jonnybaker

the great animal orchestra

there is a fabulous installation at the moment at vinyl factory by uva called other spaces. i have loved all the things of theirs i have seen (chorus, onedotzero, speed of light, momentum). this exhibition has three installations. one is a reworking of momentum, the second a lazer depth of field experience that reminded me of perspective drawings at school (though somewhat cooler), and the third the great animal orchestra. you can read about it here. and i have a few photos here though after taking a couple was asked not to so there are not many. 

the great animal orchestra in some ways is a fitting follow on to my previous post. it is a sort of celebration at the wonder of the world but also a lament. bernie krause has recorded animal sounds in various landscapes. these are played in a dark room with led screens making up three walls. in front of the screens is a pool of dark water which reflects the projections in mesmerising fashion. the projections are digital graphs or spectograms of the sounds. as the sound goes up and down so the lines respond. when a creature's noise first appears the name appears on the screen and slowly moves round the wall. the whole thing lasts about an hour. it's a gorgeous experience (apart from when you either step in the pool or put your hand in it because you don't realise it's there!). the lament side of it is one track before and after where the sound is first played at two points recorded in time. the second is after the landscape has been wiped out or eroded in some way so the absence of animal voices is an immense loss that is brought into the room in its absence. 

the space itself is an like an alternative worship dream! we have got lazy at grace but we used to create three walls to project onto to be surrounded by projected images and have beanbags in the centre as a space for reflection, with ambient music playing. we still do create that kind of space to some degree but this was so well done. i'd love to have use of a space like that. it was a very fitting space to visit during extinction rebellion. and just as poignant as the planetary mass. go and see it if you can - it's free and runs until december 8th.

i would put it down as a worship trick but i'm just not sure anyone else could pull it off in the same way!

there is a second exhibition at the other side of the vinyl factory which is not quite as amazing but does include an installation by doug aitken - one of my all time favourite artists - so it's worth it for that piece called new era. i love his video installations.

grace does planetary mass

i am in two minds as to whether to put this out there but last saturday with extinction rebeliion in full flow and a focus on the planet for grace we gathered round the table. some members had been in to join in the action - sadly i couldn't make it due to work. so we gathered to pray for our world, to remember it is god's world and lament the ways it is being pushed to its limits. i have a recording of the planetary mass from the nine o clock service. i can't remember where i got it from but i have always loved it and play it to students as an example of creative liturgy. it must be from the early nineties. anyway i transcribed it which i have never done and we read through it together and shared bread and wine round the table. it was without the visuals and drama but poignant and powerful. if anyone is reading who was involved in its creation thank you - and i hope it's ok to put this on my blog. but here is the liturgy and i have added tracks we listened to. the soil by david benjamin blower was perfect for passing round bread and wine and we brought soil and water to the table along with bread and wine.

i'd love to hear of what other laments and liturgies anyone else is creating or using. 

Welcome and Opening Prayer
Listen to planetary mass 0-3:09

The planetary mass is our celebration of life and our ritual of celebration and repentance on behalf of our culture. Here we seek to mourn the destruction of so much life on our planet and to cultivate a compassion that feels in our own flesh the wounds inflicted on others and on our planet and to awaken to the incredible awe and beauty of our existence with God. Whether humanity has a future or whether it is going to become extinct in the next few centuries depends on our will to live and that means our absolute will for our one indivisible life. We have got used to death, at least to the death of other creatures and other people and to get used to death is the beginning of freezing into lifelessness itself. So the essential thing is to affirm life, the life of other creatures, the life of other people, our own lives.

The Lord is here
His Spirit is with us

Breathe in the Holy Spirit…
Breathe in life
And out fear
In passion
And out numbness
In hope
And out death

The Word
Wisdom let us attend. From the book of Deuteronomy:
This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death,
blessing and curses. Now choose life so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to His voice and hold fast to Him.

This is the word of the Lord
Thanks be to God

Read Declaration of Rebellion from This is Not A Drill

Confession
Creator God the Source of all life we confess our sin to you.
We confess where we have turned away from you and where in ignorance we have turned our back on the earth and on each other.
We confess that as we have wanted more and more we have dominated and exploited your creation.
And we admit that we are responsible for abusing the riches of our home, that we are complicit in crucifying you by polluting the air and the sea, by destroying the forests, by starving the people of the two-thirds world, and by robbing the future generations of life not yet here, our children and grandchildren.
God of all creation we turn away from our addiction
We turn back to you
Our Source and our Hope
We repent and we turn back to you

Communion
This ritual is a symbol of the worship already happening in creation. The whole universe is invited to this intimate event, the feasting on Christ. The church here has no walls - we worship with plants, planets, animals, and angels.

The day before Christ suffered he took bread in sacred hands and looking up to heaven he broke it and gave it to his disciples saying ‘take eat this is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me’. In the same way after supper he took the cup and gave thanks. He gave it to them saying ‘drink this all of you. This is my blood of the new covenant which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Do this to recall me, to remember me.’

Creator and soul of the cosmos
The universe shines with your life Lord
You’re everything we desire.
We give our lives to you
You created everything that lives
Through Christ you are the Source
We believe and trust in you
Our desire is to let go of death and give ourselves to the vision of life your son Jesus believed in to the point of his own death
We commit ourselves to him
Spirit of life, integrity and truth who raised our brother from death and gives us hope beyond death here now
You are our strength and compassion
We believe and trust in you

God of life we bring wine to the table
Touch this now to become a life blood transfusion.
Christ our life we bring bread to the table to become your precious flesh
In our global village we offer it in the presence of those who starve.
Eternal source we offer water:
The overwhelming swell of the oceans unique to this planet.
Creator God we thank you for the gift of soil:
The foundation of the forest, the sign of our mortality
Creator God we offer ourselves along with these elements of bread and wine and join with the voice of the whole universe crying out for life and healing.
Father hear our prayer through Jesus Christ.
Amen

We can no longer see ourselves as separate from nature.
We are all given a chance to participate in the story of the universe.
We’re all in it together - people, particles and God.
Through Christ hope is built into the very fabric of space time and matter.
So now there’s hope.
Now contains the possibility of resurrection.
So let’s come to the table now and let’s reconnect with Christ,
hope of the cosmos,
the power to renew us and change our lives now.

[share bread and wine
play The Soil by David Benjamin Blower during distribution]

Prayer
Let us pray together now for the universal church and the world.
Christ our hope at this critical time lead us into facing our denial.
As the church, as a culture wake us up to an awareness of the responsibility and opportunities we now have.
We honour the wisdom gained by centuries of spiritual and artistic endeavour through the experience of our mystics and the lives and deaths of all our saints.
We pray for an open church that celebrates the coming together of all faith and wisdom traditions, the sciences and the arts.
We pray for a new time of hope, mystery and promise as we bring all these riches to bear on our global crisis.
God the Mother and Father of all creation we pray that a new way of living emerges out of the present reductionist system that’s robbed the world of its spirit and turned human beings into objects and nature into a machine.
We pray for a culture that allows us to live in harmony with all creation and stops crippling the earth’s diversity.
We pray that your Spirit of passionate life that raised Christ from the dead bursts now into all people in our earth community.
Creator God we pray that we will wake up to a new consciousness.

Watch Greta Thurbnberg and George Monbiot video

Listen to Numbers by Radiohead

Blessing
May Holy Wisdom whose voice calls all to the feast
Whose hand draws the whole cosmic community of life to her table,
preserve you in eternal life.
And the blessing of God Creator, Liberator and Holy Spirit be amongst you and stay with you always
Amen

The mass has ended
Go in peace

[All liturgy is from The Planetary Mass by the Nine O Clock Service]

greenbelt this weekend - come and say hi if you are there!

every bank holiday in august i look forward to greenbelt festival. i have been more years in my life than i care to count. it's a beautiful blend of hanging out at a festival with friends, exploring ideas around issues of justice and faith, enjoying music and arts, and these days even hanging out with grandchildren and nephews and nieces! i love to take part too and have done talks, photography exhibition, led the main communion service, lots of alternative worship events, run labyrinths, chaired panels, and co-ordinated the worship programme for several years. this year i am excited to be involved in the exchange venue which is about social transformation and i'll be chairing three sessions talking to pioneers who have turned a crazy idea into a project to contribute to good in the world - see this post on the pioneer site for details. 

i'll also be hanging around that venue wanting to talk to anyone who is interested in turning an idea into reality and trying to persuade them to come on the amazing make good week which is so great. and i'll be chatting to anyone interested in talking about pioneer mission who might be interested in training with us on the cms pioneer course. honestly those of us there from our team would love to hang out and talk pioneering mission with anyone who wants to. if you are interested, have ideas, are struggling or having a great time come and say hi.we are going to be with richard passmore and others from the northern centre which we are partnering in so if you are from the north and interested in pioneering come and say hi and find out what's happening there. 

and i will be helping proost with a creative worship service on sat evening. 

and of course i'll be answering politely all the people who ask me if i am harry baker's dad - yes i am! looking forward to seeing his show off the back of an amazing run at edinburgh festival and chris' show and harry and chris's show! it's going to be busy... it's going to be fun... and oh yes i am soooo happy to say the weather forecast looks great!!!!

grief and hope

the fiesta festival in earlsfield was great - it was so good to meet amd learn from the wisdom of alastair macintosh. grace curated a space to reflect on hope and grief - flip sides of a prophet's imagination - or flip sides of the road to newness perhaps. i have added some photos in an album here. it was good to suspend a block of ice for an installation on grief - last time we did that was 2001 apparently!

grief and hope - grace at fiesta

looking forward to the next grace which is part of fiesta festival in earlsfield - note it's a differemt venue and time if you are a regular! here's the info... 

Join us as we grieve like prophets and dreamers for our broken world, and hope like prophets and dreamers for a different kind of future.

Note different venue and time - Grace will be 6:30pm at 'Riverside', Haldane Place, Wandsworth SW18 4UQ, as part of 'Fiesta' - see below for details of the festival as a whole.

People at the festival are coming as part of their festival ticket, but if you are just coming for Grace it is free. Just say you are a member of Grace when you arrive.

The legendary block of ice will be making its third appearance - last seen at Greenbelt 2001! Well obviously not the same block of ice.

hope to see you there

note venue change:the venue has changed to paradise cooperative, 19 heathfield road sw18 3je - opposite the entrance to wandsworth prison.

fiesta - pioneer festival in london in july

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. 

[united] kingdom come - grace this saturday

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.

space

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.

a worship trick - flash paper

 

flash paper from jonny baker on Vimeo.

grace last night was a rather beautiful evening with a magical labyrinth and stations on themes of gold, frankincense and myrrh. i can't remember where i read about it but i came across flash paper which is a kind of paper magicians use in tricks - when you light it, it flares up and goes up in smoke in a flash. i took a very short video of it on my phone. so if magicians use it i guess it is probably as close to a worship trick as is possible! we used it at the myrrh station where people reflected on things to bury or get rid of or put to death in their life and then they went up in a flash!

grace new year labyrinth

another year of grace begins this next weekend - join us to walk a labyrinth

where will god be born? - advent coming up...

i always love the season of advent. love this flyer from steve for our grace advent service this year which will consist of a series of reflections, prayers, meditations, songs brought by whoever comes. if you plan to come do bring something to share in that way. it will all be followed by mulled wine and stollen. 

and i am not sure i should confess to this but if you look on the grace web site there is a link to a video from 1996 of grace on channel 4 which we dug out for the 25th celebration - it is fairly amusing/embarrassing!

grace silver

we had a wonderful celebration of 25 years of grace last night.

projections - fairy lights - tunes - 4 course feast - communion shared at the table - memories - toasts - stories - laughter - an amazing cake - 25 year old whisky - nostalgia - hope - gratefulness - friends - church - alternative worship - zine - late night

here's a few photos

grace xxv - the zine

steve collins has put together a 64 page zine for grace's 25th celebration. it's free to download as a pdf - we'll probably do a limited edition print run but haven't got oprganised for that yet. but it's a great collection of photos and memories - largely visual - and organised into sections on worship, people, technology, greenbelt, labyrinths, music and ethos. mike and i had fun selecting a few tunes from each year that have been on the grace playlist. who would have thought - two zines in a year?!

#gracesilverservice

grace - 25th anniversary!!!

it's hard to believe but november will see the 25th anniversary of grace. i wasn't there when it started but jen and i got involved when we moved to london in 1995. it has been an amazingly creative group of people with whom to share life and faith as we have sought to follow christ together in today's world. i'll save a longer post for nearer the time but i am so thankful to be part of it.

to celebrate we are having a meal/banquet. unusually we would like to know numbers in advance for the catering side of it so if you plan to come please can you let us know - email or leave a comment. if you have been part of grace's life over the 25 years do see if you could make it along - we'd love it to be a sharing of stories and memories, of thanks as well as hopes for the future as we are not done yet! 

(there is of course a grace service before that in october too)

labyrinth - a new design

it was a wonderful evening at grace with a new labyrinth designed by adam baxter and made in the afternoon from some cloth and gaffer tape. st mary's in ealing is a wonderful magical space for it and with candles flickering and a playlist of ambient tunes a prayerful meditative evening ensued... if you click on this link and scroll through you'll see some of the labyrinths we have made and run over the years. i think the first was back in 1998 or 1999. this labyrinth web site has lots of info if you're wondering about labyrinths

grace labyrinth this saturday

i'm looking forward to grace on saturday as it will be a labyrinth and it's a brand new design and mat that i haven't seen yet. there will be a cafe so you can sit and chat and then go and walk the labyrinth in your time at any point during the evening. 

the table - next grace april 14

next grace we are delighted to welcome friends from the table in southall. the table is a fresh expression of church that fits perfectly into southall's context gathering around the table over food and conversation and hospitality. friends from the table will be coming and  helping lead grace and cooking up some food southall style - one not to miss. don't eat before you come!

because we'll be catering we could do with knowing numbers so let us know if you are planning to come (if possible).

turn

well it's getting close to the season of lent. it's a time of year when grace, the community i am part of spend some time reflecting on what it means to follow christ in today's world. we'll be having a couple of grace services and then reading various things and discussing them over meals.

 

but if you are around london join us at grace on feb 10th for the first of two services exploring the themes of lent. themes for both are taken from words in the ash wednesday service ‘turn away from sin and be faithful to christ’. first up is ‘turn’ - face down your vices and join us in grace’s very own 3 step programme followed by grace café which will be serving up pancakes.

cumbria, eastbourne, brighton - my next three weekends

this term i seem to have signed up to more speaking things than for a long time. if you are in these parts of the world do come and say hi!

headed to kendal today to join with carlisle diocesan day on fresh expressions tomorrow november 18th where richard passmore is catalysing all sorts of great new stuff around the diocese bold god for all vision.

next weekend i am in eastbourne with st elizabeth's church. there is a public event called mission is which will be cafe style with a meal exploring mission. and sunday morning i'll be speaking at st elizabeth's 10:30 morning service

and then dec 2 i am taking part in a day in brighton on curating pioneering worship along with martin poole, maggi dawn, tim watson, simon rundell, and nick haigh which will be fun and i am looking forward to catching up with those guys as well as hanging out with my mum, sister and nephew who live in brighton...

after that things ease up and it will be time to get ready for christmas!

the power of a simple diagram

i was really pleased to see mark berry and philip mounstephen have written a grove booklet on mission and community. it gets a hefty review here if you want to know what it's about and that saves me writing too much (!). i am particularly pleased because it's part of grove's mission and evangelism series and cms has become a partner in that series contributing a couple of booklets a year - at least that's the plan. this is the first. it used to be the evangelism series but we were keen if cms were to be involved that it become mission and evangelism. i have read it and really recommend it. it's the kind of book you read and think 'of course!' but then realise that what seems obvious often isn't.

the thing in the book that i thought was very neat and powerful was a diagram. they draw on robert warren's missionary congregations book which i really liked when it came out and that had three interlocking equally sized circles in a venn diagram of worship, mission and community saying that all three were important and that in the intersection you'd find the heart or spirituality of a congregation. i remember drafting what grace was about years ago and having those three sections on an older version of the web site.

what mark and philip do is redraw the diagram showing the reality could be very different in practice to warren's nice equal version. it seems quite shocking - community is small and mission is isolated. but the more i have thought about it the more i think that diagram nails something with truth in it even if it is exaggerated.

it's at least worth pondering if you are in a congregation or church what the balance is and where all the church's time, money and effort goes. we have been thinking about this at grace recently and realising that in our case community has grown in importance over the years and we are reflecting on what mission looks like. i guess worship has always been a reasonable size as we grew out of what was then known as alternative worship. i'll blog again in a separate post to say a bit more about this with a diagram we drew for grace.