jonnybaker

you will find us on the periphery

footnotes on life is a blog by kate fox robinson. it's a mix of poetry and reflections. i really loved this reflection on the edges which includes this poem you will find us on the periphery

You will find us on the periphery
In the land of the mapless unknown
You will find us at the edges
Where the wild things grow

You will find us in the liminal space
Where no one knows what to expect
You will find us where the sea meets the shore
And no one knows what will wash up next

You will find us among the hedgerows
Gathering what delights are growing there
You will find us with the bees and butterflies
Connecting over here with over with there

You will find us on ours knees
With the beetles and the ants
Living all together
Without a lot of thanks

For our humble jumbled life
And our muddy handed style
But we would invite you
To come a stay a while

In the land where the wild things are
And the place where the periphery reigns
You may learn things here that serve you
When you return to your pathed way.

Kate Fox Robinson

solitude

a communion prayer - jesus and the powers

i wrote a communion prayer for grace on saturday...

Eucharist: Jesus and the powers

Thank you for your incredible life. 

You announced a new kingdom at the margins of the world, 
an offensive against the strongholds of oppression, 
and the dawn of liberation. 

You made a way in the wilderness. 

You proclaimed good news of the kingdom, 
brought healing and deliverance, 
lived a life of nonviolent confrontation with the powers. 

You restored social wholeness to the sick and “impure”. 
You tore down the boundaries of tribe, gender, skin tone, religion, disability and ill health. 
You overturned the dynamics of status and honour 
to make way for the outcast Jew and alien gentile. 

With you there is no longer male or female, slave or free, Jew or gentile.
Patriarchy, slavery and racism have no place in your kingdom.
All are made in God’s image, 
all are welcome, 
all are included in your “last as first” revolution.

Almost every ruling faction in society opposed you. 
Your resistance was through loving enemies, 
non violence, 
story telling,
truth telling, 
meals with the wrong people, 
refusing to live under the domination of the powers and their way of ordering life.

You chose love and not fear 
pursuing kingdom practice even at the cost of death. 
Ultimately they did put you to death. 
You were lynched and hung on a tree. 

In a great mystery and a great reversal 
you overcame the powers on the cross. 
Three days later you were raised from death, 
a sign that the powers have been defeated, 
a sign of hope, 
a sign of a future kingdom when all will be well. 
You shattered the powers’ reign of death in history.

When we forget, help us to remember. 
When we are blind help us to see. 
When we are deaf help us to hear. 
When we despair and are overwhelmed send your Spirit to comfort us.

You call us to a conversion of heart,
to turn away from empire, its seductions and iniquity.
This is not a call out of the world, but into an alternative social practice,
a community of resistance and healing, 
gathering in homes and around the table with you. 

You have given us a meal to remember you by
a meal to remember the ending of slavery 
and deliverance from the power of Pharaoh’s dream;
a meal in which you broke bread and drank wine - 
your body broken for us, 
your blood of a new relationship with God.

May our homes and our tables be open, 
May they not have rigid boundaries. 
May this table and this home today be such a place. 
May we live from love and not fear. 

We break bread and drink wine now to celebrate your life, death and resurrection.
And we look for the day when all slavery, all oppression and all domination is ended.
When we will be free at last
Your kingdom come
Amen

we'll post the whole service on the grace site at some point and i'll come back and post a link here. if you are interested in what is behind this take, things in the background are probably multiple but some that spring to mind:

• mark's gospel and his telling of jesus' life - i have been very inspired by ched myers binding the strong man which i have blogged about elsewhere. there are some lines of the above prayer that are phrases directly lifted from his wonderful commentary. i really hope he would like this prayer.
• the current wider context and the challenge of making sense of the powers and their domination as exemplified in the murder of george floyd and in the continual ordering of political and economic life to favour the wealthy and powerful at the expense of the earth and those at the edges. for me the wider context is also about religious power which too easily slides towards control and/or domesticating jesus. i am not against institutions or power as such - it is where there is domination that is the issue.
• subversive meals by alan streett who reads the lord's supper as an anti-imperial practice (which is picked up on by kreider and kreider in worship after christendom). 
• walter wink's trilogy on the powers and alastair mcintosh's take on that in soil and soul.
• james cone's the cross and the lynching tree which i have just read (thank you emma for the suggestion) - the prayer uses the word lynched challenged by this book. we reflected on this image of the black christ at grace which is from a book of poems the black christ by countee cullen published in 1929 which james cone refers to in the amazing chapter on the arts. if you want a short summary of the idea of jesus being lynched then chance the rapper's twitter thread does a nice job.

i am adding this to the worship trick series 4 - that will be no 79 - i must try and get to 100 before it's been a decade that that series has been running!

photography workshops in ealing

there's a real treat in ealing if you are interested in photography. edmond terakopian is leading a series of photography workshops with open ealing over july and august. he is a brilliant photographer, always inspiring in person and very knowledgeable so i am sure they will be really good. details of the workshops are in this post on the ealing lip photography group site.

if you are further afield the series kicks off with a talk that will also be online

communion by numbers @home - next up at grace

next grace is july 11 8pm - join us on zoom or whatsapp. here's the info

Communion* by numbers @home Grace July 2020 “Wherever we are we will remember God who always goes with us”

This month Grace will be a communion by numbers. Join us on zoom or you can also follow along on whatsapp. If you’d like to take part and are not in our mailing list or whatsapp group email [email protected] and we can send you the zoom link and add you to the whatsapp group. There will be no obligation to remain - you can leave the group afterwards.

Communion by numbers is a simple idea. We have a simple structure with numbered sections led by different people and you simply follow along on zoom or whatsapp to take part.

The title comes from a prayer we have used at Grace many times over the years. It’s sort of our community prayer. We’ll conclude with that prayer together.

*This is not a Church of England communion service. It’s just communion.

the arts are no disposable luxury

harry has penned an article on the arts - the arts are no disposable luxury

urban interventions - controlled zone

at the last gathering of the ealing photography group i am part of we explored urban interventions - - it was a really inspiring evening. there are three blog posts of some of the presentations and discussions on the ealing group blog - life during lockdown ; clap for carers ; colonialism, street art and earthquakes. the last one was mine which you may recognise if you followed my posts from new zealand. 

as well as presentations, members also shared photos in response to the theme. the photo below was my offering.

hopefully it speaks for itself but some in the group did not read it as easily as i expected so to give a bit of context, i repurposed a found sign to reframe the sharing of bread and wine at the meal table in a home. this practice was right at the heart of jesus' life and he got in trouble for eating with the wrong people. christians down the centuries have continued this in memory of his inspirational life, death and resurrection. and yet it has become one of the most tightly controlled ares of the church's practice. this has been exemplified in the church of england's (of which I am a part) response to communion in lockdown while people are at home. i blogged about this before - share communion in your own home and resist the power of religious control so won't repeat that here. but hope that helps frame the idea a bit.

imagine anthology

imagine anthology is a lovely collection of writings for refugee week 2020. how we need imagination of other worlds that are possible! it's also really nicely designed - simple, clean, easy to navigate. 

a father's day poem

harry sent me a poem for father's day which is sourdough inspired and themed. to give a bit of context i have recently helped him get started making sourdough with a few tips and i have to say he is smashing it! 

A Father’s Day Poem

To start you fed me every day,
checked in to see how I was growing. When done right you’re set for life
- you just need help to get things going. You taught me patience and precision, when it comes to hate and greed:
As with your 3-day recipe,
you showed there simply is no knead.

When things got sticky, you’d make sure I’d take it with a pinch of salt
That I would stretch myself,
before you’d always bring me to the fold. You’ve got me covered

on the days it takes to get into the groove, Just like that dough, you let me know when I’ve got nothing left to prove.

Your love is gluten -
in that I still cannot quite describe what it is, But I’m grateful you brought me up
to be tolerant of things.
Because potential is like yeast,
it’s been in the air this whole time - Sometimes it just needs activation
before we can see it rise.

So thanks for keeping me alive,
for building me to so much more.
You showed me kindness is fresh bread, and it is best
when it’s served warm.

northern pioneering taster day

there is a taster day (online of course) for the pioneer course starting in september in penrith. sign up for the taster day here if you want to find out more. the course is the certificate we designed at cms for pioneering mission which we have run in a few hubs now. it's pitched at people working full time. it's not linked to any university or anything - it's designed for people who are interested in both learning about and doing pioneering mission where they are. i just got sent a summary of feedback today actually from students who have finished the course in bath and wells and that was hugely encouraging saying it had given students confidence, sparked creativity, given them language around what they were doing, been amazing, changed them and so on. i loved reading the responses. 

the structure of it is 6 modules that run through to july with a weekend for each and a small group to be part of for the duration. given the current situation we have decided to run half the modules online and we'll see about the rest so actually if you are anywhere in the north of england or even in the south of scotland this will be even more accessible than before. the small groups will also be online. 

if you want to know a bit more about it there is nicely filmed video about the northern centre on this page but if you want a more homely chat type video allison who is part of the team in cumbria and i have a chat about it for around 20 minutes on the same page - just scroll down.

it feels great to be getting to this point of being able to offer some training and encouragement in the north where there is so much brilliant stuff happening. i am looking forward to it - maybe see you on the taster day?!

i attach a leaflet about the taster day if you want that or want to pas it on to anyone

the farm - a parable from paul bradbury

paul bradbury is writing pioneer parables - two down so far. i really love this latest one the farm which he explains over on his blog and it's inspired by the book wilding by isabella tree.

There was once a farmer who managed a large arable farm on behalf of the owner. The farm was losing money and its future was uncertain.

The farmer invested in the best machinery and used the best fertilisers. The farm was amalgamated with neighbouring farms to reduce costs. The farmer did all these things and worked day and night every day of the year. But the farm continued to lose money.

Then one day the farmer said ‘I know what I will do – I will stop growing crops and I will listen to the land. The land is dying and everything with it. We will work with the land and with the God of creation and see what happens’. And she let the land breathe and allowed herself some rest.

Then the farmer called a meeting to communicate her plans. She sold all the machinery and laid off all the staff.  The staff were angry and said the plan was crazy. Other local farmers heard about the plan and shook their heads. Word reached the landlord about the plan and he wrote an angry letter saying ‘The farm needs to pay its way!’ and that the farmer wouldn’t have his support if she carried on in this way.

Then the farmer said ‘I know what I will do – I will introduce ancient breeds of cattle, horse and pig to graze the grass, and to trim the trees and to till the soil.’ These breeds had been largely forgotten but some in the farming community still knew about them. They managed the land naturally and fertilised its soil and new life began to return in amazing and surprising ways.

So the land continued to heal. The trees began recovering. Insects returned; butterflies, moths, beetles, bees. Birds began to nest and thrive.  The call of the turtle dove was heard once again.

And then the farmer welcomed people onto the land. They walked its paths and sat under its trees, they listened to the bird song and witnessed clouds of butterflies.

And many of them went home and became like the farmer. They listened to their land and worked with the God of creation. And watched to see what the future brought.

grace this saturday - retreat

this saturday grace will be very laid back. we often do some sort of retreat this time of year. so grace wil be reflective with space for some guided contemplative prayer followed by the cafe. if you want to join see below for email to get zoom info from. here's the blurb

The next Grace will be a Zoom gathering at 8pm on Saturday June 13th.

Take some to pause a while from the business of life to listen, reflect, pray, review and share.

There will be a virtual cafe afterwards.

If you would like to join us please email [email protected] and we will email you an invitation link.

emerging church web site back online

in 2003 emergingchurch.info was launched and was a place for sharing stories and reflections on what was happening or emerging by way of new church practices. it ran for a decade. andrew jones has just regained the domain name and the archive and it is now back online. i have very fond memories of the whole movement and was involved on my first day at cms in a meeting to dream up the idea and then part of the group that kept it going for those ten years. 

i am unsure what plans andrew has for it but the church is always emerging

compost loo for the woodland

i am happy to report the lockdown project of building a compost loo for the woodland is complete and turned out pretty well. i have never done anything quite like this so it was good fun, a relief it came together, and hugely satisfying! i am now just waiting for a bucket to arrive and then job done (did you see what i did there?!). 

the future of church - tune in to a webinar conversation between me and rick lawrence tomorrow

i am on a one hour webinar tomorrow (thurs june 4) exploring the future of the church and creativity in that regard. it's hosted by friend rick lawrence at group publishing and it will be great to catch up with him. it's free, is at 5pm uk time and 10am mountain time in the usa and canada. the link to sign up is here 

#BlackOutTuesday

reach out and connect

fermenting part 2 - beautiful failure

i was surprised how much interest my previous fermenting post got - and i am happy to say it seems to have inspired a few bits of fermenting out there. it may be that people loved the photos - which did look great i agree. but i have made a few schoolboy errors i'm afraid. the main one is not paying enough attention to the waterline and for whatever reason which have been multiple i have had a few jars go mouldy because i have had things poke above it. i thought i'd better confess in the public domain so took a photo of the latest one - which i think looks rather beautiful. but it did remind me that the flip side of creativity is failure. if you can't fail you won't try stuff and you don't learn. but i have pressed through and now successfully made the following ferments...

• ginger beer - just keeps giving
• lime pickle - i am addicted - seriously try it with this recipe
• sourdough - have been doing that for 5 years now and fortunately managed to keep sourcing flour in the mayhem created by lockdown and everyone starting to make bread
• radishes - got that one right first time - see here 
• kraut - second time lucky though not sure what i eat it with - any suggestions?
• basil beets - my sons have suggested this as a future DJ name for me! - recipe here btw
• mixed veg - probably my least favourite
• carraway carrots and turnips - turnips are surprsingly wonderful fermented (these and the other veg ones above are all from 
• farmer's cheese - this is not actually fermented but is in sandor's book which is my excuse both for trying it and including it here - particularly satisfying was turning it into paneer for my own palek paneer curry
• lemon pickle - also not fermented but is kind of close being a pickle?!
• and this weeks new one has been yoghurt - which is amazing - see below
• and the failure i have not repeated yet is peppers - need to retry

so this week's adventure has been yoghurt and i followed the sandor katz recipe in wild fermentation. it needed 8 hours to yog rather than 4 (is that a verb?!). and i used a dried culture from bulgaria which took a while to come in the post - i didn't realise you could simply use some yoghurt to kickstart it. i don't have such luxuries as a yoghurt maker so used a cooler/coolbox with hot water in and that did the trick.

having made it i then drained one through a cheesecloth for an hour to thicken it into greek yoghurt and that is incredible. so i think i'll do the same with my second jar. it tasted delicious with fruit and some homemade granola after cycling 26 miles this morning - i can never bring myself to buy granola as it sees so over priced for essentially some toasted oats with bits in!

the photo album fermenting has a few more photos in now though i have realised i must add some of the sourdough which i kind of take fro granted having made bread for several years now but it probably the best ferment i make actually...

so there you go - that's where it's got to in my lockdown fermenting adventures. 

flipped church

the flipped classroom is a simple idea. you use technology to make available content for individuals to access for their learning before you meet and/or afterwards – this might be video, reading, presentations and so forth. but when you gather as a group you use the time or the bulk of it for interaction and dialogue. i've taken this approach to teaching online. 

but i began wondering could you think the same about church and what would the flipped church look like? my thoughts are on the pioneer blog - click on the link. i have been pondering these things in preparation for the webinar on wednesday reimagining church

this got me trawling back through blog posts from 2005 and 2006 and i found this post and set of questions i posed wondering about the implications of the online environment for church. well here we are 14 years later asking the same questions...

can we imagine...
church beyond gathering?
church beyond once a week?
church as always on connectivity to christ and one another?
church where community is the content?
theology and resources of church being open source?
church valuing the wisdom of the crowd rather than the knowledge of the expert?
our church/spirituality being easily found by seekers because we tag it that way?
an ethos of low control and collaboration?
an economy of gift?
church as spaces for creative production and self publishing?
church as providers of resources for spiritual seekers and tourists?

 

pioneer open days and evenings

at cms we have open days and evenings coming up on may 19 and june 15 for our pioneer training.

regardless of where the lockdown has got to we will be open and running all of our pioneer training options next (academic) year. we're already teaching online through zoom which i am enjoying - i like new challenges. it will be nice to meet physically and blend the two when things ease up but you can do a lot at a distance. 

the kind of training we offer helps students' imagination. we hope that if they train with us they are able to think for themselves, be creative, start things, be resourceful, build community, find connection points locally, draw on resources in terms of theology and mission but apply them to where they are. and i think now more than ever the kind of approach we have is ideal for the moment we are in.

so all of that is to say do sign up if you are interested to find out more.