Space to rest...

We journeyed north and ithroiugh from Greymouth over through beautiful valleys and then over Takaka Hill to Golden Bay up in the north of this South Island. It was the part of journey that signalled less exploration and more rest. It was everything we needed after the year past. Sea was warm, beaches that were full of space and well don't these views say it all. How blessed we are! What a beautiful space to rest.




Here is where Abel TAsman touched down at Ligar Bay.


Being on the edge of Abel Tasman NAtional Park we entered at our nearest end and doid a short walk to Taupo Point. We only got so far as the tide wasn't fully out. However there was a less coastal route, so I on behalf of the others set off up the steep cliff through the bush amongst the cicadas sounding loudly and the steamy heat. At the top I came out and saw this....


I truly felt like an explorer as I saw it for the first time. It made me stop a while, before heading back down.

So spaces to rest... this coming week when so much of church seems to be abuzz with doing and activity that drains and demands of people, it is my hope that our Lenten journey on Highgate will begin for us the practice of hospitality, that can only truly begin to happen genuinely, if there is a restfulness to it, but also space to get restless as a result of the rest is needed. Hence, I have put out a simple journal that will go out for the next few weeks based on a few psalms. Following all the changes we've undergone to pursue mission, I feel we need to create spaces to rest and the mutual building of one another up in faith.

Explorations - Into the west

Into the west and through the immensity of the Haast Pass around us on either side, waterfalls gushing amongst the dense forest.



Then the west coast a curious mixture of lengthy, wild grey beaches strewn with driftwood logs and them vast areas over hills of native tree forest/bush.


I picked a small driftwood piece and felt the smoothness that had been given it by the pounding sea. In the immensity of the beach there was a moment to find some quiet. All this newness was stimulating to all the senses. As we traveled it didn’t seem to matter where we were placed or rooted, I felt so caught up in the thrill of exploring and sesing each new place we encountered, even what we might say seemed like the middle of ‘no where’.

A visit up the the Fox Galcier saw us pass signs giving dates of when it was at point x or y and now the distance cvovered to the face of it. To simply look up and see the carved rocks that were huge edifaces, somewaht cathedral like rising sheer upwards... it was overwhelming.



Children need ‘wild’ places. Perhaps we all recovered a sense of that and enjoyed it. No longer did being in a ‘strange’ new land feel as overwhelming. Children in the way they roam break the boundaries between themselves and the world in which they move, no matter their space they are in… imagination helps create this as they can make the place their own for that time. Into the west had a sense of this, as well as a curious mix of intimacy and immensity.

Preparing for Ecclesiastes tomorrow in church, it strikes me that Qoheleth somewhat soberingly makes a call to gather the people and seeks to rid them of illusion, falsehood, fraud and sentimentality, holding up a mirror and more perhaps to enable the people to engage faith with reality, in a very disillusioned context. In the face of those who offer a chummy God who is rather banal /reduced, and hence people's faith is more a quiet resignation. Qoheleth voices a more robust faith affirming the holiness, the awesomness the other-ness of the God of Israel who is the centre of everything we are, we have and we do without such a faith God's care, love, joy - God's YES to us and our 'yes' response are empty, vanity, illusion, fraud, or as Zimmerman says is 'flatulence'. How do we see God today? Can we live with what for us may feel like paradox, a God who is 'other' and evokes awesome fear and intimacy as we know and experience it in Christ ?

Gaston Bachelard in Poetics of Space philosophically explores intimate experiences of place. In Chpt 5 on shells (pp105-135) he aims to open up an understanding of ‘intimacy and immensity’.
‘To imagine living in a seashell, to live withdrawn into one’s shell, is to accept solitude – and to embrace, even momentarily, the whole concept and tradition of miniature, in shrinking enough to be contained in something as tiny as a seashell…’ (Foreword o the 1984 edition p. viii)

Psalm 91 v2 'Say this:' God, you are my refuge, I trust in you and I am safe.'

Explorations of Place

One of the exciting things on our trip was not that we covered some 2000+Km’s was the way in which it has helped place us here in New Zealand. Each step of the way provided so much visual stimulation among others as we ‘explored’.
In the end it has given us an even better sense of place beyond Dunedin. It was interesting to move from reading lines and names on a map to actually see these places and continue to have even beyond photographs very vivid images still in my minds eye of places, landscapes we simply passed through. Our sense of place is clearly interactive. As a result of our journey I want to reflect a little bit about this.

Central Otago took us up into high-land and mountain country filled with orchards, vineyards and sheep stations. Here we knew some parts having journey that length before. We me family there and they go each year to the same farm cottage. It was clearly a place that they valued and it was good to share in it together.
The mountains and ranges never fail to impress. It’s when you read the old stories of settlers and life in this environment it makes you wonder. I note the big blue skies above them and how small it makes me feel in this grand stage…



Central otago

Lake Wanaka (on approach to Haast Pass)

I ask myself – what kind of place was it for me? What do I value about it? Perhaps further, what relationship do I have with the place now?

What are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? Psalm 8 v3

Summer seems to have finally arrived. And we are on family holiday.
Out with the artist brushes, oils and canvas... a few beers perhaps and some nice red's!

And so we are looking forward to rest, relaxation... as well as some exploration with Gillian's folks out visiting us from Scotland. So we are set to explore te Waka-a-Aoraki/Te Wahi Pounamu (the canoe of Aoraki/ the place of Greenstone) - i.e. the South Isalnd.

Off we go then into new places...

[2] Jazz Improvisation

Simply put improvisation is ‘improvisus’ Latin meaning “ not seen ahead of time.”
What I think strikes me is the exploratory nature of this, the possibilities of the risks.

Jazz improvisation as ‘conversation’ then involves soloing = which means one taking the lead; trusted by others to improvise, while comping is the others supporting. Even improvisers need others and must themselves in due time play such comping role. This seems to involve collaboration and teamwork to a degree even where words are not required, a look, nod or eye are enough to deliver/pass the message. Listening and responding then are of the essence and sensitivity. These form part of the opening of the space for ideas, for response and the taking on board others ideas. Such leadership requirements seem to me to suggest that we must learn to live less out of ur competencies and trsut the work of the Holy Spirit in us and among us, to work through us. It is a far more demanding and risky business to allow the Spirit to 'improvise' through us because we don't see too far ahead. It demands faith of a sort rooted and being built up in Christ - a faithful obedience. I think this is the sort of scripted life Brueggemann directs us to. I also think it is what will lift us in our leadership beyond the endless sense of despair as we see the edifaces crumble, number decrease, etc., etc., and further it will save us from 'false' platitudes of hope.

Organisationally/structurally, the implications for how churches wrestling to find a form that maintains the missionary participation today may revolve around the improvisory nature of life in the Spirit. How much structure is needed in this Post-bop genre will be an interesting one of course, and no-one can see ahead on that! Some studies have shown how the second/third generation of a movement sees all the initial intensities wane and growth rate slows. ( Noted by Donald E. Miller : Reinventing American Protestantism). I’ve also been reading Prayer and the Priesthood of Christ in the Reformed Tradition by Graham Redding (T&T Clark 2003) It covers several paradigm shifts in theology from early Fathers through to reformers and Scottish reformers. It takes a good look at worship and prayer and how our notions theologically about Christ’s priesthood have been affected. Anyway, it strikes me that looking at it from a Jazz improvisation perspective, we can see that in each historical period the emphasis, debates, creed forming, the liturgy, confessional standards were in part developed in relation to the focus of the times. That was why in looking back some aspects of their theology were not as developed. Some was spontaneous, some built on years of understanding, practice (pastorally) and ‘thousands of experiments’ which was exactly what Calvin’s Geneva was in a way and what Thomas Chalmers undertook in the poor house areas of Glasgow and Edinburgh and seeking Godly Commonwealth too. From a historical/doctrinal perspective there is much we can learn that would make us think, reflect and hopefully better understand where we are , but also with a sense of improvisus. This is not to say that we are more Jazz/swing or bebop about handling the past, for present and future, I do actually see in Acts 10 Peter go against the bounds of tradition and go 'outside' in conversation(postbop). Jazz improvisers are interested in creating new material, surprising themselves and others in spontaneous ways with the music. Jazz equally has no prescription of what is to be played.

“Spontaneity… is but the outcome of years of training and practice and thousands of experiments”. (Hauerwas, Against the Nations 1985: 52)

Keep improvising! Keep experimenting and risking!

[1] Jazz Improvisation

Sorry for the previous theorizing and its labour. But now to turn to the metaphoric use of Jazz that seems to be increasing for the church emergent.

I confess I like it and delved into organisational science to discover a debate going on for some time now in regard to this metaphor and it’s usefulness in organizations generally.


I’ll come back to this another day. But what at the outset I think is striking are the genres of improvisation and the degree of improvisational structure in each shift.

Classical- Minimal = functional hierarchy – formal structure, linear, rigid

Trad. Jazz/swing – constrained = process, flexible

Bebop – extensive = network, complex and structured, organic

Postbop – maximum, new content and structure emerge = functional anarchy, emergent, spontaneous, mutually constructed conversation, chaotic

(see Michael Stack “Jazz Improvisation and Organizing” in Organisational Science vol11/2 2000, pp 227-234)

Within this framework, perhaps we find ourselves in the midst of a conversation throughout the Church at this time between similar genres or in a transition/paradigm shift. I would dare suggest then that missionary thinking has engaged the church with some constrained impro. of Jazz/swing which significantly moved us beyond classical. From the tradition I know, it seems tome that Trad Jazz/Swing fits. There has been room for some fresh impro. with constraint and new flexible structures have been taking shape. Basically impro. here allows for a degree of marginal differences but it is all kept within the bounds of the larger scheme of ‘expected behaviours’.
::
I also would say that church planting, (and perhaps the likes of cell/house church,etc) have in recent decades given rise of more extensive impro. And are more your Bebop genre with emphasis seen on networks of relationship, organic growth changes but still having complexity of structures. Bebop utilized the ‘bad’ notes of swing to create new interesting harmonies. I take this to reflect the bricoleur-like approach of utilizing whatever is to hand and making something of it.
::
But I dare to suggest that what we are now seeing through the breadth of emergent, Alt. Worship (and those who say they have ‘left church’ and those who argue that they still care but want the newer stuff ) is more Postbop – where the basic structure of a tune was not fixed, the structures themselves could be improvised so – notes, structure, harmony emerge spontaneously. Though I dare say even these postbop musicians had a previous background in jazz /swing. This was truly though ‘playing outside’ the norm the box, the accepted structures. It was walking the wire without a safety net. However, even here there is emphasis on rehearsal – playing the same old tunes, same old chord changes, does provide the ability to spontaneously create embellishment... further in relation of this to organization, Zack says, “ it requires practicing communication that builds a deeply shared language, worldview and an understanding of the group’s purpose, mission, and belief system, one part of which is to abhor complacency…” there is a need to have openness to new ways, a need to suspend judgement and even interpretation to accept the apparent anarchy, noise, and confusion that may merely represent unfamiliarity rather than chaos. Hence with a postbop emergent view there is much that is spontaneous carries maximum freer improvisation in which everyone is reacting and listening and thinking ahead to everyone else, connected in interactive ‘conversation’, (perhaps this is a significant part of emergent) which has infinite possibilities and so the group may never find resolution or return to the original point…

Towards improvisation!

Therefore in finding a way forward in mission, we need not only critique the present, but find a continuity with the past and reframe this in relation to the Jesus' Story which is the Christian point of departure. The radical strategy for mission is the reclaiming and reinterpreting the tradition in such a way that it is consistent with its roots and yet adequate to the new situation. That is a process of improvisation with constraint. Three types of constraint are at work in music; continuous, cultural and occasional. Begbie explores the parameters of each, particularly relevant are metre and syncopation, harmonic sequence and idiom each contributing to a framework of constraint that allows for a flexible responsiveness as music engages with the present particularities. In this way the improviser works with boundaries.

::
The key phrase Begbie uses is 'Freedom-in-relation-to-constraint' (186) through which we gain new personal identity. The danger today is that many seek to be original and creative, but regard freedom as unrelated to the past and tradition. The unease with temporality makes the new mission 'mediocre'(219), the antithesis of freedom. Contingency[i] and constraint allow the church in mission to relate to the particular context in such a way that failure and error can be incorporated. It gives the space to fail without complete disaster, as constraints help carry you through and in this risking new things are learned. The cadence therefore required is a restful restlessness(244) which saves us from activity as busy-ness that leads to lifeless monotony. On the one hand then, the structures give form and meaning to the improvisation; we don't have to make it happen. Yet equally these structures free us for mission and new fruitful possibilities. Significantly, it means identity is found in the repetition of the Eucharistic practice, rooting the community of faith in God's newness and to participate in His mission. From this restfulness comes the restlessness to be willing to give and give back.[ii] This removes a focus on technique and strategy or programme and means in terms of freedom, that we take more seriously the others identity as a person.[iii] The church therefore, does not exist for itself, but for the sake of passing on the Gospel. The mission praxis here too recognises there is no longer a need to have control over others, that power is relinquished. Indeed, music's contribution to our understanding of God's mission and that of the church is a reframing of present roles and responsibilities. With regard to the mission of God and of God's people, the shape of freedom, as restful restlessness, will have a gentle rhythm that is to be learned continually. This frees us from a having to get it right or to happen and so recover the cadence in mission – a provisionality which helps define the church less in terms of building and more in terms of people. It means letting go of traditional organisational and structural baggage; seeing ourselves less a part of a fixed institution and more participants forming the mosaic of an eschatological community. I think that is something of what it is to be emergent in the Spirit today.

In eschatological perspective, the church is the end-time community, called to life by the Spirit, … It is a community, travelling from context to context, emerging in different cultural spaces, putting up signs of the coming kingdom and providing safe environments for people who try to make sense of their world with the aid of the gospel. It lives on the basis of the pneumatological contextualisation of Christ.

(Kirk and Vanhoozer, To Stake a Claim, 225)

I like that! I think that's what we are seeking to do.

FOOTNOTES (all from Begbie)
[i] See p184. Importantly, contingency has the force of newness.
[ii] See chapter 9.
[iii] A useful image of this and the learning process in relation to discipleship is provided in p227/8

Beyond our equilibrium ?

Our life of faith consists in moving with God in terms of the dynamic of tension and resolution in a process of anticipation and hope. Now I realise that some of these recent posts may seem rather removed, but in wrestling and reflecting theologically I believe that we can learn to live faith today. So, I want to pick up on Paul Fromont’s posts on 2nd January Walter Brueggemann - 19 Theses and 4th January Unpacking the Box within which we think we have confined God – and take these alongside my own process with Begbie.
If we accept a non-linear view of time and if we move beyond homogenous notions and modes, indeed more deeply understanding and experiencing God as Trinity, being caught up in/participating the ‘dance’, then our faith will always be developing, growing changing, deepening, but never have arrived, always in process, beyond our time of equilibrium. Accepting such notions then can we not be more honest about the things of faith and Christ?
Brueggemann’s 19 theses emphasis the scripted life, but I think it is not in terms of a script that confines, but is liberating into the counter – story, text and indeed drama of God's mission (missio Dei)
1. That script is not monolithic, one dimensional or seamless. It is ragged and disjunctive and incoherent. Partly it is ragged and disjunctive and incoherent because it has been crafted over time by many committees. But it is also ragged and disjunctive and incoherent because the key character is illusive and irascible in freedom and in sovereignty and in hiddenness, and, I’m embarrassed to say, in violence – [a] huge problem for us.

2. The ragged, disjunctive, and incoherent quality of the counter-script to which we testify cannot be smoothed or made seamless. [I think the writer of Psalm 119 would probably like too try, to make it seamless]. Because when we do that the script gets flattened and domesticated. [This is my polemic against systematic theology]. The script gets flattened and domesticated and it becomes a weak echo of the dominant script of technological, consumer militarism. Whereas the dominant script of technological, consumer militarism is all about certitude, privilege, and entitlement this counter-script is not about certitude, privilege, and entitlement. Thus care must betaken to let this script be what it is, which entails letting God be God’s irascible self.

I would add to this by noting what he does in his handing of the psalms – as a movement and flow involving orientation (where all is perfectly in order and balanced), disorientation (where and when things are ragged, confusing, painful and messy), re-orientation (a newness to life brought about by God’s grace and fresh perspectives and life).
Such faith is not settled and fixed, it has a sense of tension and resolution to it and can somehow see the transient more in the daily-ness of living.
So what is the trouble if the Archbishop raises honest questions and what if we don’t have answers? Is that the point? Must we have answers or are wqe called to something else in response?
In the Telegraph (UK) -
"In a deeply personal and candid article, he says "it would be wrong" if faith were not "upset" by the catastrophe which has already claimed more than 150,000 lives.
Prayer, he admits, provides no "magical solutions" and most of the stock Christian answers to human suffering do not "go very far in helping us, one week on, with the intolerable grief and devastation in front of us".
(for some ongoing discussion on this one go to Jason Clark's Blog)
In the rawness of life perhaps this awful event may act to everyone, the church included, like God’s megaphone (see Craig’s blog) as it threatens and disrupts everyone’s convenient, comfortable equilibrium. If we dare to unpack the box in which we have confined God, perhaps these events may fill us with passion and give voice to another counter script, indeed, our responses in the longer term beyond giving aid, is also to give a voice to the lament (which we have sanitised and cleaned up in our churches and liturgies) of disorientation that the world feels letting experience touch us in new psalms that give voice to how we feel today in the face of such destruction.

Praying the psalms.

"I cry aloud to God, aloud to God, that he may hear me' Ps77

Not thinking straight

How do we understand history? Straight Lines ? The myth of progress of course and other brands of progressivism tend to regard it as a linear movement along straight lines towards some goal. Begbie however directs us to consider how musical temporality is structured upon layers of metrical waves of ‘intensification and release. Directionality is one thing; one-dimensional linearity is another’ (59)

fig 1.Metrical waves

He further notes how linear models:
1. mask or downplay the role of discontinuity
2. linear metaphors often had the effect of minimizing the place of radical and qualitative novelty, which creates a view of the future in mechanistic terms.
3. such also tends towards uniformity. Homogeneity can effect how we understand transience.
Rather then, ‘Musical time is thus not about a line split into equal parts but about waves of tension and resolution.’[i] It is therefore not so much concerned about moving in a straight line, but a varied wave in which there is a sense of ‘carrying from’ and a ‘reaching beyond’ through each present. Musically this means that the wave patterns and the multi-leveled connections of the matrix ‘the first wave lives on in the second, the first and second in the third and so on.’ In that sense therefore the past is not lost forever.
Therefore past and future can be experienced in and with the present. Time is viewed as interpenetrating – a constant intertwining, unlike the old concept of time being seen as 3 exclusive elements. ‘The present is no longer the ‘saddle’ between the two abysses of past and future, but rather that ‘in which’, ‘now’, ‘not yet’, and ‘no more’ are given together, the most intimate interpenetration.’ (63)
It seems to me then that if we consider time differently and our lace in it historically in whatever emergent way you care for the church today, then
1. we can consider God’s newness among us differently. As Brueggemann states in Texts that Linger, Words that Explode , regarding Jeremiah 31:31-34 and the ‘new covenant’. I a context of grief and bewilderment comes the extraordinary articulation of new covenant. The old one, which they broke, cannot be counted upon. ‘But the new covenant! The term is clear. It is “new” If it is new, then there is indeed a season of discontinuity between what was old with Yahweh and what is now given’ (10) He notes that we can see it is re-newal or a revivifying what is old, but that would merely assert continuity. We often speak of renewal, but I wonder if our time perspective would awaken us to a sense of ‘newness’ and so discontinuity even for those of us within institutional frameworks.
2. the creative novelty throughout emerging churches will follow a different rhythm and melody. It will mean for instancve I think, that we begin to lay aside in mission and emegring, reforming missionary churches notions of progress that I am tentative about suggesting are a part of our fabric and nature and we are not yet free of. IS this part of our deeper issues today?The interweaving of times would truly see the church as an eschatological phenomenon which may bring and extend newness beyond itself in mission. Do we see this in what more and more people are stepping into, even in the institution in places?
3. We would live with the lack of uniformity. Is this a danger in any movement of newness? But more significantly, beyond merely saying each context is different, we will begin to appreciate more the transience in life and plug into the cultural climate of the ‘spiritual’ in real and meaningful ways for and with Christ. There are also implications for understanding worship afresh and positively as a kairos experience.
4. I think throughout all this is a call to live in the ‘in-between’ as kingdom living invites us to that place of tension and resolution with a sense of direction, which I think is what we lack today in mission.

___________

Footnote

[i]

Begbie uses tension in the general sense of character of a music event which arouses a sense of anticipation, that matters cannot be left as they are. Resolution is then the closure or dissipation of the tension. This dynamic can be a process, but also a place.

Bible and Mission 2 - Theology, Music and Time

Having spent some time earlier posts on Bauckham's matters of History and particularity in Bible and Mission. I now wish to retrun and develop from there some other thinking that has been spurred on again from what I have read in Chris Erdman's Blog. There you will find wrestling with the future-past dynamic and matters of Jazz! Take a look.

Therefore I want to move on beyond historicity matters to our consideration of that dynamic which I would suggest is significant ot the mission of the church today. Indeed, it has been a concern in recent years for me that in church planting and now I suppose in emergent church contexts that we can do much without reflection upon things and we betray any praxis. I other words we need to think and reflect theologically and upon practice.

So.... I want to take some time to begin to develop some initial thoughts that have been with me for some time now, but held back on. It may not be knew, that's not the point, rather i want to make sense of the mission ecclessiology of today and that requires me to engage in matters of time and space/place dynamics. It requires some eschatological approach. I want to therefore begin with Jeremy begbie in the next wee while and go on to explore the improvisation issues from there as we may learn from within the metaphor explored in Organisational Science.

INTRO...

Into the dislocations of our times as we experience them, we may usefully place Begbie's explorations[i] into the ways musical phenomena can open up some of the central themes of the Christian faith - in particular those which are formative of an emerging missionary church - and in doing such theology, offer refreshing new models, as well as release faith from the damaging habits and dominance of tradition(s) and thought which have hindered and hampered its work in the past. In other words, in this transitional period, Begbie makes a beginning to challenge the church to engage in doing theology which is in touch with the temporal context and the zeitgeist, therefore seriously offering a way through this inter-phase from modernity to post-modernity, which further permits us to engage with relevance in our mission task.
It is in relation to issues of boundary and change[ii] at this threshold that I wish to critically review Begbie's work. While there are deficiencies due to the boundary constraints of literary conformity, he does encourage us to utilise our imaginations and do 'theology through music.'(4)[iii] Begbie's concern with the temporality and practice of music are useful in the paradigm shift from the tidy efficiency and linearity of modernity to intentional engagement with the pure escapism of postmodernity. Music's time and practice help shape our mission praxis as embodied action and participation in Christ as a dynamic or gravitational field 'which draws us in, we participate in a process, a journey in and through sound.'(18).

Footnotes
[i] The purpose he sets before us, is to allow music to serve, enrich and advance theology in relation to our understanding of God, God's relation to us and the world. More particularly, to do theology 'through music'(4) and in so doing expands and heightens sensitivity to the theological dimension of social and cultural thought and practices.
[ii] Music shows us in a particularly potent way that dynamic order is possible, that there can be ordered being, and becoming, form and vitality, structure and dynamics, flux and articulation. For something to be subject to persistent change need not imply disorder. (86)

[iii] Begbie does state that 'This book is only a preliminary attempt to address this issue.'(4) I would suggest that while it demands a great deal of intense reading, even without a deep musical understanding, I did find it possible to enter a dialogue as reader with the text in a way that used my imagination to carry out the theologising that Begbie did seem to do very little of, yet needed to do.

'our expectations'? more on at-homeness

In the midst of what is summer holidays here in New Zealand there is a very different feel and approach to Christmas/New Year. For us no white Christmas! and thankfully so, though it has been wet. However, that is not to say that people don't feel the rush and pressures.

My friend Craig says this:

One of my favorite Christmas poems comes from W.H. Auden, For the Time Being. It is a fantastic narrative poem that moves through the story of Christmas at many different levels. One of the lines towards the end suggests that what we have done is tried too hard to make Christmas live up to our expectations. (see Craig's Table Talk for more)

Having offered some reflections on Simeon and Anna myself and as we move to New Year in which people (we too) will have new expectations I wonder if we can resist the temptation to merely try and pull our socks up and try harder and better than before, if we can, not just in relation to Christmas, but in our daily living, not try too hard to make church and life or whatever it is to live up to our expectations...otherwise it makes for busy-ness.
(on that note look at Mark Balfour's blog - December 23, 2004'you must be busy...'. He also in November had some stuff re- quiet spaces)

As Craig says,

Christmas isn't about our expectations. I believe my expectations are too low. I'm not cut of the same faithful cloth as Simeon and Anna. I'm not sure I'd last a lifetime waiting and hoping. My expectations are probably too low. They're probably low so I won't be disappointed. I can hear the echo of phrases like "make sure you have realistic expectations." I believe that means "don't hope for too much." I suppose it is a way of bringing solace to children when they don't get what they want. But it's bad advice.

Christmas is about meeting God in the person of Jesus. Anna and Simeon's expectations were very high. And God went beyond even what they could hope for by sending his Son.
Of course Christmas isn't the only time we can be met by God. Any day will do. In fact any day will have to do. How about the day after? And the day after that? God has his own expectations. He expects us to recognize him each day.

As I begin to look ahead into early 2005 and make some 'plans' for Highgate and aspects of mission I have expectations, but I reckon it has to come from doxology/worship and quiet space for us as community of grace and at a personal level. It demands then an at-homeness in Christ to gain the wisdom of the heart to know what to do in ways that are less 'my' busy-ness that only leads to fatigue and relies on my control. The demand to 'wait expectantly' then is the call to exercise a sabbath rhythm.

Christmas Eve - Othering?

This Leunig cartoon gave me much to think about 'Others'



It speaks to me of the sort of questions we ask ourselves. It also seems to me to have the sad sense of wandering lostness that we face in the church fortressed. The sadness in it I think is that this figure reflects on how each "other' one is alone, yet he is no better either. What is it like to be somebody else? - speaks of interpathy. How to connect?
On this eve perhaps we need to consider God's interpathy with us in Christ - the incarnation - God in the neighbourhood! Again we speak much about incarnational theology, we study and research demographics, but the reality is that we need to get connected and relate openly and honestly in our humanity as followers of Christ. We need to be othering in our places!

Leanabh an aigh

Child in the manger infant of Mary;

outcast and stranger, Lord of all!

Child who inherits all our transgressions,

all our demerits on him fall.

Mary Macdonald 1817-1890

Happy Christmas
agus moran beannachan (many blessings)

Crowded space

Often I do not do well in crowds that bustle and elbow and well... so tonight we headed down for 5pm to Otago farmer's Market at the old railway station - a special one tonight before Christmas. (Usually it runs Saturdays) Boy was it busy, squeezed along the platform and wonderful smells of sausage and onion.... not good when you are hungry. Met some folks we knew, bumped into others we didn't. Was struck by the lack of grumpiness in most. Long lines for Waimate Strawberries, flowers and veggies galore, kid's playing carols on recorder, northumbrian pipes also and there were even drummers and 2 belly dancers!(representative of the magi from the east?) and lots more. A fun atmosphere and BUSY for Dunedin.

My wife was amazed as we headed home when I said that I really enjoyed the fun of the crowd and stalls... it made a change from trying to negotiate Union Street in Aberdeen, Scotland and worse Mark's & Spencer's! I did hear a Scottish accent say that this reminder her of Scotland. As a Scot I knew what she meant, but then again it really wasn't !( Billy Connolly was right!!) This crowded space of the marketplace. So often the church has used that phrase for being in the world where people are. I wonder more and more about that image and it's relevance for some cities, however, being where people are is also where we live our daily lives too and so we need to challenge the distinctions that creep into our terms of reference and language of 'mission'. Our dislocation perhaps lends itself to such. This was a contrast to the "waiting space provided last week, but I personally feel that therein is the key, that our waiting space for quiet and still reflection was to be catalytic in our service among the crowded places of our daily living.
One challeneg for us on Highgate is not to set in place a 'come to us' approach, rather to find ways to be good neighbours in the crowded places... even perhaps to see if we can get a stall at the market perhaps?

'waiting' as resistance - 'at-homeness'

I was asked recently about contentment in old age. The elderly lady who asked me deserved some respect and so I listened, but didn’t feel it appropriate to start suggesting and a-z on it as I was at least half her years. Last week in ‘Waiting’ and Sunday we considered what it was to wait expectantly. Simeon and Anna I felt offered some clues. What was it about these two elderly people that caused them to persevere? To seem so content in their daily life of worship, fasting and praying?
Someone asked me if our ‘waiting art space was open this week as they had thought about it last week and it had gone… they got too busy!!!! I was waiting on someone saying something like that and simply looked at them. What can one say when what was on offer was exactly concerned with all that ensnared them and their week. I hope they got the point!
Me? Well I am actually resting up after the last few weeks and am looking forward to applying the things that had started to run away from me. In fact while I was ‘waiting’ I read
Psalm 90 v12 ‘Teach us to number our days aright that we may gain a heart of wisdom.’ This verse in particular seemed to hit home and I offered it on Sunday to folks as we pondered Simeon and Anna. I think they cherished God’s promises and they held in hope to it. Hope being as Stringfellow terms it ‘reliance upon grace in the face of death’ More it is ‘living constantly, patiently, expectantly, resiliently, joyously in the effectiveness of the word of God’. I believe that in this hoping is contentment that enabled them to number their days immersed in Christ and gained hearts of wisdom to know that this child was the one. Considering Psalm 90 Brueggemann notes the ‘abiding constancy of Yahweh as home’ being the reality of this psalm. It is the sense of ‘at-homeness’ that Simeon and Anna make reality in their lifestyle – lives not captive to proof, evidence, overly impressed by data or demographic but persistently paying attention to God’s Lordship. Life rooted in faith this way gains ‘a heart of wisdom.’
So I find some way towards an answer for this elderly lady who asked a question , as well as find some lessons from advent myself. Our Highgate mission must continue in the new stages in hope (reliance upon grace in face of all that is deathly) and live out it’s at-homeness that others find home in Christ.

Defining your day?

Our installation at Roslyn has been up and running a few days now. For those daring to come it seems to have achieved what it offered as a space to wait and be quiet in. "WAITING- the Quiet Place' seems to have offered an experience that has been positive. For those of us on door, so to speak, it has also been defining. In fact I borrow Martin's words - today he commented on how the 'waiting' has also been defining of his day. I agree. It has been that recall to something that I have felt has been rushing away from me in the past few weeks - the rushing of so many things crowds out Christ, leaves little space to hear him.
More deeply though it is a serious reminder of the things that demand of us and so define our days. It asks questions of what drives us? What motivates? is it 'self' importance that denies Christ?
I came upon this from Paul Fromont. While it is directed at clergy (rightly) I think it can apply more widely. I'd direct you to Paul Fromont's Blog(Prodigal Kiwi).
I've taken liberty to pick this part out -

December 14, 2004
Parker Palmer - Leaders and Functional Atheism

Parker Palmer well articulates a recent learning on my part:
“A third shadow common among leaders is “functional atheism,” the belief that ultimate responsibility for everything rests with us. This is the unconscious, unexamined conviction that if anything decent is going to happen here, we are the ones who must make it happen – a conviction held even by people who talk a good game about God.
This shadow causes pathology on every level of our lives. It leads us to impose our will on others, [to get resentful and frustrated], stressing our relationships, sometime to the point of breaking. If often eventuates in burnout, depression, and despair, as we learn the world will not bend to our will and we become embittered about that fact. Functional atheism is the shadow that drives collective [and individual] frenzy as well. It explains why the average group can tolerate no more than 15 seconds of silence: if we are not making noise, we believe, nothing good is happening and something must be dying…
The gift we receive on the inner journey is the knowledge that ours is not the only act in town. Not only are there other acts out there, but some of them are even better than ours, at least occasionally! We learn that we need not carry the whole load but can share it with others, liberating us and empowering them. We learn sometimes that we are free to lay the load down altogether. The great community asks us to do only that what we are able and trust the rest to other hands… ” (Emphasis, mine).
(From Let Your Life Speak, pp.88-89).
It's a kind of "messianic complex!" Often it’s all too easy to think that we’re irreplaceable, that we’re the centre of a church congregation or a workplace etc; that somehow if we’re not around those things will fall down around the ears of those who remain. Sometimes we even quietly hope that will happen so that we can say, “I told you so!” This isn’t good for us. Often we remain somewhere longer than we should; a false sense of our own importance damages both us (we burn out, we grow resentful, we grow arrogant, we feel that we have to be involved, be at the centre, be the “experts” rather than co-learners etc. etc) and those we are amongst (they become reliant upon us, never growing up, never learning to take responsibility, never feeling competent or empowered etc. As Palmer says, on the inner journey – that scary journey where we face and confront the realities of who we are (beneath surface appearances), we learn that “we are not the only act in town.” We free ourselves and we free others when we make this discovery. We learn by experience the meaning of grace. In freeing ourselves we learn to become all that God created us to uniquely be, we begin to flourish, we begin to live adventurously. We free ourselves from fear. We learn to worship our triune God.

Art space - conversation

Having had the weekend to formally initiate the Highgate in it's mission, it was good today to begin fresh conversations about 'future orientated matters. as 2 of us sat in the waiting place. Reflecting on the weekend and the preaching from Isaiah- Leaving the past behind now and moving through into the newness - what does that really mean NOW?
Among the things I recall from conversation it seems to me that the challenge we face is not empathy, there's almost enough of that, rather it's that little bit more in mission in calling as disciples -
Interpathy = an expansion of empathy relating to thinking with and feeling with a person who is other to us. It is actually to step into and genuinely be involved in the experience of the other and see from their world view. Interpathy is cross cultural and is, I think/suggest what Jesus was doing in relation to all alienated groups/people in his day, therefore what about us?

It isn't so much laying on new things and expecting people to turn up, we need to really get into others shoes, genuinely here Therein lies the immense challenge to go deeper and further into the uncharted spaces and places with 'others'.

Creating - Art Space

Today was spent juggling several things. The main thing was setting in place our art space in Roslyn facility. There is an intimacy in this building that lends itself. We have Leanne's art and are running with "WAITING' as a place for quiet, following her Quiet Space exhibition as it fits advent well. We're open through Saturday afternoon/evenings. Maybe no-one will come, no-one respond, but then again....
Among the projected images/icons I came across this somewhat haunting image of Mary. On a large screening those eyes draw you.(is it just me?)


Oil and gold leaf on zinc panel. Museum of Russian Art, Kiev. (follow the link Vrubel)
Apparently her face, in Vrubel's eyes, was an epitome of the ideal, spiritual beauty; not only are her eyes large and almond-shaped, like the eyes of the Virgin on many icons, but they show a similar anxiety and sadness. The brows are regular, the nose straight but wider than the traditional thin and long noses on icons, and the slightly puckered lips seem to be a prelude to tears of a mother who will eventually give up her son for the sins of the world. Even though strict Orthodoxy would reject this image for its "earthly" character, from the aesthetic point of view Vrubel's icon is a powerful and haunting image. [S.H.]

Anyway, I also have a funeral of the husband of a christian couple of some 63 years marriage. I sat with them yesterday and called again today. I listened to their stoies of days gone bye as well as recent days and what yesterday was and felt like. Waiting has been a hard task in life the past 2 weeks and I don't like how it all is, yet... today setting up and then this visit and waiting alongside them in their grief ( and even some laughter), pointed me to consider again this image we will use. It points me to the earthy-ness of life for Mary and yet God... it points me to the earthy-ness of mourning, and yet God...

Hear the Lord say 'Faith'

Hear the Lord say 'Hope'

Hear the Lord say 'Love'

and hear the Lord say this - to you. Amen

Newness- Highgate Particularity

It was the big weekend as we became officially the Highgate Mission. Quite a weekend was had. Hence lack of blogging in recent week. Saturday was a buffet around lots of yummy food! A good place to start we reckon.


food (lots of... as well as some improptu singing by kids, lots of chat and laughter together)


Sunday morning was all 'in house' leadership stuff, and in the evening a worship experience signaling God's work of 'newness' in a PCANZ that like many other churches is in the image of Andrew Bell who was guest preacher like the old Irish man dying and smelling the cheese scones he loved so much, scrambled and crawled with every bit of energy he could sum up, grasping the bannister and nearly at the table, reaches in a stretch to get a scone when he gets whacked on the hand by his wife who says " leave them alone! They're for the funeral!' Cruel perhaps, but he pointed us to this as an image of Pressie church.
Don't misread our delight at the newness we sense. There are huge issues to grapple with and some challenges mission-wise which will take many to dimensions of faith and witness they have not gone before - it will at times be painful, but we will also experience joy together!
celebrations music

ONe dynamic that is actually becoming quite fun in a way is the manner in which people around beyond us are very curious about us. They may even be more than curious. We've had all the 'modernity' stuff asked of us and challenge us, but I think we've managed to run the fine line to get us to the juncture now when we can begin to risk newness beyond old paradigms.What's so different? Unlike other tacks on 'mergers', this one has so many unresolved matters of facilities, money... etc. Why? no being blind and nutty, but actually grasping a dream living with it and sharing it and in the oddness beginning to capture and word a vision of mission. Mission is the thrust if this into unknown territory but it happens in our particularity.

It also now means that we create spaces for the new.

Particularity - worship

Forgive my indulgance. But I do believe that praxis means thinking deeply and working hard. Hence some longer delays in blogging as I wrestle for now in this new context of working out our particularity,history and space/place. So......
in thinking further about particularity, we must not neglect the universal intention of God’s Kingdom and coming. To do so would lead to parochial navel gazing. Bauckham says that the New Testament‘ puts all its readers where its first readers stood – between the church’s commissioning by Jesus and the future coming of Jesus. (25) Further, ‘The New Testament gives the church in every age its missionary identity by plunging it into the midst of the biblical story where the words of the great commission still ring in its ears’ (25)
I think that what we are therefore directed to here is to look for the rhythms ‘of grace’ (?) More technically I wonder if there is a vital eschatological aspect we are neglecting.
The other day a few of us chatted around such matters in a way. It was really about contextual issues and we focused upon the implications for worship as one aspect of our identity – our particularity.
Reflecting since, I am reminded that Brueggemann in Cadences of home Chpt 7 ‘Rethinking Church Models through Scripture’, points to how the late community goes back to learn from the early community to find the resources needed to sustain.
In our own worship, while at Cove and latterly here I have begun to apply something developed from Marva Dawn’s book on Sabbath. In it I hope that it resources us and teaches us a rhythm for our weekly daily living. I admit we’ve got some work to do, but mere experience of it will in time change us.
:: Key elements for Worship based upon a Sabbath Rhythm ::

GATHERING
How we make use of the space we have for fellowship-ing (koinonia). Create a user friendly environment for all ages. Time to relax, chat together.
Welcome

CEASING – from work, anxiety, worry, tensions, trying to be God
Image for the day
Personal story/ a thought/reflection/ listen to a song/collect/response prayer
Object lesson for children

RESTING – spiritual, emotional, physical, intellectual, social
Songs
Prayer – various forms
Quiet – poem, reflective music/song/[offering as Thanksgiving]
[Offering]
Bible
[sacrament]
EMBRACING – Intentional/deliberate in practices/actions, value of one another, one’s call to serve/shalom/ healing wholeness world
Overhearing the Good News
Response activity- song, Alt W liturgy, healing /anoint with oil, lay hands on; [sacrament]
Intercession prayer

CELEBRATION – celebration/joy of new, anticipation of Kingdom, new reality in midst
[Offering]
Song(s)
Blessing & Amen

Perhaps it could be simplified, but it offers some form around which much can flexibly be set. Any suggestions, alternatives?

History - Particularity

Brueggemann in Texts that Linger, Words that Explode, chapter 5 ‘The Scandal and Liberty of Particularity.’ –
I shall suggest that the maintenance of a self-aware, self-conscious alternative identity in the face of totalism is precisely the practice of character ethics that aims to generate and authorize liberated “agents of their own history”; such practice depends upon the great “thickness” of the community that makes possible such liberated agents on a day-to-day basis. (61)

Israel is seen then, as a counter-community that practiced relentless, dense memory as an alternative to the ‘co-opting amnesia of the empire’. He points to the way the story of exodus is character forming and liturgy becomes a launch pad for conversation, but more creates a different world; finally it is learning your history in which recitation defines the memory for generations to come. Bauckham says it this way, ‘ We are always beginning again and again from the biblical narratives, which still open up unexpected possibilities for our own future within the future of Jesus Christ. (21).

In many ways New Zealand is in it’s history dealing with this matter of particularity . In many ways it is of vital importance as it seeks to reflect upon and even shake off the shackles of ‘colonial’ past and find its particular, owned story which incorporates the Maori story(along with the wider cultural diversity here today). It is equally the case for the churches here which wrestle in the present tensions of debate much of which is the tension between ‘the co-opted amnesia’ of their heritage of Presbyterianism and how things are done by good order, which buffers up today with what I would say is the ‘Kiwi’ will to have a go! For instance, there is much radical talk about mission and liberating structures, but in the next it seems to me that more legislation and tightening procedures etc. counter the potential. Why? Is it a fear to move from the colonial Presbyterian (empirical) past into the mission Dei ? There is such opportunity here. Perhaps we need to re-discover in the history here and biblically the liberty of the particularity in the story that will help reshape and reform us.
On a more general note, I have had a course to take and write some papers through in Church History in Aotearoa. One I really enjoyed getting into was Parihaka – Te Whiti. It reveals some of what I am reflecting on here. "Parihaka is a moral, political and spiritual provocation to Māori and Pakēha to turn their anger at the past to the pursuit of peace and righting the historic injustices in the present and future.’ (Paul Morris “ The provocation of Parihaka: reflections on spiritual resistance in Aotearoa” In Parihaka: The Art of Passive Resistance p105-116)