People say we’ve got it made
don’t they know we’re so afraid,
isolation

Listening again today to John Lennon / Plastic Ono Band I’m affected by how much pain there is in there. Anger and pain. Struck by the impression of how much of his childhood is in Lennon’s music; and by how much of his childhood hurt. In a fascinating and genuinely revealing 1971 interview with Tariq Ali and Robin Blackburn Lennon said,

“… I was never really wanted. The only reason I am a star is because of my repression. Nothing else would have driven me through all that if I was ‘normal’…”

Yoko: “… and happy …”

Lennon: “The only reason I went for that goal is that I wanted to say: ‘Now, mummy-daddy, will you love me?’”

All of that is well-expressed in that seminal 1970 album which sears through my iMac speakers as I write. Plus Lennon’s anti-establishment, anti-religion, anti-Beatles vibes which are also well-explored in Ali/Blackburn’s interview.

“The more reality we face, the more we realise that unreality is the main programme of the day. The more real we become, the more abuse we take, so it does radicalise us in a way, like being put in a corner. But it would be better if there were more of us.”

And so to this morning, where at the invitation of the Liverpool Beatles Appreciation Society I laid a laminated print of Peter Murphy’s Lennon icon at the foot of the Lennon statue on Mathew Street (see it on this AP Photo/Paul Ellis picture, above). Very unreal, trying to reach the assortment of Lennon fans struggling to see through a barrage of the world’s cameras and microphones, explaining briefly the significance of icons to spiritual seekers, the value of Lennon’s image as a focus and inspiration for those seeking to work for peace, asking for reflection and remembrance of today’s peacemakers.

It was such a media event that I felt numbed by it. It seemed a long way away from the very real, very raw emotion I felt that cold winter morning in 1980 when, leaving home for work, I heard the news of Lennon’s death on the radio. And the bemusement I felt as a green seventeen year old when some older workers on the shop floor met the news grudgingly, with complaints about Lennon’s betraying the city of his birth and disparaging his peacenik, refusenik character. Their attitude horrified me at the time; in retrospect at least it awoke some sensibilities in me, matured me. Taught me that there were many in the world who would vehemently oppose the sorts of values I held dear. That it still smarts, that memory, perhaps means that I’m not entirely numbed by the fact that Lennon was only a Working Class Hero to some of us.

“God is a concept by which we measure our pain,” Lennon sang. I doubt he’d have been too chuffed having two clergymen and the Lord Mayor leading tributes to him outside The Cavern today. But he may have felt better about it knowing that for one of us at least, it triggered these thoughts, about getting real, about still wanting to stand in a corner, with the ragbag radicals, fighting the unreality.

This cafe is beautiful, and it’s where a lot of Greenbelt business gets done, a lot of Greenbelt chat is chattered, a lot of Greenbelt dreams are dreamed. Now regular customer Pip points me to an article in the Society Guardian detailing the dilemma facing this wonderful jewel at the heart of London, the New Piccadilly , facing closure after the landlords announced their intention to increase the annual rent from £51,000 to £75,000.

Thankfully the New Piccadilly’s owner, Lorenzo “Lolly” Marioni, is fighting it (demanding a rent tribunal). Hopefully the Twentieth Century Society will put some weight behind it, because English Heritage are being no help at all. Viva New Piccadilly!

…seems a long time off yet. I’m in the midst of bringing Advent services into being, and planning for Christmas. Tomorrow I give version two of one of my Greenbelt talks from 05 here in Cambridge, reminding me of last Greenbelt which still seems like yesterday.
Yet on my desk is correspondence and forward plans for Greenbelt 06. I’m looking forward to it already, and giving some back-burner thought to the shape of talks and panels and the like.

Have you booked your space yet? I’d be fascinated to know how far in advance other people plan their Greenbelt.

Great to bump into Paul Cookson on Walton Lane last night, en-route to Goodison. Somehow we managed to miss each other at Greenbelt this year so it was good to hear his news - an update on his Poet-in-Residence post at The National Football Museum, Preston (his home town), and more excitingly still, the three-page feature on him and his poetry in the current edition of essential footy rag The Evertonian (pictured here).

I was so excited by all this that the Boys Brigade tonight were um, treated to a performance slot by me reading some of my Cookson Everton-themed favourites, and of course his classic The Footballer’s Prayer:

Our team
Which art eleven
Hallowed be thy game
Our match be won
Their score be none
On turf as we score at least seven
Give us today no daily red … card
And forgive us our lost passes
As we forgive those who lose passes against us
Lead us not into retaliation
And deliver us from all fouls
For three is the kick-off
The power and the scorer
For ever and ever
Full time

download a pdf of the brochure

re:source begins a second course in january 2006. i am on the core group for the course and am excited about it. the first time we ran the course it went really well. this time it will be even better as we have learned from the first year and hopefully improved on it.

if you are involved in leading an emerging church/fresh expression of church/church plant or are thinking about starting one this could be a great course to sign up for. it is aimed at people who are doing it i.e. practitioners.

it consists of 5 weekends through the year, each in a different location, on the themes of mission, culture, leadership, church and transformation. like all these kinds of courses as well as some teaching, discussion, reflection, coaching and so on, one of the huge benefits is meeting a bunch of other people on similar journeys round the country to learn from each other. mentoring and assignments are also part of the course.

the stated aims/aspirations of the course are that by the end of it you will:
• be equipped to create church in emerging culture
• develop mission strategies for your specific context
• explore and apply skills in leadership and discipleship
• develop your capacity for spiritual and personal growth

full details are in the brochure. if you would like a brochure sent to you e-mail beth who now works part time to make re:source happen and is doing a fab job and she will send you one. you can also download a pdf of the brochure
here (approx 500k). one of the challenges with all of this emerging stuff is that it is often tucked away so if you know anyone you think would be interested please pass on the info/pdf - these kinds of things spread best by word of mouth and we haven’t got a huge advertising budget anyway. the course is pretty good value i think at £420 (plus £200 if you want us to provide accomodation).

there is a re:source web site but it is in the process of being updated so look back there in a week or two.

CMS are one of the partners helping run the course, hopefully offering some nous and experience about mission into the mix. i am intending to be at all/most of the weekends so maybe see you there?…

“Audiences deserve, and I believe crave, much more protein in their diet. Only by giving the viewer a workout, making them join the dots, use their own imagination, can we reclaim television drama as the challenging, exciting, life-changing medium that I and many others have known it to be.”

Good to hear Paul Abbott delivering the Huw Wheldon lecture at the Royal Television Society’s convention. Not especially because of his criticism of shoddy TV dramas, which has inevitably grabbed the headlines; more for his positive enthusiasm for programmes which treated the audience - and the subjects - with respect.

“The commonest excuse for drama being bland or inoffensive or just crap is that the audience can’t assimilate complex story-telling. This is just patronising. Audiences today can handle as much as you can throw at them.”

Being a GB worker tied to a venue for the past five years I’ve missed whether this has ever been a discussion topic at the festival; if not I reckon there’s mileage in it for GB06.

The best bit of Abbott’s speech I’ve not seen reported anywhere; it was about Clocking Off, that excellent series of factory-floor cameos which focussed on the life of a different worker each episode, and did so with integrity and depth. He spoke about his decision to jettison the usual working-class stereotypes and to explore the possibility that ordinary working people’s lives were complex, vital, vibrant, intense, and so on. How right he was to follow that instinct; how good were the results.

[based on an original post here]

Ok. This started as one thing and ended up being something else.

Greenbelt is one of those places that’s totally different to other Christian camping events. Most other Christian camps I’ve been on have been about resourcing “the faithful” to go out and march forth and do stuff. I’ve noticed alot of the imagery surrounding that sort of idea of mission tends to be military in origin.

I used to be a missionary; a proper travelling missionary zipping round Europe and Eurasia working with students. My job was supposed to be winning souls to Christ but this didn’t really sit too well with me. As a post modern post evangelical poster boy I spent most of my time debating ideas, concepts and authenticity rather than preaching a specific dogma or orthodoxy. In short I didn’t feel much of a missionary. As part of a theatre company embodying questions about life we’d deconstruct long held ideas through physical theatre. It was challenging, stirring stuff; as one stoned student in Denmark put it “You really know how to kill someone’s buzzâ€?.

The guys I worked with wanted to know what my missiology was (and to tell the truth I had to look that word up) at the time I mumbled about sharing faith or something. Now I can answer that question a little better. It’s about going beyond mere belief in commands and into a life that’s in rhythm with God. And if everyone does that something like the kingdom of heaven (that place of mustard seed faith, wise virgin preparation, lost sheep searching and a welcome for kids that come home) will happen here on earth. Bonza!

Thanks to those bloggers who attended my seminar “The Spirituality of Blogging”. I left some short notes here but others may have better memories and notes than I.

BTW - Greenbelt rocked this year! That was my 3rd Greenbelt in a row and I think it gets better each year. Nice to meet you all!

I read in the paper today about the big stores getting into trouble because of overcharging for the use of their store cards. The Competition Commission is unhappy because they charge about 30% compared to normal bank rate of 18%, making about £100m a year in extra profit. At the same time the banks tend to back most of these cards anyway. The Commission harks on about the rate being too high, but in doing so seems to have completely missed the point. The reason for such a high rate is that the stores don’t really care too much who applies for a card and therefore the risk is much higher - hence the higher interest charge.

The focus should have been on why it is so easy in the first place to get a store card. It is a classic example of consumerism out of control - stores are perfectly happy for you to rack up £5k of debt with the risk of not being able to pay - yet if you get caught for shop-lifting they will prosecute. Not saying I condone shop lifting, more a case of the stores condoning people obtaining goods that cannot be paid for. Controls for obtaining cards should be made much tighter - in the same way you (used to) can only get a mortgage 3 times annual salary there needs to be much tighter credit control. Store cards in theory should not even be required - they are more expensive than a credit card - and if you can’t afford to purchase via VISA etc then you should not be allowed to use a store card instead. I’ve seen too many people struggle in their lives because of debt - about time someone did something to stop it.

At least those who run the Greenbelt Store have never caught on to store card fever - otherwise they would be issuing 20,000 cards to Greenbelters, enabling them to buy goods on site, repayable at extortionate terms over 12 months!

Douglas Coupland is most famous for his writing (Generation X, Miss Wyoming, Eleanor Rigby etc), but he is also a visual artist.

In his work entitled Hornets’ Nests, he combines these two strands of creativity, by literally chewing on his own work and using the pulp to mimick the creative process of the hornet’s nest.

Moving on from his own books, Coupland made two more nests, one formed from used dollar bills (which he states took considerable chewing) and the other from the far finer and possibly more edifying pages from a Gideon bible.

Each nest apparently took a week of chewing, which Coupland undertook in front of the TV. Side effects included being devoid of saliva for days afterwards; though the forethought of pre-dousing the dollar bills in antiseptic, addresses certain concerns…so just the chemicals and ink to worry about then

Once again I’m minded that Coupland would make an excellent Greenbelt guest.

(thanks to Kirsty at Fragile Tender for the intitial heads up on this)