Nice rocks?

Just can't help thinking that the President of Chile must have had some other pressies already wrapped before he came to the UK giving everyone rocks from the ill fated mine. Can't help thinking the Queen and the Primeminister are wishing it had been a diamond mine.

Imagine all the people?

When in October 1971 John Lennon released his most popular solo album 'Imagine' the single of the same name quickly became his signature song and remains an enduring plea for a world of harmony and peace. In the chorus Lennon assumes that people will say he’s a dreamer and perhaps he is quite right, because it’s hard to imagine a world where there’s no countries or possessions.

But in Lennon’s dream there is no place for religion either. This is an understandable perspective when we look at the harm brought to the world by men and women acting in the name of religion. Wars have been fought, truth has been suppressed, ideas of Heaven and Hell have been used to manipulate social control: all this and worse may have been perpetrated by those who profess belief in God.

But to my mind religion, or better, faith in God, has also been a force for good in the world because believers could imagine a better way of living than that which they saw around them. When the ancient prophets spoke of a time when the wolf and the lamb would lie down together they were encouraging people to imagine just that: and to live with one another as if such alternative realities were actually possible. When Jesus brought all their hopes to life, bringing good news to the poor, the sick and the oppressed, it was not just a dream he had, the reality of what he did so upset the Powers that Be that they killed him for it. Some things are still worth dying for, John.

So while I want to live with no need of greed or hunger

With all the people sharing all the world as one

if it is to happen then I must not just dream about it

I must act and live not out of fear but in love

And maybe you will join me

Dear God help us to imagine a world

Where we do on earth

as it is done in heaven

And help us to believe

that such a world can be here today

Amen

Prayer is like a telephone ... or not

Another prayer from Radio 4 this week

On my desk is a cartoon of a man talking on his mobile telephone.

The caption reads:

I am just calling to make sure you got my e-mail following the letter I faxed this morning.’

For many of us calls like that will be all too familiar. Technology seems to drive our life at a pace that few people want but equally now we are communicating with such momentum that hardly anyone can resist or stop it. And amidst all this is a myriad of changing social protocols.

We wonder how long it is reasonable to wait for an email to be answered

If it is appropriate to text a partner telling them the relationship is over

And should we accept our boss’s invitation to be a friend on a social network site

In an age where we assume an eager audience is instantly interested with our status updates, where seemingly every emotional response to life is a matter of public record, and others are encouraged to add their comment, are there changing protocols on prayer?

When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray, he began by telling them to go into their room and close the door and pray in private … for God who sees what is done in secret would then reward them. No-one else need know what they told their maker or what their Creator had said to them. Anticipating our lack of patience in such an endeavour, he quickly followed the words of the Lord’s Prayer with a parable on persistence … assuring us that if we ask, then it will be given and if we seek then we shall find.

Jesus does not confirm a timescale for heaven’s answer

Nor indeed the method by which it may be communicated

But he leaves us with the promise - that if we knock upon his door then it will be opened for us.

Dear God

In this fast moving world of ours

Give us patience and persistence in our prayers

Open our hearts that we may hear you clearly speak today.

Amen

Happy (belated) Birthday Charlie Brown

Sorry the blog has been silent for so long ... lots of interesting things have been happening, going to worship with the Pope in Westminster Abbey, Stuart Murray and Roy Searle on Celts, Anabaptists and New Monasticism, and flying to Newcastle with odd shoes on, but so often away from my computer that i've not blogged them later. Some of this will out in due course no doubt. Anyway if you are up early or like the radio 4 shipping forecast then you will have heard these prayers for the day already ... I am doing this week's prayers ... so playing catch up a bit ... here's the one from 2nd Oct.

Today is the 60^th birthday of Peanuts, the celebrated cartoon strip penned for so many years by Charles Schultz.

Charlie Brown and Snoopy may be the stars, but I love an episode that featured two other characters, Lucy and Linus.

They were talking about a baby called Sally.

She is pictured crawling slowly round the room and Lucy, frustrated at the baby’s lack of progress, asks ‘When will Sally start walking?

Linus replies,‘Let her crawl;

once you’ve started walking

you’re committed for a lifetime.’

There are not many things that people will commit to for a life time now.

We might give a year or two to this hobby or that job,

we may devote time to living in a certain city

or even to a particular religion,

but so much these days seems subject to the

possibility of moving on to something else.

We are often reluctant to dedicate ourselves like this because we fear if we do so

then we might be loosing out on something else

maybe something better.

But this is exactly what is needed if we are to make a difference in the world ...

if we are to see any real change in ourselves.

Many people liked Jesus when it was easy and exciting, but he needed disciples who would still be loyal when things got tough. When a would-be disciple asked to go and say good-bye to his family before signing up for good, Jesus told him straight: No-one who starts following me and then looks back is ready for where I am going.

Tough words, I know, But in a world of seemingly infinite choices, we need the courage to make tough decisions and know that we will remain steadfast for a life time.

Dear God, all of us are tempted to look over our shoulder

To wonder with regret at what might have been

Give us the courage today

To start walking towards the future you have prepared for us

Help us to be faithful for the life-time of that journey. Amen.

The First Victory of Peace

This post is A bit after the fact I know but I was doing Radio 2 Pause for Thought on VJ Day, Sunday.

When I was a child my dad used to let me stay up late to watch the war-time programme Secret Army. It was a lot more serious than the hilarious Dad’s Army, much more like the classic Colditz, for which I had the Action Man figures and the Board Game.

Even though it won Seven Oscars, one war movie that was not for viewing in our house was The Bridge over the River Kwai. It carried painful associations for members of our family and it was always switched off. The film tells the story of Allied Prisoners of War forced to build a bridge by their brutal (and brutalised) Japanese Guards.

Years later, when I was actually working in Japan, we were talking about the national stereo types we have of one another. I was amazed to discover that they thought that British people lived in the dangerous and foggy streets of Sherlock Holmes and they were taken-a-back to realise how much war time movies had shaped what I thought of them. It’s always a bit of a shock to see ourselves as other people see us, to hear what others say of us.

I’ve been thinking of those conversations recently and of the cultural clichés we exposed and left behind, because today Britain will commemorate VJ Day: It’s 65 years ago that the war against Japan was finally brought to an end. I have huge admiration for those who gave their lives back then, but I hope we’ve come a long way since, especially in understanding one another better.

Because if the first casualty in war is truth, if propaganda encourages us to see the other people as being somehow less human than we are, then the first victory of peace should be for us to see each others as equal partners in a shared and redeemed humanity.

And maybe that’s why Jesus told us to love our enemies.

I think it was a challenge even in the midst of conflict

for us to see ourselves in others,

to value in them the identical image of God that lives in every one

And so for all we humans are different,

we’re really just the same

And I hope onm VJ Day we don’t remember just the victory of some

and the defeat of others

I hope we celebrate the chance for peace to overcome in the hearts of everyone.

It's not about the money ... it's the principle

When I was a lawyer handling personal injury claims, my boss gave me a helpful piece of advice. She said when someone says to you 'it's not about the money it's the principle' you can be pretty sure its about the money.

Her words were in my mind this week as we sat down to review our Church Constitution, looking at the standard Governing Document for BUGB churches. In the section on 'Belonging to the Church' it talks about members giving financial support to the Church and there is a footnote which says 'Although there may be encouragement to give financially this is a private matter.' Why is this a private matter? Why should a people called together under God keep this information from one another. Why should we shrink from being financially accountable to one another, to those we love adn who love us? I understand the fear of a church developing a 'richest members league table' and the jealousies that may ensue, but surely we are called to be better than that.
Surely we can be better than that.
Why is money to be kept as a private affair in today's churches?
What purpose is achieved by such secrecy?

The poet Alice Walker says:

We alone
can devalue gold
by not caring
if it falls or rises
in the market place

Wherever there is gold
there is a chain you know,
and if your chain is gold
so much the worse for you

Feathers, shells
and sea-shaped stones are all as rare

This could be our revolution:
To love what is plentiful
as much as
what's scarce.

This is not about the money ... but it is about the principle.

Feed the World ... what Sir Bob didn't know.

A seminal moment in my experience of music was Bob Geldof's (and of course Midge Ure's) Live Aid Concert. It also was a foundational moment in rekindling my personal determination that politics and faith needed to kiss and make up ... (but not get married).

Bob and Midge and the many musicians at Live Aid encouraged us to 'Feed the World.' But there was something that they didn't know ...

something I discovered this weekend.

Putting aside recent questions as to how successful Band Aid was at actually delivering aid at the point of need, the shift in public consciousness here was undoubtedly immense. But many still went hungry in Africa.

I am pleased to announce that this need happend no more.

Because I have discovered a way to feed the world for free.

I went into a well known shop (it could have been one of so many) to buy and sandwich and a drink.

Total cost 3.49

But if I took a packet of crisps it would become a 'meal deal' and only cost 2.99

'But I don't want the crisps' I explained.

'No, crisps, no meal deal. Its not a meal without crisps', the cashier explained.

'Couldn't we just pretend ...

The shop would be a packet of crisps the richer? I asked

'No,' she said.

So I bought the meal deal and offered the crisps as a present to the cashier.

She declined my offer.

So did the near by security guard who had become curious.

But he did intervene when I went to replace the packet of crisps on the shelf.

Seriously, he stopped me giving them stock.

It would mess with the system he said

'But any system as crazy as this needs to be messed with!' I said.

So folks here's what to do.

Mess with the system.

Go to whatever local shop is offering a meal deal

Save yourself 50p and get your bag of crisps

proclaim to all the world that a meal is a meal without them

and then we can collect them all

and ship them off to Feed the World

The 50ps we save will even cover the cost of shipping.

If only Sir Bob had known.

Prayers for today that come from Yesterday

I heard this prayer many years ago, but had forgotten it until today when it was used by Rev Dr Pat Took at Momentum, the Assembly of Baptists in Wales.

Disturb us, Lord, when we are too well pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we have dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when
With the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wider seas
Where storms will show your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.
We ask You to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push into the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.

In case you're wondering, it's by Sir Francis Drake.

FATHER'S DAY

Back on the radio sharing some thoughs on fathers' day I wanted to get my favourite father's quotation in there but it didn't really fit.

'A father never stands so tall

than when he bends down to help his child'

but anyway this is what was said.

In case anyone’s forgotten, this Sunday will be Fathers’ Day again, and this year it’s the hundredth anniversary. There’s no need to panic if you haven’t sent a card or bought your present, it’s only Thursday after all.

Of course like the corresponding Mother’s Day, this special anniversary brings mixed emotions into many of our lives. Some people get on well with their dad and they may be looking forward to a cheerful celebration lunch. But this happy picture isn’t true for everyone. There are many ways that the relationship between a father and his child may end up strained or even broken these days, and all the hype around a special day can just make things seem worse. And of course there will be other men who’d love to be a father, but for whatever reason it hasn’t happened for them.

I sometimes wonder if these special days with their over-commercialized sentimentality don’t cause more hassle than they’re worth, but then I am reminded that behind this one anyway lies a century of people expressing their love for dads.

It all began when a young woman called Sonora Smart-Dodd heard a Mother's Day sermon in her local church. Her own mother had died many years before when Sonora was 16 but it was on that Sunday morning that she realised the sacrifices her father must have made to bring up her five brothers and sisters, including a new born baby, all by himself. After church that day she began to think about a way to honour how he and other fathers had so loved their children.

She’d hoped to organise the celebrations to coincide with her dad's birthday, on 5^th June, but there wasn’t enough time to get everything ready and so that first Father’s Day took place on the third Sunday of the month in 1910. Since then it’s gone from strength to strength, winning the approval of US presidents and spreading from America right across the world. But it’s only been successful because time and again, sons and daughters want to say ‘I love you’ to their fathers.

I don’t know what bible text the preacher chose to speak about on the day that Sonora had her great idea. No doubt she’d listened to many a minister give a sermon before and her dad had probably done so too, but I suspect it didn’t matter whether the scripture came from Genesis or Revelation or any point in between. Because sometimes the greatest texts are those found in the people who love us come what may. Often the greatest sermons are those expressed in the touch of gentle hands and the power of a reassuring smile. Perhaps they come too in a calm voice of correction.

And maybe no-one does that more

Than our Father who is in heaven

Character and characters

A church full of character

is not the same

as a church full of characters.

(Just a line from tomorrow's sermon)