jonnybaker

radiohead live over new year

if you're home alone to see in the new year then rumour has it that radiohead will be performing in rainbows live on radiohead.tv

i am happy to say i managed to get tickets to see them in june in london...

looking back over the year 2007

well predictably i haven't got round to blogging much over christmas...

but with the new year approaching it's time to reflect on 2007, the year that's passing. one of the things i like about online publishing via a blog and flickr and so on is that i can look back over the year through those things and it reminds me what i've been up to...

so these are some of the things that spring to mind from my 2007.

i now have a son who is eighteen

i have exhibited a photo in london for the first time and sold it

i celebrated 20 years of being married to jen - i can't quite believe that. jen is amazing.

i have dug potatoes from my own allotment, much to the shock of my mum

cms has moved to oxford where i now work 2 days a week in funky new offices. i have taken on a new role as a team leader.

proost was re-imagined, re-vamped, made downloadable and relaunched at greenbelt 2007 and seems to be going pretty well with music, movies and books.

on the subject of greenbelt, having co-ordinated worship for several years for the festival i have stepped down (and it's in the capable hands of gayle and ben)

our friend jane foster smith died over christmas, which was sad and shocking news to return to after the christmas break

i loved visiting cornwall, croatia, portugal, ireland, orkney, lee abbey, usa and canada, and the wye valley

my dissertation got published as a book

i felt so proud of my sister esther when i went to the preview of her film at the national film theatre written by damo

jenny launched the sophia network which is a brilliant thing

i have so enjoyed joining the ealing group of london independent photography where i have had a warm welcome and met wonderful people. i have learned a ton.

grace has been home base in terms of christian community that i thank god for - such good friends and creative people. paul and marcela got married, lydia celebrated her first birthday, and lynda has been a wonderful addition. the scariest gig was leading a session at the worship songwriters conference in december.

we had fun at the london mind body spirit festival praying with people.

i actually wrote a song for the first time in a couple of years - watch this space as i hope to do a few more with jon and doug for an album or something in 08

the big chill was so brilliant again and i loved being there with joel and harry and bhav. lots of other gigs were also amazing - chemicals, scroobius pip, lcd soundsystem, daft punk, air, trentemoller, tom middleton, coldcut, bonobo, massive attack...

anthony gormley blew me away in london and crosby along with loads of other amazing art stuff this year. i love london for that...

and on a london theme seeing the prologue of the tour de france in london was cool

chelsea won two cups beating arsenal and man united in the finals which was deemed a bad year which i never understood (!!!) and it was gutting to see jose morinho leave

harry and jen both did triathlons (and i cheered them on from the sidelines!)

it was a bit of a weird year for weather but we still enjoyed the new garden and managed to eat out and party in it on plenty of occasions.

and of course i have resisted the pressure to join facebook

so i guess i am saying a big THANK YOU and have had a sweet year.

the day i tried to go to church and failed

the sunday before christmas jenny was preaching at st marys so i thought i'd go along (st marys is the church that grace is a congregation of). before going i stuck my head round harry's door to let him know we were going out to church. he was still in bed. jenny had gone early. when i go anywhere i try and take the camera - a sort of discipline i guess thinking that you can't take a photo of something if you don't have your camera...

it was an incredibly foggy morning so i thought i'd walk via a look at the common. well the fog was amazing and just drew me in so i got the camera out. and much as i intended to go towards the church i walked in the opposite direction and started taking photos. well 100 photos later and having walked via ealing common, walpole park and lammas park i had just about arrived at st mary's an hour later when my phone went. it was harry asking where i was. it turns out he had got out of bed to join me at church and the service was now over. so i met him at munsons and had a coffee and went home never having made it to church in spite of my good intentions. i'd had a wonderful time. i felt slightly guilty missing jen's sermon. but when i recounted the story over christmas my mum said 'i'm sure you were closer to god there...' which made me feel a whole lot better! the bench below was part of that morning. i have added others to flickr of course. i like this text message | patterns | the bench | rainforest

just back from a few days away over christmas staying with my younger brother steve's family being wined and dined which was brilliant. we have a bit of a family tradition of going together to see a film at some point over christmas, ever since we went and saw napoleon dynamite one christmas eve. so last night we went to see kite runner which is such a brilliant story. i loved the book and the follow up, a thousand splendid suns is my favourite book this year. the scenery is stunning in the film. it really made me want to drive the road from pakistan to kabul...

happy christmas!

happy christmas!

regardless of theologies and postmodern theories and new ideas of church, and irrespective of our programmes, plans and energy levels, God will come and be born in our world...

...he will be born in our world whether we are ready or not, deserving or not, prepared or not. The incarnation of God will defy our plans, upset the organised and come with ease and rapturous joy to undeserving sinners and the poor in spirit.

[a quote from maggi dawn's book]

contemplating life's mysteries in the fog on ealing common

contemplating life's mysteries in the fog on ealing common, originally uploaded by jonnybaker.

 

labyrinth web site updated

the labyrinth web site has had an overhaul...

walled nativity

this is the most thought provoking nativity i think i have seen since steve's chess set from amos trust... the nativity wall is detachable which is sadly not the case for the real one.

emerging church postcards 2007

go and send steve taylor an emerging church postcard for 2007

henry moore by night

henry moore by night, originally uploaded by jonnybaker.

kew gardens always have a couple of free open evenings in the run up to christmas to get you in the christmas mood with some of the glasshouses lit up, mulled wine and roast chestnuts and carol singing. an added bonus this year was that we could see the henry moore sculptures by night... i didn't take many photos but there is a set from last year i have added them to if you are interested...

on the subject of photos congrats to dean who has a photo of his as a double page spread in this month's art forum magazine!

Technorati Tags: henry moore, kew gardens

francis a postmodern saint

i have just finished reading chasing francis, a novel by ian morgan cron. the plot is of a pastor who feels trapped and is dying inside in a church he leads. a death of a young person pushes him to the edge and he announces in a sermon that he has lost his faith and is then sent off to get some space and give the church some space to decide what to do. he ends up tracing the trail of saint francis in italy with his unkle. saint francis' story re-invigorates his faith in a very different way. i won't spoil the plot any more, save to say when he comes back to the church and presents a new vision the church has to decide whether it can cope with a much more radical stance and approach to faith.

i really enjoyed the book. i read it over two days. it was refreshing to read a story about faith in postmodern times rather than another book that maps the contours of culture, the crisis in church life and offers models of new ways people are imagining faith, which seems to be the trajectory of a lot of books on this sort of theme. it was also a creative way into the story of saint francis rather than picking up a biography. he is an incredible saint/character - ian refers to him as the consummate postmodern saint. i guess the parallel is that he lived in a time where the church had got stuck in its own way and offered a radical vision of returning simply to follow the teachings of christ and work them out in small communities. his life is very challenging in lots of ways.

at the beginning of each chapter are some rather good quotes. i liked this one from marcel proust:

the real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes

advent again

i have been really enjoying maggi dawn's advent book. it sits on the kitchen table and each morning or evening i read the reflection. she has some great insights/nuggets that she draws out of passages from the bible. her stuff on abraham and elijah has been particularly good at least for where i'm at. inspired by maggi one of our grace services in lent will explore elijah's desert journey.

other advent stuff (i find it's a very creative season - there's so much around)...

prayer of mary
pray peace

and on a completely different tack jon has stirred up over 100 comments so far on this cartoon!!!

spiritual journeys

well the church sometimes comes along and surprises me...

spiritualjourneys.org.uk is a web site connected with a new book sense making faith produced by the mission theologial advisory group which i think is a group connected with church together in britain and ireland. i haven't got the book though i will look out for it. but the web site is packed with resources around the themes of exploring, looking, asking, dreaming and doing. i am convinced if churches had more emphasis like this on connecting with spiritual seekers we'd be in better shape...

photography exhibitions in london

i called in last week (or maybe it was the week before) to a few photography exhibitions in london...

if you get the guardian on saturdays a few times this year they have featured the work of sebastiao salgado, photos of bleak untouched places and peoples on earth. they really are quite amazing. well his work is on at hackelbury, a small gallery near gloucester road tube. i loved seeing his work. it is selling at about £6000 a piece so if you bought the guardian magazine you got it cheap!

on a similar theme IPA nature photographer of the year 2007 josef hoflehner , has work on show at the atlas gallery on dorset street (near baker street tube). i loved these even more. they are black and white landscapes that capture a wonderful sense of stillness, again in remote places. (they also have two sensational portraits of mohammed ali in the window as a bonus!)

then lastly i called in to the new white cube west end gallery which is an amazing space in itself. jeff wall who was featured on the genius of photography series on bbc 3 (well worth seeing if it gets a rerun) has 3 huge photos displayed in light boxes and then some black and white shots. the theme he explores is beauty in the mundane which is a theme i love so i was surprised how little i actually liked his work. i didn't dislike it, i just expected to be moved by it in some way and wasn't unlike the other two exhibitions. i liked one of the photos in a chicken shed in canada but the others did very little for me. i was impressed with the technique and loved the light boxes and gallery but that was about it... timeout reviewed the show and loved it and he is pretty well known as a contemporary photographer so you may love it. don't be put off by me.

all these are free - you've got to love london.

i plan at some stage to make our annual trip to see the wildlife photographer of the year which is on at the natural history museum (though sadly that one is not free!)

ten years of blogs

according to bob blogs began 10 years ago! i'm sure this will be contested soon and i have no idea if it's true. but i thought i'd say happy tenth anniversary anyway to blogs. for my part my first blog post was on april 18, 2002  so i have been blogging for 5 years and 8 months. that kind of shocked me that i have been blogging that long. the reason i started blogging was because i had met andrew jones and he was enthusing about it and told me i should start one. looking at those early posts is quite amusing and my third entry describes what i was thinking when i started the worship tricks series that have proved popular. this is what i had to say.

one of the things i want to do via this blog is to share with the world [or at least with those few people in the world who are a) reading the blog and b)interested] what i'll call worship tricks. now i've written that term i think it may not be brilliant but it will do for now. one of the things i love about alternative worship is the way groups use the stuff of life and popular culture as the building blocks for worship rather than using churchy language and stuff that no-one outside the subculture really relates to. i've expanded more on this in an essay - see the links to articles i've written at the side. these tricks might just be called ideas, but i like tricks better because often there's some sort of dynamic thing that happens when ideas are used in worship that makes them worthy of a better name than idea. i'm going to number these tricks and see where it leads. so if you have some tricks let me know. some people think they are on to a trick when they are using multi media, but there's an overdose of naff powerpoints with sunsets and predictible words. i'm after stuff that's either got an edge, is cool, is a good building block, is beautifully crafted or simply works. it may be as simple as using a particular tune or image in worship to reframe it or it may be a ritual or it may be a link to a piece of liturgy or a flash animation online. we'll see. anyway trick no 1 will be in the next post....

i think i particular noticed this because the january issue of youthwork magazine has an article on creative worship that without naming me slams my blog and worship tricks as being trivial and a sell out to consumer culture!!!! i haven't got the article in front of me so can't quote directly but i have clearly rattled the author's cage. ho hum...

proost christmas movies

this month's proost release sees one advent movie and one christmas movie

wait was originally created for vaux by kester. it last 12 minutes and embodies the advent theme of waiting with 6 minutes of the word wait and people standing on train platforms before moving to a reflection of words fading in and out. it really is beautiful... it originally had the sigur ros track svefn g englar from the album agaetis byrjun underneath it. we don't have the copyright/permission so you'll need to download or buy it yourself or use something similar.

and silent night is a new animation from jon birch that sees people journeying to visit jesus christ. perfect for all ages...

they are both in the movies section of the site and can be previewed in the player.

ealing photo blog

i have contributed a few photos from the frosty morning at gunnersbury park to december on the ealing london independent photography group photoblog

[update: i have now added a slideset compiling my various ealing frosty morning photos]

trouser wobbling night with the chemical brothers

enjoyed seeing the chemical brothers last night in brixton. at points the bass was so heavy that you literally could feel your trousers wobbling! one of the things i love at gigs like this is to see how the visual side is developing. the lights and set were amazing. the screen was huge and looked like a gauze that was being projected onto but actually it was a huge see through computer type screen rather than projection - i don't even know what the technical term is, but it meant the visuals were crystal clear but lighting was projected through it from behind. it's hard to describe but was very impressive... on the way back from oxford earlier in the evening there was a huge accident that we got caught in the tailback from so i wondered if i was even going to make it but we eventually crept through and got there in time (turns out we were lucky as i heard from a colleague today who took 6 hours to get from oxford to london!). the old classics were still the best tunes - out of control, block rocking beats, though star guitar was probably my favourite... always feels good to get out on a thursday night and extend the weekend!

a letter from god to man

i was reminded of scroobius pip and dan le sac's letter from god to man yesterday. joel posted the text to it on the lent blog after we saw them. anyway it was featured in home's nine celebration this year and matt sent me a link to the youtube video of it... and you can listen to it on their myspace page

i have decided to add this as worship trick 22 in the third series...

god is a londoner

or so says the cover of this week's timeout magazine which focuses on the vibrant religious life in the capital.

two years ago joel took part in creating a youth produced mini timeout magazine called timeout trashed. it was a fantastic experience where he learned a ton and contributed illustrations, articles and layout. well ealing borough have just run a simliar project again with a different group of young people. the results are in a huge foldout poster that is included in this week's timeout in shops across london. joel got invited back to be a mentor and part of the team leading the project (and got paid too which was a bonus). the results are amazing. i think this is such a brilliant project and wonderful for young people in ealing to get a chance to create something like this. and as before the results are fantastic...

gunnersbury frost

gunnersbury frost, originally uploaded by jonnybaker.

another stunning frosty morning in ealing - this time gunnersbury park...