Ambient Wonder Review - our 'threats'/challenges

To continue on from the last three posts, here are the thoughts we wrote down on Sunday evening when we reviewed where we're up to.

Ambient Wonder's 'threats/challenges':

• size of core group and attendees - difficult to keep motivation/enthusiasm?
• could potentially become a clique
• could get stuck in a rut / be shallow
• lose initial enthusiasm for authenticity / freedom / creativity
• being limited by venue / time
• Becoming mainstream / too sensitive to pleasing audience / church leaders??
• losing Christ focus
• Not being as accepting/open as we hope to
• Accessibility
• Assume beginners know steps - need to learn to introduce beginners

Any more? Thoughts on these?

Ambient Wonder Review - our opportunities

To continue on from the last two posts, here are the thoughts we wrote down on Sunday evening when we reviewed where we're up to.

Ambient Wonder's opportunities:

• Become known as LGBT friendly?
• Increase our profile
• We have the freedom to define ourselves in new ways
• potential for interim small cells, online thoughts for the week / month
• Use the facebook page and website to share more ideas / experiences
• reach out to likeminded people in other churches
• explore the past - "period' events
• reaching out to people who are spiritual, with a sense of Christ-consciousness, but not Christian
• new venues
• grow greater community

Any more? Any thoughts on these?

Ambient Wonder Review - our weaknesses

To continue on from the last post, here are the thoughts we wrote down on Sunday evening when we reviewed where we're up to.

Ambient Wonder's weaknesses:

• event-focussed
• vague network rather than a 'community'
• irregluar meetings - can be disjointed
• hard to contribute to an event if you miss the planning meeting, not as open as it's supposed to be to take on a role after the planning evening
• lack of organisers
• lack of committed participants
• Insufficient time in planning meetings to organise an event
• people feel they don't need to commit to attending regularly
• lack of continuity between events
• Not coming from a christian background and not knowing the New Testament can make it difficult to contribute
• If you don't know how it works you can feel lost and stranded from planning to event.

Any more? Thoughts on these?

Ambient Wonder Review - our strengths

After our get-together at the Workshop cafe bar on Sunday evening, I wanted to share the remarks and comments we wrote down when we were reviewing where we are as a community, so that we can ponder some more and interact with them further, in the comments below the posts and also on the facebook page.

We looked at our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats - I know, not hugely original but it was the end of a long week! I'll posts the strengths in this post, and the other 3 areas in separate posts. That way we can discuss the different areas without getting too tangled up - well, that's the theory anyway! Please chip in with thoughts.

Ambient Wonder's strengths:

• open-mindedness, not closed
• tolerance, inclusive
• coming from unusual tangents and different perspectives
• creativity
• many people's ideas being pooled, co-creative
• not afraid of technology
• variety, interesting
• addresses unusual topics
• stimulating, thought-provoking
• social, friendly
• values individual contributions, use of artistic gifts
• free - not constrained by preconceptions
• spontaneous

Any more? Any thoughts on these?

Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet...

Browsing around the Guardian website a few days ago, I found a contribution from David Bowie in which he lists the things he's listening to on his iPod. Being the good fan of the Thin White Duke that I am, I plugged the playlist into Spotify and had a listen to his selection. All very interesting, but the thing that really grabbed me was the final track - Gavin Bryars' "Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet".

For those of you who don't have Spotify (sorry guys - I don't have any invites), let me talk you through this track. It's basically a recording of a tramp singing a few lines from the song of the title, looped over and over for the duration... which is 25 minutes. He starts out unaccompanied, and by the time we reach the end of the song, he is accompanied by a full orchestra. This accompaniment, of course builds with beautiful subtlety over the course of the piece, so at times we barely notice it building.

The effect is something quite hypnotic - soothing, and yet a little frustrating. And when I gave it enough time, I found it quite meditative. Here's an excerpt from the rationale, from the composer's website:

"... I left the tape copying, with the door open, while I went to have a cup of coffee. When I came back I found the normally lively room unnaturally subdued. People were moving about much more slowly than usual and a few were sitting alone, quietly weeping."

Inevitably, this track has been around for years, without ever entering my field of awareness. But now it has, I can't shake it. Apparently, the the reason it's only (!) 25 minutes long is simply due to the limitations of tape... there's an hour long version that was recorded in the 90s with Tom Waits joining in the singing towards the end! I'm trying to get my hands on a copy...

Engaging with young people...

When I was, myself, a young person, I spent a lot of time fretting about how to 'Engage' with young people. How to make the gospel 'Relevant' and 'Accessible' and appeal to a 'Secular' generation. I expended a not inconsiderable amount of time developing youth services and youth clubs and youth bible studies. It often felt like heaving a snowball at a warm, teflon-covered piece of wall.

I now work in a school, where we occasionally try to develop events and activities for young people - not in a Christian way, just in a kind of social responsibility way. But the buzzwords are still 'inclusion' and 'outreach' and 'relevance'. And we still often meet with only a limited amount of success. Last year, we provided a free DJ workshop, and encouraged 14/15/16 year old boys to come and have a go at mixing and scratching under the experienced eye of a professional DJ. Three Students turned up. I concluded that sometimes, the snow just won't stick.

So, I was uncertain of what the reaction would be when my colleague decided to host a semi-religious candle-lighting ceremony during the lunch break of a busy last day before half term. She had spotted that a number of students had recently had bereavements, and wanted to do something to acknowledge them. I was dubious of how much interest there would be, but went along to 'show my support'...

I needn't have worried. Students crammed into the mobile classroom to have an opportunity to light a candle in memory of someone, and listen to a short poem and Bible verse. There were tears, and a genuine sense of community and spirituality. It was deeply moving, and clearly quite valuable for most of those involved. I found myself standing there, not just 'showing my support', but taking part in, and benefiting from the short ceremony.

'Secular Generation'? Young people are deeply aware of things of the spirit. Often deeply in need of greater engagement with things of God. We should not be trying to drag them in. We should be meeting their needs. That's how we show our support.

Reverse Contextualisation

I was interested by a comment someone made today about Ambientwonder. We'd been at a Diocese run event today where we were asked to give a taster of one of our events. In itself a bit surreal given that our events are a bit like noticing the tip of an iceberg of all that goes behind it - relationships, how we create stuff, our values.

The comment I referred to was along the lines of AmbientWonder is trying to contextualise faith into a contemporary culture with no experience of church or the Christian Story. Our event today was trying to take our outworking of that into a place whose only experience is of formally expressed Christianity.

So how do you translate backwards without it having the same effect as putting a phrase into one of those internet translation sites, then doing it again and seeing how different the final phrase is from the one you first put in!

I suppose another question is does it matter? I think it does. It's hard to have a dialogue from two positions without something in common. The person doing differently has the capacity to imagine and articulate, perhaps, both positions. And why is a dialogue important? I think dialogue enriches both perspectives. I've been reflecting on this post from Pete Rollins which gives a clue to where I'm coming from.

The Poppy - A weed in all it's Glory

Poem from tonights Remembrance event

I am a bastard.
The illegitimate son of your battlefields churn.
I am a displaced vagrant
Whose home is anywhere but nowhere
A roadside Verge, a cornfields garland.

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row

I am a Lord
Who ties a million Afgahan farmers to their fields.
Am I religion?
The peoples opiate; dulling, stilling, numbing,
Binding and escaping, luring away from freedoms grasp.

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row
That mark our place and in the sky
The Larks, still bravely singing, fly

I am a warriors head
Bloody, Bowed with glory crowned.
I am the offering to death, a symbol
Of forgetfulness to aid you
In your selective remembrance fest.

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row
That mark our place and in the sky
The Larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below
We are the dead.

I am your lovers kiss,
Your loyalty, faithfulness, inspiration missed.
I am your offering O Goddess
Demeter of fertility and Diana of the hunt.
Give me your life, your prize and death.

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row
That mark our place and in the sky
The Larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below
We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow
Loved and were loved and now we lie.

I am your eternal sleep
Embossed upon your aged churches seat.
I am your temporary rest
Forget, remember, catch your breath.
Numb or still I am Christ your promise kept.

We are the dead and shall not sleep though poppies grow.

c Paul Cracknell 2009, after John Mcrae

Remebrance and the importance of choice

I'm enjoying preparing for our Remembrance event on Sunday evening. I'm doing the response stations and feel drawn to offering people a chance to connect with organisations working for peace (including the white poppy people) but also to undertake a ritual for repentance of the church's involvement in encouraging people, well boys actually, to join up during, in particular, the first world war.

I'm very aware that this is a personal response and is quite controversial but I think its ok to offer it as a station as people have a choice whether to engage with it - there will be other ways to respond. I hope people see that when they join in - otherwise we could be in for a stormy ride after the event!

So Guy in a Skeleton Costume...

...Comes up to a Guy, in a Superman Suit...Runs Through Him with a Broadsword!

So say the Mountain Goats - one of my favourite bands in all of existence. They are heading over from the North Carolina to our wet and windy shores for only 2 gigs in October. And I'm going! I'm gloating here... you may not realise this, if you haven't yet discovered them, but this is a gloat.

But, true to the spirit of the blog, there is a spiritual angle to this. The Mountain Goats' new album is called "The Life of the World to Come." Sound familiar? That's it there, at the end of the Nicene Creed. But not content with leaving it as a subtext, John Darnielle has namede very song on the album simply with a Bible reference. No this is not some hipster gesture - the songs are woven with meanings of the passages.

If you want to know more, then there is an amazing interview with the lead singer on pitchfork. In it, he's incredibly candid about his relationship with Church and faith, saying "Seriously, I get weak in the knees when we go into the Apostles' Creed. I think it's the greatest thing." Well worth a read.

In the meantime, if you haven't yet heard the Mountain Goats, fire up Spotify, or whatever it is you use to listen to music, get hold of Tallahassee, The Sunset Tree or... well, anything by The Mountain Goats and listen to it. Then, when you're finished, listen to it again - it usually takes a little investment to get the most out of their music.

Apparently, this album has leaked onto the net already... I have been well-behaved and chosen not to listen to it. But by its very existence, it may have found its way to the top of my list of scripturally inspired secular albums. Up there with Plague Songs and... well... I guess Slow Train Coming at a push. Anyone got any better suggestions? Comments please!

Wonder against Wonder

So, some of you (especially those of you who were at Greenbelt) may be interested to see this article on Apprising Ministries about the whole festival. It's critical of the inclusivity demonstrated by the various groups representing at #GB09, mostly those that are "LGBT friendly", but also the "ecumenical and... counter-reformation" ideas knocking round (I'm sure there were people who complained about Martin Luther on the grounds that he was 'counter-papal').

And, about halfway down the page, what's that? The blurb about Ambient Wonder, which I wrote with my own fair keyboard. Tempted though I am to write something scathing/witty/deconstructive as a response, my "inclusive Christianity" (I often worry what an 'exclusive Christianity' would look like) leaves me inclined to consider the writers of 'Apprising Ministries' my brothers and sisters in Christ... and bickering within the body of Christ is rarely helpful.

In fact, this whole scenario has caused me to reflect. It's made me consider the power of one voice. In the past, the preacher had Authority. And he found his authority in Learning, or Tradition, or his particular interpretation of Scripture. Before the reformation, there was only one Authority on earth, and that was the Roman Catholic Church (well, for most British folk anyway).

Imagine you're a 17th century guy. You've got a family, and a plot of land to work, and some of those stupid trousers that seemed to make sense back then. One day you're told that you're no longer Catholic, but that your faith will be more or less unchanged in all other respects. You'll probably go 'oh, alright', and carry on much as before. Then, a few years later, the head of state/church decides to flirt with some protestant theology. I say 'flirt'... you'll be killed if you don't go along with it... So you go along with it - after all, what they're saying kind of makes sense, and you've never been given a chance to read the Bible for yourself anyway (you can't readin English, let alone latin).

And then, a few years after that, a new monarch decides that, no, we're climbing back up the candle to Anglo-Catholicism again, and that anything else is punishable by burning... you're going to be getting a bit fed up with this idea of one person claiming to have 'authority', and wonder if your own views aren't just as valid. That's probably why so many denominations started springing up.

Fast forward to now, and I express some ideas on a website. Ideas that I may not have held a few years ago, and almost certainly will be a bit embarrassed by in a decade's time. Meanwhile, thousands of other bloggers express other views in a similar manner. Some of them disagree with me. It's not that I don't believe what I say - I believe it wholeheartedly, passionately, and honestly. But I accept that I'm on a journey, and one that has taken me places I never expected in the past, and one that contains a whole bunch of unknown in the future. Isn't that exciting?

So when another website openly criticises words that I've written (words that were, admittedly, a little theologically flimsy... but deliberately referred to 'Meditation' 'Sprituality' and 'Daily Lives' within the context of Christianity), it's not so much that they're criticising my beliefs (criticise away!); it's more that it's flattering it's that they deem them significant enough to criticise at all... as if someone, somewhere is treating the words I say with Authority. But they'd be wrong. I have no more authority than the next blogger. Only One Person wields complete authority. I'm just trying to get a little closer to Him.