this is a photo of seyed's edalatpour's incredible sculpture crate which is in the RWA open sculpture exhibition in May 2109. see this photo for the whole piece. the notes don't say much about it but on his web site he speaks of a long and dangerous journey as a refugee from iran which didn't come as a surprise. this sculpture is so evocative! i found it utterly compelling. i love work in wood like this too.
on the way back from the yurt we stayed with dave (my brother) and lou. lou baker is a textile artist creating extraordinary sculptures in textiles - usually incorporating knitting. we saw one of her pieces pillar of fire in the open sculpture exhibition at the rwa in bristol. this photo is an abstract enjoying the colour but click here to see what it actually looked like. i'll be adding some photos of pieces in the show by other artists in the next week or so...
tomorrow night i am going to see harry's new poetry show i am 10000 (which he will be performing at edinburgh along with harry and chris new show). come along if you are in london and you get to see chris' solo show as well - weird i know. harry and chris but not harry n chris or something...
super proud of harry - just saw today that he has 2 million hits on his exteter tedX talk - wow. i am generally delirious if i get over 50 likes on an instagram photo! i need to up my game clearly though inspired by harry i worked out i will be 20000 days this year on the same day as joel's birthday.
i should also add that the rejected eurovision song contest entry of harry and chris - sorry! - is out today...
just back from a week's holiday with jen in somerset where we stayed in a yurt for 4 nights. it was quite a cold week but with a firepit outside and a woodburner in the yurt and plenty of layers it was an amazing experience. i didn't take loads of photos but there is a set here (half of which are in woodland nearby). the set up was beautifully designed by the owners who had created a kitchen unit, compost loo and the most amazing shower which was run from gas but open to the sky with the shower head hanging from a tree above - see photo set if interested. i don't normally duck out for a week's holiday in term time but summer is a challenge for holiday for us so this was an opportunity we took. the only reason we ended up in a yurt in somerset was because the weekend before i was in wells for the launch of holy rumpus, a new pioneer hub in bath and wells diocese, so we thought we'd look in the direction of somerset and devon. we pretty much cooked off the fire outside all week which was good fun too. anyway now back to emails and work tomorrow with a new boss to meet and a shed load of marking to do!
i'm looking forward to fiesta in london in july - a festival for pioneers, activists and others wanting to make their community a better place. it's being hosted by earlsfield friary and will be great food, music, spirituality, conversations and the like. book in here . grace are taking part on the sat night and i see harry and chris will also be performing. i am a big fan of alastair mcintosh who is going to be the resident wise elder for the weekend.
so many people on instagram are loving bluebells and what is there not to love about the gorgeous blue carpet that appears in woodlands at this time of year. what is particularly special for me about it this year is that in september we bought a woodland and wondered whether bluebells were in the wood or not so it has been exciting to see the blue carpet emerge. having said that how do you take a great photo of bluebells especially that has some originality to it. my previous favourite attempt of mine is this one - bluebell vortex but i found myself messing around again to try and create something more abstract and painterly that shows off the colours. there's a couple of others on flickr too. woodland photos is going to be a thing as i am sure you have worked out!
excited today for mark and jess bamping who launch their community hub - candid in stafford. yes mark loves beer and i am sure will brew as well as serve up decent local and creative independent craft beers. but the driver is community and rather than calling it a cafe or pub it's a community hub. mark brought the idea to our make good week a while back now and when he made his pitch he was coincerned about loneliness and thinking that men in particular will gather around doing stuff together (such as brewing beer) so it seems thayt this has developed into the design of the space and there being a room for groups and activities as well as a larger table to gather round. i was hoping to get to the launch but couldn't make it but will raise a glass of craft beer today to toast candid beer on their launch and hope to visit before long.
there is a make good week coming up at cliff college 13-17 may and there are a few spaces left so if you have an idea for a project or enterprise to make good in the world then sign up!
in the last blog post i said how wowed i was by the salgada familia cathedral in barcelona. the light through the windows is incredible. but i have to say given a choice between a cathedral and a woodland i'd probably say the latter is a better cathedral with equally glorious light that comes through the trees.
i finally got to visit barcelona for the first time last weekend which i loved. i am not a big fan of visiting historic buildings normally but the gaudi totally wowed me. i loved sagrada familia and casa bastilo. there are some photos in an album here - barcelona
every year i go on a retreat - this year i am not going on anything organised or landing with a monastic community - i am simply heading into the woodland with a tent, hammock and some supplies. the phone and email will be off. i'll be cooking off a fire and off grid for a while... i have blogged before about silence and retreat. i have come to value this practice for my own wellbeing, my own sense of reconnecting with life, leaning into the love that holds the universe together aka god, remembering who i am and what's important, and i simply find that turning the noise off is regenerative. forgive the parallel but it is like making a clearing in a woodland - it lets the light in and new life comes. curiously enough last year in silence i had the idea of getting a woodland - i don't know if that would have come to me without space for nothing. but it feels great a year on to be going on retreat into the woodland that emerged out of last year's silence! for those of you into the enneagram for people like me stopping doing stuff is also an important practice.
i actually started the practice of retreat in an annual way because we were recommending it to all our pioneer students at cms. and i thought i can't do that if i don't actually do it every year myself! when i first did retreats i did a few with other people which i also really enjoyed and think in some ways it's an easier way into the practice. if that's where you are at there is a fantastic retreat been organised at the end of april if you are an outdoors type of person. it's a mountain retreat led by paul who is part of mountain pilgrims which is an innovative fresh expression of church in cumbria. there are a maximum number of twelve places so if you are interested in that i recommend booking quickly. see below for the flyer and the link to book is here. sadly i can't go on that one myself though it looks great.
i love artists - the way they see, think and make. so much so that i am happy to say 'yes' if anyone asks me if i am an artist. i have blogged before about books about artists - notably think like an artist, and the creative stance. as you probably know if you read this blog regularly i train pioneers people who have ideas for making the world a better place, people who see possibilities and then build things out of their seeing, people who imagine and can gather communities of people who follow christ which don’t require them to leave their culture behind. whenever i read a book about artists or art i find myself replacing the word art with mission or pioneering. it’s quite a fun game to play. for christmas this year my son harry gave me a book art matters which has four essays or reflections by neil gaiman illustrated by chris riddell. one off the pieces is called make good art and is the text of a speech neil made in 2012 at the university off the arts - the text and video are here. it’s absolutely brilliant - do digest it in full its own right. but i have taken the liberty of taking a few of his quotes and switching the words the arts or art for pioneering or pioneer. i have placed them in brackets so it’s obvious. anyway see what you think…
When you start out in [pioneering] you have no idea what you are doing. This is great. People who know what they are doing know the rules, and know what is possible and impossible. You do not. And you should not.. If you don't know it's impossible it's easier to do. And because nobody's done it before, they haven't made up rules to stop anyone doing that again, yet.
If you have an idea of what you want to make, what you were put here to do, then just go and do that.
When you start off, you have to deal with the problems of failure. You need to be thickskinned, to learn that not every project will survive.
I decided that I would do my best in future not to [pioneer] just for the money. If you didn't get the money, then you didn't have anything. If I did work I was proud of, and I didn't get the money, at least I'd have the work. Every now and again, I forget that rule, and whenever I do, the universe kicks me hard and reminds me. The things I did because I was excited, and wanted to see them exist in reality have never let me down, and I've never regretted the time I spent on any of them.
I hope you'll make mistakes. If you're making mistakes, it means you're out there doing something.
Do the stuff that only you can do. The urge, starting out, is to copy. And that's not a bad thing. Most of us only find our own voices after we've sounded like a lot of other people. But the one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So [pioneer] as only you can.
Where would be the fun in making something you knew was going to work?
People keep working, in a freelance world, and more and more of today's world is freelance, because their work is good, and because they are easy to get along with, and because they deliver the work on time. And you don't even need all three. Two out of three is fine.
That was the hardest lesson for me, I think: to let go and enjoy the ride, because the ride takes you to some remarkable and unexpected places.
The rules, the assumptions, the now-we're supposed to's of how you [pioneer], and what you do then, are breaking down. The gatekeepers are leaving their gates. You can be as creative as you need to be. The old rules are crumbling and nobody knows what the new rules are. So make up your own rules.
And now go, and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here. [Pioneer]
grace this saturday exploring our responses to brexit. glad to be part of a community that doesn't shy away from what's going on around us and difficult conversation. the blurb says
Why are we so divided and angry? What are we going to do about it?
All are welcome. After the service you can either Remain for the café, or Leave to look for a better deal elsewhere.
happy ten year anniversary to nomad podcast - it's wonderful and a massive achievement to have produced such an interesting and dynamic conversation, communication and community.
it explores christian faith in today's world. their strapline is stumbling through the post-christendom wilderness, looking for signs of hope. it's honest, searching, and on a genuine quest. each episode carries an in depth conversation with someone for about an hour and is topped and tailed by the hosts chatting about it. typically the people interviewed have published a book though not always. i have by no means listened to all the episodes but every so often catch up with it and dive in. sometimes i might listen to a big hitter like walter brueggemann but another time i stumble across someone i have never heard of because the theme grabs my attention. one of the recent ones i listened to was edwina gateley on missionaries, mystics and mother god which you have to listen to if you haven't. i loved her and her story - she is a northwestern english saint for sure. she probably wouldn't use the term but she is an incredible pioneer with some classic elements of a pioneer's journey in her story. i noticed she has a poetry collection called there was no path so i trod one! because they are not bound by the constraints of pleasing a political church environment or denomination there is a great freedom in exploring issues fearlessly and honestly - the interview with vicky beeching was one example of that. i have also had the honour of being interviewed a couple of times which i have enjoyed.
but rather than going through my favourite episodes to celbrate, i have been reflecting how people are interacting with it and how it is becoming quite a thing...
at one level it is just a podcast and because the content is consistently good it's growing followers. it helps that tom wright has been interviewed and drawn in listeners as is explained in their epic 10th anniversary edition of 3 hours and 37 minutes (i was driving to cumbria so found myself listening to the whole thing!).
at another level it is part of a changing environment in which people are working out how to follow christ and connect with others. there are huge numbers of people who follow christ but do not engage with traditional patterns of church attendance but they do meet with friends to discuss faith over coffee or the meal table, they listen to podcasts, they attend festivals and read books and chat online. the podcast interview with steve aisthorpe, the author of 'invisible church' really lifts the lid off this area of a new kind of practising of christian faith. the stats are huge on this in both the uk and america - there are a lot more followers of christ not in church on a sunday, not because they have given up but they are making faith in other ways and often because church as they have known it is not working for them any more. i have written elsewhere that this is one of the current mission movements that not many people are paying attention to.
for some of those people nomad and things like it are so helpful - people in that space identify with it and feel they are not alone or mad. nomad have developed a listener map so that you can add your postcode and then be connected with other listeners and there have been meet ups and gatherings. there is also now a listener lounge and a book club online.
it is also interesting to me that tim nash who is one of the key players and who puts energy into this full time (i think) was part of an experiment in the methodist church called venture fx who invested in around a dozen pioneers to go and experiment with new forms of church and mission over 5-10 years. this has allowed tim the space to invest in this which has been a great gift and i hope the methodists have taken note and are feeling good about it. in a year or two that money will run out so nomad have been developing a business model whereby people can donate and in exchange for that get access to the listener lounge and other content. i have no idea of the scale of that but it is an enterprise model along with some merch they are selling.
on monday we are hosting a conversation/research day on mission and church at cms which i am looking forward to (it's sold out so if you're not booked in there are now no spaces - sorry). i am looking forward to the day very much and it will be great to catch up with pete ward who is a good friend but now lives a long way away so i don't get to see enough! it seems to me that this is a great example of what he has called liquid ecclesiology. he has developed a way of thinking about christian community that takes seriously the fluid nature of culture. church is always constructed in relation to culture and must remake itself in every age. pete draws on missiologist lamin sanneh to suggest that the church tends to absolutise its own way of doing things and resists the call to translate afresh. but if the church is to move forward it must engage in that translation and needs prophets to lead her there.
anyway all that is to say that as best i can tell as i pay attention it seems to me that christ is present in what is spinning in and out of nomad. it is a kind of liquid ecclesiology as far as i can see, a translating afresh. on their tenth anniversary podcast a listener asks if it is church and they say it is just a podcast. i think that's a wise answer but it's not really true or at least there is a lot more going on! in parts of the church huge sums are being spent on big churches - we're talking millions of pounds on city centre buildings, staff, sound systems and so on. the rationale is that these churches will grow fast and reach new people and they will also then plant out other churches. i don't really want to get into a debate about that here. but i would imagine nomad is resourcing thousands of christians and seekers and it costs peanuts - well a salary.
anyway happy tenth anniversary nomad! thank you for what you do and make. i agree with a quote on the web site - flippin love nomad!
had a wonderful day off yesterday - the weather is amazing at the moment - sadly probably global warming! but i visited two exhibtions and went to see massive attack in concert in the evening. one of the exhibitions was life death rebirth with bill viola video installations and michael angelo drawings. i'd actualluy seen a lot of the viola installations at various exhibitions over the years but it is amazing. i am convinced my heart rate was slower when i came out - i think we took getting on for a couple of hours going round. his work is very spiritual drawing on religious themes. i found the curators comments next to some pieces quite annoying though! one of things that was strange was how the view of spirituality seemed to buy into a negative view of the world and the notion of getting the soul out - it's kind of a platonic view of the world that has informed some bad what i call escaplogy theology over the years. the worst case of it was next to a drawing by michael angelo of the resurrected christ which was a really great drawing of a body bursting out with energy and the curator had sai something like a suprising embodied drawing of the resurrected christ - duh! what exactly did you think the resurrection is if not a body???!!! anyway that aside it is a fantastic exhibition. this photo is of the piece fire woman which is amazing - possibly my favourite piece. of course there are no photos allowed by i took this photo years back at an exhibition where i got thrown out for taking photos which is the only time that has ever happend to me.
massive attack were great as ever - i have no idea how many times i have seen them - a lot! but just as in the manchester international festival adam curtis was doing the visuals. it was a wide ranging set of visuals of life in our crazy world - once again he was opening up the idea that we are stuck in our own past rather than able to imagine a different future as we are fed things based on feedback llops - you like this so you'll love that. one memorable sequence was a series of projected slogans from politicians that sounded great in their own right but when projected together came across as hollow slogans which is what we have got used to. it was pretty bleak... but i found it also woke me up - it's so easy to be numb.
it's so great living in london!
congratulations to jenny, grace and daisy on the launch of out of the box cards today - the web site is now live and you can go order cards. i love the strapline creating intelligent and playful cards that expand horizons. the cards look great (and are currently filling our lounge!). the official launch is tonight. i have chipped in photography - the photo above for example - and will no doubt be taking some photos at the launch party.
people often associate me with the word pioneer for obvious reasons seeing as i have written and teach in that area. but in an interview the other day jenny was described as a pioneer and she really is - she makes things happen! i always love it when ideas that have been brought to our make good week and developed as ideas come to birth often a few years later. this is the latest!
several years back our friend lynda asked if we could meet up once a week to talk about life and at that time parenting as she was taking custody of her grandson. so we began meeting round a meal. it came up in conversation with a couple of other friends and they joined in and over the years various others have joined in and come and go. there are some occasional visitors who feel like they are part of the extended table family. sometimes there are three of us and sometimes it can get into double figures. the format is simple - jen or i cook food, others bring contributions and we sit and eat and drink and catch up on life. as well as a meal there is usually something to spark conversation - a poem, a thought, a prayer, a reading. and there is always space to share joys and sorrows and to pray together. the prayer is usually informal - it might involve lighting a candle, or sometimes a simple liturgy as we remember christ in sharing bread and wine in the meal, or sometimes it is enough to be held in silence for a moment. it's not really religious and we have tried to make it open and welcoming to anyone - as long as they are happy for food, conversation and prayer (whatever way they interpret that) all is well.
it is so simple. from the start jen and i agreed we wouldn't put effort into content so the thought/reflection is last minute. it's not about that really. but it has been and is a gift to have a group of friends who care for one another and hold one another in life. we are part of grace which is a wider church community but this group is also just as much our community of faith. i recommend it as a habit to get going in your life...
our latest conversation starter has been a wonderful find - lifelines by martin wroe and malcolm doney - a book with colour photographs and 99 reflections. they are spiritual themes but made very accessible for people of faith and none. so we have taken to simply asking someone round the table to take the book away, pick a theme they like and come back and share it with us and we talk about it. as well as being delightful provocations, what it has done which has been lovely is to share out facilitating the conversation starting. the themes are wide ranging - community, silence, waking up, kindness, creating a clearing, grief, activism, prayer... and of course friends round the table is the real lifeline.
i know i hardly blog worship tricks these days but i am going to add it to the list...
everyone is welcome to join us at grace on 9th february for a service of meditation and silences, followed of course by a less silent café! this year our february service falls in a space between church seasons - christmas and epiphany are past, lent does not begin until march, so we find ourselves in an in-between place, a place to pause for quiet reflection.
since we began the pioneer training we have hosted a day each year where we explore a question or theme in relation to pioneering mission. these have led to various publications. this year we landed on mission and church as the theme to explore which in some ways is an old chestnut but anyone pioneering inevitably comes up with all sorts of questions navigating church. for example, yesterday with students we had a day with sue steer (who is taking part in this day) who is two and a half years in to building community relations and networks in a new housing area and she was sharing the questions and challenges around church, what's naturally occuring, timescales, what it could look like and other peoples expectations and imagination. it's always a rich packed day and the line up this year is great. do come along! my advice is book early because it will probably sell out. there's more info here and you can book here.
another year of grace begins this next weekend - join us to walk a labyrinth
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where i come across creative ideas, liturgies, movies, music tracks, service outlines or anything that strikes me, i add them as worship tricks. i started these in april 2002 when i first began blogging and they have built up over the years so that i am now on the third series. this has proved a pretty popular feature of the blog.
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