I’m away for the weekend… off on the UCCF leaders retreat thing to Lendrick Muir. I’ll be back on Sunday afternoon, so no blogging until then. Looking forward to a weekend hanging out with the guys from our exec, from execs all around Scotland and getting some quality teaching.
Also plan to watch the rugby on Saturday – Come On Ireland!!
In my ‘office’ this afternoon… can’t believe I only discovered this place recently!!
Loving the free wifi, great staff, and fun atmosphere. They’ve got a great exhibition space downstairs too.
Some new pictures up on my Flickr… plan to start putting more up, maybe put up some old ones I’ve got as well. There are a few from the e.s.t. gig the other night up now.
Life is pretty busy right now… I got a new job… althought wondering how long I will be able to stay!! Gotta give it a try at least.
I’m getting baptised on Monday evening! Excited about that, and my folks are going to be over for it as well which is cool. More details later.
Some stuff I’m interested in / reading / thinking about / acting on at the minute:
The Still Small Voices blog is sharing stories of asylum in the UK, well worth checking out. This is a big thing in university at the minute too, as asylum seekers are being forced to pay international student fees if they want to study.
Awaiting the release of Black Gold, the film adaptation of a book (of the same name) I read last summer. Starbucks are getting some pretty bad press because of how they are treating their Ethopian coffee farmers. Oxfam have a campaign to make Starbucks pay fairer happening now.
Also awaiting the release of Amazing Grace, a film telling the story of William Wilberforce and the abolition of slavery. This year marks the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery… but there are still so many people in slavery…
600,000-800,000 men, women and children trafficked across international borders each year. Approximately 80 per cent are women and girls. Up to 50% are minors.
[US Department of State Trafficking in Persons Report 2005]
Stop The Traffik are campaigning against this, check them out.
I have some friends involed in the “The Truth Isn’t Sexy” campaign, which is attempting to raise awareness of sex trafficking. They designed and printed a load of beermats which are going into as many pubs, clubs and bars as they can get them into. I heard recently that the NUS has agreed to put them into 100 university students unions, which is great. If you want to get involved, for example, get some beermats to take to your local, get in touch with me (leave a comment is probably easiest!) and I’ll forward your info to the appropriate people!
A stand-out comment from Soliton that is haunting my thoughts…
“We can build missiles but we don’t sleep with our secretaries.”
Gareth kicked the Soliton Sessions off for us in Belfast on Thursday.
Trevor facilitated a conversation on the impact of Martin Luther King’s writtings for today, and how we can gain hope from them. We talked briefly about the idea of heaven coming down to earth, figuring out what it looks like to build Gods kingdom in our midst. Someone (maybe Trevor?) commented on how we can claim and use the title ‘New Belfast’ just like there is a ‘New Jerusalem’. We discussed how it can be so discouraging to look around at the world and feel like we have nothing to give – not enough money or whatever – but sometimes all we have to do is get on the same level as people (Big Issue sellers, homeless guys, etc) and simply acknowledge their humanity. The question was raised, has our culture taught us not to dream, but instead to stifle our creativity?
“Answers are never really answers – just hints of truth.”
After lunch Derek Poole and Linda Gould from CCCI spoke briefly on peace and reconciliation, in Northern Ireland particularly. When asked about one thing they’d like to see change in the church, Derek said something that’s stuck with me:
“We are social creatures that are shaped by the poetics of space. I’d like to see a change in emphasis from a strong emphasis on immanence (the God who is near) to a stronger emphasis on transcendence (the God who is other and mystery). For that change to affect our spaces and gatherings. We need a deep sense of the otherness and the mystery of God so that we may learn to see the holy in the ordinary. A space that is fundamentally about an alternative consciousness, and nudges us again towards the numinous. One expression of numinous today are the artists”
The afternoon conversation I took part in was facilitated by Rob and Angela Spain, and looked at the death and regeneration of churches, and decentralised methods of church. I loved this session I have to admit – helped me to understand it a bit more!
We talked about the passage from John 15, and how we look at it very introspectively – what if we look at it in a world-wide view? Vineyards are pruned, but the parts that are cut off aren’t burned, they could be used to compost, fertilise.
Rob talked about how the Internet is a model of this type of scale-free organisation – not random distribution, but connected around hubs that are seen as important, and the hubs are also all interconnected. The connections are fluid and liquid, as the nature of the system is that it is always changing.
Is the ‘dying’ of church then a form of redistribution? It’s not necessarily a bad thing then, if we learn to embrace it, and view the redistribution from a more kingdom mindset.
“Maybe the church appears where connectivity between each other appears.”
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