Eternal Echoes

Creativity, play, and pain....

I have just arrived home from Summer School with ERMC at St Gabriel's conference centre, Ditchingham. We have spent the week engaging with Tim Gorringe's book, " Furthering Humanity, discussing how we can see and relate to and also reveal God through film, literature, art and music and more....

Part of that engagement involved participating in practical workshops on music, art and creative writing, it was an amazing relief after days of fairly intense lectures to paint, draw, write and sing. God's image is truly within each one, his creative power flows forth when we allow it space and time to "play" through us.

Play is an evocative word, it seems to me that we too easily become serious that we forget to play, we forget what it is to respond in childlike wonder to the world around us, even our creativity can become serious as we strive all the time to be the best. So I am challenged by the idea that God might want to "play" through me, her gentle spirit smiling my dry soul into life....

...and so I have stopped to consider those things that give me delight, things like plunging into a pool of cool water, dancing , drawing with chalk pastels and blending the colours to produce something beautiful, watching the clouds roll across the sky, and taking time to enjoy and drink in a beautiful sunset.

When I look at the amazing diversity in the world around me I am more and more convinced that God delights in her/his creation, animals and birds, trees, plants, landscapes all speak of delight and draw us to wonder....

... and yet we should be challenged for this world also contains sorrow and pain, death and disease, war and famine...we need to have eyes to see both, to respond to both, to inhabit the gap and call forth hope...

Our community offering from this morning will go to Darfur, for we must be conscious that art, music and literature although worth engaging with are truly available to a privileged few...

Delight and prayer, suffering and prayer....Lord we pray "Your kingdom come".

These are the closing responses to one of the Summer School acts of worship:

Look at your hands; see the touch and the tenderness

GOD’S OWN FOR THE WORLD

Look at your feet; see the path and the direction

GODS OWN FOR THE WORLD

Look at your heart; see the fire and the love

GOD’S OWN FOR THE WORLD

Look at the cross

See God’s Son and our Saviour

GOD’S OWN FOR THE WORLD

This is God’s world

WE WILL SERVE GOD IN IT.

AMEN

Cultural Friday 5

I have spent the week at Summer School studying the Gospel and Western culture, we have looked at art, literature, music, film and popular culture in their myriad expressions. With that in mind I bring you the cultural Friday 5.

Name a

I am playing quickly before heading off to another lecture....

1. Book- Douglas Copland's " Life After God"

2. Piece of music; Bach's Cell Concertos- esp. No 6, and Fix You by Cold play

3. Work of art- I love the work of Farid De La Osa especially this:

4. Film: The Shawshank Redemption

5. Unusual engagement with popular;ar culture: The work of Banksy- powerful when you bump into it unexpectedly!

That have helped/ challenged you on your spiritual journey.

Bonus: Is engagement essential to your Christian faith, how and why? Yes it is essential to think through what the Christian faith has to say to the culture, and how the culture challenges my theology is equally important!!!

A prayer for the young women of the world

Father God, thank you for all the young women in the world. Give them dreams that are bigger than themselves--so they will have to trust you to make their dream come true. Give them a will and heart to be all you created them to be. Help them to work hard and be successful.

Enable them to be generous to those who are less fortunate. Give them hearts full of love and compassion.

Give them the strength to say "no" to activities that they would later be remorseful about--that they would do what is right for them and for the world around them. Help them to be kind to others.

Protect them from people who would harm them physically, emotionally and mentally.

Let them know that allowing You to direct their way is the smartest thing they can do. In Jesus wonderful and powerful name. Amen

Smile please

Jon spotted these in Melbourne and felt there should be more around the world!

I wonder what other signs we could invent?

Hug zones/ laughter zones etc.....

Praise

I praise you because you are artist and scientist in one. When I am somewhat fearful of your power, your ability to work miracles with a set-square, I hear you murmuring to yourself in a notation Beethoven dreamed of but never achieved. You run off your scales of rain water and sea water, play the chords of the morning and evening light, sculpture with shadow, join together leaf by leaf, when spring comes, the stanzas of an immense poem. You speak all languages and none, answering our most complex prayers with the simplicity of a flower, confronting us, when we would domesticate you to our uses, with the rioting viruses under our lens. R.S. Thomas

Womens voices/ The Ooze...

Recently this story of mine was published on the Ooze, it relates the story of the woman anointing Jesus feet in Luke 7 from the woman's perspective. I believe we need to recapture womens voices, to hear them through the text, to be challenged by them, and changed by them...

Two more accounts will be published on "The Ooze soon;

Martha's story on the 7th September

and Sarah's story on the 21st September

Out of interest lovely readers, how important do you believe it is for us to hear the womens voices?

Am I setting off on a flight of fancy, or hearing the voices through the text? ( or a bit of both?)

Any suggestions for my next spot of listening? ( I've been pondering Ruth, or maybe Lydia.)

We want to hear the sounds of our foremothers voices,

We want to listen to our grandmothers tales

We want to speak the names of our sisters who came before us

We need to hear their stories

we need to hear their voices

to hear and know who we are... " - Nicola Slee, Praying like a Woman

RULES FOR EATING CHOCOLATE and more...

• If you've got melted chocolate all over your hands, you're eating it too slowly.
• Chocolate covered raisins, cherries, orange slices & strawberries all count as fruit, so eat as many as you want.
• The problem: How to get 2 pounds of chocolate home from the store in a hot car.
  The solution: Eat it in the parking lot.
• Diet tip: Eat a chocolate bar before each meal. It'll take the edge off your appetite and you'll eat less.
• If calories are an issue, store your chocolate on top of the fridge.
• Calories are afraid of heights, and they will jump out of the chocolate to protect themselves.
• If I eat equal amounts of dark chocolate and white chocolate, is that a balanced diet?
  Don't they actually counteract each other?
• Money talks. Chocolate sings.
• Chocolate has many preservatives. Preservatives make you look younger.
• Put "eat chocolate" at the top of your list of things to do today. That way, at least you'll get one thing done.
• A nice box of chocolates can provide your total daily intake of calories in one place. Isn't that handy?
• If you can't eat all your chocolate, it will keep in the freezer. But if you can't eat all your chocolate, what's wrong with you?

---

CALORIE BURNING ACTIVITIES

Jumping to conclusions . . . . . . 100

Swallowing your pride. . . . .... .. .50

Passing the buck . . . . . . . ... . .150

Pushing your luck. . . . . . . . . ... 250

Wading through paperwork .. . .. 300

Jumping on the bandwagon .. . .. 200

Balancing the books. . . . . . .. .....25

Running around in circles. .. . . .. 350

Climbing the ladder of success . 750

Adding fuel to the fire. . . . . . . ...160

Wrapping it up at the day's end. . .12

To which you may want to add your own favorite activities, including:

Opening a can of worms . . . ... .. .50

Putting your foot in your mouth. . 300

Starting the ball rolling. . . . . . .......90

Going over the edge. . . . . . . . ... ...25

Picking up the pieces after. . . ......350

Counting eggs before they hatch.. . . 6

Calling it quits . . . . . . . . . . . ......... 2

Friday Five: Word Association, Redux

This one is patterned off an old Friday Five written by Songbird, our Friday Five Creator Emerita:

Below you will find five words. Tell us the first thing you think of on reading each one. Your response might be simply another word, or it might be a sentence, a poem or a story.

1. vineyard- I am the vine and you are the branches- Jesus wonderful picture of God being the gardener and tending his vines

2. root- first word that came was branch- guess I'm still thinking along the same lines- those and the wonderful words from Isaiah about being a planting of the Lord for the display of His splendour!

3. rescue-helicopter, mad perhaps but my son Jon was airlifted to safety 5 years ago, we lived in the back of beyond and he developed sudden onset diabetes, the helicopter saved his life!

4. perseverance- Hebrews 10:39 But we're not quitters who lose out. Oh, no! We'll stay with it and survive, trusting all the way.

5. divided- a house divided against itself will surely fall!

Summer School

I am heading off to Summer School for a week, studying the Theology of Culture. In some ways I'm dreading it, in some ways looking forward to it... hey ho!

Back in a week :-)

Exam Results in...

We had a house full of nervous young people yesterday, they were up early this morning to collect their results, and now they are back here celebrating, most of them have the grades they need or better to get into their chosen Universities, including Joanne and Jonathan!

The party is still going- and they are all planning to go out tomorrow night to celebrate more!