great warm up for the big chill last night with tom middleton aka amba playing with a four piece band and VJs at the national film theatre. fun in the bar after catching up with pete and jonny from ikon, kester and beki from the south london allotment crew and ian from moot...
June 30, 2007
June 29, 2007
sinead o connor theology
i have always liked sinead o connor. she never takes a preditable path. her voice blends a beauty, a frailty and has a passionate anger that rails against injustice that can only come from someone who has suffered. i remember seeing her at glastonbury several years ago and when she sang famine feeling like i was listening to a prophet.
she has suffered abuse at the hands of religion and famously ripped up a picture of the pope on stage and has vented her anger in public at her abusers. but she has also sought refuge in the solace of spiritual traditions and the mercy, grace and healing that come from finding a god of compassion, mercy, justice and kindness who is unlike those who claim to represent him. she calls god jah or U, and seems to have found inspiration and comfort with rastafari. there is a whole tradition of setting the old testament to music in reggae and sinead aligned herself with that tradition in her last album musically.
her latest album theology is just out. i bought it on impulse not having heard anything on it, intrigued by the dedication on the sleeve to a theology professor for his classes on jeremiah who suggested to sinead that she set some scriptures to music. well thank god he made that suggestion. because theology is pretty much that - a range of old testament scriptures woven tenderly into song. it's pretty, beautiful and powerful. i'm sure sinead must have read walter brueggemann in her classes? at least she fulfills the two roles of the prophet as he describes it - to evoke grief/lament about what has been lost and where we have become numb and to evoke amazement about god and the new world that is possible of healing, justice, and mercy.
the album has two CDs - one session recorded in dublin with just an acoustic guitar and the other in london with a wider range of musicians. i love the acoustic one. i don't listen to much music like this either. but this has so much soul it almost brings me to tears when i listen to it. it will be hard to beat though i kind of hope people do some remixes of some of the tracks too.
sinead seems to have stolen a bible from somewhere in desperation one christmas eve (judging by the lyrics of something beautiful) and found healing in the pages and poems of scripture. she thinks god agrees with her that it should have been free anyway... fair point! and it makes perfect sense that she has found a companion in jeremiah as he walked a path of suffereing in his own life out of which his message was hewn. there are songs that draw on psalms (33, 91, 137 and 104 i think) and songs of songs as well. as well as tender lament and love songs celebrating god's mercy she still has a few choice lines as do all the prophets for the oppressors who distort the name of god for their own ends.
i've heard religion say that you're to be feared
but i don't buy into everything i hear
and it seems to me you're hostage to those rules
that were made by religion and not by U
you can listen to a few tracks on sinead's myspace pages if you want to check it out. as well as her own songs she covers by the rivers of babylon and i don't know how to love him, as well as a curtis mayfield track.
the album opens with the lines
i wanna make
something beautiful
for U and from U
to show U
i adore U
oh U
you succeeded sinead - thanks. and may you continue to find the healing and mercy of god. [i'd love to hear what you make of the new testament and the person of jesus sometime as he carries forward the traditions and wells of spirituality you are drinking from and they 'broke his windows' for it]
heard a rumour that she was invited to greenbelt but sadly can't make it as there's something else in the diary. i hope she makes it another year.
the whole album is worship trick 7 [series 3]. virtually every track fits to be played and listened to in worship.
Technorati Tags: sinead o connor, theology
June 28, 2007
June 27, 2007
glass - a symbol of truth and mystery
i have added a set of pics of cms house, the new offices in oxford to flickr. big deal eh? actually they are wonderful - it's quite a shock after the run down partnership house to be in a new bright, funky space with great cafe, chill out spaces, wifi and plasmas etc... it's also got great rooms for training with built in sound and projection and all that. come and visit sometime! this picture is of the glass in the prayer room that was designed by saga. she says this about it...
'For now we see in a glass, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known' 1 Corinthians 13:12
Glass is an element through which we see. It can distort or enhance, clarify or obscure, or simply reflect back a familiar image. Glass is used here as a symbol of the truth and mystery we seek and celebrate.
mount project - worship trick 6 [series 3]
electric angel sent me this e-mail...
hi jonny, thought i'd let you know that on the electric angel blog we're posting a typographic poster every day this week based on the sermon on the mount.
each poster is a re-phrasing or interpretation of a key passage. all are set in the ubiquitous helvetica, partly in celebration of the typefaces 50th birthday, partly because it has become the typeface of the people and so seems totally appropriate to represent jesus's words.
at the end of the week we'll make artwork for all 7 posters available for download as a pdf.
adrian
had to be a worship trick which makes two in a row for them! at the end of the week i'll update this post to include the link to download the posters. electric angel are the guys who are redesigning the proost web site for our relaunch in august which i'm getting excited about...
[update: you can download the posters here]
June 26, 2007
June 25, 2007
June 23, 2007
fecundity
forgive my self indulgence, but this is the first year we have had an allotment and today we dug our very first potatoes - it was like magic finding treasure under the ground...
June 21, 2007
felt - worship trick 5 [series 3]
i got a nice surprise last week when a limited edition envelope came through the post. it was from adrian riley of electric angel. he has been involved in alternative worship over the years but is currently without a group as an outlet for his creativity so along with a couple of others produced felt.
in the envelope was a lovely book with images, poems and reflections with the instructions - read, feed, be; and then in a little compartment (all hand stitched together) were some seeds with the words plant, grow, eat. i am making it a worship trick - not that you can reprduce felt exactly, but it's a wonderul idea to create something to encourage faith that is unique and can be posted to friends around the globe for people to participate in a dispersed moment of prayer, reflection and (alternative) worship.
we had friends from croatia staying so opened the envelope with them and they took it back so some of adrian's beans may be grown and shared there...
June 20, 2007
June 19, 2007
cms house opens in oxford
first day at the new cms office in oxford today. i'll take some photos no doubt in the next week but just to say it is amazing and will make a great base for cms for years to come i'm sure.
June 18, 2007
happy father's day
following on from the last post, joel and harry gave me this card designed by joel for father's day!
June 17, 2007
daft punk is playing in my house...
had a blast yesterday at the wireless festival. it helped that you could get half price tickets if you were an O2 phone customer and then bypass the queues to get in. it had rained really hard several times in the morning, so we were expecting to get soaked but by the time we arrived the sun was out and there wasn't a rain drop all evening and the ground was fine (note to self: under no circumstances wear wellies to a gig again as a) you are an embarrassment to your children b) you look a sad dad again - that's twice in a week c) they are uncomfortable d) leaping around like a lunatic to daft punk is not as easy as it otherwise would be).
O2 customers could get access to the O2 blue room where you could get a deck chair and a splendid view of the stage so the first part of the afternoon was spent there (ideal for the old men) before venturing down the front for lcd soundsystem and daft punk. lcd were nothing like as good as earlier in the year when i saw them. their sound was poor but rather than engaging the crowd and focusing on the gig in hand they seemed more concerned with the levels in their monitors which was all abit tedious in the end and the last track just fizzled out in pathetic fashion. this was a big missed opportunity by them on a big stage. even so daft punk is playing in my house got a huge cheer for obvious reasons.
daft punk were simply brilliant. they put on a spectacle - this was the first time i had seen them. the crowd was rammed in and it was impossible not to spend the whole time surging around, dancing and leaping up and down to lots of anthemic tunes along with an impressive light show. all good fun...
[click on pics to enlarge]
June 15, 2007
jonny
an advocate for pioneers, lover of all things creative and an explorer of faith in relation to contemporary culture
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