sustain:if:able kiwi

Trinity worship stations

Creationary: a space to be creative with the lectionary (in this case, visual images on themes of pilgrimage). For more resources go here.

On the weekend, I am leading some worship for a group of church leaders in the South East of the State. It is Trinity Sunday and as I reflected on the lectionary readings, and in particular Isaiah 6:1-8, a number of stations seemed to suggest themselves – ways to confess, to intercede, to respond, to commune.

Introduction:
There are many ways to engage the Word. Around the room are a number of stations. You can stay with one. Or you can move. After about 20 minutes a bell will ring. We will gather. If time, there will be space for a few people to share in insight that emerged from engaging the Word around stations. We will then move into communion together.

Confession and absolution station: Coal station
One way to respond to Isaiah 6 is to take time to examine “our lips.” In this Bible passage, the coal becomes a symbol of forgiveness that follows confession.

Take some time to reflect. In what ways have you been a “person of unclean lips”? In what ways do you “live among a people of unclean lips”?

Silently confession any areas of uncleanness that come to mind. Do this by touching the coal to your lips. It might be appropriate to touch your lips more than once.

Please take a coal from the bag and once you have finished, place your coal in the basin provided.

As you end your time at this station recalling the words from Isaiah: “Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.”

Mapping station: “Here I am, Send me.” But where?
Take some time to look at the map. It is laid out, using stones, in the shape of South-Eastern South Australia. Take time to see if there is a place that God puts on your heart. You might like to light a taper and place it on the map in a place that you would like to pray for.

Eating station: “touched my mouth.”
Make yourself a savory snack.

Now enjoy eating your snack. As you do, reflect on the following. The three elements – crackers, cheese, gherkin – invite us to think about the three persons of the Trinity.

What happens if one is left out? What does each distinctive “person” add to our faith? What does each person and the faith of our church?

If you want, make yourself another. And keep tasting, reflecting …. This weekend we have focused on mission, on our taste in the community.

What might your church taste like to those in your community? As a result of this weekend, are there any different flavours you want to add into your church “taste”?

Drawing station: “And I said” What are you “saying”?
This weekend we have asked: What is mission? What does it mean for my church? Isaiah asks us how we will respond. He asks himself the question: “And I said” …..

As a result of this weekend, what do you want to say?

Take some liquid chalk. Write a word or phrase that might capture what you want to say.

(by writing it on the window. The chalk does come off. Promise!)

Take a second colour and write a word or phrase you want to pray that your church might start to say?

Colouring station:
Colour in the icon. Simply enjoy it. As you do ask God to speak to you through the activity.

when the day of Pentecost came: the visual in worship

When the day of Pentecost came. Mark A Hewitt, Pastel & pen. 26 May 2012. (Mark provides a weekly visual for worship here).

the haiku theology of Rowan Williams

For a while last year, I tried a spiritual practice, of making a 1 sentence prayer from my first waking experiences. It was an attempt to pay attention to God in the everyday, to (try and) keep me centred in simple places. Well, I am a babe, compared these six haiku offered by Archbishop Rowan Williams.

A million arrows, I
the target, where the lines meet
and are knotted

Inside, hollowness; what is
comes to me as a blow, but not
a wound

Not only servicing the lungs, the air
is woven, full
of needles

The first task: to find
a frontier. I am not,
after all, everything.

The strip of red flesh
lies still, absorbs, silent; speaks
to all the body

Each door from the room says,
this is not all. Your hands will find
in the dark

The six haiku are in Sense Making Faith. Body Spirit Journey (which I’ve reviewed here). The following explanation is provided.

“To guide our thoughts and ideas we asked the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, if he would offer us a creative meditation for each of the chapters on the senses. He has responded by sending us six haiku. A haiku is a poem, based on an ancient Japanese tradition of poetry, which is set out in 17 syllables in the space of three lines. The economy of each poem means that each word has layers of meaning and asks the reader to engage deeply and imaginatively with the world it invokes.”

It is one type of charism to write dense theology crowded with footnotes. It takes a rare gift to pen theology in 17 syllables. My favourites are the last three, the way the senses push us into new spaces, new encounters, new experiences.

Sense making faith: taste

Creationary: a space to be creative with the lectionary (in this case, visual images on themes of pilgrimage). For more resources go here.

This is superb. The power of the mouth, the potential of taste. That sense of intimacy, the way the mouth functions as useful, a barrier, sensual.

It would be fabulous loop for use during communion. Or for use during the “taste” session when teaching Sense Making faith.

icons as spiritual practise

Last year, as a thank you gift for their ministry here in Adelaide, I gave John and Olive Drane an icon I had “written.” They now want to use it as a resource, both in worship and in a class they are running on worship later this year. So they asked if I might shoot a “homemade” video, reflecting on the spirituality of icons.

I thought I’d also place it on the blog, in case any of my readers are interested – why do I “write” icons? what is a “pioneer” icon? how do icon’s work as theology and for spirituality? how to craft an icon?

A short personal reflection on the icon as spiritual practise.

Two most helpful books in getting me started as an icon “writer”:

And for those who can’t access the video, here are my notes in preparation to speak (more…)

the J(esus)POD on Palm Sunday

So if Jesus were entering Jerusalem today, what songs would be on rotate on his ipod? (4 other Palm Sunday prayer stations are here). 

Here are the contributions so far from the twitter-verse and facebook-verse.

• U2 – City of blinding lights, Yahweh, New York, Angel of Harlem, Elevation
• Jefferson Starship – We Built This City
• Diana Ross and the Supremes – Stop in the name of love
• Lou Reed – Walk on the wild side
• Elvis Costello – What’s So Funny About Peace, Love, & Understanding
• Laura Marling – All My Rage
• Arcade Fire – Abrahams Daughter
• Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues
• Ben Harper – Pictures of Jesus

creative palm sunday worship stations

Creationary: a space to be creative with the lectionary (in this case, visual images on themes of pilgrimage). For more resources go here.

Chapel in Palm Sunday week – an invitation to enter a week of activity

(Update: This resource was further developed here – the J(Pod) shuffle on Palm Sunday – and here – Palm Sunday as mission.)

Rad-Adalaide station
Take an Adelaide road map. Draw on the map the route of your most recent “entry into the city.” Draw your feelings as you drove/trained/bussed/biked? Mark with a cross where you thought you were most likely to find Jesus. Reflect on whether your expectations were met and if it matters?

iPOD station
So if Jesus were entering Jerusalem today, what songs would be on rotate on his ipod? List the top 5.

Make palm crosses
Instructions have been provided. As you fold pray for people you know, people who are being “creased” by life.

Colouring station
Colour in the icon. Simply enjoy it. As you do ask God to speak to you through the activity.

Walking on the pavement station
Take some time to wander outside. In this Palm Sunday week, please walk only on concrete footpaths. As you do, silently pray for people who have walked before, and who are walking behind you. What might it mean for you to encounter the Christ in them?

At 12.22, a bell will ring. We will gather, to share communion on the Tuesday/to share what we experienced on the Wednesday.

Sending prayer
Jesus, when you rode into Jerusalem
the people waved palms
with shouts of acclamation
Grant that when the shouting dies
we may still walk beside you even to a cross …

creationary: Keith Haring’s Life of Christ and John 3:16

I’ve been sitting with Keith Haring’s Life of Christ all week, alongside the lectionary text for Sunday (John 3:16), reflecting on the questions that arise for me.

I’ve used it for chapel on Tuesday, as a call to worship (As we look at the figures, what posture best describes how we’re feeling? ). And on chapel on Wednesday as an aid to prayer (What prayer would I make in response to the “Life of Christ”? Who do I want to place in the painting, in the arms of the “Life of Christ”?)

Updated with photo: The Haring image projected. People were invited to prayer using written words rather than verbal words, by writing on post-it notes and sticking them to the screen on which was projected the Haring image. It was lovely to see people walking into the projection, finding themselves caught within the life of Christ.

And I might well conclude the two services I’m preaching at on Sunday with “What posture does the “Life of Christ” calling from me?”, along with the following video:

A creationary: a space to be creative with the lectionary. For more resources go here.

Jesus deck in chapel worship

I used the Jesus Deck in worship at College Chapel today. As it always does, for some people, the card they chose speaks to them quite profoundly and the ensuring conversations are rich, full of God entwining with a person’s story.

For those who not aware of the Jesus Deck, it is a set of cards originally designed as a Christian education tool in the 1970’s. The designs are quite dated, which in themselves becomes part of their charm. In recent years, some Christians realised that for many people outside the church the reading of tarot cards has enormous interest. The Jesus Deck offers a point of connection, an opportunity to dialogue, a starting point around the Biblical story for conversation and exploration. (For more on the use of the Jesus deck, go here or here, or buy the book Beyond Prediction: The Tarot and Your Spirituality.)

The Jesus Deck is quite hard to get (I got mine a few years ago via the internet) and a group are trying to organise a reprint. If you’d like to be part of that, contact them on jesusdeckinfo at gmail dot com.

Anyhow, back to chapel. As the lectionary text for this Sunday was John 3:16, I was looking for a way to engage people with the whole of the Jesus story. The Jesus deck, with its rich range of examples, was perfect. As people entered, I invited them to take a card, which they sat with as the worship began. During the worship, I invited them to reflect on the card. As we came to communion, I invited them to lay their card on the communion table. Thus as we “remembered” the life of Jesus around bread and wine, we also had this visual reminder, these cards scattered on the communion table.

And, as we finished, some folk naturally just stayed standing around the communion table, sharing their card and how it connected with their life story.

For another example of using the Jesus Deck in worship, see here.

City soul as invitations to community

This is fabulous. A project in Sheffield UK, which invites folk to participate in mapping the spirit of their city. An empty warehouse, a collective of artists and the invitation for April, May and June,

For these three months we will be using a large open plan space to build a model of Sheffield. Anybody can come to make a building to include in the city – not only artists but also passers by, community groups, schools and businesses are all welcome to come and create.

Choose a building or a part of the city that holds significance for you, that is part of your story, and make it in as simple or elaborate way that you like (we have plenty of art materials to use) then put it in place along with everyone else’s creation. In this way the piece of art will grow and evolve with our different stories just as the city itself has. The model city will develop in unpredictable ways as we interact with each other and offer our unique contributions and we will record that exciting process on our website.

I love the mix of creativity, open-endedness, participation and invitation to consider spirit. One of my hopes as the incoming Principal at Uniting College is to create art projects over a semester, a different theme and a different medium each semester, which can create engagement, remind us that we are humans as well as heads, and be a way of building community.

This type of thing sparks creativity around these processes.

Update: Olive Fleming Drane commented, asking for more ideas regarding campus community formation. Well, there is another in Ethnography As A Pastoral Practice: An Introduction which describes a Diversity quilt project. A table was set up and individuals invited to design a square with their name. Creative resources were supplied. Some students were doing a Art Practicuum and their “assignment” (working with an artist) was to assemble the quilt and hang it publicly. It seems participatory, communal, creative and above all, do-able ie it is not an idea but a description of an actual project at Wesley Theological Seminary, US.

Any other ideas that people have experienced?

why church?

Was great to listen to John Swinton, Professor of Practical Theology from Aberdeen University, speak at the Uniting Church of South Australia Synod today. Back in 2003, I wrote a journal article on his research method, along with John Drane’s: “Doing practical research downunder: a methodological reflection on recent trends in Aberdonian practical theology,” Contact 142, 1 (2003): 2-21. (I never realised it actually got published until 2007, when I met a Anglican ordinand from the UK, who helped me track down an actual copy.)

Then in September last year, I connected with John again, at the Ecclesiology and Ethnography conference in Durham.

Today John spoke on health, healing and community and it was wonderful. Here’s one (of many memorable) quote:

The task of the church is not world transformation but signalling kingdom through small gestures. John Swinton

As in this, colour and creativity in concrete places?

theology needs art: Adelaide Fringe Festival floor talk

Here is the floor talk I gave to launch the Adelaide College of Divinity bi-annual art exhibition.

Over the recent summer holidays, I was fortunate to be able to spend some time visiting friends in New Zealand. As part of our time together, they took me to the Brick Bay Sculpture Trail, which lies about an hour north of Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city.

The Brick Bay Sculpture Trail is part of the Brick Bay Winery, although owned by a separate, not-for profit arts trust. In 1986, the owners, Richard and Christine Didsbury, had brought the land.

While the land had previously been overfarmed, they had a personal passion for the environment and began a systematic project of restoration. Trees were replanting. Native bush was protected. Water was carefully damned and channelled.

Which means that all of the art in the Brick Bay Sculpture Trail, is outdoors. So to experience the art requires about an hour of your time, and about a 2 km walk. You climb through native bush and walk past gently meandering lakes.

In other words, the backdrop is not walls, but trees and landscape. The roof is the sky and the land and environment speak. Which allows a fantastic art experience – glass of wine, time to wander, space to contemplate and discovery, all outdoors, all surrounded by birdsong, all open to random encounters with native wood pigeons and tui.

The 43 artpieces displayed in the Brick Bay Sculpture Trail are from some of New Zealand’s most well known sculpturers.

For example, sculpture 17 – Lucy Bucknall’s Awaiting Transportation. It references immigration, a proud couple, dressed their best, awaiting transport on their next part of their journey to a strange land. It says so much about the hopes and dreams of all migrants.

Or sculpture 25 – Jim Wheeler’s Regeneration. A revered native bush, the Puriri, sprouts from a distinctively New Zealand fence post. It says something about the processes of settler colonisation, and about the potential for rebirth, of nature’s ability to regenerate and reemerge.

Or Sculpture 31 – Graham Bennett’s Position Fixing. A wire fence, it captures the linkages – links between people, links between place – that give shape to our identity. Running along the top of fence are a line of towers and at the top of each tower is a boat, each boat pointed toward a Pacific Island, in honour of those who first sailed to New Zealand. The art explores boundaries and journeys.

Each sculpture is profoundly shaped by it’s context; Lucy Bucknall’s Awaiting, the migrant couple waiting to board a boat, is playfully positioned by a small stream of water. Jim Wheeler’s Regeneration almost hidden in a thicket of regenerated native bush. Graham Bennett’s Position Fixing standing proudly atop a hill and it serves to mark a boundary between native bush on one side and a (imported) vineyard on the other.

I’ve taken the liberty of taking quite some time to describe this, because I want it to serve as contrast with some of my experiences of theology.

You see, in 2009, I was part of an academic theology conference that explored the theme of land. I did a theological paper that engaged with many of the sculptures – that explored Jacob in the Old Testament as a migrant, as crossing boundaries, and the impact of that on the indigenous peoples of the land.

In 2011, the conference became a book. The Gospel and the Land of Promise: Christian Approaches to the Land of the Bible. In which my paper appeared and it was a bit of a personal highlight from last year.

But walking the Brick Bay Sculpture trail, sitting on the grass, looking at Graham Bennett’s Position fixing, I began to wonder what sort of conference, what sort of book, and what sort of theology might have been possible if our theological work on land had actually engaged with art of the land.

If instead of sitting in a sterile lecture room, we’d been expected to take regular walks been lectures through this art trail. If instead of a lecture spent looking a data projector, we’d had a lecture looking at the art, which was exploring so many of the same themes. If artists like Lucy Bucknall, Jim Wheeler and Graham Bennett had been our dialogue and conversation partners, rather than simply other theologians.

In other words, over the summer I was reminded again of how much theology needs art. (The question of whether art needs theology is best addressed by an artist?)

Theology needs art, first because art celebrates metaphor more than careful footnote. Both are important. But a theological focus on the footnote alone, on the careful analysis, on the minute detail, needs to be reminded of the importance of metaphor, the need for making connections, for looking for a bigger weave.

Theology needs art, second because art reminds us we are bodies and not just heads. The first thing theology tends to do is look for a library. But we are more than minds, waiting to be stuffed full of information. We are also bodies, who need to walk and look and be moved by our emotions. That, to quote one New York art critic, there are times when “words fail us; the glossary dissolves, there are no more terms that really work.”

Theology needs art, third, because art invites us to see. Richard Kearney, who is Charles B. Seelig Chair of Philosophy at Boston College has written over 460 pages on the place of art in human history (The Wake of Imagination). He concludes by arguing desperately, passionately, for the need to see in our world today. He argues that we need two types of seeing.

First an ethical seeing, we need things – words and images- that make us aware of the other, of the voiceless, the missing, the unheard the overlooked. An ethical seeing.

Second a creative seeing, we need the invitation to the invention and re-invention of ourselves, others, our worlds. A creative seeing that invites us to be more than what we currently are. To quote Christian Seerveld, we “need an understanding of playfulness if we are going to take sanctification by the Holy Spirit seriously.”

Which is why I’m delighted that every two years the Adelaide College of Divinity is part of the Adelaide Fringe through facilitating an art exhibition. This year, but also back in our history.

And why I thank each artist. And Stephen Downs and his team for the work they put in behind the scenes to make this event possible.

Because theology needs art. First, to remind us of metaphor as well as footnote. Second, to help us recall that we are bodies and not just head. Third, to invite us to see, ethically and creatively.

And fourthly, and finally, because it makes our lives, this space, a whole lot richer. I watched on Tuesday as folk came into the Chapel of Reconciliation for a weekly chapel service. And how, rather than take their seats, they gasped in wonder, and proceeded to wander around the art. To point. To talk. To ponder. And suddenly our lives, our chapel, this space, was a whole lot richer.

Because theology needs art.

writing on windows

Great chapel today, creatively led by Sarah Agnew and Michelle Cook. The adoration station invited us to write words of thanks. On the window!

Yep. Liquid chalk.

An idea that deserves a mention in the creationary: a space to be creative with the lectionary (in this case, visual images on themes of pilgrimage). For more resources go here.

Full service here.

transition pack: an everyday spiritual resource

Moving house isn’t easy. There’s the hard work of moving, the disruption of routines and patterns, the things that are misplaced. But it’s also fun, a chance to change a room, to explore new places, to find new things.

We’re in the process of moving, which involves not just a move, but a lot of work to get the new location liveable.

To help our kids in the move, on Saturday we gave them both a “transition pack.” It was a brown paper bag, with the name on the outside. And inside was some things that might make the move more fun.

• their very own paint brush, to be part of painting their own room,
• their very own paint roller, brand new for their room
• colour charts for the choosing of colours
• flowers seeds for their patch of flower garden
• vegetable seeds for their patch of vegetable garden
• a creative project idea.

It was a fun moment, which helped them to thing about some of the enjoyable parts of moving. And it was interesting to note how the “transition packs” got immediately packed in the car, and taken over to be put into use.

A simple idea, but one that seemed helpful.

(For more examples of “transition packs” and their use in church ministry, see here.)