Holy impatience

It sometimes really gets to me just how much time we waste, messing around with our little agonies when we know what needs doing but just haven't the courage to do it. Look at the Anglicans, getting their purple knickers in a twist over the issue of women bishops! Having eventually got round to ordaining women, they're still wanting to avoid taking the final fence of making them bishops. They've spent 10 years living with 2 integrities. And yes, it is important to realise that some of those who oppose women bishops do so with integrity. I take that to mean that they're genuinely convinced that it would be wrong in God's eyes, rather than that they're simply being prejudiced and deliberately resistant to the Spirit. But to be sincerely wrong doesn't make it any less wrong! I spent 2 years in Ian Smith's Special Branch, convinced that what I was doing was right. The fact that I wasn't doing it because I was personally racially prejudiced, or simply enjoyed being a bastard, didn't alter the fact that I was deeply, tragically wrong. Yes, it is important to realise that we are on a journey. It is important - and gratifying! - to note that God is far more comfortable with the time it takes and the detours we make than we feel God ought to be. Yet it is vital that, while trying to take people with us, and "maintain the unity of the body in the bond of peace", we recognise the time when we have actually to make a stand and act upon what we believe to be true. The Anglicans will get there - but at great cost. That cost grows the longer the process. And they will lose people over it. Providing that is a self-selecting process - people leaving because they want to rather than are pushed out - then that's ok. In fact, it's something to rejoice over. Not unlike fell running with a rucksack full of rocks for training: there comes that moment when you've done all the slog you can or will, and you shrug the rucksack off. You feel as though you can run like the wind! Or is it the Wind..?

Overcast day, overcast soul

It's grey and gloomy and muggy here today. That reflects how I'm feeling. I don't want to live in a country where the Prime Minister - for whom I campaigned and voted in 1997 - gets up and, time and again, tries to silence criticism about Iraq. And does so by pretending that the only reason we have terror on our streets is because terrorists basically run around looking for excuses to blow people up, so that if it wasn't Iraq, it would be something else. What drivel! It's so ridiculous that it's risible. Yet, coming as it does from the Prime Minister, it's sinister. It means that there's not going to be any attempt to get rid of the root causes of terror on our streets. And the danger of not dealing with the real causes, but with made-up ones, is that things fester and get worse.

I don't want to live in a country where bombs go off because young Muslims are becoming radicalised because they're alienated, discriminated against, and because they look at what's happening in Palestine and Iraq and conclude that Britain and the USA are anti-Muslim and pro-Israeli. I don't want to live in a country whose policies contribute proactively to death and terror on the streets of Iraq and Palestine and which cannot then understand young people in this country wanting to do something to change things.

I don't want to live in a country where moderate Muslims have to be called in and paraded before society, both to say "See? Not all Muslims are evil!" and also, in a sense, to give account of themselves. I don't want to live in a society that is suspicious of Muslims rather than of terrorists because it assumes that the two are synonymous. I don't want to live in a country that spends most of its time and effort investigating whether there is something intrinsically wrong about Islam, rather than looking at its own actions in the Muslim world. I don't want to live among people whose working assumption (promoted by the media) is that the bombings show that all Muslims are fanatical, evil, violent fundamentalists, when the IRA never led them to ask the same questions about Christianity.

And I don't want to live in a country where the Daily Telegraph can run a front page showing Ken Livingstone in a line with two radical Muslim clerics under the headline, "These men blame Britain!" (Mind you, it would be nice to be able to live here without the Daily Telegraph!)If we have got to the point where we lump all criticism of the government under the same heading, and assume that critical voices are pro-terror voices, and silence engagement by suggesting publicly that it is the same as associating ones self with voices calling for British deaths, then we are deep, deep, deep in the brown smelly stuff!

I don't want to be told to "Go home, then!", either. I'm not saying I don't want to live here. This is my home. I want it to be a good place, though - a place where the logic of terror makes no sense at all.

Permission to use The Dancing Madonna

Lis is happy to give permission for use of her photographs. Please just email her to ask and to let her know you like and want it! I'll try and trace the sculptor. I'd be glad to know, too, who found it helpful.

The Dancing Madonna

Isn't this stunning? It's the statue of The Dancing Madonna, from St Luke's Church, Duston. It was taken by Lis Mullen, minister of Carver United Reformed Church. It's something to meditate on. Look at the locked gaze between Jesus and Mary. Isn't the joy and thrill of the dance astounding? This is one of those pictures I can look at for ages. Thanks, Lis, for permission to share it here.

The politics of the rabbit hole

So Tony Blair thinks there's no connection between the London bombs and Iraq? What he means, presumably, is that there ought not to be a connection. After all, it's no good saying there isn't when the network claiming responsibility give that as part of their reason and justification. But Blair is essentially suggesting that to buy into the notion that British foreign policy and presence in Iraq is linked to the bombings is somehow to buy into and justify the logic of terrorism. As though agreeing that the connection is exists is the same thing as condoning the response!

It's an argument totally devoid of logic but with enormous power to silence. It's cunning and insidious. If you watch the wider picture, you'll notice a smuggling operation going on. What presents is the need for the nation to unite in the face of threat, in the name of law and order and democracy. That is perfectly acceptable. But smuggled in is the insistence that "If you are really behind us in the opposition to terror, you'll proclaim as vehemently as I do ["I being TB] that there is no connection to Iraq, no motivation othere than sheer bloody-minded evil, no problem to be solved other than combatting terrorists who would have done this regardless of the war, and no problem with my government's foreign policy that needs to be addressed!"

The position he's taking here is an attempt to deflect and silence criticism of his pursuit of the Iraq war - a position morally bankrupt and responsible, to date, for the deaths of 24 864 Iraqi civilians. He mustn't be allowed to evade responsibility for that. We elected him - we owe it to the rest of the world, to the families of the dead in Iraq and London and to the very values Blair reckons are under attack by the bombers to hold him to account. It is the most effective contribition we can make to ensuring that the terror doesn't continue.

I'm church, therefore I blog

Interactive. Communication. Two keywords for plotting changing patterns in the way we relate these days. Remember BE (Before Email), BI (Before the Internet) and BMP (Before Mobile Phones)? It's difficult, isn't it? The organisers of Live8 were talking about how different it was organising the first LiveAid concert 20 years ago, and the one this month. The landscape of relating and communicating has altered beyond recognition.

I could have added "Information". That's how the Internet started - a global store of information. But it has become far more than that. It's evolved into a global communication network. Communication is now a far more fundemantal function of the Internet than disseminating information. The explosion of website design about communicating. It's not just a meatter of being "out there" on the web and being picked up by the search engines. It's about persuading people to spend time on your site. After all, if the only purpose was information, why not just post what are effectively A4 pieces of paper with the information?

What makes the difference between a good website and a great one? Between one that gets loads of hits and results, and one that doesn't? Increasingly (now we've got the notion of attractive design firmly in our heads) it's about interactivity. (Blogging enters from the wings, stage left, and takes up position centre stage).

Blogging moves us beyond merely reading what someone else has written to interaction and discussion. Follow a thread, join the discussion, and influence it. Your comment - your "take" - is likely to draw more people in. The discussion moves on and grows. It's not static.

I cannot imagine a church with any significant sort of online presence that, very soon, will not have its own blog. Imagine how it would change things! On Monday, the minister posts the texts for the week. People who are interested add their observations. They say what they find interesting, puzzling, relevant, archaic, helpful, problematic. They also suggest hymns (and of course, there will be few surprises there! Jo Blogger will suggest "Jesus wants me for a sunbeam" for the nth week running). They post names of people and situations they would like included in the prayers. On Wednesday, the minister gives a draft outline of the service and sermon, shaped in no small part by what has been posted. Again, there's opportunity for response and comment. Friday is "S" day.

Think about how much communal thinking and discussion has gone into the service. Imagine how many people will come to church having had a hand in what happens on Sunday! In time, it could be developed. People will be able to contribute written prayers, and suggest stories for the family slot. It would be a great way to encourage people to share their faith stories. And to get feedback on the service that's just been. People are inclined to be far more honest, open and personal when blogging. Our churches could become hives of communication, instead of everyone always complaining about being left out of the loop.

It astonishes me that the denominational centres of the churches don't have running blogs. Think of the potential for communicating the work of committees and getting real feedback and interaction. Consider how useful the URC would find a running blog about Catch the Vision. After all, if you want to find out what people are thinking, one sure way is the Letters section of Reform.

Of course, blogging isn't for everyone. But then, neither is picking up the phone, or writing to Reform. That doesn't matter. Some (many?) people will do it. We need to be looking for ways of making it easy for people to participate "where they are". The fact that many aren't yet online, or are unlikely ever to be, shouldn't stop us getting adventurous. Why must the church always be several steps behind, rather than leading the way creatively?

it's not dark yet, but it's getting there ...

Did anyone else see Amazon's 10th Anniversary Concert online yesterday, or catch the last chance to see it today? If you get this in time (today only!) go to www.amazon.com (ie the US site) and navigate from the ad on the RHS of the page. It featured Bob and Norah Jones - their two highest selling singers.

I felt profoundly sad, watching it. Dylan's getting old. He still makes music - wonderfully and generously - but his voice is going. Of course, there are those who maintain that he never had a voice, but that's to misunderstand what he does. There have always been three vital elements to Dylan - the lyrics, the music and the voice. Dylan uses his voice as an instrument to interpret his songs. He plays with his voice as others play a guitar or piano. If you've ever admired what Clapton can make a guitar do, and how he can change the mood or feel of something, then you'll undertand how Dylan does the same thing with his voice. He can snarl, sneer, beg, mock, woo, entrance, and terrify. Or he could. That's what makes the man so astoundingly versatile and infuriating. Dylan is probably the one perfomer who has always maintained absolute rights to his own music. He will change the tune, the lyrics, or reinterpret the songs radically. You never know what Dylan in concert is going to do with his songs. One of the audience's favourite games is "Guess the song" from the instrumental introduction. It beats "Who wants to be a millionaire?" for unpredictability!

This is part of what makes his music truly great - but not as others count greatness. Bob has never pandered to fans' demands to hear the songs again and again "just like on the record" (Lawrence, you're showing your age here, mate!) His songs endure because they mean constantly new things to Bob. Listen to "Just like a woman". The young Dylan howls and sneers. The older Dylan makes it drip with irony. My desert island disc selection would include at least two versions of "Like a Rolling Stone" - cos they're two different songs!

[I'm not going to miss the chance to observe that the enduring newness of his songs and the open-endedness and polyvalence of the lyrics - the ability to say something new and fresh in a different time and context - is pretty much how I think the Bible functions as Living Word. Nor am I going to miss the chance to invite you folk to come to Rock & Redemption at the Windermere Centre to come and do some serious theology through the music of Dylan, Cohen and Springsteen! But this is by way of parenthesis.]

So Bob getting old and losing his voice is much, much more than just an issue about what the singing sounds like. It means he's losing control over his own creations. His versatility gave him the means to reinterpret his work; to remould the songs; to say something new with old words. So it was heartbreaking to watch him limited by his voice. The spark was gone. The songs were singing Bob. I could hardly bear to listen to "Maggie's Farm", not because it was bad (it was!) but because he was powerless to do it differently. It might be ok to listen to Sir Paul struggling - and failing - to hit the notes in the classic numbers he did for Live8, cos it's wonderfully nostalgic. Audience memory does what the voice fails to do, and we hear "The Long and Winding Road" filtered through years of sameness. Not so with Bob. You can't sit there and smile indulgently, or wash away on a wave of nostalgia seeing His Bobness do the good ol' numbers, cos he's never done that and they've never been old! Always forever young!

It was all the more poignant because when he hit the harp, you could see the gawky young singer of 45 years ago. Dylan's always looked awkward and anally retentive when he moves to music on stage. As though there's an Elvis inside a wooden puppet trying to get out. But that just made it all the harder to watch.

His voice warmed up and gained in strength. "Blind Willie McTell" still gave me goosebumps. He dripped vintage bob-sarc at the pretensions of Mr Jones. "Lay Lady Lay" was great - I found myself wondering (as in full of wonder) at how an old man could sing a young man's song and make it mean something absolutely different but relevant. But then, I guess it isn't difficult to sing that particular number if you have a libido and a score card like Dylan maintains. When he donned his cowboy hat, he was in Love & Theft territory and completely at home there. He made that music for and with his voice as it is today.

He was generous with the harmonica. Now, I've always maintained that Bob uses the harmonica on songs that are really important to him. It's a cue for what matters. And he also uses it as a gift to audiences (Dylan's notoriously ungenerous to audiences, getting positively surly, curt and churlish with them as he's got older). So I rate his perfomance as generous. He gave what he had to give. He'd obviously refused to allow the cameras to zoom in on him. Oh, and he ought to have sacked his band - or rehearsed more! But he was generous. And none more so when he called Norah Jones onstage to do a duet with him - "I Shall be Released" (gives me a fresh set of goosebumps just remembering that!). Who can forget Bob Dylan and Joan Baez doing that one together? It was an anthem for a generation. They were its voice. And he gave it to Norah. He really did give it to her, because his singing was quite deliberately instrumental. You could see that Norah knew it, too. She didn't take it and try to own it - she did it beautifully, with just the right amount of deference and awe in the face of the gift's significance.

It's getting dark. And it's shaken me. Dylan is part of the fabric of my universe. Just as my world is constituted by the fact that my parents are still alive, and I don't have ultimately to stop the buck just yet, so it is with Dylan. I go to Dylan to be awed, and puzzled, and challenged. I go to hear Dylan articulate my thoughts and values, my dreams for the world and my anger at what's wrong. He says them far better than I ever could. His conscience has been a guide. And he's never rested - he's always pressing on, experimenting. His grasp of literature and the Bible and poetry is astounding and his range is monumental. So is his musical knowledge. He's like Mandela. He can't die - mustn't die - because memories aren't enough. Dylan's power is never only in what he's done, but in the vitality of what he's doing now and will do tomorrow. His tomorrow's are running out. Like those of my parents. And Mandela. And where then will be the voices that we desperately need to hear?

just chillin'

It's one of the great things about living in the Lake District - after working today on the service tomorrow, I was down on the beach at Miller Ground, swimming. The water was like a warm bath - at least for the first 12" or so. Cold after that! But a quick drive, or a visit to the lake, or a river, and it feels as though you're on holiday! And I get paid to be here ... eat your hearts out, fellow bloggers!

Eyes on the G8, not just London

Wasn't it amazing how effectively the London bombings knocked the Make Poverty History capaign and the Gleneagles summit off the front pages? I mean, just look at mustard seeds as an example! There's a post on the bombings, but nothing on the coach trip to Edinburgh. What an astonishing experience! Nearly a quarter of a million people taking over the streets of the city for 7 hours. I spoke to a police officer (I'd lost one of my bus charges!) and he said there'd been no trouble, no drunkenness and no ambulances called. He couldn't believe it. I'm usually not on the side of people who whinge about the media and their reporting, but I couldn't help noticing how effective violence is as a publicity stunt! Look how much coverage and screen time the handful of anti-globalisation demonstrators got by comparison with our record-breaking demo.

Of course, the good news is that there was some significant good news to come out of Gleneagles. The package of debt relief, doubled aid and a commitment to tackling Aids is going to make an enormous difference to millions of people's lives.

Here's the question that intrigues me. What if we've actually done it - what if we've actually changed the way of life for Africa, and with it, the world? What effects will that have? Let's be optimistic. Let's say that release from crippling debt will revolutionise the economies. Let's say that the aid gets to where it's needed. Let's say that the Aids programme starts to bite. African lives are going to change dramatically - thank God! We need to keep up the pressure so that the debt relief is extended as far as is needed.

But how does it change us? I wonder if it's going to alter radically our postmodern mindset? I have a feeling that somewhere at the heart of Po-Mo is a despair of the complexity of reality. It seems to me that part of the demise of the Big Story is a pessimism about being able to alter things on any significant scale. The global economy is just too big, complex and powerful. Unaccountable multinationals, far more powerful than nation states, are unaccountable. If the pressure on them in one place gets too great, they decamp operations elsewhere. So we give up on any hope of changing the world and instead concentrate our efforts on small, individual, single issues. We might at least make a difference in our own back yards! So, for example, we profess a "zero tolerance" policy towards drugs and jail someone for 14 years for having a dope party in the privacy of their homes, but live with the fact that the drugs cartels can be inconvenienced but never eradicated. Small wonder that students these days are so frighteningly conservative by comparison with our generation, obssessed with grades and CVs!

But what if we've actually done it this time? What if we've got the most powerful people in the world to listen and act? How much pent-up hope will that unleash? Will we find other ways of making a difference to the Big Picture? So many questions! I confess to being quietly hopeful...

dave faulkner has an interesting section on "What Did the G8 Accomplish?"

Oh, the picture? It's of two of the demonstrators at Edinburgh, saying to the G8 (ala Sting) "We'll be watching you!"

Can we handle life in the highways and byways?

Lucy's comment on the "Visions to Avoid" post set me thinking (read that thread if you haven't - we need to develop it!). We're "selling" Jesus, she suggests. That's what we've got to offer. And she raises the question, "To whom?" I wonder what most of our church folk would answer if (a) the question was, "Who would you most like to attract to your church?" and (b) they had to answer honestly!

I suspect that the answer is that we'd like middle class, well-spoken, enthusiastic, productive, skilled, younger, thinking, popular, gifted, comfortably off people. I'm getting on for sure-to-certain that the answer will not be poor, damaged, difficult, marginalised, unpopular, dirty, destructive, embarrassing, unemployed (unemployable?) people who need giving to.

This is where I get stuck. I actually believe that these are precisely the people we should be seeking to attract first (ie before turning our attention to those less needy). That's what Jesus did, after all! But Jesus did more than extend charity and hospitality. He chose these people as friends! They were his first choice.

We concentrate our efforts on people like us. We are battling to communicated with jaded, satiated consumers who are overwhelmed with choice. That is not to say for a moment that they - and we - aren't needy. But our needs come from having too much. We pray "Give us this day our daily bread", while my daily bread frquently goes hard and mouldy and gets fed to the ducks and swans because I have so many other, more exciting things to eat. We have Communion services, procaliming Jesus to be the Bread of Life, while people starve to death. Then we have theological arguments about how to dispose of the leftovers! One of our greatest health problems is obesity and our most common mental health problems centre around our bodies and self-image. Part of our salvation is a fairer world in which we live more simply in order that others may simply live.

The parable of the Great Feast is about abandoning concentration on those who are most reluctant to hear the Good News of the Gospel and concentrating on those whose need is greatest - for whom the Gospel comes as gloriously Good News. That is not the same thing as abandoning those others. It's about where our efforts are concentrated.

So how can we make that sort of quantum leap? How can we begin to create a Church that is recognisably the Church of Jesus Christ precisely because it reflects Jesus' priorities in this area? That seems to me part of the task of catching the vision of God's Tomorrow.

Let's stop pretending suicide bombers are cowards

Am I the only one who gets really angry with the media depiction of suicide bombers as cowards? They may be many things, but cowards they certainly aren't! I've fought in a war, and one thing that strikes me forcibly is that most soldiers spend and awful lot of time and energy surviving! The idea is to kill the enemy while escaping harm. Yet these people quite deliberately give up their lives. When I try to imagine myself into the mind of the bombers, or the terrorists who flew the planes into the twin towers, I'm haunted by wondering what it is like waking up knowing that today you are going to die. Or what goes through their minds in the last seconds before they detonate their bombs. Are they frightened? Any last-minute doubts about whether or not it's worth it? When they look at the passers-by they are going to kill, what do they think, or feel?

Why do suicide bombers evoke such particular horror in us? Why do we portray them as so very, particularly evil? It can't be for their effectiveness - many bombers die taking hardlyanyone with them. Perhaps it's the deliberation of it all. Or the knowledge that anyone around could be a walking bomb. Or maybe it's our horror of casualties. After all, we expect to go to war with minimal casualties. We have smart bombs and tanks that can pound the hell out of people and places from great distances. We shelter our troops behind inches of toughened metal and glass. We kill people from heights or distances. We rarely have to see them, or engage with them as human beings. They are statistics. Our military language carefully removes the personal, human element from our killing and dying. Suicide bombers don't allow us that sort of detachment. Their stuff is too "in our faces"; too personal. They remind every one of us that, in their eyes, we're to blame - each of us. Not just our government, but us. They say, in effect, "This is between you and me".

We are happy to participate in the kinds of things that breed suicide bombers. Israel carries out its state terrorist policies (well, come on, let's call a spade a spade! If anyone elese did what they do to the Palestinians, we'd regard it as an act of terrorism, wouldn't we?) because Britain and the US exercise their vetos in the UN. We might not like it. We might protest. But we don't see ourselves as deliberately and personally involved. In the eyes of the victims, we're culpable. We are participating. When a Palestinian loses a child to an Israeli sniper or gunship, or his wife dies giving birth at a chekpoint because the soldiers won't allow her to get to an ambulance, or a farmer loses his land and wealth at a stroke because the Wall is routed through the family olive grove, then that person blames you and me, just as much as George Bush, Tony Blair or Ariel Sharon.

I spoke to some Palestinian young people of 17-18 years. What was terrifying was the level of despair. They saw no way out, no end to the fighting and no means of influencing events. The only people who, in their eyes, were doing anything positive, were Hamas. One told me, "The Americans think they have their smart bombs. Well, we've got even smarter bombs!" She was referring to suicide bombers. Pretty desperate when you look at suicide bombers as a sign of hope, eh? And when a 14 year old girl believes the only thing left is to sign up as a martyr - what is going on?

And no, before anyone starts, this isn't an apology for terrorism or suicide bombers. On a personal and spiritual level, it's an attempt to understand fellow human beings. I think that is vital and we do no good pretending things are other than they are. Calling them cowards makes it easy to dismiss them. I interrogated many "terrorists" in Zimbabwe. Some had done some very, very evil things. But there were two things that struck me. Firstly, they were, without exception, brave. Secondly, they saw themselves as being engaged in a struggle against a great evil, against a powerful enemy who was waging a terror war on their people, with no means to wage it other than through terrorism.

That was a salutary lesson for me. It meant I had to take them seriously as human beings. It meant I had to take seriously the fact that they had consciences and a moral argument for what they were doing. It meant I had to take them seriously as soldiers. It meant that I couldn't ignore the ways in which they saw every citizen of what was Rhodesia as intimately connected to and involved in what was going on on the streets of the black townships.

If we want to rid the world of terror, one of the things we need desperately to do is to avoid playing things as though they are different from the way they are. If we don't like terror on our streets, then we must recognise that it has come to our streets from their streets. And they reckon we're to blame! We can't just disagree - we need to struggle for justice and peace.

Visions to avoid

Too many discussions of Emerging Church are still underpinned by a desire to be successful. If "success" means growth, then the hard facts are that most churches grow at the expense of others, because we are not so much conecting with people who have nothing to do with Christian faith as competing for a market share of people who are already Christians. Church as it is is getting to the point where we are exhausting the list of people "on the outside" who are interested in "joining" Church.

If the vision to be caught is of a Church that is simply more successful than before in wooing disaffected Christians, it's one we ought to avoid assiduously! There are enough churches presently catering for "already Christians". If we have a justifiable reason for existing beyond our existing shelf life, it must be because we are finding ways of connecting with the vast majority of those for whom the Gospel is clearly not Good News. When we create spaces for them to find faith and join the community of faith, we will find ourselves changing organically. That's when we start to become the Church of Tomorrow!

Praying for our enemies

Quite a challenge in the wake of the London bombings, isn't it? Yet Jesus gives a command that is a deliberate rejection of the cycle of violence, hatred and revenge. He says that we are to love our enemies, too. Praying for them as people we love (rather than as those we hate and fear) is immensely challenging. So, as soon as the news broke, we set up a vigil cangle - a huge candle with 6 tealights set into it. We prayed for the victims and their families, the rescuers and medics, the government, the G8 summit and for a world in which poverty is history and justice and peace render terrorism and violence redundant. We also prayed this prayer: "We light a candle for the bombers. Restore their humanity. Keep them from further evil. Have mercy on their souls."