talk, study suggests'.

Like I said, learning to talk is very complicated. I realise that is never going to be a sound bite in anyone's newspaper. However, my own study of the life experiences of parents in NE Sheffield parenting children learning to talk makes nonsense of both headlines.

It's nearer the truth to say;
1 parents think that learning to talk is very important;
2 parents expect their children to learn to talk and when this doesn't happen most are surprised, sometimes frustrated and have limited resources for dealing with the situation;
3 parents of children learning to talk are usually juggling many more family life pressures and issues alongside this one;
4 most parents, including those from multicultral parts of NE Sheffield (this study was done in the parliamentary consitituency of Sheffield Brightside) have some parental knowledge about learning to talk. That is to say, they have attitudes, beliefs and experiences on which to build when it comes to parenting in this situation. Few, if any at all, will be completely without this, and few will apreciate the patronising approach of so called experts who act as if parents know nothing.

Meanwhile on her blog, Anita, has something to say about the role of the third sector in supporting and promoting parents of children with communication needs. Check it out: http://www.thecommunicationtrust.blogspot.com/

Raw prayer

2009-12-27T06:27:00.001-08:00

I heard today that a local youth I knew, Peter, died on Christmas Day, aged 17. He leaves his mother, Margaret and his father, Stephen. Remember them.

And as you remember, remember this...

At the bottom of the mountain, Jesus meets a boy with epilepsy and his family (I go back ot this incident often) and the father says 'help my unbelief', as any of us might, and the mother says nothing, as any of us might, and Jesus says to the disciples 'this comes right only with prayer' and that's what any of us might discover through the Holy Spirit at the bottom of any mountain.

Dying day

Tomorrow will be my dying day:
the day before yesterday was yours.
You didn’t buy a ticket,
you didn’t book a place
and yet there you were
suddenly at the front of the queue.
Never one to push yourself forward,
you had been propelled there
by a few ill-chosen breaths.
Of course it’s all behind you now,
while we that are left grow old
and still have to face the final hurdle;
waiting for the chance to catch a note
of that endless chorus you now sing
and hoping this will not break us.

For today, God of all,
give us peace, one more time.

JAL: 27.12.2009
In memory of Peter

Today

2009-12-24T03:40:00.001-08:00

What sort of day will it be today? There's nothing like unexpected weather to create uncertainty in Britain. Basingstoke has been particularly vulnerable to this phenomenon but there's hardly a corner of the UK untouched by it, according to the news. All this dreaming of a white Christmas that goes on year after year has suddenly become the last thing we really want for Christmas now it looks possible. So what sort of day is our Advent day today? Here's a few possible descriptions:

Present day

Advent day
Waiting day
Snowy day
Weathery day
Slipping day
Sliding day
Travelling day
Biding day
Visiting day
Minding day
Thinking day
Deciding day
Going day
Staying day
Action day
Resting day
Living day
Dying day
Present day
Emmanuel day

Janet Lees: 24.12.2009

She's a woman

2009-12-21T03:17:00.000-08:00

If you've not already seen the poet laureate's poem for the 12 days of Christmas you must not miss it. It is at http://www.radiotimes.com/content/features/carol-ann-duffy-the-twelve-days-of-christmas/
Well done Carol Ann Duffy. It's moving, it's relevant and it's really good. I always knew we needed a woman as poet laureate.
In these snowy Huddersfield days when everything is covered in a thick blanket of white such that you can be forgiven for thinking nothing else exisits outside the warm shell you have created we need this stuff to keep us active and concious. Note the 12 drummers drumming - drumming for Cpenhagen still. If we'd gone on a few verses we might have made it to 350 ringers ringing and got further than the delegates themselves managed to.

Year of the Nurse 2010

2009-12-20T02:16:00.000-08:00

It seems that 2010 is to be the Year of the Nurse - so says the Nightingale Declaration at http://www.nightingaledeclaration.net/.

Of course this is dear to me having been the daughter of one and th neice of another nurse. Anne, my mum (died 2007) is on the left and Betty, her sister (died 2005) is on the right. Both were nurses as you can see.

Here's a piece I wrote about them both a couple of years ago, a month after my mum's death, which is influenced by RB and the story of Martha and Mary:

Two Sisters

There were two sisters.
One was married and one was single and they lived together in the home of the married one.
One was extrovert, outgoing, practical. She would invite many people to the house, make lots of food and feed everyone. She would also help people with practical family problems in sickness and in health.
One was introvert, quiet, reflective. She would prefer to be on her own, reading a book or the paper, listening to the radio. If you asked her for help she would give it willingly; the washing or the ironing.
They seemed quite different.
They shared the same profession both being nurses, but they practiced it in different ways. One was the career nurse who had managed wards and even a whole hospital (in the days when the NHS was like that). Her quiet authority had transmitted itself to staff and patients alike. One was a nurse alongside other roles in family and community, sharing her skills and knowledge with anyone who asked, mentoring young people, supporting old ones. Her practical action helped many to cope with life’s ordinary challenges.
But they were also very similar: generous with their time and resources, they both enjoyed music and reading, and were very faithful to each other.

I knew them both and they both influenced my life. One, the practical extrovert, was my mother. The other, the reflective introvert, was my aunt. I am like them both; practical and reflective. Theirs was not a competitive relationship: there was no ‘better part’. Rather they each made a contribution to the whole of life, lived in the company of the Life Giver, each one giving what they were, wholly vulnerable.

JAL: 19.10.2007

A ringing good day

2009-12-12T02:06:00.000-08:00

Over on Jane's blog you can read about the plan to have 350 rings, bongs, bangs or hoots tomorrow for climate change: http://stranzblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/get-ready-to-ring-church-bells-across.html

I wondered how we could do this in a small village church in the north of England, one with no bells and few people. Last night we heard the mighty Huddersfield Choral Society raise the roof of the Town Hall with thi annual Christmas concert. All the old favourites were sung and some new ones. So it made me think: they had tubular bells - we don't have any of those. They had jingle bells - the little hand held bells you had in primary school - we've got some of those!!!

So here's the jingle bells theme adpated for climate change ringers everywehre:

A ringing good day

Bells ring out
Bells ring out
Bells ring out all day
As bells ring out around the world:
Protect the world today!

Bells ring out
Are you listening?
Ring out loud
Are you listening?
We’re happy today
To worship and pray
Working for a much fairer world

Bells ring out
Bells ring out
Bells ring out all day
As bells ring out around the world:
Protect the world today!

Drums beat out
Are you listening?
Beat out loud
Are you listening?
We’ll beat a loud song
As we right the wrong
Working for a much fairer world

Bells ring out
Bells ring out
Bells ring out all day
As bells ring out around the world:
Protect the world today!

JAL: 12.12.2009
To a well known Christmas tune

Advent and sin

2009-12-10T01:51:00.000-08:00

It seems Advent goes with sin like kippers go with custard (i.e. it's not to everyone's taste). Sin has become one of those dated words fewer and fewer ordinary people use. Maybe we can't scrap it altogether (I'm sure a bishop or two would have something to say about that) but maybe we can find some more relevant words to use. Someone I read about recently suggested 'abuse' was a good word to swap for sin. I'll think about it.

Meanwhile what about RB for Advent? There's all that exciting stuff about the end times - a bit like the far fetched plot of a dodgy video game. Then there's John the Baptist - now you're talking.

We did some RB on John the Baptist at the weekend. Some lovely things about John the Baptist have come up in RB like John being a Baptist because that's his name. Good thing he wasn't called John the United Reformer then wasn't it! But the best memory I have of John the Baptist is the tin of dried grass hoppers my mum won in a raffle when I was about 8 years old. Yes, I know he ate locqusts but they don't do them in tins it seems. This lovely unopened but fading tin of dried grasshoppers is still on my shelf to remind me of John the B and all his austere ways. I'm not sure they've not passed their sell by date but speaking personally my austerity measures only go as far as nonfat milk (that's the stuff with the red tops).

Advent days

2009-12-08T07:57:00.000-08:00

‘Advent is not supposed to be about ‘happiness’. It is about judgement’ said the Bishop of Repton. [1] Just goes to show what he knows about it. Seems to me quite possible that this rather limited view of it has sucked quite a lot of life from Advent already. There are many different days in Advent; some happy, some less so. But let's not rule out happy days from Day 1. And as for judgement, that's something we all need to learn: to discern when and where, as the days of Advent move from one to the next, just what the possibilities might be. Here are my prayers so far for the days of Advent 2009.

Mundane day

On a mundane day it’s easy to miss the thistledown
floating by on the breeze to settle and root elsewhere.
In commonplace spaces it’s easy to overlook
the uncommon, small and rare things under stones.
In ordinary time it’s easy to forget the extraordinary,
the celebration of sunrise that lifts me.

As tiredness seeps into me
and weariness weighs me down
it’s easier to make my litany
from a limiting list of negatives
than a liberating whisper of possibilities.

In the still moment, confirm in me
the possibility and the surprise.

JAL: for 01.12.2009
altered from 07.06.2009

Happy Day

Advent God,
As we wait out these happy days
welcome us in from the drafty doorstep
of the tomb lined garden
into the warmth of your company
to share the wine of your kindom.

JAL: 02.12.2009

Round and round the park

Round and round the park,
all three or a pair:
one lap, two laps,
then smoothie we can share.

Body-wise God,
keep us moving all our days.

JAL: 03.12.2009

Slow moving sun

All hail to you, slow moving sun
symbol of creation’s energy.
All hail to you, full setting moon
making dawn so awesome.

All hail to you, slow moving One,
plodding on with us daily.
From sunrise to sunset,
moonrise to moonset,
may we be Son-wise people.

JAL: 04.12.2009

Body days

Praise God with the gurgling tummy.
Praise God with the amputated limb.
Praise God with the cleft palate.
Praise God with the deleted chromosome.
Let every impaired one praise God.

God, you know me and my impairments.
You know what I remember and what I forget.
You know what I hear and what I miss.
You know when I sing in tune and when I don’t.
You know the rhythms of my body and when I’m out of synch.
You know my anger and my anxiety,
What keeps me awake at night
And what causes me to doze off in meetings.

When I’m feeling alive
and creativity is pouring out of me,
then you dance with me.
When I’m feeling dead
and despair is seeping into me
then you curl up with me.
When anxiety freezes me
or anger makes my insides molten
you are alongside me.

As I walk round the park
You keep me company.
When I eat with friends
You break bread with us.
My breath is like a warm fog
That fills me lungs
And permeates every cell.
My skin is like a blanket,
A coat that defines
my insides and outsides.

Each cell has its role,
Its DNA, mitochondria and whatnot.
When a pain comes
Help me to respond equitably,
Accepting my body’s message
Without anger or undue anxiety.
May my breath praise you,
My heart beat for you
And my body rise to you.

JAL: 05/06.12.2009
After Psalm 139, at Gateways into Prayer.

Tree Planter

Cosmic Christ, growing up in a carpenter’s shop,
meeting you death on a cross of wood,
bless these trees, ‘whips’ they call them,
that they may shelter and feed
the birds and animals around us
and give you glory in every season.

JAL: 07.12.2009
For the trees planted at Silcoates on 05.12.2009

Dismal Day

Weep, city weep.
Weep stones and streets,
houses and alleys:
weep now.
Weep with the Weeping One.
Who knows what makes for peace?
He knows and shows
the way to peace
for this and every city.

JAL: 08.12.2009
For Luke 19 in the Yorkshire Gospels.

[1] Quoted in the Guardian, 05.12.2009

The old and the new

2009-12-07T03:19:00.001-08:00

We did some RB with both the Old and New Testaments during our weekend on Gateways into Prayer at Offa House.

This photograph of a lovely tree from the churchyard reminded me of the Psalmist saying 'hide me in the cleft of your rock' although obviously this is a cleft of a tree but similar. We did some RB on psalms and participants had quite a lot to offer. There were bits of psalms that were important to them:

I will lift mine eyes to the hills

God is our strength and refuge

The Lord is my Shepherd

You put me together in my mother's womb

and so on....

There were also less confortable but remembered ones:

My God my God why have you forsaken me?

May the wicked perish and of course the one about dashing the babies' heads against the rocks.

Some psalms we remembered had neither negative nor positive emotions attached. These usually contained some sort of memorable image like 'the oil running down Aaron's beard'.

Then we made up some music to go with psalms both those remembered and read from print.

We also did some RB with the gospel, remembering Jesus saying 'if you have ears'. How many ears can you remember from the gospel? Don't forget the one that gets cut off in the Garden of Gethsemane. We did some 'frozen poses' to remember these stories: think of a story and then freeze yourself in a position that reminds you of part of the story - sorry no photos of this!

Walking buddies

2009-12-04T01:50:00.000-08:00

Three of us, the Always Helpful Two, Angela and Hilary, and me, have started a walking buddies scheme the purpose of which is to get us excercising in a gently but persistent way each day. Our route takes us around the circumfrence of Greenhead Park in Huddersfield, which is one mile. We try to do it twice which makes a week worth ten miles. Not as impressive as some of Bob's daily totals, but we're getting there. Our walk is supossed to be followed by fruit smoothies as a way of increasing our 'five a day' count but so far I seem to consume more of the smoothies than the other two. My plan to day is a smoothie in a cake: a low fat recipie that includes bananas, kiwi and blackberries. It smeels yummy just now!

Anyway all this has lead to a bit of creativity as you might imagine. You might recall that I rarely do RB with the Old Testament. Well here's a change then. Remembering the sort of pattern you commonly find in what is referred to as Deutero-Isaiah - that's from about chapter 40 onwards - I wrote this piece which is all about changing our deathly habits for more life-givign ones, which seemed to be the sort of thing old D-I was on about.

The playground of possibilities

Leave the outhouse of despair,

the barren barns damp with disuse,
the convoluted corridors of conceit,

where low lighting hides the true colours.
Leave all the gapping tombs and come outside
to the playground of possibilities.
Roll in the mud if you must,

swing from the trees if you will:
slide, slip and saunter, twirl, twist and waddle,
bounce, boing and be unrestrained in embracing
the recreational potential of humanity.
Do not acquiesce, accept or agree
to be tamed into the tram lines of timidity.
See the rainbow colours of life reflected in a puddle.
Hear the symphonic cacophony of sound echo round the park.
Admire the skipping squirrel and seek to emulate her glide and verve.
You were made for this;
the spitting image of your cosmic forebear,
it is written in every cell,
and this is the playground of possibilities
so come and play today!

JAL: 01.12.2009

Remembering the fig tree

2009-11-18T03:23:00.000-08:00

One of the interesting bits about remembering the Passion Octave this year with many different groups has been the role of the fig tree. I wonder if you remember it?

During his comings and going around Jerusalem in Holy Week, Jesus is remembered for cursing the fig tree. In the first place he sees a fig tree that has no figs on it. He's a bit cross and curses it. Sure enough when they pass it the next day the disicples notice the fig tree has died.

Various people who write about written down Bibles comment on this small but perverse incident as the only ocassion Jesus is recorded as cursing nature. So what do you make of it?

In the various rememberings of the Passion Octave I've done this year a number of different patterns emerged. In the first example there was a group who remembered curing of the fig tree three times in Holy Week, on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. This proved to be a real laugh: Oh no, not the fig tree again! Another group didn't have the fig tree in at all - the memorable fig tree had become the forgotten fig tree.

This week Jane drew my attention on her blog of Laughter and Liturgy (that's listed on the side of my blog page) to a parable of trees in recorded in Judges chapter 9 in the written down bible. This parables features a number of trees the second of which is the fig tree.

It reads: 'Then the trees said to the fig-tree 'You come and be our king'. But the fig-tree answered 'In order to govern you, I would have to stop producing my good sweet fruit'.' [Judges 9:10-11].

So I wonder if the link is kingship. Holy Week is a different kind of king week. From Palms to Cross and early morning Garden, Jesus is demonstrating ways of contradicting the kingship ideas of his day, and ours. In cursing the fig tree is he saying something about his own refusal to be co-opted into the schemes and plans of human beings. There's no fruit on the fig tree and there's no chance Jesus is going to agree to be king either. Yet at the same time, he goes beyond the kingship ideas of those around him and produces fruit for those willing to to see beyond the bare branches of the fig tree. It is the kind of image that contains the sort of paradox Jesus seems to have been good at: not what we are expecting, challenging our expectations and interpretations.

As we approach the Feast of Christ the King again this year (this Sunday) may be a bit of remembering of Christ the King and Fig-Tree Curser would be in order.

Psalm language

2009-11-08T02:15:00.000-08:00

Although I have used the psalms for a great part of my life they are not the first thing I usually turn to in worship. Mostly because I often struggle to connect with the language. Images of God are limited in most translations: it's all Lord, Lord, and other images seem ancient and far away.

Psalm 127 is part of the lectionary today. It's short and whilst the translation I'm readying has Lord, Lord it's also about building and protecting cities. The second part has the image of children being like 'the arrows in a soldier's hand'. In Helmand today arrows are not much prized I suspect. How to pray with women and men serving out there when we all yearn for peace and wonder at the right action to take to get there? So my rewrite of Pslam 127 in a week that saw deaths of British service personnel pass that of any year since the Falklands. Maybe these words will not sit comfortably with us and maybe that's the thing about Pslams. Too much emphasis on the comfy ones and not enough attention to the uncomfy ones.

Revised Psalm 127

If God does not build the peace
the work of the peacemakers in useless;
if the Holy One does not protect the city
then what hope for those who stand guard.
Your work is useless;
the early mornings and late nights wasted.
Whilst your are sleeping
God nourishes you with love.

We consider children to be God’s gift:
a real blessing.
The offspring a young parent has
are like ammunition to a soldier.
A soldier feels satisfied with a full clip;
such a one feels ready
when face to face with the enemy
or surveying the ground for an IED.

copyright Janet Lees: 08.11.2009

Holy Haddock

2009-11-07T02:01:00.000-08:00

Scientific name: Melanogrammus aeglefinus
Market name: Haddock
Common names: Haddock, Finnan Haddie

I wonder if anyone has a spare Haddock about their person they would lend me for a while? These excellent looking Haddock are just the kind of thing I'm looking for. And I know you'll wonder why.

In our house the phrase 'slap me round the face with a wet haddock' is one of those things we say when we want someone to wake us up or surprise us in some small way. It maybe due to my fish selling ancestors that this phrase has entered our reperoire - then again perhaps not.

I need a wet Haddock to wake up a group of people who have written a very irritating book. The book 'Evangelism in a Spiritual Age: communicating faith in a changing culture' is by Stephen Croft and friends and published by Church House Publishing for the Anglican Church (2005). And why do I want to slap Stephen and his mates round the face with a wet Haddock. 'Cos they need to wake up -that's why.

The book pretends to be a new way of thinking about evangelism. Oh who will deliver us from this dratted 'e' word? A bunch of well meaning 'e' folk have got together and written a well meaning book about 'e' (not the controlled substance that concerned Professor Nutt this week) in a spiritual age - that's now they reckon.

It begins with Yvonne Richmond (first Haddock for her) telling us how she gave up her more agressive form of 'e' for a gentler listening sort of 'e' and whoa how surprised was she to find that she developed relationships with people. If that was not enough we then get a long commentary on a research project (good research project, maybe a nice plate of Haddock and chips for the researcher) in which we find out that ordinary people want to ask six big questions (more haddock please). I'll leave you to guess which ones.

Then Mark Ireland (two Haddock for him, one on each cheek - he'd doubtless turn the other one anyway) tells us how to do this sort of gentle 'e' in ordinary churches at funerals and at Christmas and such like. What the Haddock does he think we've been doing all this time (I do not believe it)? 'Perhaps we need to stop assuming that those who don't go to church have no faith' is smuggly says on page 77. For goodness sake, you do not even deserve all this Haddock I'm throwing at you. What sort of ministry have you people been practising all this time. And published by the Anglican Church. Well quite frankly you deserve everyone to leave (my ancestors left in 1662 by the way).

So why read the book at all. All I can say in my defense is I was asked to for a CWM conference I am preparing to take part in during January 2010. The book seems to think there is some sort of fringe or edge to the church that people inhabit vaguely or fall off. I can't say I see it that way. During a CWM event in 1994 I had the vision of a church with no inside or outside. I refered to it at my ordination, when I got a roll of toilet paper and threw it down the aisle in a long stream and then ripped it up (I think that was after I held up my bra). Mr Ireland says the new Anglican liturgies 'intentionally allow latitude' (page 83). Unfortunately not quite as much latitude as that.

So for now I'm staying out - where ever that is. If the book did anything positive for me it reminded me to keep moving. Once the well meaning 'e' folk start to catch up with you and begin to espouse something that sounds warm and 'bunny cuddly' as a friend of mine put it, it's time to be on your way, looking for the cutting edge of the gospel out there, everywhere, anywhere. Haddock anyone?

The dream comes alive

2009-11-01T07:33:00.000-08:00

Last week Delory Brown, better known to Vision4life contacts as Gaius from Welcome to Corinth, starred as Martin Luther King Jnr at the Lawrence Bately Theatre in Huddersfield. As part of Black History Month, this was also a local celebration of talent. The programme began with a young rap poet, Samuel Wyatt, who has won prizes for his poems. He was followed by a local choir, the True Colours Gospel Choir who sang some of the songs from the civil rights era.

The Dream Comes Alive was a fictional interview between MLK and Moira Stewart, played by Huddersfield actress Lindsay Pascall, and accompanied by archive footage of King.

Brown had obviously done a lot of work to prepare for this role, which he did superbly. The cellar theatre is a small space and this was really the only drawback of the whole evening. Brown could easily have filled a bigger space and indeed it was a shame that he did not have the opportunity to do so. Speaking for alomost the entire time, with only questions interpolated by Pascall in her role as the well known newsreader, King/Brown began be recalling his early life and inspiration. There were many young people in the audience and everyone was hooked by his portrayal of the man who for some many epitomises the Black struggle. He then reviewed the main tennents of non violent resistance and ended with a glimpse into the future: what would MLK have made of the war in Afganistan?

Brown himself has an imposing physical presence and when he stood to give the final 'I have a dream' speech it was clear that he could have benefited from a bigger space in which to perform. The speech itself is well know and it was wonderful to hear the sentences rolling across the audience, including as it does so much 'Remembered Bible'. All together this was an excellent evening and if your local community decides to remember Black history month this way then look no further than Delroy Brown to fill the role. Failing that opporunity you can still catch his portrayal of Gaius on the Vision4life website: http://www.vision4life.org.uk/ (and go to the download DVD section).

Give us this day our daily potato

2009-10-26T10:09:00.000-07:00

This year we grew our own potatoes.

They grew better on one side of the hills than the other.

The west side of the hills is wetter and the ground heavier. Also the potatoes seemed to get more disease and pests there. The east side of the hills was drier but being the north of England not so dry as to dry them out. As you can see we got some good potatoes. We also got some beans, cabbages, spring onions, tomatoes and other stuff.

We also had quite a lot of plums on our plum trees. Here is a poem about all of this gardening:

Plum picker

I’m not the plum picker
I’m the plum picker’s friend.
I’m only picking plums
till the plum season ends.

I am a
plum gatherer,
bean stalker,
potato lifter
wasp botherer
jam stirrer
pie baker
spud roaster
harvest admirer

Of course my attempts at growing fruit and vegetables, whilst they have made a difference to our health, are not on the same scale as that of women all over the world who have to grow stuff to live.

Heavenly gardener, give us this day our daily potato, yam or pumpkin.

As we marvel at the growing may we dig justly so that all may justly dig.

How can they remember who have never heard?

2009-06-21T13:18:00.000-07:00

This must be the most frequently asked question about RB. At almost every event someone says 'But this won't work because ...' and it's usually because there is thought to be insufficient bible knowledge in the common pool for folks to engage in RB. In other words my opening generalisation 'There's a bible in everyone' is not true.

And of course, it's possible that folks saying this are correct. But then again it's not been my experience. In fact I think it's a red herring (enter red herring at this point - swims across screen and exits on the other side). The statement 'we can't do RB because there's no B to R' is just an excuse not to do anything.

RB is a risk. Maybe one day I'll find a group with no B to R but it hasn't happened yet. Personally I still think it's more of a question of how you R your B that what B you R. Of course some days RB goes better than others but for now I'll keep on RBing, at the very least because it's better than doing nothing.

PS When I published this post a free ad by Google popped up and offered me 50% off Red Herrings - now there's an offer it's hard to refuse.

Word of the week

2009-06-11T01:49:00.000-07:00

Hannah is trying to teach me German in advance of our visit to Germany in August. My current favourite word is bloemenkohl (this may be spelt wrong).

Some little herb plants arrived yesterday in the post. These were a free gift. I am looking forward to planting them in my garden where broad beans, lettuce, cabbage, spuds and other goodies are currently growing. Alas no bloemenkohl though.

Watch out for catterpillars. Some ate my gooseberry leaves (!). Anyone who know what those might be, I'd be pleased to hear from you.

Remembering the Bible in Calderdale

2009-06-03T12:47:00.000-07:00

Stainland and Holywell Green URC is a small faith community just over the border into Calderdale, and part of the Waverley Group. Today I took the Vision4life RB road show to their midweek fellowship group. About 12 people were there, mostly retired. We worked on Bible Scrapbooking (see Vision4life website for these instructions) using RB in five small groups.

Although not at first very confident, they soon got into this and produced five interesting versions of gospel stories. There were three different takes on the Holy Week narrative, one that emphasised Jesus carrying the cross, one that looked beyond Good Friday to Easter Day and one which saw the events of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday as the culmination of Jesus life. The two other groups remembered two other well remembered gospel episodes: Jesus calming the storm and the parable of the prodigal son. Hopefully we may have some photographs of these by the weekend so watch this space.

Everyone enjoyed it and felt able to contribute. One person was surprised how much everyone had joined in. Another said how much they liked working in the small group. Some made links between the Rb and episodes from life, including current events in the news and suggestions for prayer. All in all, another good example of how RB can reach the parts other ways of using the bible don't seem to reach.

Finished!

2009-06-02T04:37:00.001-07:00

I'm pleased to say that the batik I started about 6 weeks ago is now finished. It represents the view of the bay and castle at Holy Island, where we did some RB back in April along the theme 'In my end is my beginning'. It was here that we remembered the post-resurection story of Jesus meeting the disciples at the enge of Lake Galilee with bar-be-qued fish. Kate Gray kindly brought along the fish and the smell (and eventual taste) added a wonderful dimension to our RB.

Boys and the bible

2009-05-19T07:37:00.001-07:00

David Hockney has had a thing or two to say about boys and art in response to one of those daft Ofsted reports that makes you wonder if they could inspect their way out of a cupboard. The report includes a vibrant piece of 'computer art' pictured here.

He says "I was appalled when I read that school inspectors say boys are turned off art when it's too heavily focused on drawing and painting," he said. "It's a bit like saying schools shouldn't be bothering with grammar." Well, we all know they'd never stop teaching grammar, would they?

What about the bible? Are boys turned of by that? Lasty night I was at a session with the Boy's Brigade company section at Brackenhall URC exploring more of the remembered bible. Some great insights into Jesus passion as we remembered around the Easter story. Washing feet was 'just wierd' but betrayal was more recognisable, as was fear and wanting to avoid pain. The streets of Huddsersfield may not be the same as the streets of Jerusalem two thousand years ago, but in the small upper room where we met there was plenty of honest remembering.

Wacky in Wythenshawe

2009-05-18T03:16:00.000-07:00

Playing with the Bible for the weekend at St Mark's Wythenshawe was a most creative time. Here are some pariticipants with their bible scrapbooking of the Easter story, from Palms to Pentecost.

You can find the instructions for bible scrapbooking on the Vision4life website. Why not have a go yourselves!

Work in progress

2009-05-08T01:54:00.000-07:00

I've had a busy few weeks remembering the bible here and there. As a result of being away I've not been blogging but I do have other work in progress to share, so here's a bit of it.

Inspired by remembering the bible on Holy Island, this is a batik, a technique that uses hot wax to mark out designs on fabric (in this case an old cotton sheet from Oxfam that cost £1.99) in order to allow the artist to build up layers of pattern and colour. I'm about half way through it now. Watch this space...

Still remembering the bible: local and national

2009-04-26T09:48:00.000-07:00

Yes, I promise I have been doing it - RB of course - since I last posted here. Often indoors, sometimes outdoors, it has been a week or so of creative RB and still some more to come with a visit to SW Synod this week.

Last week was Durham and Lindisfarne with the members of the Thames North and Eastern Synod Ministers' Spring School. Here are some of us eating bar-be-qued fish on the beach as part of remembering post resurection stories - yum yum.

This morning Clive James had a go at RB too in his point of view on Radio 4, with a reference to the Sermon on the Mount. Some of the members of the congregation at Moldgreen URC had heard that as we came to our own rememberings of a wide range of gospel encounters that leave us with scars. So it has been a moving time doing RB and as I get on a train to the SW tomorrow I will look forward to moving a bit further.

Cross-wards through the cross woods

2009-04-12T04:21:00.001-07:00

On Good Friday about 20 folks associated with Waverley URC aged from 10-80 years walked 7 or so miles through West Yorkshire countryside to Castle Hill for a service of witness. They were joined at the hill, which shows signs of human activity since 4,000 BCE, by about 30 other less energetic people. Along the way we often went through small woodland areas. Just breaking into bud, these woodlands were small oasis of wildlife undergoing to natural process of regeneration. Last years fallen leaves were still a blanket in some hollows. Twisted roots and fallen branches, the odd dead hedgehog, all witness to the life and death of the woods. On this edge day there was a fresh awareness of the path between life and death as we trod our way through these woodlands. On the hill we heard the story of the hill far away and the Suffering One. Amongst those who gathered on the hill to listen, some were not associated formally with any organised Christian fellowship. These are the Good Friday people of our age, who walk cross-wards through woods and up the hill to remember and who still count.

Christ of the Easter Vigil,
as you hung on for us,
help us to hang on
to and for each other.
Remind us that we all still count,
in that endless crowd of witnesses.
Confirm us as cross people
as we take the steps that lead us
from death to life.

copyright Janet Lees: 12.04.2009

Remembering the bible with football fans

2009-04-06T01:56:00.000-07:00

It was the morning after Shearer's first game in charge of Newcastle and the team had gone down 2-0 to Chelsea, when I preached my Shearer Walks on Water Sermon. Even in deepest Essex there was one Newcastle fan in the congregation. This is a suprise in a place made up of ethnic old Londoners, the majority of whom are Spurs supporters like me (there was one Chelsea fan there). The congregation was about one quarter members of the local congregation and three quarters family and friends of the baptismal party. I began the remembering the bible session with the Jesus life-line activity you will find on the Vision4life website. This is usually a good place to start. We had some good ideas: Wise men who visited the baby Jesus (one 5 year old remembered), the Last Supper (one 8 year old): as usual the children are quickest off the mark to shre their remembering as active learners. They seem less inhibited than the adults on the whole. This is clearly one of the main factors affecting our monogenerational ageing churches. We lack the energy and action that these younger ones contribute. Many of us can remember attempts to drive these kind of tendencies out of us as young people. Unfortunatley in most cases it worked and drove almost the whole generation out too. Those of us that did not go are left hanging on by our fingertips in the 'We don't do it like that here' churches.

Eventually we had a shared remembered life in which the Life Giver was also remembered for getting lost in a temple at 12 years of age, getting baptised, turning water into wine, feeding a lot of people with a small amount of fish and bread, telling parables and yes, for walking on water. Afterwards over the tea and coffee more inhibited adults suggested other rememberings including 'the one where he turned over the tables of the bankers in the temple'. So its true, even in deepest Essex, just down the road from where Jade Goodey was married those few short weeks ago, the Life Giver is still remembered and celebrated. Let's hope Alan Shearer lives long enough to keep Newcastle in the Premiership as well.

Well spotted

2009-04-04T04:54:00.000-07:00

I'm spending the weekend in Hatfield Broad Oak, in Essex, with my Dad. I've just seen a seven spot ladybird in his garden and a comma butterfuly in his backgarden which is a few miles from the end of the runway at Stansted Airport. Comprising about half an acre of mature woodland it is currently full of purple and white violets, primroses and celendines. The Chestnut tree that I planted as a 12 year old child is breaking into leaf. This is one of the best times of the year in the garden, which has grown pretty much wild over the years. Dad calls it his nature reserve.

Jesus saves but Shearer....

2009-04-03T02:29:00.000-07:00

... gets the job at Newcastle United for eight games only. However, the whole episode is replete with religious language. They say some folks take this game of two halves very seriously indeed. A BBC reporter said of the unfolding events: 'For these fans, Shearer walks on water'. More examples of remembering the bible? Is it possible to understand the image of Shearer walking on water without remembering who the description originally refers to? Also known as 'The Angel of the North', is Shearer only a God by reference to that other God-human, Jesus? Or is it enough that humans can't walk on water so we must be referring to Shearer's God-like qualities whether or not some minority group still remembers another water-walking bloke two thousand years ago? Bearing in mind the remembered events of the week coming up, I only hope Alan Shearer makes it to eight games and doesn't find himself nailed to the cross-bar in untimely fashion. He's a very nice bloke (even to a Spurs fan).

Still remembering the bible

2009-04-02T03:38:00.000-07:00

There's this website about the bible: http://betterbibles.com/
and they've got a poll there about how often people read the bible.
Now, if I was clever enough I could find out how to put a poll on this website to find out how often people think they remember the bible. But just for fun see what you think when I ask:

How much of the bible do you think you remember?
A lot
A bit
Not much
None

[most people I've asked before think they don't remember any of the bible].

Do you remember any of the following:
The Lord's prayer?
How many days it took for God to create the world?
What happened on the first Good Friday?
What happened on the first Easter Day?

If you remember any of these, Congratulations! You are remembering the bible!! (Ok, so not all of it - try not to be so hard on yourself).

Do you remember things from the bible
often
sometimes
never
only when asked by polls like this on blogs like this?

Do you notice other examples of people around you remembering the bible?
In newspapers
on the radio
in films
on TV
in conversations
in your dreams
in other places?

If so please tell me about it.

Remembering the cross

2009-04-01T08:02:00.000-07:00

Harry, aged 85, keeps this cross in his pocket. It was given to him 15 years ago by Constance, who died three weeks after she gave it to him. He keeps it in the pocket where he has his loose change and every time he puts his hand in his pocket he feels it there. It reminds him of his friendship with Constance, a disabled woman from Jamaica who he used to give a lift to church to each week, and of his committment as a Christian.
Baptised as an Anglican, he tried the Baptists as a teenager, before become a Presbyterian after the war, like his late wife, Ruby. Apart from when he had a virus last year for a couple of weeks, he never misses going to Waverley URC, where he is the oldest male member.

You can find plenty of these little crosses to make or for sale on the internet. As we approach cross-week I thought I'd make a video piece about crosses. I've been using some photos of crosses in the school assemblies I've been doing for the last few weeks. Today it was year 7 and they were a bit braver/less self-consious than some of the other groups, so a few people offered their views and opinions. On Friday there's an Easter bonnet competition.

Cross-wise Christ,
with us still
in love, loss and memory;
as we approach your cross-week
keep us mindful of you and each other,
in life and in death.

JAL: 01.04.2009

Remembering the bible: art, humour and gender

2009-03-31T02:13:00.000-07:00

When using Remembering the bible some folks accuse me of making the bible up. I'm not sure how these folks think we got a bible in the first place. How do they imagine memory works for 30-40 years after an event (about the time the gospels were written down after Jesus death), even with good oral story telling and oral memory strategies in an oral culture? Just what do they imagine we are referring to when we read, in the written down gospels 'Jesus said...'?

Well here's someone with a good eye for making up the bible: humous feminist Karen Whitehall. She makes collages from the gospel sotries using classical European paintings and photographs of actresses from the 1930-50's. This one is Palm Sunday. See her gallery at:

http://klwcollages.com/index.html

I was looking for Caravaggio's two paintings of 'the not last supper' (or the emmaus Road as some call it) to go with a reflection I am doing tonight and came across these. As a novice blogger it never ceases to amaze me what's out there! She does a good all female last supper with Great Garbo in the central place. It reminded me of an RB session a few years ago doing the Last Supper with an all female group of rememberers. Very moving stuff. Try it sometime yourselves if you can to explore something of what gender says about remembering the bible.

School repeats Crucifixion

2009-03-30T02:15:00.000-07:00

Last night's performance of The Crucifixion by Stainer at Silcoates School was sung by a mixed aged choir of around 60 people, outnumbering the audience by quite a few. One of the best things about this school is the way it encourages people of all ages to work together in many different ways.

Although this particular cantata might seema bit old-fashioned (it was first performed in 1887, which was more than half a century after Silcoates first opened) it was actually a very powerful experience. It gaves us all a chance to revist the story, even if the words were not in contemporary English. Malefactors is a word I really use these days and there were one or two other 'Kenneth Williams' moments, but to hear the words of the Bible sung in recitative is an interesting way of topping up your remembered bible.

The last line, sung by the solo tenor, whispering away to silence: 'And he gave up the ghost' was amazing. Yes, he died. Once and for all. As do we all. Don't forget that. Don't water it down. Don't fudge it. Crucified, dead and buried.

Remembering the Bible in Blackburn

2009-03-29T02:43:00.000-07:00

Yesterday Revidge Fold United Reformed Church hosted a Vision4life Day for United Reformed Churches in Blackburn. About 20 people attended and spent some part of the day remembering the bible together.

We began with pictures by Dinah Roe Kendall, whose work I have mentioned before. Her two pictures of Palm Sunday and the Family at Bethany provided a good starting point, as participants could easily relate to the vibrant images. You can get them from Piquant here:

http://www.piquant.net/PDFs/postersallegories.pdf

Then we went on to try some of the Vision4life Bible Year Menu activities. Remember anyone can visit the Vision4life web page, view the menu and download materials, even if they are not 'signed up'.

From the menu we did the Jesus life-line and later in the afternoon Kennings and Cookies.

There's a link to the Vision4life website at the side of this page. Some of the participants said...

'A day well spent, an eye opener'

'Reassuring and real'

'Thought provoking'

'Brings the Bible to life'

'Made me dig deeper'

Whilst I understand that 'not everyone would want to do this' if you think you know some people that do then please get in touch.

Meanwhile a thought from the way home on the Caldervale line, after St Francis.

Remembering, after St Francis

Make me a channel of your peace:

where there is chaos,
may patterns emerge;
where there are words,
sentences take shape;
where there are fragments,
stories unfold.

For it is in remembering we forget,
in forgiving we are released to forgive,
and in listening we are empowered to speak;
in fighting we discover our need of peace,
in hugging we gain courage to let go,
and in creating we set free the stuff of life.

[copyright Janet Lees]

Waving or drowning

2009-03-26T01:04:00.001-07:00

There was a lovely programme on BBC4 last night about this picture of 'The great wave' by Hokusai of Japan. It turns out that it is one of a series of prints of Mount Fuji made by the artist using a woodblock method of printing in the 19th century. The full series called 36 views of Mount Fuji actually contains 46 prints and can be found here: www.man-pai.com/Grandes_series/Hokusai_Fuji36/hokusai_36_vistas_monte_fuji_e.htm

He made the series in his old age. The prints are just delightful and I find it quite hard to choose a favourite. Each one has such different colours and detail. There's a windy one with people's hats being blown away, in fact there's one for every possible weather or season. Just lovely.

A death in the family

2009-03-22T10:09:00.000-07:00

It's now one year since we interred my mum's ashes in the churchyard of St Mary's Hatfield Broad Oak, Essex. It snowed that day and a few hardy villagers came to help us with the task. Today we learnt of the death of another Essex girl, Jade Goodey. I'll not be the first or the last to write about her. I was remembering the hymn by Dora Greenwell 'And art thou come with us to dwell' in which we sing

Thou bringest all again; with Thee
Is light, is space, is breadth and room
For each thing fair, beloved, and free
To have its hour of life and bloom.

I was also thinking of Madge Saunders, who's funeral was held yesterday in Kingston. I found a new photograph of her on another site in which it says she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005.

This morning I heard about another well remembered woman. Constance had been a member of Waverley URC until her death in 1994. She had made a small embroidered cross that Harry, my informant, still carries in his pocket. He told me the story today. I hope to find out more about her in the next few weeks.

There's nothing else quite like a death in the family. We need our stories to nudge us further into life even when movement seems impossible. This week's entry in the URC Prayer handbook [still available from http://www.urc.org.uk]/ includes the story of Tony, a builder who built a business on pumpkin finance, a good thing to consider in these credit crunch days. The prayer for today on page 29 reads

Draw us to you,
God of all,
that in our dying
and our living
we may bring
glory and honour
to your name
as we seek to serve you
with integrity.

[copyright Janet Lees, for the 2009 URC Prayer Handbook 'Hush the Storm']

After reading about small fragments of the solar system

2009-03-18T03:55:00.000-07:00

I've just finished reading 'Half of a Yellow Sun' by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. You can read an exerpt from the book on the authors website, here: http://www.halfofayellowsun.com/content.php?page=excerpt&n=2&f-2
It is a book which has clearly made an impact on many folk who have read it. You can read some of the responses here:
http://www.halfofayellowsun.com/public/yourstory/guestbook.php
and even add your own.
I was given the book by my friend Sarah and it arrived the day after I had my PhD viva two weeks ago. I had only a hazy memory of Biafra, I was a child of about 10 when it all happened but I remembered words like kwashiorkor, although not well enough to be able to spell it without looking it up.
My own African memories are generally of Kenya and of Southern Africa. I have memories of Zimbabwe from several visits in the 1980s and 90s so I was glad when our friend Margaret had some poems written by her lat husband Brian Louis Pearce published this year. Called 'Voices Spits Silence', you can get it on Amazon. The poems were written during 1997-8 when Brian worked as a librarian at the Bulawayo Theological College. They are brilliant.
I also got an email today from Gerald West, my former supervisor at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal, where I first learnt about Contextual Bible Study. You can find there stuff here http://www.ukzn.ac.za/sorat/ujamaa/resources.htm
All of which focused my thoughts on these small fragments of the solar system as you can see:

Words come back to us

Words come back to us,
names recur,
memories spring up like new grass.
You live through what you write
and so do I;
hanging on each word,
tongue trying each name,
hands holding each memory.
Neither sticks nor dust,
spirits rise to dance around us.
I join in
hoping the dream will outlast sleep,
hunger or dementia.
But the power of the wind
will blow the dust away
until it collects in another corner
and fertilizes other words.

Dust-dancing Spirit,
whirl us up with your energy
that the heat of memory
may become the fuel of life.

JAL: copyright 18.03.2009

Growing up in a religious family

2009-03-17T04:28:00.000-07:00

Some of us do and it is good to hear the voice of one young person, Deborah, who has her own blog: http://deborahdrapper.com/

She also has a rabbit as you can see.

She reminds me of some of the young people I meet when I was researching the views of young people growing up in religious families for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. You can read the report and download it at

http://www.jrf.org.uk/publications/religion-beliefs-and-parenting-practices

Last week we did two seminars on this research in Oldham for practitioners working with children. Next week one more in Sheffield. If you are interested in hearing about the research and its implications for front line staff or for faith communities please contact me.

Meanwhile today was my first Assembly at Newsome High School and Sports College [http://www.newsomehigh.kirklees.sch.uk/]

Today was year 9. The deputy head asked me some questions about Lent and Easter, the significance for Christians of this time of year, and the meaning of common Christian symbols associated with Easter like the cross. Three more to do over the next few weeks.

Celtic fashion week

2009-03-15T03:04:00.000-07:00

I wonder whether breastplates will feature on the cat walks of Milan, Paris or London this year? This mornings the BBC Radio 4 service was from Belfast and included a version of St Patrick's breastplate [http://prayerfoundation.org/st_patricks_breastplate_prayer.htm]. It made me think that breastplates were all very well for St Patrick but what about contemporary fashion? So I have settled for a t-shirt. The version of the poem with which I am familiar (which dates from at least the ninth century) includes a remembered core gospel as well as the works of the Creator and the Spirit. Only problem with my St Patrick's T-shirt version is I'd need quite a big t-shirt to get it all on.

St Patrick’s T-shirt

I’ll write it here, the Trinity
The three in one, the one in three.

I remember Jesus born in a stable,
Baptised in the river Jordan,
Broke bread, shared wine around a table,
Died on a cross and then rose up
Appeared to friends, the stuff of fable,
Ate again the ‘not last supper’.

I’ll write it here, the Trinity
The three in one, the one in three.

I recall God’s created wonders,
All around me air, earth, fire, water;
And forgiveness for our blunders,
Misuse or pollution of the same.
I recall the Spirit’s action,
Interpreting and then translating
Languages of very faction:
Dancing with diversity.

I’ll write it here, the Trinity
The three in one, the one in three.

With me – Christ!
In me – Christ!
Behind me – Christ!
Before me – Christ!
Beside me – Christ!
Beneath me – Christ!
Above me – Christ!
Winning and restoring Christ,
Quiet and confirming Christ,
In heart – Christ!
In mouth – Christ!

I’ll write it here, the Trinity
The three in one, the one in three,
Always here, upon my chest,
In remembering this, my life is blessed.
But I do need a bigger T-shirt.

copyright Janet Lees 15.03.2009
A version of St Patrick’s breastplate.

Still remembering the Bible: the not last supper

2009-03-13T04:33:00.000-07:00

About a week ago there was a poll about books people had not read (!). It seems that 65% of people lied about books they had read. Anyway one of the books people lied about reading was the Bible. Charlie Brooker wrote about this in the Guardian on Monday [http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/09/charlie-brooker].
He says
'Potential partners who genuinely adore reading the Bible on a daily basis traditionally don't mention it until later, when they've invited you back to their place to unexpectedly nailgun your hand to the wall while loudly reciting a selection of their favourite parables from memory.'
Now this was not a technique I'd seen referred to in any daily Bible reading notes I've ever seen, nor a method of RB I'd tried myself. I wasn't sure wether to invite him round and see if the same effect could be produced with my staple gun.
However, it did illustrate once again how the Bible keeps getting into the news, even in this rather odd way. As for 'reciting their favourite parables from memory' - Hurray! They have favourite parables in their memory.
On Monday evening I meet six young people at a local Boy's Brigade group. We got started. One said he had a Bible: small red one with New Testament written on it that he got at school. No one else owned up to having one. Anyway I asked them if they thought they remembered anything from the Bible (well from the story of Jesus life of course, I am a gospels woman). No they said. So we got the string and pegs out. Forty minutes later they had remembered this:

Jesus was born in a stable.
Before he was a year old the king tried to kill him but he escaped.
When he was 12 he got lost in a temple.
When he was an adult he went into the desert for 40 days and 40 nights, then he met some fishermen and he told them to fish on the other side of the boat, and they got a net full of fish, and then he went into Jerusalem on a donkey.
The night before he died, he had the last supper with his friends.
He was crucified, but a couple of days later he came back to life.
And then he had another supper with his friends so that was 'the not last supper'.

So there it is. A core remembered gospel generated by 6 teenagers in 40 minutes with a piece of string and some pegs. Not a nail gun in sight. Brilliant!

An inspiration: tribute to the Revd Madge Saunders

2009-03-03T04:10:00.000-08:00

The Revd Marjorie Prentice Saunders 1913-2009

Arriving in Sheffield in 1965

At home in Kingston, Jamaica, 2002

Outside Sheffield Cathedral, 1960s

Ordained at St Mary, Jamaica, 1975

I heard from Kingston, Jamaica, this morning that Revd Madge Saunders died in her sleep last night. She was 96 years old having celebrated her birthday last week. Her funeral will be held on 21st March.

I meet her in Kingston in 2002.

Madge was one of those pioneers of whom we say such great things without really knowing the depth, height, and breadth of it all. I continue to stumble across connections to her life and ministry in the most unlikely places.

She did some of her training at St Colm's College, Edinburgh. Her signature survives in the chapel book against her birthday.

She served at St James Sheffield from 1965-1975 heving been the first and only black woman to be ordained at a deaconness in the Presbyterian Church of England. She took leadership of the congegation when her colleague, Revd Robert Gillespie, who had been instrumental in bringing her to Britain, died.

She returned to Jamaica to be the first ordained woman minister in the United Church of Jamaica and the Calyman Islands. Her long and active retirement saw the inauguration of the Madge Saunders Centre, a conference and youth training centre, on the north coast of the islands, as well as many other activities.

In 2002 folks from St James Sheffield visited her and paid tribute to her important ministry in Sheffield: her work for race relations and amongst young people, which had inspired three generations of Sheffielders.

Self giving to the end, she sold a bigger house a few years ago to raise funds for school bursaries for young people to attend high school. She said she only needed a small house.

Her story is told in part in Daughters of Dissent and in This is our story: Free Church women's ministry. I'm sure we will continue to discover more about her.

Please remember her and the current work of the United Church of Jamaica and the Cayman Islands [http://www.unitedchurch.org.ky/]

Food for thought

2009-03-01T02:30:00.000-08:00

Having finally ground our way through the BBC's Masterchef contest last night (courtesy of 'i-player': http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00hzdnj/MasterChef_Series_5_Episode_32/) we food-a-holics in the Lees-Warwicker family, in common with many of our companions in the West, need another food fix (writes novice blogger as she eats toast!).

I was therefore delighted to read the article by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in yesterdays Guardian Weekend, about her soon to be published Settler's Cookbook (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/feb/28/yasmin-alibhai-brown-cookbook). Her recipe for Dry Potato Curry reminded me of one we ate when I first visited India in 1984 and her story of return to Kampala was very moving.

So I dream about fusion food, of which we make a lot in our household. First there's Italian fusion and French fusion, products of my time spent as an au-pair in both France and Italy in my late teens and early twenties. I had thought it strange that an 8 year old child should eat pasta three times a day until my own daughter showed everysign of preferring to do the same. As for France, it's in everything from the herbs and garlic to the salad, cheese and wine, and of course the chocolat.

Then there's Asian fusion. This mostly means combinations of spices and red lentils, commonly called lentil mush in our household; another thing Hannah would eat daily if at all possible.

There are earlier attempts at fusion food that have fizzled out. For a while when I lived in Palmers Green about 20 years ago I ate a lot of pilchard lasagna but it rarely if ever appears on menus here these days. It was cheap. I joke about making soup with turnips but actually I hate them. Hannah's good on fairtrade fusion cookies. That's cookies with anything fairtrade in them. They feature on the Bible Year Menu on the Vision4life website in the Kennings and Cookies activity. Why not give it a try?

Then there's British fusion, which I mostly learnt from my mum and gets embellished by all sorts of stuff from anywhere. Last night we had our first Yorkshire Triangle Rhubarb of the new season. you can find out all about it here: http://www.yorkshirerhubarb.co.uk/ruhbarb_triangle.htm

But most of all of course, there's bread pudding: mum's piece de resistance. Once again Guardian Weekend featured a recipe, but it didn't seem to be the one I remembered. These days toast sees off stale bread in our house so there's little opportunity for bread pudding even if I could remember it. Maybe I'll give it a little thought.

Remembering which bible

2009-02-15T02:27:00.000-08:00

There's a weekly programme on Radio 4 at certain times of the year, called the News Quiz. Chaired by Sandi Toksvig, an irripressible Dane, it is a great source of examples of the RB. It happens quite often that RB comes up in the group's discussions of obscure news items. This week it was Leviticus and whether the bible was funny. Now we could get sidetracked by that but I suggest you just download the podcast from www.bbc.co.uk/radio4

The subject of todays blog is remembering the Hebrew scriptures, another challenge from Jane, who has been remembering Bable with a multilingual group in Switzerland. In the 15 years of so of working on the RB method it is true to say that I have been selective about which bits of the bible I've remembered with people. There are many reasons for this

1. RB is not about remembering the whole bible - a rote pedagogy - but about the bits that matter to you at the time and how remembering them challenges the status quo;

2. RB is a contextual method - it is about remembering the bits that seem relevant for that context - and in the context of 21st century Britain and the margins of urban living that is the core of Word of Mouth, the 'bit' of choice was the gospel - the central Jesus story;

3. RB is a personal method - as Jane notes in her blog about Babel, our own stories are essential to our rememberings. So Babel was great with multilingual bridge builders. But I am a gospel woman. I am passionate about the story of the Tomb Quitter, the Name Caller, the Life Giver. So that this the core of my RB.

It is not the case that I have never used the Hebrew scriptures for RB. There's some illustration using the book of Ruth as a basis for RB in Word of Mouth, and that's a story I have often used in multicultural Britain. I have sometimes used other bits depending on the context. It's great to hear about more people doing RB. Please share the stories of your rememberings.

Word of Mouth is still available from www.ionabooks.com

Getting bloggin

2009-02-14T09:30:00.001-08:00

Bob has started a blog. After a conversation about blogs he started one today. You can find it at http://therevbobsdiary.blogspot.com/ although as it's only just started there's not much to see yet. But there will be. Watch this space. This is Bob as he appears on his blog.

We took a walk to Castle Hill and saw the bus stop to Nazareth. We had some fish and chips and came back on the 368. The bus driver was very talkative (we were the only people on the bus most of the way) and told us how dangerous Scar had been in the ice and snow. We saw some bits of Huddersfield we'd not seen before. The snow has nearly all melted and what is left is very dirty. In some gardens you see a melting blob and a discarded scarf; signs of previous creativity.

Women, leadership and the church

2009-02-13T04:28:00.000-08:00

Jane has been blogging about this so I thought I should get onto it too. She has 'blogged my memory' so to speak. Yesterday I meet women who are in leadership in the church. One told me about the bible studies she had facilitated using some of the RB methods that are on the Wision4life website. Another I had last seen in her kitchen in South Africa 15 years ago, at the end of our exchange period in 1994. She's now in ministry in Kent. I came home and read a bit in the Guardian about women clergy in the Church of England by Riazat Butt [http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/feb/12/women-in-the-church]. There were some interesting bits:

Of the 512 male clergy who left in 1994 when women were ordained as priests, 72 came back. What's that story?

Of the 8,423 stipendiary clergy a smaller proportion are women (1,543) than are the nonstipendiary clergy (2,588 of whom 1,247 are women). What's the story? We had a similar disproportion in the two different streams in the URC at the time we wrote Daughters of Dissent (that's it on the right: about women and leadership in the URC).

Then there were a few thumbnail sketches about the ways in which women clergy currently exercsie leadership in the Church of England, including the story of one who now chairs several important committees. The URC also does committees and we have tried to balance committee members by gender. however, what we have not dealt with is work load by gender or any other criterion.

I also wondered about the story behind the story. For women clergy to lead committees is one story but why do we need ordained clergy to lead committees? All denominations do this: clog up the church beurocracy with ordained clergy. Why? Particularly when most mainstream churches also struggle with the availability of ordinaed leadership at local pastoral level. Why do we need priests or ministers, women or men, to chair committees? Of course you are hearing from a total meetings-phobic person here. I can understand that knowledge and skills in theology and ecclessiology etc may be required of a committee chair, depending on the remit of the committee. But to struggle for all those years for ordination of women to the priesthood and then celebrate by chairing a committee, however prestigious, well I just don't get it. Please someone, tell me the story of that.

Daughters of Dissent by Elaine Kaye, Janet Lees and Kirstry Thorpe is still available from the URC bookshop via the website http://www.urc.org.uk/

Tell me the stories of Jesus

2009-02-10T04:07:00.000-08:00

Working on my new book, Tell me the stories of Jesus, a Gospel companion that uses RB, I looked up the well known hymn of the same name, only to find there were two hymns for which this is the first line. The one I knew was by William H Parker. But the other was by Fanny Crosby (1820-1915). Whilst Will was British, Fanny was from the USA. She became blind at six weeks of age, and later wrote over 8,000 hymns, under a wide range of pseudonyms. You can read more about her life, including her work as a teacher of blind students, at http://www.nyise.org/fanny/songbird.html .

Four hundread of her hymns are listed here http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/c/r/o/crosby_fj.htm

It seems that she used remembered versions of the Bible from an early age. She was said to be able to remember the first four books of both testaments, that must be Genesis to Numbers, and the four Gospels, by the age of 10 years. Although RB is not about rote remembering of the Bible, some folks do show an ability to do this, and like Fanny to an extraordinary degree. At one time rote remembering was a common form of Christian pedagogy.

RB is more about retelling and thus also includes the way in which interpretation has influenced memory. There is plenty of evidence in Fanny's hymns that remembering the Bible influenced her spirituality, theology and hymnody.

Digging deep

2009-02-07T00:51:00.000-08:00

Bob has just dug the car out of the snow for the first time this week. The road is still like a skating rink so we'd left it until today. He scooped about 6 inches off all round - a bit like a hair cut really - using the the dustpan. I stayed inside in the warm and thought about books. In fact I quite often think about books. I had a dream that I could not speak and I was communicating with finger spelling and sign language, texting and drawing and stuff. I was writing a book and folks kept asking me what I was doing so I was explaining using these different means about how I was writing a book. I've written several books of course and I look forward to doing so again. The day you get the first copy is magical. You hold it in your hand and it feels awesome that you put those words in there. Actually I'm not sure that really ever goes away for me. I know most of my books off by heart I read them that often. So here's to the next book, the next dream, the next word or sign, and quite possibly before too long, here's to the next snow.

The weather

2009-02-06T07:24:00.000-08:00

It's very British to talk about the weather but I'm not sure whether it is very British to blog about the weather. Probably. Personally I am in favour of compulsory hibernation with chocolate. I have been outside a few times, but not much. My friend Lydia broke her leg slipping on an icy pavement. that was enough for me. We should all be hibernating, I tell you. Any country without indigenous Reindeer (I don't mean imported ones) is not really suited to snow. Besides which in urban landscapes it gets dirty very quickly. There's still a small pristine drift by the back gate and the back garden is untouched except for a few birds' footprints.

Another interesting blog

2009-02-04T03:06:00.000-08:00

Yes I'm getting the blogging bug. Every morning I look at blogs - it's a great way of passing the time when there's loads of other things to do. Jane's blog is a good source of other blog information. She told me about http://powerscourt.blogspot.com/ where Suzanne McCarthy has listed some women bible translators. As 'speech therapist theologica' language and the bible are two important things to me. Whilst I take an oral/aural approach to remembering the bible with people of all ages and abilities myself, I also admire the work of translators. I'm interested in women bible retellers and will try to list some of those in due course. Suzanne McCarthy has another brilliant blog of poems at http://silenceistheornament.blogspot.com/ that I will add to my blog list. It has some very good posts about silence.

Centre of the universe

2009-02-03T07:00:00.001-08:00

Huddersfield is currently centre of the snowy universe, according to BBC News 24 who have had more reporters in these parts than ever before in living memory. So here is a prayer for snowy weather, from your own correspondent.

Prayers in snowy weather

As we try to keep a grip
we pray for gritters
without whom we would be slippers.

We pray too for those who have slipped up,
and who now clutter up wards
and out patient departments
with their sprains and fractures.

We pray for menders:
both those mending the slippers
and those mending everything else
that needs fixing in bad weather.
Roads, vehicles, transport systems:
all seem prone to break when the snow comes down.

We prayer for workers
and those staying at home:
so whether we work or play
we pray that the weather will not break us.

We prayer for meteorologists,
always the butt of jokes and poor memories:
As the weather systems weave their way around us,
keep them alert to the signs
ready to alert us to live carefully,

And when white once more gives way to green,
may we give thanks for all that has happened
that has kept us mindful of you
in whose footsteps we tred:
Jesus our Lord,

Women

2009-02-03T02:54:00.001-08:00

Since we had the Women in Ministries meeting in Windermere (should that be Womendermere?) I've certainly done more blogging and connected with more women this way. This has helped me feel more connected. Ministry is about connection but so often as a minister I have felt isolated: no wonder then that it has often seemed very hard. I was struck by my friends blogs: Sarah wrote very personally about a pastoral situation. Now Sarah is a wonderful woman. One I admire a lot in the calm and careful way she goes about ministry. Through her blog I feel more connected to her given that I don't see her as much since we moved to Huddersfield. I was struck by my friend Kate's blog in which she wrote about using remembered versions of the bible, Kennings and also the remembered stories of ministry. Kate is a wonderful women who's creative and warm approach to ministry I admire. Once again I found it very affirming to connect like this and see us tackling similar issues side by side even though on different sides of the Pennines. Jane's blog is always a source of inspiration and fun. For me her 'prix choc' should have been about the price of chocolate. But there's always something on her blog that reminds me of Jane's great facility with laguage and her ability to make connections across so many subjects. So here's to wonderful women.
Of course, not being Superwoman either, I know I don't find all women so affirming or all encounters with women so positive. So these words are to spur me on, to help more look at all women as I look at Sarah, Kate and Jane, and to go on trying to connect to the wonderful in all women.

Here’s to women

Here’s to women, wonderful women:
warm women, cold women,
working women, creative women,
wild women, wistful women,
watchful women, mindful women.

Here’s to women, wonderful women:
reminding me who I am,
encouraging me how to be,
waiting alongside of me,
bringing love to birth in me.

Here’s to women, wonderful women,
both known and unknown.
As the world turns
may we turn to each other
and affirm what we discover there.

Elemental Powers

2009-02-02T04:17:00.000-08:00

Our friend, Louise Mabbs, a brilliant Christian fabric artist (http://www.louisemabbs.co.uk/) living on the south coast of England, has recently completed a piece to celebrated 'Air, Earth, Fire and Water' and the 10 years of our life and ministries in Sheffield. She calls it 'Elemental powers' and it includes inspiration from Sheffield like Forgemasters Engineering, where Bob was Chaplain, the Sheffield Peace Gardens and the face of a steel worker the brick version of which is near the Co-op in Sheffield city centre. The top and bottom panels depict the walk from Lands End to John O'Groats that Bob made in 2003 which was called End to End via the margins, the diary of which is still on line at www.bobjanet.demon.co.uk/lejog

It includes the Angel of the North (bottom left hand corner) and the Caledonian Canal amongst other images. The photograph is by Janine Boyer of Brighton.

Sundays God

2009-02-01T05:22:00.000-08:00

It's Sunday. As a child I would go to church with enthusiasm every week. It was not much different to the one I go to now except that it was in a village (this one is in a town). Most of the people there were a lot older than me and there were few youths. Now at 50 years old I'm still one of the youngest present. There are even fewer youths.
We read Pslam 111. It's not one with which I am very familiar (i.e. I don't have a remembered version). It merges with all my remembered Psalms. God makes stuff and keeps promises and can generally be relied on. From time to time things go a bit ary and babies heads get bashed against rocks. Now and again we can lament a bit or recall some particular Godly stuff. But remembered Psalms are mostly comfortably predictable: God is in keeping the laws of nature (as Bob reminded us) and we can marvel at that. So Sundays God is worth remembering any day of the week.

The God I meet on Sundays
created an ordered universe so huge and mysterious I'm still wondering about it all.
The God Imeet on Sundays
keeps age-old promises to a huddle of ageing ones and a handful of others.
The God I meet on Sundays
still causes me to lift my voice in response to all the God-stuff.
Upright or not, Sundays God, affirms me everyday.

Communicating with bloggin wimin

2009-01-29T03:16:00.000-08:00

I like communicating with bloggin wimin. I think I'm getting more of the hang of it. I often speak to my friends on the phone but bloggin is a bit different. Yesterday I went to St Mark's Wynthenshaw (I will find out how to put that link up on my blog) where my friend Kate and I talked about 'remembering the Bible' and all the exciting workshops we're going to do later this year. This morning I read the blogs on the WIM blog and got excited about the fact that in just a few weeks so many more of us are bloggin. When we put bloggin in the plan for WIM I thought it would be good to have Jane get us started and so it has been. Now loads of us are bloggin. I already feel more connected to Sarah - who I see in Sheffield ocassionally, and Jacky - who I see once in a blue moon - because I can read their blogs and send them comments. So bloggin is workin. It is helping us to connect up our stories. Keep at it bloggin wimin. If you're reading this and not yet bloggin, why not start?

A hopelessly zoological word

2009-01-25T08:42:00.000-08:00

Seems everyone's commenting on Obama so I think I should too. It seems that he used the word 'forebears' in his inaugural speech (my spelling is particularly creative I think you will find if you follow this blog long enough). Anyway, forebears is one of my favourite words. It was once used at a Synod somewhere (I think I may have slept through the actual event) as a more inclusive term than forefathers. The use of the word was reported as 'hopelessly zoological'. Of course I have tried to use it often ever since and always with the tag 'hopelessly zoological': are we not all hopelessly zoological? Now there's a thought for the umpteenth anniversary of Darwin.

Word of Mouth

2009-01-20T09:16:00.000-08:00

This is my book 'Word of Mouth' which is about using the Remembering the Bible (RB) strategy with ordinary people. It is published by Wild Goose and available at www.ionabooks.com.

It includes: basic information about doing RB, ideas, activities and stories based on RB, books that influenced my development of RB, liturgy that was developed with people and situations in which RB has been used.

The ideas in the book have all been road tested and developed with ordinary people in real situations, mostly in NE Sheffield, but also around the UK. I am excited about RB so if you want to know more do contact me. I run training events about RB around the country.

Women who blog

2009-01-18T08:04:00.000-08:00

Last week at Windermere I meet some other women who blog and that got me started again. Actually I already knew these women. Jane and I trained for ministry together, and Kate and I have been colleagues for some time but this was a special week and it got the blogging thing going again.
We were working on Remembering the Bible (or RB) which is a way of working with the Bible with ordinary people that I have been developing for over 12 years now. There is some more stuff about it on the women in ministries blog, which you will find listed on my blog list on this page (note to self: well done for creating blog list).
We were about 20 women in different ministries and it was good to work together on connecting stories in different ways: biblical, individual and communal stories. Our methods included RB, scrapbooking and blogging.
Over the next few months I have to prepare to work with some other groups of ministers using RB. I think this got the year off to a good start and next time I want to concentrate on the role of RB in building community.

A long time

2009-01-16T08:48:00.000-08:00

It's been a long time since I did any blogging. In fact I had of course forgotten my password. I wonder if any bloggers have good tips for this contemporary problem.
I have got excited about blogging again since a conference with Women in Ministry this week in the Lake District. We created a blog for this meeting. Please visit it
http://womenministrynetwork.blogspot.com/
My new year's resolutions are:
I will try to blog more often and get more into the blogging community.

2nd draft

2008-06-04T03:12:00.000-07:00

I got my second draft done on time on 23rd May, before I went on holiday as I had planned. At 90,000 words without appendices it's still a bit long, but it's in. Unfortunately I was so chuffed by this acehivement I forgot to renew my library books before heading off to the rather damp south-west corner of the country that I got fined (!).

Now I have various other writing projects to complete whilst waiting for comments on my draft.
Hannah has also been hard at work on her exams, this time with the added feature of a recently dislocated shoulder. I'm putting her rainbow prayer here, as we had to change it for the prayer handbook which couldn't seem to cope with the colour fonts.

Lent 1 Old Testament: Genesis 9:16-17

Rainbow

Rainbow
cOvenant:
You
God
rememBer
all thIngs
liVing

Help us to be as colourful.
Help us to be as careful.

Hannah Warwicker

Getting back to it

2008-05-02T03:39:00.001-07:00

I don't think I'm cut out to be a professional blogger because I keep forgetting to blog. On the other hand my PhD is making progress. I not sure I've really got the hang of blogging. For a start you need something distinctive to say. Whilst I have a lot to say I mostly just get on and say it. Blogging in front of a computer is not my natural form of communication, yet. Speech Therapist Theologicus, the name I made up to describe my joint vocation a decade ago, usually does it face to face, although I also appear in print in a number of more traditional formats. Blogging is big: there are more and more out there. But I've not really found the thing I want to blog about.

I could blog about Firth Park Road. I'm in my usual window seat, looking over the park as the trees come into leaf and the crows make sucessive attempts at nest building. Perhaps that would be eco-blogger or park-blogger. I voted Green yesterday, not because I've given up on socialism but because the Labour Party appears to have done, or has, at the very least, become very complascent about the support of ordinary people.

Green is the colour,

the colour of the grass

where the local people pass.

Green is the colour,

the colour of the leaves

where a nest crow weaves.

Green is the colour,

the colour of today,

as each voter had their say.

Green is the colour,

the colour that may last

if we get our act together, fast.

Quiet

2008-04-07T01:43:00.000-07:00

It's very quiet in this new office. I've been the only one here for about two hours now. In some ways that's a good thing. Getting on with the PhD is the order of the day/week/month. So quiet is good and helpful. Of course, it's not really quiet because noise comes in from time to time, mostly traffic, the occasional emergency vechile. The grey sky line of the first part of the morning has given way to a pasty looking lighter grey as the sun makes an attempt to break through the clouds. From where I sit the most noitceable thing about Sheffield is building sites. There are cranes stretching up, practicing maneouvres. There are old brown-field sites looking for a new lease of life. There are half finished and half started buildings, some wrapped up in plastic. There are rows and rows of cones. This is the twenty-first century city: always changing. For all I know it has been the story of the city throughout the ages. Maybe prehistoric Sheffield was a building site. The different styles of architecture sit side by side. In some places the roof tops look like rows of teeth, the windows like blank eyes.

In the beginning was the building site.
It was rough and messy and waiting.
The sun came out
and made the puddles sparkle.
The dandelions began to push their way
through the rubble.

a

Easter snow

2008-03-26T01:53:00.000-07:00

Easter has now come and gone again, and talk of fixing the date or the weather will abate for another year. Of course such casual conversation allows us a distraction from the real Easter stuff that puts Easter at the heart of the Christian faith.

For me Christian spirituality is earthy stuff. It happens from the ground up and it is about down-to-earth things. Yes, of course the skies, the heavens and the heights are quite marvelous in their own ways but I beleive in life before death and therefore most of what I pray and write concentrates on the ground.

Take Easter Saturday, when we interred my mum's ashes in the churchyard at Hatfield Broad Oak. It was a day of four seasons with every possible weather. We dug the hole for the ashes ourselves and placed them in ourselves, and covered them with earth ourselves. Not so remarkable you might think, except that the British way of death has become increasingly removed from the living. Our sincere thanks to the dozen or so people who stood in the snow laden wind and joined in.

Earth to earth

Cover the earth with a blanket of snow;
cover it, cover it all
so that the cut of the spade
and the turned turf
are invisible again.

After the snow wake the earth gently;
wake it, wake it up
so that each bud
each leaf and blade
emerges fresh and whole.

Inconvenient

2008-03-19T03:02:00.000-07:00

As the week of weeks progresses we get into more difficult territory. All the movies and celebrities of our time will never really be able to convey the real horror, even with the lights out and a lot of beards. There are more authentic insights into the sense of hopelessness that was building up and overflowing then and continues now. See the photographs from any of the current war zones, the protests in Lhasa, the conditions in which whole communities live with rampant rates of HIV and AIDS. In some ways the horror is compounded by our ability in Britain to distance ourselves from most of this and to respond 'How awful' to the mildest forms of minor inconvenience like when the supermarket runs out of the product we wanted to buy. Just how awful is that?

How awful

Unable to cross the border into your own country,
unsure where to find clean water or medicine,
unlikely to be able to feed your family,
uncertain if you will be arrested for speaking out:
how much worse can it get?

Quite likely to loose your legs to a land mine,
have to carry your child to an under-equipped hospital
or get raped going to fetch water;
certain to be imprisoned illeagally for years and years:
reader be sure to understand.

Be sure to understand that all this and more
is happening today to someone like you,
with a life like yours,
in a country not far from here.

Will you wait until it happens to you
before you say anything?

[Mark 13:14-23]

The week

2008-03-18T03:20:00.000-07:00

This is the week:
the week of cheers
that turn to mocking and jeers
and then to silence
that storms out of twisted streets
to stand at crossroads
in Lhasa, Harare and Rangoon;
the half-remembered week
where guttering flames
and a few lined faces
keep this vigil, still;
the week that takes us further
than any other
and always ends in tears.

just bloggin

2008-03-17T02:04:00.000-07:00

I got this blog free when I signed up to write up my PhD. I don't think this is going to be a poem, in fact I'm not really sure what it's going to be. Indeed, I'm not really very sure about blogs.

Being a novice blogger I'm not sure what to put. Things like, 'I got here on the tram', or 'it's a nice day' all seem a bit naff. I did get here on a tram and it is quite a nice day. But to be honest I'm not sure I need a free blog - I just need to write up my PhD. I have yet to be convinced that having a free blog will help me do this.

Currently my PhD survival strategies are:

Classic FM

looking out of the window

hot chocolate with cream on

collecting lots of things that look as if they have a passing reference to my PhD subject

putting off writing my PhD

doing the washing

writing everything except a PhD

All of these have got my through 7 years of part time PhD registration and to the point of having a reasonable draft, which probably now needs completely rehashing. Having a free blog, whilst sitting comfortably in the above list, does not at first sight appear to be a strategy likely to get me any nearer completing the PhD than any of the others featured.

God did not post a blog,

he sent a bloke

who borrowed a moke

and made an entrance

to start a week

so holy

that we've not seen the like since.

As we plod on,

cross-wards

may we be carried by integrity

and commitment.

PS: Other frequently used PhD strategy (along with 90% of the population) is prayer.

PPS: 'Moke' , which I may have spelled wrong, is cockney for donkey.