jonnybaker

lino water

a lino print of water from saturday's advent grace. the (intentional) blur gives it a sea like feel. 

lost in light

in 2023 i saw fourtet and he had an amazing light display of nearly 40000 light balls suspended - see this post for a photo. that lighting was done by squidsoup who currently has an exhibition in shoreditch, london of 5 installations - lost in light. i love that kind of immersive exhibition. we went in half term so there were lots of kids enjoying it and charging around touching the light hangings so i hope it survived that week! anyway here's a few photos to give you the idea. it is light and sound so you get half the idea probably.

northern lights over st beunos

what a treat to be in north wales at st beuno's and to see the northern lights in the night sky. i am here doing a course on spiritual conversations.

sunflower triptych

we were issued a challenge of making a triptych for the photography group. this was mine.

sunflowers

last week as i drove to the wood through sussex these sunflowers were all greeting the morning sun. i loved that they weren't a farmer's crop but simply in a wide verge. i had nick cave's album wild god on in the car, it was a glorious morning and i felt full of joy! i had to stop the car for a few photos...

balloon ride

over two years ago jen gave me a hot air balloon ride. since then i have booked a ride lots of times but each time the weather was too windy but finally this week we got to go on a beautiful morning. we took off in petworth in west sussex and landed near billingshurst. if the wind had been slightly different we might have flown over prospect wood. it was such a beautiful experience - peaceful, gently floating over the world. i have added some photos to flickr - balloon ride

tourists

jen and i spent a couple of weeks staying in a yurt in siskon, switzerland. it was such a great location. this photo is i think my favourite from the holiday. it's taken on the stoosbahn funicular railway which is the steepest in the world at 47 degrees which is 110% incline! but the way it works is incredible. each pod rolls so you stay horizontal. this is a shot inside the pod we were in of everyone wowed and/or trying to photograph the moment.

i have added an album sisikon switzerland to flickr if you want to see my holiday snaps (and the amazing alpine landscape round there!)

jonny by frankie

following my post of frankie and photos i took of her in our photography group portrait challenge here are a selection of frankie's photos of me. see here for the album jonny by frankie

frankie

in our photography group we occasionally have challenges. one that we done a few times is being randomly paired with someone in the group and taking photographs of one another. i was paired with frankie and you can see some of the photos in this album frankie. i like the black and white shots best. i have grown in confidence in taking photos of people and am getting to be pretty happy with the results. click on the link to see the other results of the group portrait challenge

egypt

i visited my second new continent this year. having visited s america, i got to visit egypt which was my first visit to africa. at cms we have an annual gathering of those who lead pieces of work round the world (we call them hubs). as i lead the work in britain i get to go. last year's gathering was oxford but this time round egypt. i hardly had internet and did not want to pay the phone rate so didn't get to posting on the blog or social media so playing catch up somewhat at the moment. it seems to be a madly busy season... though when is it not?!

i was mainly in a conference centre so not loads of photos of that thought i rather liked this jeep run into the sand.. it was nice to get some sun!

we did have two days out and visited alexandria, the pyramids and an amazing coptic cave church in cairo (more about that in another post). 

my egypt photos are here 

fun week hanging out with these guys!

lovely easter week with family in croyde - three granddaughters having fun as ever! i have added a croyde photo album here

snowdon horseshoe

we packed in the miles this week! on our way back from oban we visited friends gav and erika in llandudno. for those who have followed gav's crazy building ventures the results are amazing. on friday the weather seemed kind enough that we could do the snowdon horseshoe. this is a route up to snowdon along the miner's track and then looping left over lliwedd and up to yr wyddfa. jen and i have done plenty of walks but this was another level for us. looking at lliwedd i wondered how on earth it is even possible to go up it. but sure enough there is a path of sorts and putting one step in front of another we made our way up. i have been up once before by the rangers path but this was much more dramatic in terms of views. the top of yr wyddfa never came out of cloud so when we headed up there is was snow and cloud! it was such a wonderful day - exhilirating and we felt we were in safe hands with gav who has run up and down all those routes on multiple occasions. photos of the day are here - snowdon horseshoe

this photo gives a good sense of the scramble up lliwedd - you can see jen making her way up.

a lost rainforest in britain

having read guy shrubsole's the lost rainforests of britain it was great to be able to visit one on the island of seil which you reach via a bridge a few miles south of oban - balluchan hazel wood. i have added some photos here - scammadale and seil along with a few from scammadale where we have spent a few days with friends in a magnificent glen. next stop llandudno where we head tomorrow.

the one who walks the earth

message to world leaders

wild fire

this week we celebrated cms pioneer students achievements graduating with a range of awards from durham university. i teach a module on worship and worked with students on that module to curate the celebration as part of the assesssment! they did an amazing job exploring the theme of the pioneer journey. it was in two parts. part 1 was a series of installations to interact with. part 2 was a fireside celebration. it was so joyful. it's amazing to work with pioneers - i love the way they see the world and seek to catalyse new things, new projects, new communities invariably with those at the edges of their communities. 

every year iain cotton, an artist and sculptor has created a gift representing the pioneer journey. this was actually the tenth iteration. each year is different and each tile is unique. i hope to find all ten and blog about them all at some point. this year's one was just perfect in so many ways. the image is of a chiseled journey which is incomplete. it's also an open circle - a place of gathering but in which others are welcome and out of which the life can spill outwards. at the heart is a fire - the fire of the great spirit which too breaks out of the circle. 

we also admitted several pioneers as lay workers in the church of england.

congratulation to all those who completed awards! 

synchronicity

i have several shows by uva. synchronicity was at 180 studios which is a wonderful setting for their work. i had seen a few of the pieces before. it's impressive and looks wonderful in the dark. we discussed afterwards how art is at its best when the ideas have something to get into that is below the surface. some of their work looks great but doesn't do that deep dive. i have added an album of a few photos - synchronicity.

grace - a slideshow and a revamped ethos

at grace's 30th birthday steve collins had compiled a slideshow of photos from most of those years. we don't have any photos of a few of the early years but they scroll through in chronological order. the link to a pdf is here. it's 67mb. it's a wonderful reminder. there is also a section in the archive now for slides from various things

we have also spent a bit of time reflecting on what has been our ethos for a long time now and that has had a bit of a revamp. what has surfaced in those discussions is the value of a hospitable and welcoming community (which you might expect if you call yourselves grace!). risk has been demoted to a sub section which i hope doesn't mean we are losing our edge! here is the ethos

 

heaven exists - grace is 30

this extraordinary cake was commissioned by lynda who is a dear friend and member of grace. she wanted to celebrate grace's 30th birthday and poured her creativity and gratitude into the cake as an amazing gift. the cake is called heaven exists and looked and tasted amazing. thank you lynda! the cake was made by nastassja

we had a wonderful evening doing a new take on communion by numbers round tables. 

a slideshow of moments from grace over the years was scrolling put together by steve collins from his incredible archive of photos over the years - hopefully he will add it online somewhere and i'll add a link - so good to be reminded of so many amazing moments. a playlist with a tune from each of the 30 years was put together by mike rose, the sole founder member who remains part of grace. 

overall there was just a lot of love in the room, with a small community of amazing creative human beings (in the room and online) who have journeyed together as a community of friends making artful soulful worship (fresh vital worship as the early flyers used to say) seeking to follow christ in today's world and support one anther in whatever life has thrown our way. during that time this small group have sparked the imagination of people al round the world, published books, albums, hosted web sites, been part of movements of alternative worship and emerging church, led grace in cathedrals and festivals. and all the while we have remained small, never employed anyone, and been hosted in the mothership of st mary's who have simply let us get on with it. 

a revamped ethos was introduced on the night - tweaked really to add more on being a welcoming community to all which has gione up our agenda over the years as an intention. i will no doubt post that and link to other pieces of the service when they go up on the grace web site.

i am very grateful. it's such a gift of grace.

come to the edge

jen and i are just back from two weeks holiday in canada. it felt weird to be going away this time of year as we always go in the summer (largely because i am involved in teaching students). friends who we shared a house with back when we lived in bath invited us to celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary with them along with a group of around 20 for 4 days. my team at cms kindly said it was fine to go and seeing as we were going that far we made a fortnight of it. it was so good to catch up with aad and jeanette in paris (ontario), and we explored a few other spots in ontario - mainly ottawa and manatoulin island. we visited niagara falls which is completely mesmerising. you can get surprisingly close to where the falls roll over the edge - that's where the photo above is from.

i have added a set of holiday photos to flickr. there are quite a few of them be warned - canada 2023. canada is a beautiful country. i hope i'll find space to blog a few thoughts in the next week or so. but first things first - photos!

i also seem to be making a habit of going to a gig the day i get back from n america (well that's two in a row) and you always fly overnight so i hope i stay awake for the young fathers tonight!

the photo title come to the edge is one i used recently in a team day - it's taken from a 1 giant leap track of that name. the opening words are

Come to the edge we said and they said ‘no it’s too high'
Come to the edge we said and they said ‘no we will fall’
Come to the edge we said and they very reluctantly came
And we pushed and they flew