Selwyn Hughes said the Sacrifice of Praise is thanksgiving with blood on its hands. Hughes was the writer behind Every Day with Jesus, a daily devotional read by millions around the world and a tool used by God to cement His truths in hearts across the nations. He was also a widower, a man who lost his wife to cancer twenty years before his own death; he also outlived their two sons. Yet Selwyn Hughes continued to write the praises and glories of his God of abundance: surely an act of thanksgiving with blood on its hands.
Today one of the lead stories on the news concerns the upcoming battle for the number one Christmas single. Two competing versions of Leonard Cohen’s 1984 song Hallelujah look like taking positions one and two on next week’s chart: for the first time two cover versions of the one song filling both top positions on the Christmas week charts. I must admit that this song, in the Velvet Underground’s John Cale’s version, was until recently for me “the wedding theme from Shrek”; but today I went and looked up the lyrics. It is a Sacrifice of Praise.
Well Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
she tied you to her kitchen chair
And she broke your throne and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah
I love the anguish of that last couplet; it’s hardly All Tomorrow’s Parties is it? (But perhaps Bathsheba was Venus in Furs, it sure makes Psalm 51:7 a lot more interesting.)
Well baby I've been here before
I've seen this room and I've walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew ya
I've seen your flag on the marble arch
Love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah
Leonard Cohen spent over a year writing this song, and wrote over eighty verses before settling on the final six he released in 1988; he substantially rewrote it in 1994. Can it be called a labour of love? Not with that refrain.
Well maybe there's a God above
But all I've ever learned from love
Was how to shoot somebody who'd out drew ya
And it's not a cry that you hear at night
It's not somebody who's seen the light
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah
I love words and I have always found strength in my own prayers in the Hebrew word "Hosanna". Hallelujah translates to English as “praise God” Hallelu Jah(weh), where Hosanna is “God save me”. Hosanna is a cry of desperate dependence: it's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah. Unlike CQD or SOS Hosanna is more than a cry for assistance, it’s a sacrifice of praise.
Whether Alexandra or Jeff top the chart on Friday I’m stoked that “Christian Rhyme” as Cliff might (not) call it will be the song on everyone’s I-pod.
Wednesday 17 December 2008
The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.
The stated moral of the story of Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge, has a deeper significance for me than merely raising the great Bohemian ideals of Freedom, Truth and Beauty. Love, as The Beatles sang, is all you need; a sour note in the current climate surrounding Sir Paul and his Lady Mucca.
God is love, the Bible in the First Letter of John states this plainly, but is God all we need? There are some very lonely Christians around the place, desperate for the love and affection of fellow creatures (preferably humans of the opposite sex); many who have found this love which I have not, would agree with the above statement for as long as it lasts.
This is the incomplete one...and is better left that way. Maybe I'll use the title for another effort, but this one works best left as is...
God is love, the Bible in the First Letter of John states this plainly, but is God all we need? There are some very lonely Christians around the place, desperate for the love and affection of fellow creatures (preferably humans of the opposite sex); many who have found this love which I have not, would agree with the above statement for as long as it lasts.
This is the incomplete one...and is better left that way. Maybe I'll use the title for another effort, but this one works best left as is...
If you can’t sing well, then just sing loud.
I must confess I am a big fan of the idea that if you can’t sing well then you should just sing loud, it says so much about confidence in the innate worth of the individual that I smile to think of this as a philosophy for life.
When I was small I was very small, smaller than all the other boys, even some of the younger boys were bigger than me, my little brother for one. I was always the last one picked for sport, lined up along the fence as all the heroes of playground footy/cricket/anything were numbered off by the opposing captains: just me and the fat kid, or just me and the kid on crutches and with plaster from groin to ankle awaiting the sealing of our fate, who would be chosen to leave the last one as the “default pick”. It was often me. I would like to say that I then played “loud”, but in all honesty my size was but one of my handicaps, the other being far more devastating: I was utterly crap at footy/cricket/anything and basically spent lunchtime running about calling vainly for a pass...never getting a touch.
Oddly enough, or perhaps it isn’t; singing was one thing I could do. I didn’t need to sing loud because I could sing well, (I still can). But I did sing loud, if not in volume then in influence: I was the only boy in the school choir. Nowadays being the one boy among twenty two girls would be a bonus, but as a twelve year old it underlined the awful truth, I was too small to play footy/cricket/anything with the boys. But I didn’t care, because I could sing and I did sing, and I sang in the front row where everyone could see me and admire my bravery at sticking with choir. And I did know it was brave, I realised that I could never compete in sport but I knew I could sing well and represent the school at that, and I did.
Now I sing at church along with the congregation, I was only in choir for two years, (the second year with four other boys, all too small for sport), but I remember the whispers and the words of praise my parents accepted on my behalf from the proud mums of Pakenham. I have decided to live well in the ways that I can, and loudly in all other things.
Jesus counselled the Laodicean Christians to be hot or cold but not lukewarm: this is the only way to live according to the Messiah. Perhaps he was talking about the life of faith, but then the life of faith is more than just about the stuff you do at church, it is living with purpose and bravery. It is a life that sings loudly at all times, learning to sing well by choosing to sing often: my life.
When I was small I was very small, smaller than all the other boys, even some of the younger boys were bigger than me, my little brother for one. I was always the last one picked for sport, lined up along the fence as all the heroes of playground footy/cricket/anything were numbered off by the opposing captains: just me and the fat kid, or just me and the kid on crutches and with plaster from groin to ankle awaiting the sealing of our fate, who would be chosen to leave the last one as the “default pick”. It was often me. I would like to say that I then played “loud”, but in all honesty my size was but one of my handicaps, the other being far more devastating: I was utterly crap at footy/cricket/anything and basically spent lunchtime running about calling vainly for a pass...never getting a touch.
Oddly enough, or perhaps it isn’t; singing was one thing I could do. I didn’t need to sing loud because I could sing well, (I still can). But I did sing loud, if not in volume then in influence: I was the only boy in the school choir. Nowadays being the one boy among twenty two girls would be a bonus, but as a twelve year old it underlined the awful truth, I was too small to play footy/cricket/anything with the boys. But I didn’t care, because I could sing and I did sing, and I sang in the front row where everyone could see me and admire my bravery at sticking with choir. And I did know it was brave, I realised that I could never compete in sport but I knew I could sing well and represent the school at that, and I did.
Now I sing at church along with the congregation, I was only in choir for two years, (the second year with four other boys, all too small for sport), but I remember the whispers and the words of praise my parents accepted on my behalf from the proud mums of Pakenham. I have decided to live well in the ways that I can, and loudly in all other things.
Jesus counselled the Laodicean Christians to be hot or cold but not lukewarm: this is the only way to live according to the Messiah. Perhaps he was talking about the life of faith, but then the life of faith is more than just about the stuff you do at church, it is living with purpose and bravery. It is a life that sings loudly at all times, learning to sing well by choosing to sing often: my life.
Wide, Wide As The Ocean
At church this morning I had the most wonderful experience, of seeing old people remembering their childhood. There should be more of it; indeed it was Jesus who talked about being as a little child in our dealings with God, it was that which I saw this morning.
I was unable to attend my own church today so I visited the local parish church, the only place of Christian celebration within walking distance of my home. I don’t usually connect too well with the worship life of this congregation; the people seem rather religious and set in their ways although they are not unfriendly. Today however during the communion songs the pianist played C. Austin Miles’ well known Sunday School anthem, a song I remember my grandmother singing to us and making us sing at Sunday concerts in the lounge room back in Melbourne. Well, here were these oldies singing along with all the glee of the under tens, doing the hand actions and smiling broadly with the memory of years long passed now and how they had first learned to worship, perhaps in this very house. It pleased me greatly to see this, there is some life in the old church yet; sadly that life seems limited to those at the upper end of chronology as the younger adults and none of the kids were so vigorous in joining in...or perhaps for them, like me, it wasn’t really their song.
This is a great song, almost lost under nana’s insistence that it be sung for the entertainment of the post-dinner parents of the mid 1980s and the chagrin of the suited and booted boys that my brother, cousins, and I were shoehorned into being. My saviour’s love is indeed as wide as the oceans, as high as the heavens, as deep as the seas. I’m not so certain about the theology of unworthiness, I once was but now am saved and therefore am worthy of His love, (the Bible tells me so, in Romans if you care to check), but I most certainly am a child of His care where His love reaches me wherever I am: even here, even now.
I am very much looking forward to going home next weekend, to being back at Hillsong Church London and all that home is and means, but today’s forced absence allowed me to see that there is indeed hope for the Church in this world, and in this country; that the tales of childhood do sustain those who choose to find sustenance there, that His grace is indeed sufficient for all our needs.
I need to be reminded of the great love of God, and of the promise that He is a good God and is good to those He loves: even me. I need this reminder often in my line of work, in my absence from my family, and in my struggles with a past that keeps me leg-roped to so much weight.
I was unable to attend my own church today so I visited the local parish church, the only place of Christian celebration within walking distance of my home. I don’t usually connect too well with the worship life of this congregation; the people seem rather religious and set in their ways although they are not unfriendly. Today however during the communion songs the pianist played C. Austin Miles’ well known Sunday School anthem, a song I remember my grandmother singing to us and making us sing at Sunday concerts in the lounge room back in Melbourne. Well, here were these oldies singing along with all the glee of the under tens, doing the hand actions and smiling broadly with the memory of years long passed now and how they had first learned to worship, perhaps in this very house. It pleased me greatly to see this, there is some life in the old church yet; sadly that life seems limited to those at the upper end of chronology as the younger adults and none of the kids were so vigorous in joining in...or perhaps for them, like me, it wasn’t really their song.
This is a great song, almost lost under nana’s insistence that it be sung for the entertainment of the post-dinner parents of the mid 1980s and the chagrin of the suited and booted boys that my brother, cousins, and I were shoehorned into being. My saviour’s love is indeed as wide as the oceans, as high as the heavens, as deep as the seas. I’m not so certain about the theology of unworthiness, I once was but now am saved and therefore am worthy of His love, (the Bible tells me so, in Romans if you care to check), but I most certainly am a child of His care where His love reaches me wherever I am: even here, even now.
I am very much looking forward to going home next weekend, to being back at Hillsong Church London and all that home is and means, but today’s forced absence allowed me to see that there is indeed hope for the Church in this world, and in this country; that the tales of childhood do sustain those who choose to find sustenance there, that His grace is indeed sufficient for all our needs.
I need to be reminded of the great love of God, and of the promise that He is a good God and is good to those He loves: even me. I need this reminder often in my line of work, in my absence from my family, and in my struggles with a past that keeps me leg-roped to so much weight.
Freedom, Beauty, Truth. Love.
I have a sneaking suspicion that Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge might just be the best film ever made. Well, perhaps not, but I have enjoyed seeing it again because it is full of cleverness. I have had the passing idea, all too passing actually, to attach new songs to old stories, to incorporate songs from various artists into a single show, like the ones playing in London at present yet not limited to one band. Baz has already done it, and done it well linking his story through the songs to an historical time, an infamous revolution in the arts, one of its great heroes, and its great downfall.
I am especially pleased that this film was made in Sydney, and features some of Australia’s finest actors in its many roles, indeed only Ewan McGregor is out of place among the leads.
Australia has no need for cultural cringe when such work as this can come from its shores, yet still the story is one of Montmartre and not of Melbourne. It reminds me of a panel discussion I saw on one of those Sunday afternoon’s arts shows on the ABC, where cultural cringe was being discussed by a group of Australians, including a koori. What was most notable about this panel was that all except the koori spoke in French. The French facilitator described what France knew of Australian culture and summed it up in the equation 32 and 17, not for the purpose of maths but for the purpose of sport, that being Australia’s winning margin over France in the 1999 RWC played at Millennium Stadium in Cardiff.
Australia’s is not a Bohemian culture, but then, having recently visited Prague, I must say Bohemia’s isn’t a Bohemian culture either. The four great pillars of Freedom, Beauty, Truth, and most of all Love are somewhat forgotten, or perhaps only belittled, in our postmodern land girt by sea; but we still have much to be proud of beyond our prowess as a nation of wannabe Wallabies. (Especially following the 2007 RWC.) Australia is however a clever country, a creative country, a can-do nation of battlers, of Bazzas and Shazzas who can make art work just as easily as they can find water in a drought or convert a try from the sidelines. Australians have travelled beyond the Fatal Shore to establish themselves in all corners of the planet, how great it is that Baz Luhrmann is able to fly the flag from the Emerald City itself.
I dream of an Australia where we are known for more than just our green and gold; although may those great endeavours never cease. May we be proud of our clever Baz, and shine more light on Australian arts in cinema, literature, fine arts, and music of all genres. May we be proud of our Nicole, (born in Hawaii), but continue to shine light on Australian science and discovery. I love the sunburnt country, a land of untamed imagination.
I am especially pleased that this film was made in Sydney, and features some of Australia’s finest actors in its many roles, indeed only Ewan McGregor is out of place among the leads.
Australia has no need for cultural cringe when such work as this can come from its shores, yet still the story is one of Montmartre and not of Melbourne. It reminds me of a panel discussion I saw on one of those Sunday afternoon’s arts shows on the ABC, where cultural cringe was being discussed by a group of Australians, including a koori. What was most notable about this panel was that all except the koori spoke in French. The French facilitator described what France knew of Australian culture and summed it up in the equation 32 and 17, not for the purpose of maths but for the purpose of sport, that being Australia’s winning margin over France in the 1999 RWC played at Millennium Stadium in Cardiff.
Australia’s is not a Bohemian culture, but then, having recently visited Prague, I must say Bohemia’s isn’t a Bohemian culture either. The four great pillars of Freedom, Beauty, Truth, and most of all Love are somewhat forgotten, or perhaps only belittled, in our postmodern land girt by sea; but we still have much to be proud of beyond our prowess as a nation of wannabe Wallabies. (Especially following the 2007 RWC.) Australia is however a clever country, a creative country, a can-do nation of battlers, of Bazzas and Shazzas who can make art work just as easily as they can find water in a drought or convert a try from the sidelines. Australians have travelled beyond the Fatal Shore to establish themselves in all corners of the planet, how great it is that Baz Luhrmann is able to fly the flag from the Emerald City itself.
I dream of an Australia where we are known for more than just our green and gold; although may those great endeavours never cease. May we be proud of our clever Baz, and shine more light on Australian arts in cinema, literature, fine arts, and music of all genres. May we be proud of our Nicole, (born in Hawaii), but continue to shine light on Australian science and discovery. I love the sunburnt country, a land of untamed imagination.
And an end to all that
These five hundred words get harder to write each day; surely I cannot be running out of things to say already? The problem is that I have too much to say; so much I have been carrying unsaid which now fights to be the first story to be released.
What I am certain of is that today is the time that there be an end to all that: all the distraction from what I don’t want to know any more.
I choose to write. I choose to write as more than just an outlet for my angst or my latent creativity, I choose to write because I am a writer and writing is what I do. But if I am to write, to do writing, then I must stop doing what I am not being. I am a writer, writers write. I am not anything else, so I shall no longer do nor seek those other things.
Better than focussing upon what I am not is attending to what I am. I enjoy writing and I shall do that, and let everything else fall away: it doesn’t matter what it is it matters only what it isn’t.
I know what I want to write about, but I wonder if it all comes across as a little self indulgent. My first foray into publishing under my own name was not as well received as my extensive work under pseudonym; but then I wrote those stories under very different circumstances. I shall rewrite Malcolm’s story as suggested by one of my critics, and I shall write in a better frame of mind and for a better purpose.
I also know what I don’t want to write about, so I shall indeed stop researching such things.
“A memory is never finished as long as you are alive”; well that’s the case according to Sunset Boulevard’s Jesse. Maybe only God has the capacity to forget entirely upon request, but I can choose not to remember. I am struggling; not only with the 500 word challenge, but also to move my writing beyond where it was most comfortable in 2007 because I can see that it was heading into a dead-end. Today I am trying to write about not writing about what I no longer wish to write about: a circuitous argument if ever there was one: not a lost cause, but a foolish endeavour, as foolish as the original endeavour had been. I don’t want to drop out of life and the world, I have things I need to be doing, but I am struggling today with pressures from all sides.
How can I run the race and win the prize if I can’t even get onto the blocks? Sometimes the race is not to the swift but to the persistent, I shall put it all down to experience.
Wake me up inside, call my name and save me from the nightmare I’ve become.
It ends now.
What I am certain of is that today is the time that there be an end to all that: all the distraction from what I don’t want to know any more.
I choose to write. I choose to write as more than just an outlet for my angst or my latent creativity, I choose to write because I am a writer and writing is what I do. But if I am to write, to do writing, then I must stop doing what I am not being. I am a writer, writers write. I am not anything else, so I shall no longer do nor seek those other things.
Better than focussing upon what I am not is attending to what I am. I enjoy writing and I shall do that, and let everything else fall away: it doesn’t matter what it is it matters only what it isn’t.
I know what I want to write about, but I wonder if it all comes across as a little self indulgent. My first foray into publishing under my own name was not as well received as my extensive work under pseudonym; but then I wrote those stories under very different circumstances. I shall rewrite Malcolm’s story as suggested by one of my critics, and I shall write in a better frame of mind and for a better purpose.
I also know what I don’t want to write about, so I shall indeed stop researching such things.
“A memory is never finished as long as you are alive”; well that’s the case according to Sunset Boulevard’s Jesse. Maybe only God has the capacity to forget entirely upon request, but I can choose not to remember. I am struggling; not only with the 500 word challenge, but also to move my writing beyond where it was most comfortable in 2007 because I can see that it was heading into a dead-end. Today I am trying to write about not writing about what I no longer wish to write about: a circuitous argument if ever there was one: not a lost cause, but a foolish endeavour, as foolish as the original endeavour had been. I don’t want to drop out of life and the world, I have things I need to be doing, but I am struggling today with pressures from all sides.
How can I run the race and win the prize if I can’t even get onto the blocks? Sometimes the race is not to the swift but to the persistent, I shall put it all down to experience.
Wake me up inside, call my name and save me from the nightmare I’ve become.
It ends now.
The scent and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning.
The first words in Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale bring the reader straight into the scene which later editions of the James Bond novels and films have made very familiar. I had never thought of a casino having a sweat beyond its scent, and I find casinos nauseating at any time of day: but there it is; the murkiness of low lighting, the cigarette smoke, the smell of fear, the pain of loss. Casino.
Several years ago I wrote a lesson for Year Six Literacy based around the beginnings and endings of stories; the first and last sentences in a novel. I have never read any of Ian Fleming’s novels, and I’ve not seen all of the Bond films yet, but this first sentence of this first novel is a fitting opening because all of Bond on scene is there. It is a great sentence.
I am beginning to see stylistic traits coming out in my own writing, in no way as characteristic as this first sentence of Fleming which indicates an entire genre in fourteen words, but still ways in which people might identify me as the writer behind anonymous or pseudonymous works. I wonder if these things will remain.
I have noticed that I like using semicolons and commas, separating out my sentence with loads of punctuation. Charles Dickens did this. I have noticed I use some Germanic forms of grammar, like the Australian I am. I didn’t notice this until it was pointed out to me; British English has a different word order. I want to be able to write well in both dialects, but I also want to be able to write correctly in each one and not confuse the two.
I am still seeking a beginning, even as I refine my style and my use of the English languages I still wonder about the genres in which I shall write. Ian Fleming was a journalist for The Sunday Times, and also wrote fiction. He was a man whose business was writing and words, mine is not. I have been many things in the past, and I have written as a part of all of those things, but writing has never been the main part of what it is I have done. Now it will be, indeed it will at times be the only thing I shall do. It is the piece which dictates the opening sentence, the first thing read is close to being the last thing written and I am confident to wait: but still I would like to begin on the middle.
Only Connect: I choose to adapt Forster’s famous words as only commence; because connection only follows commencement. If I provide a substance, relational connections may be made. It doesn’t matter what I write at this point, only that I write: but it is important that I write of myself and from myself, even when only starting out.
Several years ago I wrote a lesson for Year Six Literacy based around the beginnings and endings of stories; the first and last sentences in a novel. I have never read any of Ian Fleming’s novels, and I’ve not seen all of the Bond films yet, but this first sentence of this first novel is a fitting opening because all of Bond on scene is there. It is a great sentence.
I am beginning to see stylistic traits coming out in my own writing, in no way as characteristic as this first sentence of Fleming which indicates an entire genre in fourteen words, but still ways in which people might identify me as the writer behind anonymous or pseudonymous works. I wonder if these things will remain.
I have noticed that I like using semicolons and commas, separating out my sentence with loads of punctuation. Charles Dickens did this. I have noticed I use some Germanic forms of grammar, like the Australian I am. I didn’t notice this until it was pointed out to me; British English has a different word order. I want to be able to write well in both dialects, but I also want to be able to write correctly in each one and not confuse the two.
I am still seeking a beginning, even as I refine my style and my use of the English languages I still wonder about the genres in which I shall write. Ian Fleming was a journalist for The Sunday Times, and also wrote fiction. He was a man whose business was writing and words, mine is not. I have been many things in the past, and I have written as a part of all of those things, but writing has never been the main part of what it is I have done. Now it will be, indeed it will at times be the only thing I shall do. It is the piece which dictates the opening sentence, the first thing read is close to being the last thing written and I am confident to wait: but still I would like to begin on the middle.
Only Connect: I choose to adapt Forster’s famous words as only commence; because connection only follows commencement. If I provide a substance, relational connections may be made. It doesn’t matter what I write at this point, only that I write: but it is important that I write of myself and from myself, even when only starting out.
Stop seeking what it is that you should be giving
There was a fable once told about a tiger which was lame, and was fed by hyenas that brought it meat which they found in their daily scavenging. A man who heard this story decided that that sounded like the way he wanted to live his life: and almost starved to death. The moral of the story is that we are meant to be like the hyenas, not the tiger.
In my world I see the truth in the direction to stop seeking what I should be giving; because I am poor in many ways. At various times I have wanted friendship, partnership, praise and recognition. I have wanted help but have been left to do it alone, even in the midst of a great crowd. I wonder now whether others have felt the same things at the same time, perhaps they were waiting for me to notice their need and then act to meet it with them.
This continues to be a dog eat dog world: I wonder whether selflessness has a place in the running of our society or whether those who seeks to be hyenas will end up starving, or as food for the tigers. Scripture is clear in describing servanthood as the preferred lifestyle for Christians; it is the model of Christ. If he could do it, then I should be able to since the same spirit (Spirit) lives in me, but why do I always feel like it’s give give give and then when people see I’m a giver they ask for more? How do I give so much assistance yet never find the help I need, when I need it? Can I truly find if I never seek? No.
The answer is to be the answer, not to deny my requirements but to find them in dialogue. Loneliness is not defeated by selfishness but by community, and community occurs in shared experience, in bearing one another’s burdens. Many feel the way I do; these are the characteristics of my generation. Therefore it should be easy to have my needs met; by meeting the needs of others I am blessed by their response. I make friends by being a friend; but I also earn praise by offering it, and am acclaimed by being personable and therefore becoming known to many.
What then shall I give? Attention for starters, but of the right form. I’ll offer friendship and conversation, and spend time with those who feel overlooked and marginalised. I shall offer partnership; in financial form but also through prayer and follow up with those who I wish to become like, or those who wish to become like me, both as mentor and mentoree. This is the simplest, most important way; I want partners and I have heard it said many times that that is the best way to move on in life: to spend time with those already heading in the direction I desire.
In my world I see the truth in the direction to stop seeking what I should be giving; because I am poor in many ways. At various times I have wanted friendship, partnership, praise and recognition. I have wanted help but have been left to do it alone, even in the midst of a great crowd. I wonder now whether others have felt the same things at the same time, perhaps they were waiting for me to notice their need and then act to meet it with them.
This continues to be a dog eat dog world: I wonder whether selflessness has a place in the running of our society or whether those who seeks to be hyenas will end up starving, or as food for the tigers. Scripture is clear in describing servanthood as the preferred lifestyle for Christians; it is the model of Christ. If he could do it, then I should be able to since the same spirit (Spirit) lives in me, but why do I always feel like it’s give give give and then when people see I’m a giver they ask for more? How do I give so much assistance yet never find the help I need, when I need it? Can I truly find if I never seek? No.
The answer is to be the answer, not to deny my requirements but to find them in dialogue. Loneliness is not defeated by selfishness but by community, and community occurs in shared experience, in bearing one another’s burdens. Many feel the way I do; these are the characteristics of my generation. Therefore it should be easy to have my needs met; by meeting the needs of others I am blessed by their response. I make friends by being a friend; but I also earn praise by offering it, and am acclaimed by being personable and therefore becoming known to many.
What then shall I give? Attention for starters, but of the right form. I’ll offer friendship and conversation, and spend time with those who feel overlooked and marginalised. I shall offer partnership; in financial form but also through prayer and follow up with those who I wish to become like, or those who wish to become like me, both as mentor and mentoree. This is the simplest, most important way; I want partners and I have heard it said many times that that is the best way to move on in life: to spend time with those already heading in the direction I desire.
Mission is not about crossing the sea but about seeing the cross.
When Jesus sent out the twelve, and the others who were with them, he sent them first to Jerusalem; it was only after their home town was saturated with the gospel that they were to go on to Judea, Samaria, and finally towards the Ends of the Earth. Even when Paul took the gospel into Asia and then Europe he always began at home in the sense that he went first to the synagogue. It is among the people of our own kind that we have the greatest credibility, and the greatest success rate. We don’t have to learn the language, or the culture, we don’t even have to learn technique; we just have to share the story of how God saved a wretch like me to others who are a lot like me.
Evangelism has been described as one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread. Our countrymen have similar needs to our own, particularly in their expression of the need for salvation. All people need Christ’s saving grace, salvation to become the likeness of Christ, but it is the people next door who need salvation from the same stuff we do: materialism, pressure to perform, the issues of postmodern, and twenty-first century British life.
Before I returned to England from Australia in 2002 I completed a unit on World Christianity and Missions at Bible school, during which I identified an unreached people group which met all the criteria of the curriculum: that group was the antipodean community of London. Here was a group which did not have an indigenous church, indeed it seemed to me it did not have a single missionary focussed upon them as distinct from the wider London community. Aussies and Kiwis (and Saffas) in London are not Londoners, but neither are they really Aussies or Kiwis (or Saffas) like the ones at home. This group has a general demographic; under 28 years of age, unmarried, nomadic workers and travellers, open-minded, easygoing. Not like their countrymen who stayed at home, and not like the natives of Great Britain around them; these are a culture apart. Who will minister to them? Quite simply it needs to be those who are like them, not the English or the churches of England; not the Australian or New Zealander coming from “home”, not even the English returning from “gap year”; the London Crowd need to hear the timeless gospel from the Church within the London Crowd itself. But is there such a Church?
There is a people coming: Hillsong Church London, whilst not specifically a mission to the antipodeans is indeed reaching them, and is an indigenous church of same. The London Antipodeans are a reached people-group, the southern crowd run this church, and minister out of it for the benefit of the kingdom of God in all Europe, especially that within the M25.
By focussing on their own doorstep they are reaching the world.
Evangelism has been described as one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread. Our countrymen have similar needs to our own, particularly in their expression of the need for salvation. All people need Christ’s saving grace, salvation to become the likeness of Christ, but it is the people next door who need salvation from the same stuff we do: materialism, pressure to perform, the issues of postmodern, and twenty-first century British life.
Before I returned to England from Australia in 2002 I completed a unit on World Christianity and Missions at Bible school, during which I identified an unreached people group which met all the criteria of the curriculum: that group was the antipodean community of London. Here was a group which did not have an indigenous church, indeed it seemed to me it did not have a single missionary focussed upon them as distinct from the wider London community. Aussies and Kiwis (and Saffas) in London are not Londoners, but neither are they really Aussies or Kiwis (or Saffas) like the ones at home. This group has a general demographic; under 28 years of age, unmarried, nomadic workers and travellers, open-minded, easygoing. Not like their countrymen who stayed at home, and not like the natives of Great Britain around them; these are a culture apart. Who will minister to them? Quite simply it needs to be those who are like them, not the English or the churches of England; not the Australian or New Zealander coming from “home”, not even the English returning from “gap year”; the London Crowd need to hear the timeless gospel from the Church within the London Crowd itself. But is there such a Church?
There is a people coming: Hillsong Church London, whilst not specifically a mission to the antipodeans is indeed reaching them, and is an indigenous church of same. The London Antipodeans are a reached people-group, the southern crowd run this church, and minister out of it for the benefit of the kingdom of God in all Europe, especially that within the M25.
By focussing on their own doorstep they are reaching the world.
Where to begin?
I have been writing all my life, and have had people telling me for ten years that I am to be known for my writing; but it is only in the last few months that I have come to believe this press and to understand that I can actually write enough to embark upon writing as a career. My question is now one of context: so I can write and I shall write, but what of?
I want to write about prayer and intercession, but I wonder whether that is old news now. I want to write of my journey with God, but I wonder if that is self indulgent: after all Paul never wrote about Arabia rather he used Arabia to write about the cross. I want to write short stories, and long ones, to write skilfully for the sake of writing, in ways I have done briefly and in the Past, but this is not where I want to make my mark. I want to write about the gospel and culture, the behaviour of developing minds and lives in our new century and the effect that the timeless gospel should have upon them if given a fair hearing. I want to write comments upon the news, to write columns and articles, sermons to be read rather than spoken aloud: to speak by my writing rather than my lecturing. I want to write in paragraphs, in dialogues like the ancient philosophers, like an interviewer: scripts for my own performance.
I want to write what comes from God, be it Christian teaching, or just for enjoyment’s sake: a creative God using me as a fountain for His creativity in words. I know the words will come, I need to be listening and practicing both my writing and my faith: it is all about Him but it first comes to me, then through me. God’s highest priority for me is that I become like Christ, transformed into the likeness of His son; out of that comes the writing and the teaching, not before. I am a son first, an oracle second. I want to write out of my heart, out of the wellsprings of life: first then I must invest into my heart the time to make it clean, (by Christ alone, not me), and the time to make it wise.
I shall begin by reading, and then shall write from that.
There is no chicken and the egg here, because my writing comes from my reading, but my reading comes from the writing of others. I shall read what I want to write, (now to find such things). I shall write what I have already read, (can I remember)? I shall read them again: histories, hagiographies, biographies, opinions; stories in many forms. And I shall read books of language, books to perfect my craft, books to help me to write well in English English. And I shall read books and coursework to help me find publication.
I want to write about prayer and intercession, but I wonder whether that is old news now. I want to write of my journey with God, but I wonder if that is self indulgent: after all Paul never wrote about Arabia rather he used Arabia to write about the cross. I want to write short stories, and long ones, to write skilfully for the sake of writing, in ways I have done briefly and in the Past, but this is not where I want to make my mark. I want to write about the gospel and culture, the behaviour of developing minds and lives in our new century and the effect that the timeless gospel should have upon them if given a fair hearing. I want to write comments upon the news, to write columns and articles, sermons to be read rather than spoken aloud: to speak by my writing rather than my lecturing. I want to write in paragraphs, in dialogues like the ancient philosophers, like an interviewer: scripts for my own performance.
I want to write what comes from God, be it Christian teaching, or just for enjoyment’s sake: a creative God using me as a fountain for His creativity in words. I know the words will come, I need to be listening and practicing both my writing and my faith: it is all about Him but it first comes to me, then through me. God’s highest priority for me is that I become like Christ, transformed into the likeness of His son; out of that comes the writing and the teaching, not before. I am a son first, an oracle second. I want to write out of my heart, out of the wellsprings of life: first then I must invest into my heart the time to make it clean, (by Christ alone, not me), and the time to make it wise.
I shall begin by reading, and then shall write from that.
There is no chicken and the egg here, because my writing comes from my reading, but my reading comes from the writing of others. I shall read what I want to write, (now to find such things). I shall write what I have already read, (can I remember)? I shall read them again: histories, hagiographies, biographies, opinions; stories in many forms. And I shall read books of language, books to perfect my craft, books to help me to write well in English English. And I shall read books and coursework to help me find publication.
God Speaks
God speaks to us in the way we are listening: He throws the ball that we are prepared to catch. If I expect God to chasten me with misadventure then I will hear through disasters. If I expect God to speak through His Word graphe and rhema, then I will hear through them. If I don’t expect God to speak then I will not hear anything at all.
I am working through how I expect God to speak to me.
In the past I have heard Him speak in a quiet, internal voice, and in a gripping in my chest while I pray. Sometimes things do ‘pop’ out at me when I am reading my Bible, but just as often it happens with other books, or even films that I am watching. Events on the television, (especially the news), will sometimes grip my chest as well: then I begin to pray and the answer is unfolded in our dialogue. All of these are valid, but now I want to know if there are other ways in which God can speak: ways in which He would prefer to speak to me.
• Will He speak to me through my own writing? He has in the past, so perhaps he shall again.
• Will He speak to me through directing my reading, rather than awakening my interest when I come across a pertinent section of text, will I now be directed to entire books which will minster to my needs and purposes? Why not; I have a few books beside me now which I would like to read in the hope that God will reveal stuff to me.
• Will He speak to me through my new and developing friendships? I have always been a solitary person, but now I see the need to get more involved with community, to make friends I can trust to speak into my life as well as to just spend time with. I’d love for that to be the case too, I need to develop godly and trustworthy relationships if I am ever to communicate with the world at large, and get married.
Whatever His means, or His message, I know God will continue to speak to me as a son of His. Regardless of my being a writer I am first a Christian and I know God will speak to me for me and then, (and oftentimes quite separately) speak to me to speak through me, but first will be my sonship. The quote is true: Don’t read for writing Damien, read for learning. Read to impact your own life and not only to teach others. I have not been reading recently, too busy with work and other things, although I have been watching films. Now I want to return to books, and to do so properly: not just something before bedtime but research as an investment in my own future.
I shall make the time to read and to write professionally.
I am working through how I expect God to speak to me.
In the past I have heard Him speak in a quiet, internal voice, and in a gripping in my chest while I pray. Sometimes things do ‘pop’ out at me when I am reading my Bible, but just as often it happens with other books, or even films that I am watching. Events on the television, (especially the news), will sometimes grip my chest as well: then I begin to pray and the answer is unfolded in our dialogue. All of these are valid, but now I want to know if there are other ways in which God can speak: ways in which He would prefer to speak to me.
• Will He speak to me through my own writing? He has in the past, so perhaps he shall again.
• Will He speak to me through directing my reading, rather than awakening my interest when I come across a pertinent section of text, will I now be directed to entire books which will minster to my needs and purposes? Why not; I have a few books beside me now which I would like to read in the hope that God will reveal stuff to me.
• Will He speak to me through my new and developing friendships? I have always been a solitary person, but now I see the need to get more involved with community, to make friends I can trust to speak into my life as well as to just spend time with. I’d love for that to be the case too, I need to develop godly and trustworthy relationships if I am ever to communicate with the world at large, and get married.
Whatever His means, or His message, I know God will continue to speak to me as a son of His. Regardless of my being a writer I am first a Christian and I know God will speak to me for me and then, (and oftentimes quite separately) speak to me to speak through me, but first will be my sonship. The quote is true: Don’t read for writing Damien, read for learning. Read to impact your own life and not only to teach others. I have not been reading recently, too busy with work and other things, although I have been watching films. Now I want to return to books, and to do so properly: not just something before bedtime but research as an investment in my own future.
I shall make the time to read and to write professionally.
Saturday 27 September 2008
Assignment Three
Hello.
I am so terrible at getting my assignments in for my writing course, I think calling this blog Damien Writes was a declaration of hope rather than a statement of fact.
Here is something I wrote for Hillsong Church London's magazine Abrupt, which they didn't publish (or even acknowledge), but it fits as suitable for my assignment. I must admit I find it easy to write, but hard to think like someone looking for a publishing deal, hence the delay in getting stuff submitted to Manchester.
I hope you like this,
Damien.
Daytrips from London.
There is life beyond the M25, and it is indeed life as you know it. Minus the crowds, minus the traffic; minus “mind the gap” there is a world of England that can be reached within an hour’s travelling on a local train. Some people from Hillsong Church London even live out here.
ROCHESTER-UPON-MEDWAY.
Rochester is one of two cathedral cities in the county of Kent, the other being the better known (but far more crowded and therefore less interesting) city of Canterbury. Rochester is the quintessential English city with its Norman Cathedral (still in use) and Castle (ruined, so not in use); yet also with a history beyond that which dates back from before the Romans until after the turn of the twenty-first century. In spite of this its greatest claim to fame is that it was the home city and chief inspiration of one Charles Dickens. (It is also the home town of Kelly Brook if you are interested in such things.)
Rochester is served by a British Rail station close to the centre of town, and is connected to both London Charing Cross and (a better option) London Victoria. The neighbouring town Chatham is host to the Dickens Experience, think Disneyland with chimneysweeps, and the Chatham Maritime which was once the Royal Navy’s premier ship-building port. Both towns are also easily accessible by road from London via the M25/A2(M).
ST ALBANS.
A Roman city, now a cathedral city, with more of the history of England than you can poke a stick at St Albans is less than thirty minutes by train from London. It is also home to two Hillsong Church London connect groups.
The Roman city of Verulamium was established within ten years of the arrival of the Roman occupying force, and was built upon the site of a town founded in 10AD which had been capital of the Celtic Catuvellaunii tribe. In 209AD legend has it that Alban, a merchant/civil servant of the town, helped to hide a Christian priest who was attempting to escape persecution. The priest converted Alban to Christianity, and was assisted to escape when Alban and the priest (known as Amphibalus, but that’s probably a fake name) swapped clothes. When the ruse was discovered Alban was offered the chance to make a token sacrifice to the local goddess, the Roman equivalent of an on-the-spot fine. Alban declined, stating somewhat heroically, “I am Alban and I worship the true and living God”. He was summarily tried and found guilty of treason, and was taken beyond the walls of Verulamium to a cemetery half way up the hill behind the town where he was beheaded. In so doing he became the first British person to suffer Christian martyrdom. In the decades and centuries following Alban was made a saint and the site of his death became a pilgrimage hotspot culminating in the establishment of an Abbey, St Alban’s, which later gave its name to the town which sprang up beside it to cater to the pilgrim crowd. Since mediaeval St Albans was built around the abbey, rather than on the old Roman city, the site of Verulamium is now a rather attractive city park with some above ground ruins beside a swan infested lake, and three nearby “ye olde quainte” style pubs.
For those of you who are interested in more recent History, St Albans was the site of two battles (including the very first) in the Wars of the Roses, the first conflict ever to be fought using flowers instead of arrows. (Ban the bulb!) It also saw action in the English Civil War during the 1640s when Oliver Cromwell himself visited and stayed in the Fighting Cocks, which claims to be England’s oldest pub.
St Albans is served by two British Rail stations, St Albans City (from St Pancras and London Bridge via the old Thameslink) and St Albans Abbey (from Euston or Milton Keynes, change at Watford Junction) and can be reached by road from Junction 6 on the M1. It has the necessary “Hillsong mix” for doing life (Nandos, Starbucks, Wagamama, and Pizza Express are all present); but if you want my two pence worth then Verulamium is a park that deserves a picnic.
I am so terrible at getting my assignments in for my writing course, I think calling this blog Damien Writes was a declaration of hope rather than a statement of fact.
Here is something I wrote for Hillsong Church London's magazine Abrupt, which they didn't publish (or even acknowledge), but it fits as suitable for my assignment. I must admit I find it easy to write, but hard to think like someone looking for a publishing deal, hence the delay in getting stuff submitted to Manchester.
I hope you like this,
Damien.
Daytrips from London.
There is life beyond the M25, and it is indeed life as you know it. Minus the crowds, minus the traffic; minus “mind the gap” there is a world of England that can be reached within an hour’s travelling on a local train. Some people from Hillsong Church London even live out here.
ROCHESTER-UPON-MEDWAY.
Rochester is one of two cathedral cities in the county of Kent, the other being the better known (but far more crowded and therefore less interesting) city of Canterbury. Rochester is the quintessential English city with its Norman Cathedral (still in use) and Castle (ruined, so not in use); yet also with a history beyond that which dates back from before the Romans until after the turn of the twenty-first century. In spite of this its greatest claim to fame is that it was the home city and chief inspiration of one Charles Dickens. (It is also the home town of Kelly Brook if you are interested in such things.)
Rochester is served by a British Rail station close to the centre of town, and is connected to both London Charing Cross and (a better option) London Victoria. The neighbouring town Chatham is host to the Dickens Experience, think Disneyland with chimneysweeps, and the Chatham Maritime which was once the Royal Navy’s premier ship-building port. Both towns are also easily accessible by road from London via the M25/A2(M).
ST ALBANS.
A Roman city, now a cathedral city, with more of the history of England than you can poke a stick at St Albans is less than thirty minutes by train from London. It is also home to two Hillsong Church London connect groups.
The Roman city of Verulamium was established within ten years of the arrival of the Roman occupying force, and was built upon the site of a town founded in 10AD which had been capital of the Celtic Catuvellaunii tribe. In 209AD legend has it that Alban, a merchant/civil servant of the town, helped to hide a Christian priest who was attempting to escape persecution. The priest converted Alban to Christianity, and was assisted to escape when Alban and the priest (known as Amphibalus, but that’s probably a fake name) swapped clothes. When the ruse was discovered Alban was offered the chance to make a token sacrifice to the local goddess, the Roman equivalent of an on-the-spot fine. Alban declined, stating somewhat heroically, “I am Alban and I worship the true and living God”. He was summarily tried and found guilty of treason, and was taken beyond the walls of Verulamium to a cemetery half way up the hill behind the town where he was beheaded. In so doing he became the first British person to suffer Christian martyrdom. In the decades and centuries following Alban was made a saint and the site of his death became a pilgrimage hotspot culminating in the establishment of an Abbey, St Alban’s, which later gave its name to the town which sprang up beside it to cater to the pilgrim crowd. Since mediaeval St Albans was built around the abbey, rather than on the old Roman city, the site of Verulamium is now a rather attractive city park with some above ground ruins beside a swan infested lake, and three nearby “ye olde quainte” style pubs.
For those of you who are interested in more recent History, St Albans was the site of two battles (including the very first) in the Wars of the Roses, the first conflict ever to be fought using flowers instead of arrows. (Ban the bulb!) It also saw action in the English Civil War during the 1640s when Oliver Cromwell himself visited and stayed in the Fighting Cocks, which claims to be England’s oldest pub.
St Albans is served by two British Rail stations, St Albans City (from St Pancras and London Bridge via the old Thameslink) and St Albans Abbey (from Euston or Milton Keynes, change at Watford Junction) and can be reached by road from Junction 6 on the M1. It has the necessary “Hillsong mix” for doing life (Nandos, Starbucks, Wagamama, and Pizza Express are all present); but if you want my two pence worth then Verulamium is a park that deserves a picnic.
Cat Astrophy
I am feeling a bit sad today: Geelong has lost the 2008 grand final after being the best team in the country all year. This is a disappointing end to the season, and is particularly sad for my family and me as we have been Geelong supporters for all of our lives.
Our tribe is in mourning.
This is a truth that Christians need to get, even amongst themselves. Of course there is no satisfaction like the love of God, but in this world there is pain and there are other loyalties. These are not conflicting loyalties, it’s not unchristian to follow the AFL, they’re just not church groups.
Our generation is a tribal generation. Our nation is too. We have always been a people who like to form groups around the things that define us in society: as Australians, it is states of origin (to various degrees) along with Ford vs. Holden, AFL vs. NRL (and the sixteenths within). These are the denominations of the world...not “of the Flesh” per se, (since when did Anglican vs. Roman Catholic be a different form of loyalty?), but of the way we think as men and women on this side of Heaven.
Therefore, my tribe is in mourning. "Sorry Business" ensues now and as a group we will commiserate together before gathering ourselves around our faith and looking to 2009, (as we looked to 1990, 1993, 1995 and 1996 of recent memory), with renewed hope.
I wonder in this specific time whether part of the issue lay with the eighteen on the field. In 2007, a Geelong team won the flag for the first time in 44 years...”we did it for the town”, the players said. Two thousand and eight was going to be different however, this time it was going to be for the boys, “we’re doing it for ourselves”. Has the team lost sight of who they are? Geelong and its football club do not exist for the support of the eighteen men in white and navy hoops: it's the other way around. We as a 150 year old tribe, founded in 1859, allow some to represent us. It was never going to be about the eighteen, it was always about the city, and the fans. If you take the event away from the tribe, the event loses its meaning and the participants lose their focus.
Nevertheless, back to my first point...Christians need to remember that Earth is a tribal place and those coming in to the church still belong to other groups. We are in the world, but not of it, but in the world there are circles and we are still very much a part of those circles...indeed it is where our ministry lays. It is not enough to say “pah but it is only football and as Christians we have a higher calling”. Yes, we do have a higher calling, but not to the exclusion of our friends and to what is important to us. Some do not like football, and that is fair enough, but those people I am sure belong to other tribes, be they other sports, or other interests. Australians are a sporting tribal nation: to minister to Australians is to minister in and within the culture of belongingness: we must not forget that to reach our “unreached” we must be sympathetic to their cries: and we must allow ourselves to feel it when our own tribes are saddened in the fight.
I am a Christian. Not “a Christian first” as there is no comparison between my belonging to Christ alone and to my “other allegiances”. Neither am I “a Cat second” as there is much of higher importance in my life than my sporting tribe: however at one level I am a “Cat”, and my family (to whom I belong more than my team) are Cats too. Today I am sad, and we are sad together, (especially as we are physically separated): I am in genuine need of ministry in a way that “look to the cross” will not fix.
I will get over it, it is only the end of the season and not the end of the world, but maybe I have discovered an insight into how our generation works. Don’t disparage the shared culture of society’s smaller groups...much rides on the fortunes of the men on the field and we must remember as light to the world that we have a duty to weep with those who weep.
For myself I will be at church tomorrow: many will be at Kardinia Park. Perhaps that is where the Church in Geelong needs to be too.
Our tribe is in mourning.
This is a truth that Christians need to get, even amongst themselves. Of course there is no satisfaction like the love of God, but in this world there is pain and there are other loyalties. These are not conflicting loyalties, it’s not unchristian to follow the AFL, they’re just not church groups.
Our generation is a tribal generation. Our nation is too. We have always been a people who like to form groups around the things that define us in society: as Australians, it is states of origin (to various degrees) along with Ford vs. Holden, AFL vs. NRL (and the sixteenths within). These are the denominations of the world...not “of the Flesh” per se, (since when did Anglican vs. Roman Catholic be a different form of loyalty?), but of the way we think as men and women on this side of Heaven.
Therefore, my tribe is in mourning. "Sorry Business" ensues now and as a group we will commiserate together before gathering ourselves around our faith and looking to 2009, (as we looked to 1990, 1993, 1995 and 1996 of recent memory), with renewed hope.
I wonder in this specific time whether part of the issue lay with the eighteen on the field. In 2007, a Geelong team won the flag for the first time in 44 years...”we did it for the town”, the players said. Two thousand and eight was going to be different however, this time it was going to be for the boys, “we’re doing it for ourselves”. Has the team lost sight of who they are? Geelong and its football club do not exist for the support of the eighteen men in white and navy hoops: it's the other way around. We as a 150 year old tribe, founded in 1859, allow some to represent us. It was never going to be about the eighteen, it was always about the city, and the fans. If you take the event away from the tribe, the event loses its meaning and the participants lose their focus.
Nevertheless, back to my first point...Christians need to remember that Earth is a tribal place and those coming in to the church still belong to other groups. We are in the world, but not of it, but in the world there are circles and we are still very much a part of those circles...indeed it is where our ministry lays. It is not enough to say “pah but it is only football and as Christians we have a higher calling”. Yes, we do have a higher calling, but not to the exclusion of our friends and to what is important to us. Some do not like football, and that is fair enough, but those people I am sure belong to other tribes, be they other sports, or other interests. Australians are a sporting tribal nation: to minister to Australians is to minister in and within the culture of belongingness: we must not forget that to reach our “unreached” we must be sympathetic to their cries: and we must allow ourselves to feel it when our own tribes are saddened in the fight.
I am a Christian. Not “a Christian first” as there is no comparison between my belonging to Christ alone and to my “other allegiances”. Neither am I “a Cat second” as there is much of higher importance in my life than my sporting tribe: however at one level I am a “Cat”, and my family (to whom I belong more than my team) are Cats too. Today I am sad, and we are sad together, (especially as we are physically separated): I am in genuine need of ministry in a way that “look to the cross” will not fix.
I will get over it, it is only the end of the season and not the end of the world, but maybe I have discovered an insight into how our generation works. Don’t disparage the shared culture of society’s smaller groups...much rides on the fortunes of the men on the field and we must remember as light to the world that we have a duty to weep with those who weep.
For myself I will be at church tomorrow: many will be at Kardinia Park. Perhaps that is where the Church in Geelong needs to be too.
Thursday 14 August 2008
Dunked Driver
Hello.
This was a piece I wrote, initially as an email, in response to a friend of mine who is being baptised this Saturday. The ceremony will take place in the English Channel off Brighton (Sussex) beach.
Once again it was well received by those for whom it was originally intended, I thought you might like to see it too.
Damien.
Like many boys who grew up in Church families in our generation I was baptised as an infant. It was Sunday 23rd July 1972 and I was two and a half months old. (My birthdate is Friday 5th May 1972.) I can't tell you much about it as I don't remember, although I was awake which was good. Being baptised as an infant is one thing, being baptised when you are asleep is something else.
Following tradition, and my parents who now constituted a Christian family rather than a Church family, (we came back to Jesus in 1975 after almost being killed in a very bad Road Traffic Accident), I made Confirmation on Sunday 21st October 1984. I was twelve and a half years of age and in Grade Seven at school. It was a school confirmation class and I was in my school (winter) uniform in church. It was at the altar rail, kneeling before David +, Bishop Shand, of Gippsland, that I prayed 'Lord Jesus if you aren't already in my life, now I am inviting you to be my Lord and Saviour'. I had been praying in this style in the weeks leading up to my confirmation, and waited until 'the altar' before praying 'the prayer'. Jesus said to me that He was already in my life and had been for twelve years, but thanked me for the concern.
I made a public re-affirmation of faith on Sunday 22nd September 1985 at my brother's confirmation service. We had changed Christian denominations as a family then, (I'd been confirmed into the Church of England, we were now Methodists) and since my little brother (twelve years and one day old) was the only kid in the confirmation class I went along to be his company amidst the scary grown-ups. He made confirmation and I made reaffirmation, basically saying that I still believed in God but I would become a part of the Uniting Church in Australia denomination as my local church.
I was Baptised in The Holy Spirit in January 1986, (I don't remember the exact date), in one of the evening rallies at 'Tabor Convention'. This was an annual conference held by Tabor College in Adelaide and had 15,000 attendees every year...basically what Hillsong Conference is now, but twenty years ago. I think it was Reinhardt Bonnke who was preaching, or possibly Paul (as he was then) Yonngi Cho. Anyway because I was little (almost fourteen) I had to stand on a chair to see the stage: and I remember my dad hugging me to him so that I wouldn't fall off the chair when the spirit came upon me. I got all wobbly and kept saying 'Praise the Lord' and 'Oh Hallelujah!' other Christian jargon.
I was first 'slain in the spirit' (ugh...horrible phrase) on Tuesday 10th September 1996 at 'The Power to Energize Conference' at Hobart Christian Life Centre. The speaker that night was Brian Houston and Darlene Zschech led worship. Our senior pastor was very sick with Motor Neurone Disease, (he died six weeks later), and so his best mate, my dad, was called in at the last minute to lead one of the workshops. (Incidentally the workshop he lead was on Casey Treat's book.) Because dad was a VIP he saved us (me and brother) seats in the second row directly behind his, so when Brian made the altar call I was one of the first ones down. Brian looked at me...and I looked at the ceiling! My dad had to carry me up three flights of stairs when we got home. It was on this night that many of my spiritual gifts were first released in me; and a lot of crap was pulled out by God's healing grace. I've only ever been 'slain' twice...the second time was Sunday 10th November 1996 and was just confirmation of what God had done two months earlier.
Since then I have had lots of occasions when Holy Spirit has washed over/through me in worship and prayer: both in church of a Sunday/conference, or just on my knees (or more frequently, my back) in my bedroom. There were other occasions at later Tabor and Energizer conferences, and memorably at 'Extravagant Worship' which Darlene lead at Hammersmith in April 2005.
So: there's the key points in the history of 'Jesus loves Damien Paul'. You will of course notice the glaring absence of me never actually going 'fully under'...I was poured on with water as a child, and drenched in Spirit both then and at every episode since: but there you go.
For me my baptisms are indeed all part of the developing love story of my Saviour's love for me, and my unworthy yet utterly acceptable efforts to love him in return. I am still only 36 now, and am looking forward to many many more times of quietness both in my prayer closet and in the midst of the thousands in worship. God continues to immerse (greek Baptismo) me in His self, his love and grace and favour and strength...and above all His life.
This was a piece I wrote, initially as an email, in response to a friend of mine who is being baptised this Saturday. The ceremony will take place in the English Channel off Brighton (Sussex) beach.
Once again it was well received by those for whom it was originally intended, I thought you might like to see it too.
Damien.
Like many boys who grew up in Church families in our generation I was baptised as an infant. It was Sunday 23rd July 1972 and I was two and a half months old. (My birthdate is Friday 5th May 1972.) I can't tell you much about it as I don't remember, although I was awake which was good. Being baptised as an infant is one thing, being baptised when you are asleep is something else.
Following tradition, and my parents who now constituted a Christian family rather than a Church family, (we came back to Jesus in 1975 after almost being killed in a very bad Road Traffic Accident), I made Confirmation on Sunday 21st October 1984. I was twelve and a half years of age and in Grade Seven at school. It was a school confirmation class and I was in my school (winter) uniform in church. It was at the altar rail, kneeling before David +, Bishop Shand, of Gippsland, that I prayed 'Lord Jesus if you aren't already in my life, now I am inviting you to be my Lord and Saviour'. I had been praying in this style in the weeks leading up to my confirmation, and waited until 'the altar' before praying 'the prayer'. Jesus said to me that He was already in my life and had been for twelve years, but thanked me for the concern.
I made a public re-affirmation of faith on Sunday 22nd September 1985 at my brother's confirmation service. We had changed Christian denominations as a family then, (I'd been confirmed into the Church of England, we were now Methodists) and since my little brother (twelve years and one day old) was the only kid in the confirmation class I went along to be his company amidst the scary grown-ups. He made confirmation and I made reaffirmation, basically saying that I still believed in God but I would become a part of the Uniting Church in Australia denomination as my local church.
I was Baptised in The Holy Spirit in January 1986, (I don't remember the exact date), in one of the evening rallies at 'Tabor Convention'. This was an annual conference held by Tabor College in Adelaide and had 15,000 attendees every year...basically what Hillsong Conference is now, but twenty years ago. I think it was Reinhardt Bonnke who was preaching, or possibly Paul (as he was then) Yonngi Cho. Anyway because I was little (almost fourteen) I had to stand on a chair to see the stage: and I remember my dad hugging me to him so that I wouldn't fall off the chair when the spirit came upon me. I got all wobbly and kept saying 'Praise the Lord' and 'Oh Hallelujah!' other Christian jargon.
I was first 'slain in the spirit' (ugh...horrible phrase) on Tuesday 10th September 1996 at 'The Power to Energize Conference' at Hobart Christian Life Centre. The speaker that night was Brian Houston and Darlene Zschech led worship. Our senior pastor was very sick with Motor Neurone Disease, (he died six weeks later), and so his best mate, my dad, was called in at the last minute to lead one of the workshops. (Incidentally the workshop he lead was on Casey Treat's book.) Because dad was a VIP he saved us (me and brother) seats in the second row directly behind his, so when Brian made the altar call I was one of the first ones down. Brian looked at me...and I looked at the ceiling! My dad had to carry me up three flights of stairs when we got home. It was on this night that many of my spiritual gifts were first released in me; and a lot of crap was pulled out by God's healing grace. I've only ever been 'slain' twice...the second time was Sunday 10th November 1996 and was just confirmation of what God had done two months earlier.
Since then I have had lots of occasions when Holy Spirit has washed over/through me in worship and prayer: both in church of a Sunday/conference, or just on my knees (or more frequently, my back) in my bedroom. There were other occasions at later Tabor and Energizer conferences, and memorably at 'Extravagant Worship' which Darlene lead at Hammersmith in April 2005.
So: there's the key points in the history of 'Jesus loves Damien Paul'. You will of course notice the glaring absence of me never actually going 'fully under'...I was poured on with water as a child, and drenched in Spirit both then and at every episode since: but there you go.
For me my baptisms are indeed all part of the developing love story of my Saviour's love for me, and my unworthy yet utterly acceptable efforts to love him in return. I am still only 36 now, and am looking forward to many many more times of quietness both in my prayer closet and in the midst of the thousands in worship. God continues to immerse (greek Baptismo) me in His self, his love and grace and favour and strength...and above all His life.
Saturday 19 July 2008
X Marks the Spot
This is a message I preached at Unity Hill Ministry Centre (Port Lincoln Uniting Church) in Port Lincoln, South Australia. It has some local content of course, but I think the message carries some universal significance as well. I hope you enjoy it, the people at Port Lincoln did.
Damien.
Isaiah 54:1-3
They say you know you’re getting old when policemen begin to look young. I must be dangerously close to ancient because I was in Tasmania last week and I must say the government is looking young: although in my defence that is because they are. The premier of Tasmania is a chap by the name of David Bartlett, with Lara Giddings as his deputy. Mr Bartlett was born in 1968, Ms Giddings in 1972. The head of government in Australia’s smallest state is forty years old, and his deputy is thirty-five. Tasmania is being governed by Generation-X.
Gary Clarke, the senior pastor of Hillsong Church London defines the term generation as a group of people who are alive at the same time. In sociological terms we can talk about The Baby Boomers or Generation-X or other groups who are defined by their decade of birth: but for the most part it is probably best to say that “this generation” is you, whoever you are, who woke up alive this morning, Sunday 20th July 2008.
But, of course within us as a group we do find different ages and different ways of thinking which mostly characterise these ages. I don’t really want to get into who the different generations are, or what defines them: that is for another time, but allow me a brief outline so that we all know who we are talking about.
At any one time in history there are four to five generations alive, with three in the forefront and one in charge. Due to the changing nature of Western Society and advances in medical technology there are six generations alive today:
The Builders 1901-1918: born before or during The Great War.
The Silent Generation 1918-1942: today aged late sixties to late eighties.
Baby Boomers 1943-1960: today aged late forties to mid sixties.
Generation-X 1961-1980: today late twenties to mid forties. This is me (36)
Generation-Y (Millennials) 1981-2000: today entering teenage to mid twenties
Generation-Z: born in the twenty-first century.
You will probably agree with me that for the most part it is the Baby Boomers who run the world at present, with some Silents still in key roles, (for example Pope and Queen are both in their 80s, although of course neither was popularly elected), and with Gen-X on the cusp. It is this cusp that the Church needs to be looking at as Generation-X begin to assume more responsibility in government and business leadership in our nation.
Another phrase used by Gary Clarke is that every church is only ever one generation away from extinction. We are here now, but who will be here in 20 years’ time? It was for this reason that God reminded the Hebrews in Deuteronomy 6:7-9 to “tell these things to your children” and “write them on your doorposts”: we must continue to pass on the things that we know to those who follow after us or the information will be lost. Just because you know something doesn’t mean your children do, and if they aren’t told and don’t know, then that information is lost when you go. If that information is the story of God, then truly this part of The Church will be extinct when we are all gone and the last one with the memory of this dies too. If we are to continue as the Church we must be a body of influence.
So what is in the future, and how can we be a body of influence?
Megachurch.
Now I know what you’re thinking, and yes Megachurch is defined by Wikipedia as a church having 2,000 or more attendees for a typical weekly service: but that’s not where I’m going. I want to suggest a different tack and describe them not as churches with lots of people in them, (although almost invariably megachurches do have lots of people), but churches with lots of influence around them. For example the place where I belong in London, Hillsong Church, is a megachurch: not because it is the biggest church in London and the biggest white-majority church in the United Kingdom, but because it is impacting its nation, its continent, and its generation in ways that many other aspects of the Body of Christ are not. And this is not just through sales of our music CDs either. As the DVD says, there is a Church behind the music.
What makes Hillsong a Gen-X church is not that it uses a big band and a lightshow, although it does do those things. What makes Hillsong Gen-X is its focus on community for those who are alone.
Let me give you an example of how the three generations think: and put it in terms of cricket.
The umpire born in 1925: a “Silent” says there are three ways to be dismissed in cricket: there is run out, LBW and caught behind, and I call them as they are.
The umpire born in 1950: a “Baby Boomer” says there are three ways to be dismissed in cricket: there is run out, LBW and caught behind, and I call them as I see them.
The umpire born in 1975: a “Generation-X” says there are three ways to be dismissed in cricket: there is run out, LBW and caught behind, but they are not out until I call them.
For those who are coming into prominence now, and have begun to take over, any decision within the rules is a good one. How should we as a Bible-based Church deal with that mindset?
The megachurches of Australia are dealing with this mindset very effectively, so is it really just about doing the Hillsong thing? Or perhaps modelling ourselves on Paradise or Edge Church (Reynella), or even Aberfoyle Park? Of course not. We can learn from their model, but what we are charged with is being the Hands and Feet of Jesus on The Eyre Peninsula. We may not see thousands come to Christ in a year, but we can act as a body of similar influence. Hillsong Church London saw just under 6700 people come to know Christ in 2007, which is pretty close to how many people attend our Sunday services in central London. This is out of a population of 7.3 million people in our city. That’s one in eleven hundred and four, or zero point zero nine of a percent. In proportion to its population that’s the same as Unity Hill reaching twelve people in Port Lincoln or forty six from across the Eyre Peninsula in a year; as well as having that as a weekly attendance on any given Sunday. Hillsong may be a “megachurch” in global terms but in population terms it’s a drop in the ocean in our city.
To be a church of influence is to be a church of engagement. We must speak in the language of Generation-X without losing our ability to speak to the Baby Boomers, and be developing ways of speaking to the Millennials who are our teens and twenties today. So, how do we speak to Generation-X? There are many things to consider, but I want to give you just two for now.
1. It’s about community.
What makes the difference is not the “show”, but the smile. If seekers don’t like the people they meet at church they won’t come back. In a world full of music, AV, charismatic speakers and advances in all forms of informational technology it is the people that keep seekers in fellowship. Indeed for Gen-X seekers it is not the “truth” which keeps them from faith, but their perception of what Christians are like. They may well agree with our arguments but they baulk at making a decision that will make them “become like us”, or what they think we represent. People are attracted to Christ by the attractive lives of Christians, not by our water-tight arguments. Truth has moved beyond relative, truth is relational. The question is not “is what you are saying true?” but “who are you that is telling me this?” Despite what some may have heard about us, Generation-X don’t resist truth; we resist arrogance. We long to find something solid that feels true, but which is prepared to consider the claims of others. The Church does not have to compromise, in fact it is best that it doesn’t because that makes it look less solid, (and feel less true); but it does have to be willing to engage in discussion.
2. It’s about compassion.
In his book No Perfect People Allowed Texan pastor John Burke writes: nothing poses a greater challenge and opportunity to the church than the overwhelming emotional pains that drive our generation into so many addictive behaviours....If God is going to use his church to reach emerging generations the church must be prepared for these struggles of brokenness....If [we] are going to minister to emerging generations [we] must create a culture where broken people are welcome and healing happens....Broken people are wounded people...they often run from those attempting to help them. Leaders must create a safe climate, so that the healing work of God can begin in their lives.
Hillsong mindset is that all Christians are to be leaders in their world, so that last sentence applies to all of you in this generation sitting here this morning, although of course with special emphasis for those of you on Vision Team who make the decisions and set the culture of Unity Hill.
In our day there is a culture of aloneness, of people longing for community, but afraid to get close – surrounded by friends, feeling ever more alone. Generation X craves the sense of community inside a spiritual family. If we don’t experience hope for authentic relational support, it doesn’t matter how contemporary the style, or how loud the music, or how trippin’ the AV: we won’t stick. The challenge the Church faces is to learn how to live in community with others, and then to provide ways to ensure that nobody stands alone.
People don’t care what you know, until they know that you care. For the members of our society in their twenties to forties it is not so much the truth that they need to know, but the Grace-without-Law that Rev Rob spoke on three weeks ago. In my generation people belong before they believe, so we need to be made to feel that belonging is easily available.
But yes, as Rev Rob touched on last week: revival and renewal are coming. Hillsong Church London saw six and a half thousand people make decisions for Christ in 2007 and our numbers grew by almost that amount. The answer, along with Biblical truth in the preached word, is that we care for those who come to faith in our house. We consider it a privilege that God would trust us with His most precious possessions, the individual “Lost”, and we do all we can to connect them to friendship and resource: and for the most part those we are reaching are those of our age-group, Generations X and Y.
There is a generation coming: men and women in the prime of life yet hungry for what the gospel alone offers: a promise of eternal connection with a gracious and loving Father, within a welcoming and sustaining community. Again as Burke said the emerging church is not a Church for a post-Christian culture but is one forged out of post-Christian people. It’s not about coming out of our Christian bunker to make forays into a fallen world, but is an indigenous church rising out of the surrounding culture to form the Body of Christ.
The lost are people just like us: and by the Father’s grace and our welcome they can join us on the road to what we are becoming.
All they need is to be made welcome.
Sunday 20th July 2008 Unity Hill (PLUCA).
Damien.
Isaiah 54:1-3
They say you know you’re getting old when policemen begin to look young. I must be dangerously close to ancient because I was in Tasmania last week and I must say the government is looking young: although in my defence that is because they are. The premier of Tasmania is a chap by the name of David Bartlett, with Lara Giddings as his deputy. Mr Bartlett was born in 1968, Ms Giddings in 1972. The head of government in Australia’s smallest state is forty years old, and his deputy is thirty-five. Tasmania is being governed by Generation-X.
Gary Clarke, the senior pastor of Hillsong Church London defines the term generation as a group of people who are alive at the same time. In sociological terms we can talk about The Baby Boomers or Generation-X or other groups who are defined by their decade of birth: but for the most part it is probably best to say that “this generation” is you, whoever you are, who woke up alive this morning, Sunday 20th July 2008.
But, of course within us as a group we do find different ages and different ways of thinking which mostly characterise these ages. I don’t really want to get into who the different generations are, or what defines them: that is for another time, but allow me a brief outline so that we all know who we are talking about.
At any one time in history there are four to five generations alive, with three in the forefront and one in charge. Due to the changing nature of Western Society and advances in medical technology there are six generations alive today:
The Builders 1901-1918: born before or during The Great War.
The Silent Generation 1918-1942: today aged late sixties to late eighties.
Baby Boomers 1943-1960: today aged late forties to mid sixties.
Generation-X 1961-1980: today late twenties to mid forties. This is me (36)
Generation-Y (Millennials) 1981-2000: today entering teenage to mid twenties
Generation-Z: born in the twenty-first century.
You will probably agree with me that for the most part it is the Baby Boomers who run the world at present, with some Silents still in key roles, (for example Pope and Queen are both in their 80s, although of course neither was popularly elected), and with Gen-X on the cusp. It is this cusp that the Church needs to be looking at as Generation-X begin to assume more responsibility in government and business leadership in our nation.
Another phrase used by Gary Clarke is that every church is only ever one generation away from extinction. We are here now, but who will be here in 20 years’ time? It was for this reason that God reminded the Hebrews in Deuteronomy 6:7-9 to “tell these things to your children” and “write them on your doorposts”: we must continue to pass on the things that we know to those who follow after us or the information will be lost. Just because you know something doesn’t mean your children do, and if they aren’t told and don’t know, then that information is lost when you go. If that information is the story of God, then truly this part of The Church will be extinct when we are all gone and the last one with the memory of this dies too. If we are to continue as the Church we must be a body of influence.
So what is in the future, and how can we be a body of influence?
Megachurch.
Now I know what you’re thinking, and yes Megachurch is defined by Wikipedia as a church having 2,000 or more attendees for a typical weekly service: but that’s not where I’m going. I want to suggest a different tack and describe them not as churches with lots of people in them, (although almost invariably megachurches do have lots of people), but churches with lots of influence around them. For example the place where I belong in London, Hillsong Church, is a megachurch: not because it is the biggest church in London and the biggest white-majority church in the United Kingdom, but because it is impacting its nation, its continent, and its generation in ways that many other aspects of the Body of Christ are not. And this is not just through sales of our music CDs either. As the DVD says, there is a Church behind the music.
What makes Hillsong a Gen-X church is not that it uses a big band and a lightshow, although it does do those things. What makes Hillsong Gen-X is its focus on community for those who are alone.
Let me give you an example of how the three generations think: and put it in terms of cricket.
The umpire born in 1925: a “Silent” says there are three ways to be dismissed in cricket: there is run out, LBW and caught behind, and I call them as they are.
The umpire born in 1950: a “Baby Boomer” says there are three ways to be dismissed in cricket: there is run out, LBW and caught behind, and I call them as I see them.
The umpire born in 1975: a “Generation-X” says there are three ways to be dismissed in cricket: there is run out, LBW and caught behind, but they are not out until I call them.
For those who are coming into prominence now, and have begun to take over, any decision within the rules is a good one. How should we as a Bible-based Church deal with that mindset?
The megachurches of Australia are dealing with this mindset very effectively, so is it really just about doing the Hillsong thing? Or perhaps modelling ourselves on Paradise or Edge Church (Reynella), or even Aberfoyle Park? Of course not. We can learn from their model, but what we are charged with is being the Hands and Feet of Jesus on The Eyre Peninsula. We may not see thousands come to Christ in a year, but we can act as a body of similar influence. Hillsong Church London saw just under 6700 people come to know Christ in 2007, which is pretty close to how many people attend our Sunday services in central London. This is out of a population of 7.3 million people in our city. That’s one in eleven hundred and four, or zero point zero nine of a percent. In proportion to its population that’s the same as Unity Hill reaching twelve people in Port Lincoln or forty six from across the Eyre Peninsula in a year; as well as having that as a weekly attendance on any given Sunday. Hillsong may be a “megachurch” in global terms but in population terms it’s a drop in the ocean in our city.
To be a church of influence is to be a church of engagement. We must speak in the language of Generation-X without losing our ability to speak to the Baby Boomers, and be developing ways of speaking to the Millennials who are our teens and twenties today. So, how do we speak to Generation-X? There are many things to consider, but I want to give you just two for now.
1. It’s about community.
What makes the difference is not the “show”, but the smile. If seekers don’t like the people they meet at church they won’t come back. In a world full of music, AV, charismatic speakers and advances in all forms of informational technology it is the people that keep seekers in fellowship. Indeed for Gen-X seekers it is not the “truth” which keeps them from faith, but their perception of what Christians are like. They may well agree with our arguments but they baulk at making a decision that will make them “become like us”, or what they think we represent. People are attracted to Christ by the attractive lives of Christians, not by our water-tight arguments. Truth has moved beyond relative, truth is relational. The question is not “is what you are saying true?” but “who are you that is telling me this?” Despite what some may have heard about us, Generation-X don’t resist truth; we resist arrogance. We long to find something solid that feels true, but which is prepared to consider the claims of others. The Church does not have to compromise, in fact it is best that it doesn’t because that makes it look less solid, (and feel less true); but it does have to be willing to engage in discussion.
2. It’s about compassion.
In his book No Perfect People Allowed Texan pastor John Burke writes: nothing poses a greater challenge and opportunity to the church than the overwhelming emotional pains that drive our generation into so many addictive behaviours....If God is going to use his church to reach emerging generations the church must be prepared for these struggles of brokenness....If [we] are going to minister to emerging generations [we] must create a culture where broken people are welcome and healing happens....Broken people are wounded people...they often run from those attempting to help them. Leaders must create a safe climate, so that the healing work of God can begin in their lives.
Hillsong mindset is that all Christians are to be leaders in their world, so that last sentence applies to all of you in this generation sitting here this morning, although of course with special emphasis for those of you on Vision Team who make the decisions and set the culture of Unity Hill.
In our day there is a culture of aloneness, of people longing for community, but afraid to get close – surrounded by friends, feeling ever more alone. Generation X craves the sense of community inside a spiritual family. If we don’t experience hope for authentic relational support, it doesn’t matter how contemporary the style, or how loud the music, or how trippin’ the AV: we won’t stick. The challenge the Church faces is to learn how to live in community with others, and then to provide ways to ensure that nobody stands alone.
People don’t care what you know, until they know that you care. For the members of our society in their twenties to forties it is not so much the truth that they need to know, but the Grace-without-Law that Rev Rob spoke on three weeks ago. In my generation people belong before they believe, so we need to be made to feel that belonging is easily available.
But yes, as Rev Rob touched on last week: revival and renewal are coming. Hillsong Church London saw six and a half thousand people make decisions for Christ in 2007 and our numbers grew by almost that amount. The answer, along with Biblical truth in the preached word, is that we care for those who come to faith in our house. We consider it a privilege that God would trust us with His most precious possessions, the individual “Lost”, and we do all we can to connect them to friendship and resource: and for the most part those we are reaching are those of our age-group, Generations X and Y.
There is a generation coming: men and women in the prime of life yet hungry for what the gospel alone offers: a promise of eternal connection with a gracious and loving Father, within a welcoming and sustaining community. Again as Burke said the emerging church is not a Church for a post-Christian culture but is one forged out of post-Christian people. It’s not about coming out of our Christian bunker to make forays into a fallen world, but is an indigenous church rising out of the surrounding culture to form the Body of Christ.
The lost are people just like us: and by the Father’s grace and our welcome they can join us on the road to what we are becoming.
All they need is to be made welcome.
Sunday 20th July 2008 Unity Hill (PLUCA).
Monday 26 May 2008
How to be an Anus in The Body of Christ without acting like an Arsehole
Now that I've got your attention...
This is something I have been working on for a while, and as with Three Year Old Crack Whores it isn't finished, but there is enough of it to post to gain feedback and opinion. I am actually hoping to expand this into a book, with lots more research of course; and perhaps a new title before submitting it to the resource table at Hillsong. Enjoy, or endure: but leave a comment either way.
I shall continue to add to this as more is written.
It must be possible to be an intercessor without being a pillock. To be an “anus” in the body of Christ without being an arsehole.
It is the vital organs of the body which are the hidden ones. We all know about the concept that Jesus only has the Church through which to act on Earth now, that since his ascension to heaven in 33AD it is we who are “his hands and feet”. We want to be the hands and feet of Christ, to be his eyes and ears, to be his mouth. We want to declare the things of God, to be a voice and a mouthpiece and an amplifier of the Word of The Lord in our day, in our generation.
But it is possible to live without a mouth. It is possible to live without hands, feet, arms, legs, eyes, ears. Okay it isn’t desirable, a man without eyes may be alive, but he’s still blind; but what of the man without kidneys? What of the man with no stomach, or no liver. Such a person cannot live.
My understanding of each of Hillsong and of Intercession in their manifestations in my hearing indicate that each doesn’t sit comfortably with the other. The “Warrior” caste (Christian K’shatria) cannot understand how a church can be as big and as effective as Hillsong without a troop of dedicated “slayers” marching around the building seven times with banners and drums and scripted prayers. Hillsong views all this sort of activity as weird, and unscriptural, (or at least unproven by scripture).
Intercession has many forms, not all of them prayer, and not all of the prayer forms of intercession are “prophetic” or “warfare”. The best description I heard of intercession was “we pray everyday prayers for everyday people”. This was said to me as I began to establish a more “frontal” prayer ministry in Australia as part of my local church – I think it’s true that prayer must be “everyday”, but that doesn’t exclude it from having power.
Similarly at Hillsong Church London I have seen my church not pray for stuff that we can handle ourselves. Not that we are excluding God or doing it “by might, by power, by our own spirit”, but simply that we are acting as “the Church” and doing what God has already told us to do. (Don’t pray for the cold and hungry man at the doorstep; give him a blanket and a cup of tea yourself!) This I have seen as everyday activity for (and by) everyday people: a form of intercession that carries the highest glory to God as it “stands in the gap” and “meets the need” of those who are gappy and needy. God gets the glory because the Church is seen to be doing something, and we get the excitement of being at the chalk-face where God is teaching us how to be like His son.
I have also seen Hillsong Church London pray for the needs of its people, and see those needs met. Needs for visas, accommodation, finance, employment, family “back home”: things that are “everyday” needs for our local church which is made up of young citizens of the Commonwealth on OE. We also pray for the blessing of businesses, for health. And we offer praise and thanksgiving too. Everyday prayers for everyday people: extraordinary people being used by God, but everyday people nonetheless.
So, do these two expressions of twenty-first century Christianity need to be reconciled? In Christ they are, he is big enough as Lord of all to handle diversity within the unity of his Church. But is there common ground, things that can be shared between these groups of faithful believers who want to reach their cities, nations, continents for the Cause of Christ? I believe there is. So, what do we have in common?
1. The Cause of Christ. All forms of “prayer for others” are ultimately without meaning if they do not lead towards the salvation of the lost and the bringing of glory to God. We pray for healings, for leave to remain in the United Kingdom, for blessing upon the workplace so that, ultimately, God is given opportunity to act in the life of an individual to transform him/her into the likeness of His son. What gain a man should he inherit the whole world yet lose his soul?
2. The foundation upon Scripture. Much of what was being revealed to prophetic intercessors in the latter half of the twentieth century came beside scripture: God demonstrating His quality of “yesterday, today, forever the same”. If it isn’t Biblical, it isn’t Christian. (It may be religious, it may even be helpful, but it isn’t Jesus.)
3. Transformation into the likeness of Jesus. A connector between the Cause of Christ and the witness of the revealed Word of God is the testimony of the gospels. “What did Jesus do” gives us an indication of what we should do: allowing for the fact that as the Body of Christ we represent him on Earth today, yet recognising that none of us individually (nor any of us corporately) is actually the Messiah of God. Christ’s greatest act of intercession was upon the Cross at Calvary, we cannot repeat this act neither as an individual Christian nor as the universal Church. Being transformed into the likeness of Christ is not necessarily about doing what he did, but about being as he was. It’s more about “for this purpose” Isaiah 61:1-3 and Philippians 2:5ff than “WWJD: I’m gonna touch some lepers today.”
4. The witness of Church History. Intercession was not invented in the 1960s any more than the power of the Holy Spirit was. Christians have been praying for each other in the mode of Jesus since the first century, and have been writing about it ever since. Paul asks for and offers prayers for the Church. Martin Luther wrote on prayer, as did John Wesley and John Calvin. Andrew Murray wrote a century ago, in South Africa, of the things people are writing about today. Edward Irving and E.M. Bounds wrote at the same time.
This is something I have been working on for a while, and as with Three Year Old Crack Whores it isn't finished, but there is enough of it to post to gain feedback and opinion. I am actually hoping to expand this into a book, with lots more research of course; and perhaps a new title before submitting it to the resource table at Hillsong. Enjoy, or endure: but leave a comment either way.
I shall continue to add to this as more is written.
It must be possible to be an intercessor without being a pillock. To be an “anus” in the body of Christ without being an arsehole.
It is the vital organs of the body which are the hidden ones. We all know about the concept that Jesus only has the Church through which to act on Earth now, that since his ascension to heaven in 33AD it is we who are “his hands and feet”. We want to be the hands and feet of Christ, to be his eyes and ears, to be his mouth. We want to declare the things of God, to be a voice and a mouthpiece and an amplifier of the Word of The Lord in our day, in our generation.
But it is possible to live without a mouth. It is possible to live without hands, feet, arms, legs, eyes, ears. Okay it isn’t desirable, a man without eyes may be alive, but he’s still blind; but what of the man without kidneys? What of the man with no stomach, or no liver. Such a person cannot live.
My understanding of each of Hillsong and of Intercession in their manifestations in my hearing indicate that each doesn’t sit comfortably with the other. The “Warrior” caste (Christian K’shatria) cannot understand how a church can be as big and as effective as Hillsong without a troop of dedicated “slayers” marching around the building seven times with banners and drums and scripted prayers. Hillsong views all this sort of activity as weird, and unscriptural, (or at least unproven by scripture).
Intercession has many forms, not all of them prayer, and not all of the prayer forms of intercession are “prophetic” or “warfare”. The best description I heard of intercession was “we pray everyday prayers for everyday people”. This was said to me as I began to establish a more “frontal” prayer ministry in Australia as part of my local church – I think it’s true that prayer must be “everyday”, but that doesn’t exclude it from having power.
Similarly at Hillsong Church London I have seen my church not pray for stuff that we can handle ourselves. Not that we are excluding God or doing it “by might, by power, by our own spirit”, but simply that we are acting as “the Church” and doing what God has already told us to do. (Don’t pray for the cold and hungry man at the doorstep; give him a blanket and a cup of tea yourself!) This I have seen as everyday activity for (and by) everyday people: a form of intercession that carries the highest glory to God as it “stands in the gap” and “meets the need” of those who are gappy and needy. God gets the glory because the Church is seen to be doing something, and we get the excitement of being at the chalk-face where God is teaching us how to be like His son.
I have also seen Hillsong Church London pray for the needs of its people, and see those needs met. Needs for visas, accommodation, finance, employment, family “back home”: things that are “everyday” needs for our local church which is made up of young citizens of the Commonwealth on OE. We also pray for the blessing of businesses, for health. And we offer praise and thanksgiving too. Everyday prayers for everyday people: extraordinary people being used by God, but everyday people nonetheless.
So, do these two expressions of twenty-first century Christianity need to be reconciled? In Christ they are, he is big enough as Lord of all to handle diversity within the unity of his Church. But is there common ground, things that can be shared between these groups of faithful believers who want to reach their cities, nations, continents for the Cause of Christ? I believe there is. So, what do we have in common?
1. The Cause of Christ. All forms of “prayer for others” are ultimately without meaning if they do not lead towards the salvation of the lost and the bringing of glory to God. We pray for healings, for leave to remain in the United Kingdom, for blessing upon the workplace so that, ultimately, God is given opportunity to act in the life of an individual to transform him/her into the likeness of His son. What gain a man should he inherit the whole world yet lose his soul?
2. The foundation upon Scripture. Much of what was being revealed to prophetic intercessors in the latter half of the twentieth century came beside scripture: God demonstrating His quality of “yesterday, today, forever the same”. If it isn’t Biblical, it isn’t Christian. (It may be religious, it may even be helpful, but it isn’t Jesus.)
3. Transformation into the likeness of Jesus. A connector between the Cause of Christ and the witness of the revealed Word of God is the testimony of the gospels. “What did Jesus do” gives us an indication of what we should do: allowing for the fact that as the Body of Christ we represent him on Earth today, yet recognising that none of us individually (nor any of us corporately) is actually the Messiah of God. Christ’s greatest act of intercession was upon the Cross at Calvary, we cannot repeat this act neither as an individual Christian nor as the universal Church. Being transformed into the likeness of Christ is not necessarily about doing what he did, but about being as he was. It’s more about “for this purpose” Isaiah 61:1-3 and Philippians 2:5ff than “WWJD: I’m gonna touch some lepers today.”
4. The witness of Church History. Intercession was not invented in the 1960s any more than the power of the Holy Spirit was. Christians have been praying for each other in the mode of Jesus since the first century, and have been writing about it ever since. Paul asks for and offers prayers for the Church. Martin Luther wrote on prayer, as did John Wesley and John Calvin. Andrew Murray wrote a century ago, in South Africa, of the things people are writing about today. Edward Irving and E.M. Bounds wrote at the same time.
Tuesday 6 May 2008
With Smaller Windows
This is a short-story which I wrote for a writing competition being run through the Trade Union at work. It has a certain amount of autobiographical detail, far too much I think, but it suits the competition. I hope you like it too.
They really do make that noise you know. Doors, in gaols, go clang. It wasn’t a sound I was ever expecting to hear for myself, but then you never know what tomorrow will bring you. The other sounds in a prison are as you’d expect them as well, but they seem omnipresent in the context of being the prisoner yourself: especially the sound of the silence of your cell at night.
People like me don’t belong in cells, well not to stay in them anyway. I used to visit Young Offenders’ Institutes from time to time as part of my role with our county’s Children, Schools and Families’ Pupil Referral Service. It was young men I worked with mostly, boys really, with EBD or ADHD or CFA. Actually I made that last one up, CFA: Chronic Father Absence, but that always seemed the most ominous of the three. Sometimes it was young women as well, but they weren’t in YOIs so much as maternity units, and to be honest it was more often than not that Deborah or Amanda was sent to work with them.
I wonder who they’ll send to work with me.
+++
I never realised that a bunch of keys could be so heavy. A wing officer carries keys which when dropped yank quite solidly on the chain which connects key ring to key pouch: but better that than the keys should hit the floor. Only last week one of the SO’s pulled me over to one side on D-Spur and asked me to drop my keys for her: I did so and she was pleased to see that they hang a good inch above the linoleum at the fullest extent of my chain. Still, with keys one side and the bulk that constitutes Mike Charlie Outstation: Echo-Three, my radio, on the other, I shall have to be careful that my trousers don’t fall down should I ever be detailed to answer an alarm and have to run the length of the establishment at the drop of a hat.
My first week on Thomas wing, Prison Officer Entry Level Training all finished now and as Officer Russet rather than POELT I proudly display the solid black officers’ epaulettes of IS-122 knowing that they are mine for keeps now.
+++
Her Majesty’s Prison Isleworth: home for the next eight months depending upon so many factors that I’m not quite sure what will happen. What I do know is I no longer have a Christian name. I’m Mister Vine at best; and IS-5572 at worst. Mr Vine was what I was called when I worked for county, except for one boy, Michael, who called me “Miss Devine” as some sort of joke; his understanding being that Teacher is a woman’s job. I certainly showed him, or did he show me?
Michael has a point; this would all have ended so differently had I not been the only man on staff. Of course there was the maintenance fellow, but that doesn’t count towards discipline in the school. No, I believe it to be true that the absence of any other man, and the vacancy in the role of Deputy Head, lead to my tragic set of circumstances. What can you expect when called to do a man’s job in a woman’s workplace, surrounded by liberal feminists who exacerbate the difficulties experienced by boys with CFA in the first place? No, this would never have happened if I had not been left alone after Mr Taylor resigned.
He had been pushing it for a while, Michael. Arguing back at his form tutor, running through the football games of the older pupils and stealing the ball from the younger ones, making noises in class: it was all becoming a bit silly. I had called him to one side for a quiet word on several occasions, we had had a regular series of 1:1 Outreach Programme sessions using material provided by the county’s advisory bureau, (material which I had assisted to produce) and he had been sent home on Afternoon and Twenty-Four Hour Fixed Term Exclusion: nothing seemed to have much of an impact on him. So when he began barging through the groups of girls who stood in small circles to chat at break time I thought I’d try something new.
It all came to a head one Thursday in November when one particular group of girls turned on him. There was no spite in what they said, nothing like the usual Bitchkrieg this particular group of girls were known for, they simply asked him to please leave us alone Michael and turned back to their conversation. I don’t know what Michael saw in their firm politeness; but whatever it was its colour was red because he proceeded to kick two of the girls in the backs of their knees, dropping each in turn to the asphalt. I was immediately on the scene and took Michael inside with me for some Time Out while Deborah tended to the wounded. I went through my mental checklist: time out (been there, done that), short-term exclusion (b.t.d.t.), modified timetable to keep Michael out of the yard during Middle School break times (b.t.d.t.), interviews with mum in the Deputy Head’s office (b.t.d.t.), Man-to-Man conversation with the only male teacher in the school. That I hadn’t done, and since this had been an occasion where Michael had hit girls and had hit them from behind, I thought it worth the attempt. But what does one say in a Man-to-Man with a fifteen year old who isn’t your son, who indeed is no man’s son?
I decided it wasn’t what you said, but it was how you said it.
So I told him his conduct was unacceptable. I told him it was unmanly and cowardly. I told him it was not chivalrous. And I pushed him in the chest to punctuate each point: man-to-man we don’t hit girls and we don’t hit anyone from behind. He burst into tears and fled the room.
Seven months later here I sit in the Induction Wing at HMP Isleworth: one charge of Actual Bodily Harm (Battery) upon a Minor, to which I pleaded innocent before the court but was found guilty. I was both a test case for the Union, and an example to be made by the liberal feminist Baby-boomer magistrate. People like me don’t belong in cells.
+++
Personal Alarm from Echo Six, Location Unknown.
The mechanical, feminine voice of Mike-Charlie burst through the radio. Echo Six; that was Officer O’Connor, and even if Mike-Charlie didn’t know where he was I certainly did. Kevin was here on Thomas wing, (all the Echoes are) and he would be in the TV room between B-Spur and D-Spur. I turned to run up the staircase as the voice of one of the Comms Officers came through the speaker: Personal Alarm from Echo Six, Officer O’Connor, Thomas Unit: acknowledge Oscar One. Mike-Charlie Out. I turned the corner and bolted up the staircase, taking three at a time. General Alarm Thomas Unit Bravo Spur, I say again General Alarm Thomas Unit Bravo Spur: acknowledge Oscar One...
+++
I didn’t see him coming; like his boy he came from behind, but it was more than a kick in the knees that knocked me into my cell. I scrambled around on the ground but I was too close to my bunk to get up before a powerful kick crashed in to my ribs. I could hear the whoop of the General Alarm ringing down the corridor, and the voices of prisoners and officers outside my cell, but he had kicked the door shut behind him so it was only the two of us behind a locked door. He didn’t say much, didn’t even introduce himself actually; but I recognised from the emptiness of his eyes who he was, and he obviously knew who I was. I managed to scramble up the frame and onto my bunk, but with my elbows sinking into the spongey mattress I was unable to gain any purchase to move much further.
+++
My first thought was one of relief, Kev O’Connor was unhurt. I could see him standing outside B27 madly trying to get his cell-key into the lock. Officer Buchannan was there as well trying to move a group of prisoners away from the door. Kev seemed to know I was there as he just began to speak, telling me that the new guy had been jumped and was inside the cell with a prisoner whose name I didn’t recognise, and that from the sounds of it the new guy was getting a right kicking.
Personal Alarm...personal alarm from Echo-Three, Officer Russet, Thomas Unit: acknowledge Oscar One...
“Russ, move!” I turned to see the Orderly Officer with the Wing SO behind me. Kev had had the door open and stood back as Oscar One changed in to the cell, to return almost immediately with the big prisoner in a restraint hold between him and the SO. Kev was calling for Healthcare assistance and behind him I could see Vine IS-5572 was in a bad way.
+++
In the end it wasn’t as bad as it appeared, I’d lost an earlobe where it had been jammed between two of the wires on the bunk and my nose and lip had been spilt: more bloodied that bruised but I’m sure it made for a good deal of cleaning up. Three days in hospital was all it took, Officer Russet on bed-watch, and I was back in HMP Isleworth. My attacker had spent the evening in the Care and Separation Unit before being transferred out to a prison up north, apparently he had a reputation for aggression but he’d never jumped a fellow prisoner before.
Three weeks later I had my first VO, and the visitor was Deborah. She was allowed to brush my cut face with her hand, prisoners at Isleworth are not put behind glass, and she made the appropriate womanly sounds of concern. Wasn’t I sacred to be in gaol? Of course I was. Wasn’t it a shock to have been arrested, charged, convicted, and sentenced for something most men would think little of in terms of socialisation of the younger generation: even if their wives and girlfriends wouldn’t understand? Of course it had been, but thanks to Deborah who even as a woman had understood. And wasn’t it so very alienating to be in a place of verbal and physical violence, where the constant sense of threat and danger made every moment a knife-edge of the unpredictable? Not at all, it’s just like school...but with smaller windows.
They really do make that noise you know. Doors, in gaols, go clang. It wasn’t a sound I was ever expecting to hear for myself, but then you never know what tomorrow will bring you. The other sounds in a prison are as you’d expect them as well, but they seem omnipresent in the context of being the prisoner yourself: especially the sound of the silence of your cell at night.
People like me don’t belong in cells, well not to stay in them anyway. I used to visit Young Offenders’ Institutes from time to time as part of my role with our county’s Children, Schools and Families’ Pupil Referral Service. It was young men I worked with mostly, boys really, with EBD or ADHD or CFA. Actually I made that last one up, CFA: Chronic Father Absence, but that always seemed the most ominous of the three. Sometimes it was young women as well, but they weren’t in YOIs so much as maternity units, and to be honest it was more often than not that Deborah or Amanda was sent to work with them.
I wonder who they’ll send to work with me.
+++
I never realised that a bunch of keys could be so heavy. A wing officer carries keys which when dropped yank quite solidly on the chain which connects key ring to key pouch: but better that than the keys should hit the floor. Only last week one of the SO’s pulled me over to one side on D-Spur and asked me to drop my keys for her: I did so and she was pleased to see that they hang a good inch above the linoleum at the fullest extent of my chain. Still, with keys one side and the bulk that constitutes Mike Charlie Outstation: Echo-Three, my radio, on the other, I shall have to be careful that my trousers don’t fall down should I ever be detailed to answer an alarm and have to run the length of the establishment at the drop of a hat.
My first week on Thomas wing, Prison Officer Entry Level Training all finished now and as Officer Russet rather than POELT I proudly display the solid black officers’ epaulettes of IS-122 knowing that they are mine for keeps now.
+++
Her Majesty’s Prison Isleworth: home for the next eight months depending upon so many factors that I’m not quite sure what will happen. What I do know is I no longer have a Christian name. I’m Mister Vine at best; and IS-5572 at worst. Mr Vine was what I was called when I worked for county, except for one boy, Michael, who called me “Miss Devine” as some sort of joke; his understanding being that Teacher is a woman’s job. I certainly showed him, or did he show me?
Michael has a point; this would all have ended so differently had I not been the only man on staff. Of course there was the maintenance fellow, but that doesn’t count towards discipline in the school. No, I believe it to be true that the absence of any other man, and the vacancy in the role of Deputy Head, lead to my tragic set of circumstances. What can you expect when called to do a man’s job in a woman’s workplace, surrounded by liberal feminists who exacerbate the difficulties experienced by boys with CFA in the first place? No, this would never have happened if I had not been left alone after Mr Taylor resigned.
He had been pushing it for a while, Michael. Arguing back at his form tutor, running through the football games of the older pupils and stealing the ball from the younger ones, making noises in class: it was all becoming a bit silly. I had called him to one side for a quiet word on several occasions, we had had a regular series of 1:1 Outreach Programme sessions using material provided by the county’s advisory bureau, (material which I had assisted to produce) and he had been sent home on Afternoon and Twenty-Four Hour Fixed Term Exclusion: nothing seemed to have much of an impact on him. So when he began barging through the groups of girls who stood in small circles to chat at break time I thought I’d try something new.
It all came to a head one Thursday in November when one particular group of girls turned on him. There was no spite in what they said, nothing like the usual Bitchkrieg this particular group of girls were known for, they simply asked him to please leave us alone Michael and turned back to their conversation. I don’t know what Michael saw in their firm politeness; but whatever it was its colour was red because he proceeded to kick two of the girls in the backs of their knees, dropping each in turn to the asphalt. I was immediately on the scene and took Michael inside with me for some Time Out while Deborah tended to the wounded. I went through my mental checklist: time out (been there, done that), short-term exclusion (b.t.d.t.), modified timetable to keep Michael out of the yard during Middle School break times (b.t.d.t.), interviews with mum in the Deputy Head’s office (b.t.d.t.), Man-to-Man conversation with the only male teacher in the school. That I hadn’t done, and since this had been an occasion where Michael had hit girls and had hit them from behind, I thought it worth the attempt. But what does one say in a Man-to-Man with a fifteen year old who isn’t your son, who indeed is no man’s son?
I decided it wasn’t what you said, but it was how you said it.
So I told him his conduct was unacceptable. I told him it was unmanly and cowardly. I told him it was not chivalrous. And I pushed him in the chest to punctuate each point: man-to-man we don’t hit girls and we don’t hit anyone from behind. He burst into tears and fled the room.
Seven months later here I sit in the Induction Wing at HMP Isleworth: one charge of Actual Bodily Harm (Battery) upon a Minor, to which I pleaded innocent before the court but was found guilty. I was both a test case for the Union, and an example to be made by the liberal feminist Baby-boomer magistrate. People like me don’t belong in cells.
+++
Personal Alarm from Echo Six, Location Unknown.
The mechanical, feminine voice of Mike-Charlie burst through the radio. Echo Six; that was Officer O’Connor, and even if Mike-Charlie didn’t know where he was I certainly did. Kevin was here on Thomas wing, (all the Echoes are) and he would be in the TV room between B-Spur and D-Spur. I turned to run up the staircase as the voice of one of the Comms Officers came through the speaker: Personal Alarm from Echo Six, Officer O’Connor, Thomas Unit: acknowledge Oscar One. Mike-Charlie Out. I turned the corner and bolted up the staircase, taking three at a time. General Alarm Thomas Unit Bravo Spur, I say again General Alarm Thomas Unit Bravo Spur: acknowledge Oscar One...
+++
I didn’t see him coming; like his boy he came from behind, but it was more than a kick in the knees that knocked me into my cell. I scrambled around on the ground but I was too close to my bunk to get up before a powerful kick crashed in to my ribs. I could hear the whoop of the General Alarm ringing down the corridor, and the voices of prisoners and officers outside my cell, but he had kicked the door shut behind him so it was only the two of us behind a locked door. He didn’t say much, didn’t even introduce himself actually; but I recognised from the emptiness of his eyes who he was, and he obviously knew who I was. I managed to scramble up the frame and onto my bunk, but with my elbows sinking into the spongey mattress I was unable to gain any purchase to move much further.
+++
My first thought was one of relief, Kev O’Connor was unhurt. I could see him standing outside B27 madly trying to get his cell-key into the lock. Officer Buchannan was there as well trying to move a group of prisoners away from the door. Kev seemed to know I was there as he just began to speak, telling me that the new guy had been jumped and was inside the cell with a prisoner whose name I didn’t recognise, and that from the sounds of it the new guy was getting a right kicking.
Personal Alarm...personal alarm from Echo-Three, Officer Russet, Thomas Unit: acknowledge Oscar One...
“Russ, move!” I turned to see the Orderly Officer with the Wing SO behind me. Kev had had the door open and stood back as Oscar One changed in to the cell, to return almost immediately with the big prisoner in a restraint hold between him and the SO. Kev was calling for Healthcare assistance and behind him I could see Vine IS-5572 was in a bad way.
+++
In the end it wasn’t as bad as it appeared, I’d lost an earlobe where it had been jammed between two of the wires on the bunk and my nose and lip had been spilt: more bloodied that bruised but I’m sure it made for a good deal of cleaning up. Three days in hospital was all it took, Officer Russet on bed-watch, and I was back in HMP Isleworth. My attacker had spent the evening in the Care and Separation Unit before being transferred out to a prison up north, apparently he had a reputation for aggression but he’d never jumped a fellow prisoner before.
Three weeks later I had my first VO, and the visitor was Deborah. She was allowed to brush my cut face with her hand, prisoners at Isleworth are not put behind glass, and she made the appropriate womanly sounds of concern. Wasn’t I sacred to be in gaol? Of course I was. Wasn’t it a shock to have been arrested, charged, convicted, and sentenced for something most men would think little of in terms of socialisation of the younger generation: even if their wives and girlfriends wouldn’t understand? Of course it had been, but thanks to Deborah who even as a woman had understood. And wasn’t it so very alienating to be in a place of verbal and physical violence, where the constant sense of threat and danger made every moment a knife-edge of the unpredictable? Not at all, it’s just like school...but with smaller windows.
Friday 4 April 2008
Darkening Crashes
This is a short story which won third place in the March 2008 running of The Mystery Prompt competition on writing.com I have made some changes to it based on the comments I received from the WDC judge, and post it here for you to read now. Enjoy!
“But that is still a long way off yet.” The optician spoke as if that were the brightest news ever spoken by Man. You are going blind. Eventually you will not be able to see, but you are not blind yet. Louisa wasn’t sure whether that made it a death sentence or a life sentence; neither sounded particularly comforting to her.
Six months ago Louisa had not had a worry in the world. Pretty, intelligent and doing the job she loved; she felt at the top of her game. Then, one ordinary morning, she noticed an odd bloodspot in her eye: as if someone had dabbed a finger into the not quite dry paint of her portrait and smeared the iris into the white. Brown iris, white white, a rusty coloured smear of colour from tear duct to pupil, Louisa thought nothing of it: simply tiredness and perhaps the stresses of her new job. She promised herself she’d get it checked when next she had space in her multicoloured planner for an appointment with the GP: and promptly forgot all about it.
Over time the smear deepened in colour and both eyes became decidedly bloodshot. Louisa began to worry, but never enough to see the GP; continuing to put the cause down to stress-inducing busyness at work and to too little sleep and too much caffeine. But now she was seeing blurring, like looking through a rain-splattered windscreen. She made the appointment with the GP, she was referred on to her optometrist and finally to a specialist optician who had delivered the cheerful news: she was going blind, but only slowly. Like pace mattered.
Paul knew something was wrong. He’d known Louisa for over a year and at last he had managed to convince her to spend some time in his company. He had noticed that Louisa had loads of friends; whereas Paul, whilst not a loner, seemed to enjoy the pleasure of his own company above too much social kerfuffle. On that darkening afternoon in Moss Park he saw her and decided she needed a friend, and with a deep breath he offered himself into the role.Louisa did not understand at the time why she had chosen to confide in Paul. A voice and a face from home, he like her was Trowennan and they had been contemporaries at the University; but she hardly knew him. Indeed to say she knew “of him” was possibly even an exaggeration; but still she shared, and he came through for her. Paul asked all the right questions, left all the right pauses, and like the girl in the apocryphal story of the late returning daughter he “helped her to cry”. Paul could not change Louisa’s medical prognosis, but she knew that with him about she would have support.
***
“Miss, what do you want with them books? They’re for grannies!” Louisa looked around with a start. It was not often she was stopped by the sound of one of her pupils’ voices at home, since she lived two towns across from the school where she taught. Louisa caught herself and offered her warmest smile.
“Perhaps this is for my granny, Elizabeth; I’m not too old to still have a nana.”
“Oh, okay Miss. Have a lovely day with her.”
The girl walked off, pausing only later to remember that Miss Davidson’s family all lived in far distant Trowenna.
Louisa tuned back to the shelves and felt the welling of a tear in her “good eye”. Large Print books were indeed for grannies, that’s why the covers were in such bold secondary colours and the pages smelled of old saliva. In truth she’d only stopped to see if there was a large print edition of a novel she wanted as the regular print, paperback edition was already out on loan. It had not occurred to her until then that one day she would only be reading large print, and then... And then, well “and then” was still a long way off yet. Paul had just that morning teased her, as her friends often did, that the notoriously clumsy Louisa parked her car “by Braille”. It didn’t bear thinking about. In the mean time there was another appointment with the optician.
***
Paul looked up as Louisa entered the restaurant. Dusk had overtaken the daylight outside; ensconced in the brightness of the booth Paul hadn’t noticed the gathering darkness. Louisa gently placed her book on the table and waited for Paul to embrace her.
“How are you?”
“How do I look?”
“Stoned.”
“Ta.” Louisa sat and idly fingered the wineglass in front of her. She sighed and smiled. “At least I can still touch and taste...restaurants are so wonderful. Ooh and hear, what lovely music this is.”
“And smell,” added Paul. “You smell too.”
“True story.” Louisa flashed her wicked grin.
The dark had completely overcome the day when they left to walk home, Paul via Louisa’s. The light of the half moon above them lit the path, but it was a familiar walk which either could have made with their eyes shut. Louisa tried to do so and promptly walked herself into a rubbish bin.
“Ouch! What’s the point of walking with you if you let me bash my legs on bins?”
“What’s the point of walking at all if you’re gonna close your eyes and hope for the best? Do not rely on what you think you know but in all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths.”
“I acknowledge he let me walk into a bin.”
“I wasn’t talking about me; now, take my hand.”
***
The brilliance of seven spotlights lit the room as Louisa idly flicked the switch and kicked off her boots in the one coordinated movement. The room was warm and Louisa realised that she had left the heater on again. She paused to smile at herself in the mirror; eyes red where they should be white she did look “stoned” as Paul had said. Louisa dropped her shoulders and exhaled the stress: deliberately relaxing herself she consciously thought “smile” and allowed her face to follow the thought. She looked into the mirror again and saw that she did indeed look beautiful, relaxed and happy. The red in her eyes was uniform in distribution, the original incursion into her iris had gone and she was responding well to treatment. The optician’s prognosis has not been the best, but it had been better than the original: she was not going blind but she was losing the ability to see in colour. “Quite simply”, she had been told, “your eyesight will diminish to black and white.” Louisa looked across at the painting on her wall, W.C. Piguenit’s Mount King William from Lake George, Tasmania. Black and white, yet almost photographic in its quality, Louisa allowed her gaze to pass through it: it would be okay after all. Dull: but then all life is dull. It would be up to her to fill the colour in, and Paul would provide a start.
“But that is still a long way off yet.” The optician spoke as if that were the brightest news ever spoken by Man. You are going blind. Eventually you will not be able to see, but you are not blind yet. Louisa wasn’t sure whether that made it a death sentence or a life sentence; neither sounded particularly comforting to her.
Six months ago Louisa had not had a worry in the world. Pretty, intelligent and doing the job she loved; she felt at the top of her game. Then, one ordinary morning, she noticed an odd bloodspot in her eye: as if someone had dabbed a finger into the not quite dry paint of her portrait and smeared the iris into the white. Brown iris, white white, a rusty coloured smear of colour from tear duct to pupil, Louisa thought nothing of it: simply tiredness and perhaps the stresses of her new job. She promised herself she’d get it checked when next she had space in her multicoloured planner for an appointment with the GP: and promptly forgot all about it.
Over time the smear deepened in colour and both eyes became decidedly bloodshot. Louisa began to worry, but never enough to see the GP; continuing to put the cause down to stress-inducing busyness at work and to too little sleep and too much caffeine. But now she was seeing blurring, like looking through a rain-splattered windscreen. She made the appointment with the GP, she was referred on to her optometrist and finally to a specialist optician who had delivered the cheerful news: she was going blind, but only slowly. Like pace mattered.
Paul knew something was wrong. He’d known Louisa for over a year and at last he had managed to convince her to spend some time in his company. He had noticed that Louisa had loads of friends; whereas Paul, whilst not a loner, seemed to enjoy the pleasure of his own company above too much social kerfuffle. On that darkening afternoon in Moss Park he saw her and decided she needed a friend, and with a deep breath he offered himself into the role.Louisa did not understand at the time why she had chosen to confide in Paul. A voice and a face from home, he like her was Trowennan and they had been contemporaries at the University; but she hardly knew him. Indeed to say she knew “of him” was possibly even an exaggeration; but still she shared, and he came through for her. Paul asked all the right questions, left all the right pauses, and like the girl in the apocryphal story of the late returning daughter he “helped her to cry”. Paul could not change Louisa’s medical prognosis, but she knew that with him about she would have support.
***
“Miss, what do you want with them books? They’re for grannies!” Louisa looked around with a start. It was not often she was stopped by the sound of one of her pupils’ voices at home, since she lived two towns across from the school where she taught. Louisa caught herself and offered her warmest smile.
“Perhaps this is for my granny, Elizabeth; I’m not too old to still have a nana.”
“Oh, okay Miss. Have a lovely day with her.”
The girl walked off, pausing only later to remember that Miss Davidson’s family all lived in far distant Trowenna.
Louisa tuned back to the shelves and felt the welling of a tear in her “good eye”. Large Print books were indeed for grannies, that’s why the covers were in such bold secondary colours and the pages smelled of old saliva. In truth she’d only stopped to see if there was a large print edition of a novel she wanted as the regular print, paperback edition was already out on loan. It had not occurred to her until then that one day she would only be reading large print, and then... And then, well “and then” was still a long way off yet. Paul had just that morning teased her, as her friends often did, that the notoriously clumsy Louisa parked her car “by Braille”. It didn’t bear thinking about. In the mean time there was another appointment with the optician.
***
Paul looked up as Louisa entered the restaurant. Dusk had overtaken the daylight outside; ensconced in the brightness of the booth Paul hadn’t noticed the gathering darkness. Louisa gently placed her book on the table and waited for Paul to embrace her.
“How are you?”
“How do I look?”
“Stoned.”
“Ta.” Louisa sat and idly fingered the wineglass in front of her. She sighed and smiled. “At least I can still touch and taste...restaurants are so wonderful. Ooh and hear, what lovely music this is.”
“And smell,” added Paul. “You smell too.”
“True story.” Louisa flashed her wicked grin.
The dark had completely overcome the day when they left to walk home, Paul via Louisa’s. The light of the half moon above them lit the path, but it was a familiar walk which either could have made with their eyes shut. Louisa tried to do so and promptly walked herself into a rubbish bin.
“Ouch! What’s the point of walking with you if you let me bash my legs on bins?”
“What’s the point of walking at all if you’re gonna close your eyes and hope for the best? Do not rely on what you think you know but in all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths.”
“I acknowledge he let me walk into a bin.”
“I wasn’t talking about me; now, take my hand.”
***
The brilliance of seven spotlights lit the room as Louisa idly flicked the switch and kicked off her boots in the one coordinated movement. The room was warm and Louisa realised that she had left the heater on again. She paused to smile at herself in the mirror; eyes red where they should be white she did look “stoned” as Paul had said. Louisa dropped her shoulders and exhaled the stress: deliberately relaxing herself she consciously thought “smile” and allowed her face to follow the thought. She looked into the mirror again and saw that she did indeed look beautiful, relaxed and happy. The red in her eyes was uniform in distribution, the original incursion into her iris had gone and she was responding well to treatment. The optician’s prognosis has not been the best, but it had been better than the original: she was not going blind but she was losing the ability to see in colour. “Quite simply”, she had been told, “your eyesight will diminish to black and white.” Louisa looked across at the painting on her wall, W.C. Piguenit’s Mount King William from Lake George, Tasmania. Black and white, yet almost photographic in its quality, Louisa allowed her gaze to pass through it: it would be okay after all. Dull: but then all life is dull. It would be up to her to fill the colour in, and Paul would provide a start.
Monday 24 March 2008
Assignment Two
Hello.
This is the second assignment for the course and I have just finished writing it. It is ready to be posted to Manchester today. The task was to choose a magazine that I am interested in, to review it from the perspective of a submitting writer, and then to write an article for the magazine. I have not included here my synopsis or my article plan, just the article itself.
For interest's sake, the magazine I had in mind for this was New Internationalist, which you can read for yourself at www.newint.org.
Thanks for stopping by,
Damien.
SECRET MEN’S BUSINESS
Eleven year old Alan[1] sits still and quiet in the middle of the classroom while his teacher walks around discussing the similarities and differences between Chanukah and Christmas. Alan is a big boy and often finds it difficult to sit and listen for long periods of time, but today he is motivated to patience because he knows that History is coming up next and History means Mr Dunn and the opportunity to engage in boy stuff. Across the corridor Daniel Dunn is reading over his lesson plan. Today is lesson three of five on the topic of The Lives of Children during The Blitz and he has two specific tasks for his class: one suggested by AQA and the other of his own choosing. This is the first time Mr Dunn has departed from the school’s approved syllabus and although he has the blessing of Mrs Johns, the Assistant Head Teacher who approves all lesson plans in advance, he cannot quite stifle the sense of nervousness.
The issue of educational equality for boys is a new one in the Developed World; historically the question has been one of raising girls’ education to the level of their brothers’, but is the tide turning against young males? It has been observed that school is becoming more “girl-friendly” as the more practical and active tasks of a generation ago are replaced by theory-based, written work: indeed the goal posts seem to have shifted such that a teacher’s goal now seems to be getting the girls to achieve and the boys to behave[2]. But boys today are not just doing worse compared to girls, they are doing worse compared to themselves, to what they might be or become with the right help and motivation.
Tony Sewell is Chief Executive of the initiative Generating Genius and he argues[3] that if boys are encouraged, like their sisters, to help with household chores they can adapt more easily to the routine and methodical nature of such tasks; but is this the entire answer? Certainly the social climate of (Western) Europe and North America has changed to allow for, indeed to expect, men to carry their weight, (and push their iron and cook their supper) around the home, but what of the boys who are still children who become less able than their sisters to deal with the style of schooling in those same geographical places?
Experience has shown that boys like clear instructions; indeed they often need help in making connections and benefit from having tasks broken down into linked, discrete, doable chunks. Girls are better able than boys to cooperatively in a team; boys will attempt to establish a pecking-order in any group task, but is that always a problem?
The bell has rung and Alan waits excitedly while Mr Dunn passes around the instruction booklets. The teacher has allowed each of the children a choice of task today and the divide is not uniform to gender although there is a distinct bias toward each one. Next to the window a group has a pile of items to try out and then write about: the experience of a wartime evacuee in either a letter home or a diary entry for 1941. A gas mask is there, with two 1940s style food tins, a ration book, a woman’s hat of the era, a pair of silk stockings, (not genuine they are rayon and belong to Mrs Dunn), and six photos of the town where the school is located taken in 1943. Of the eighteen children in that group thirteen are girls. Next to the door a group has three Airfix models, one each of a Mark VII Spitfire, a Hawker Hurricane, and a Messerschmitt ME 109. Paints and modelling cement are provided but Mr Dunn alone has charge of the craft knife. Of the eleven children present in this group eight are boys. Alan is in the model-making group and has taken charge of the cement, even though he knows that the painting must come before the cutting and sticking. He is content to wait and to talk about the planes and their uses with Mr Dunn and the group in the knowledge that his turn with the plastic kits will come.
Teachers like Mr Dunn are becoming more common, and not just amongst men. Projects such as Essex County Council’s Mantle of the Expert[4]developed by Dorothy Heathcote indicate that it isn’t only men who are interested in how boys are educated. My own experience of working in a Behaviour Support Centre with an all-female staff (except for me) demonstrated that the necessary qualities of an effective teacher for males can be found in women teachers as well as men, but all agree that it is vital that boys have access to the right type of men while they are at school, men who can act as suitable male role models.
Teachers of boys must be firm, focussed, friendly, and funny; a boy can only learn from teachers he believes like him. (Unfortunately for the boys, and girls, of a Behaviour Support Centre they tend to think nobody likes them, but that is another story.) Boys are competitive, generally more so than girls, but as is shown by young Alan waiting his turn with the cement many boys find comfort in the competition because it establishes place. Boys are role-focussed and place-centred: everyone has his fit in male society and everyone knows his place where the climate is one of up-frontness and easy honesty. For “problem boys”, a spade is always a spade.
The lesson ends with Mr Dunn carefully moving the painted sections of the model kit to the windowsill where they will dry before the next session with this class in two days’ time. Alan has not been able to use the cement today, but he has earned himself a green square (for good behaviour) on his IEP chart and he will be rewarded with five additional minutes of Golden Time on the computer on Friday afternoon. Besides this he has heard about life under Blitz conditions and shared his views on how he would not have liked to have been evacuated to the countryside. His turn as leader will come, but in the meantime Alan has managed forty-seven minutes in his seat and has not raised his volume above Partners Voice. “Mum will be proud of me and dad won’t believe it.”
[1] All names have been changed for anonymity.
[2] Steve Biddulph in Raising Boys (Thorsons, London: 1997) page 133.
[3]Address to NASUWT biennial equalities conference Boys To Men: teaching and learning masculinities in schools and colleges (2006).
[4] http://www.mantleoftheexpert.com
This is the second assignment for the course and I have just finished writing it. It is ready to be posted to Manchester today. The task was to choose a magazine that I am interested in, to review it from the perspective of a submitting writer, and then to write an article for the magazine. I have not included here my synopsis or my article plan, just the article itself.
For interest's sake, the magazine I had in mind for this was New Internationalist, which you can read for yourself at www.newint.org.
Thanks for stopping by,
Damien.
SECRET MEN’S BUSINESS
Eleven year old Alan[1] sits still and quiet in the middle of the classroom while his teacher walks around discussing the similarities and differences between Chanukah and Christmas. Alan is a big boy and often finds it difficult to sit and listen for long periods of time, but today he is motivated to patience because he knows that History is coming up next and History means Mr Dunn and the opportunity to engage in boy stuff. Across the corridor Daniel Dunn is reading over his lesson plan. Today is lesson three of five on the topic of The Lives of Children during The Blitz and he has two specific tasks for his class: one suggested by AQA and the other of his own choosing. This is the first time Mr Dunn has departed from the school’s approved syllabus and although he has the blessing of Mrs Johns, the Assistant Head Teacher who approves all lesson plans in advance, he cannot quite stifle the sense of nervousness.
The issue of educational equality for boys is a new one in the Developed World; historically the question has been one of raising girls’ education to the level of their brothers’, but is the tide turning against young males? It has been observed that school is becoming more “girl-friendly” as the more practical and active tasks of a generation ago are replaced by theory-based, written work: indeed the goal posts seem to have shifted such that a teacher’s goal now seems to be getting the girls to achieve and the boys to behave[2]. But boys today are not just doing worse compared to girls, they are doing worse compared to themselves, to what they might be or become with the right help and motivation.
Tony Sewell is Chief Executive of the initiative Generating Genius and he argues[3] that if boys are encouraged, like their sisters, to help with household chores they can adapt more easily to the routine and methodical nature of such tasks; but is this the entire answer? Certainly the social climate of (Western) Europe and North America has changed to allow for, indeed to expect, men to carry their weight, (and push their iron and cook their supper) around the home, but what of the boys who are still children who become less able than their sisters to deal with the style of schooling in those same geographical places?
Experience has shown that boys like clear instructions; indeed they often need help in making connections and benefit from having tasks broken down into linked, discrete, doable chunks. Girls are better able than boys to cooperatively in a team; boys will attempt to establish a pecking-order in any group task, but is that always a problem?
The bell has rung and Alan waits excitedly while Mr Dunn passes around the instruction booklets. The teacher has allowed each of the children a choice of task today and the divide is not uniform to gender although there is a distinct bias toward each one. Next to the window a group has a pile of items to try out and then write about: the experience of a wartime evacuee in either a letter home or a diary entry for 1941. A gas mask is there, with two 1940s style food tins, a ration book, a woman’s hat of the era, a pair of silk stockings, (not genuine they are rayon and belong to Mrs Dunn), and six photos of the town where the school is located taken in 1943. Of the eighteen children in that group thirteen are girls. Next to the door a group has three Airfix models, one each of a Mark VII Spitfire, a Hawker Hurricane, and a Messerschmitt ME 109. Paints and modelling cement are provided but Mr Dunn alone has charge of the craft knife. Of the eleven children present in this group eight are boys. Alan is in the model-making group and has taken charge of the cement, even though he knows that the painting must come before the cutting and sticking. He is content to wait and to talk about the planes and their uses with Mr Dunn and the group in the knowledge that his turn with the plastic kits will come.
Teachers like Mr Dunn are becoming more common, and not just amongst men. Projects such as Essex County Council’s Mantle of the Expert[4]developed by Dorothy Heathcote indicate that it isn’t only men who are interested in how boys are educated. My own experience of working in a Behaviour Support Centre with an all-female staff (except for me) demonstrated that the necessary qualities of an effective teacher for males can be found in women teachers as well as men, but all agree that it is vital that boys have access to the right type of men while they are at school, men who can act as suitable male role models.
Teachers of boys must be firm, focussed, friendly, and funny; a boy can only learn from teachers he believes like him. (Unfortunately for the boys, and girls, of a Behaviour Support Centre they tend to think nobody likes them, but that is another story.) Boys are competitive, generally more so than girls, but as is shown by young Alan waiting his turn with the cement many boys find comfort in the competition because it establishes place. Boys are role-focussed and place-centred: everyone has his fit in male society and everyone knows his place where the climate is one of up-frontness and easy honesty. For “problem boys”, a spade is always a spade.
The lesson ends with Mr Dunn carefully moving the painted sections of the model kit to the windowsill where they will dry before the next session with this class in two days’ time. Alan has not been able to use the cement today, but he has earned himself a green square (for good behaviour) on his IEP chart and he will be rewarded with five additional minutes of Golden Time on the computer on Friday afternoon. Besides this he has heard about life under Blitz conditions and shared his views on how he would not have liked to have been evacuated to the countryside. His turn as leader will come, but in the meantime Alan has managed forty-seven minutes in his seat and has not raised his volume above Partners Voice. “Mum will be proud of me and dad won’t believe it.”
[1] All names have been changed for anonymity.
[2] Steve Biddulph in Raising Boys (Thorsons, London: 1997) page 133.
[3]Address to NASUWT biennial equalities conference Boys To Men: teaching and learning masculinities in schools and colleges (2006).
[4] http://www.mantleoftheexpert.com
Assignment One point Two
Hello.
Here is the second piece from my first assignment. I wrote these in late December, about the time I posted my first entries on Blog Spot: I hope you enjoy them and that you will stick with me to see how my writing develops over the next few assignments.
Thanks for stopping by,
Damien.
Visit...a place that interests you...(300-500 words)
The Cathedral and Abbey Church of St Alban has the longest nave of any Christian church building in Western Europe. This fact meant very little to me until the day I entered the place by the West door for the first time. I was awestruck, I’d seen nothing like it before, and even now when I wander in as a nonchalant local from time to time I am still taken by the size of this one room and its procession of columns and windows, ending in a vast pipe organ and carved stone screen with brightly painted stone statues of saints and martyrs from St Paul to Martin Luther King.
I am Australian, our oldest church buildings date from the 1820s and were built to look old. St Alban’s was built in its current form in 1077, even the “repairs” date back to the fourteenth century, although there is Victorian mock-gothic as well in some places. The place where I do church is a theatre in the West End, we have no statues of The Virgin, or frescoes of the saints, we have photographs of Freddie Mercury and an enormous LED screen. St Alban’s is therefore quite different to what I have known both architecturally, and as a worshipper.
Recently I attended a pilgrims’ service in the abbey: I was passing by at the time and so went in to look. The nave had been emptied of its thousand chairs, and was filled with people. Children ran around the columns, playing chase-and-hide; older people sat on blankets on the stone floor eating picnic, (it was raining outside), tourists with cameras looked at the frescoes while pilgrims sat anywhere they chose, just watching the scene and resting their feet. The service was lead by the sub-dean, who joked his way through the lessons, songs, and sermon; it was all very light-hearted and welcoming for those who had travelled a long distance to be there, and just as much for me who had “popped in” uninvited.
This is a cathedral which feels more than just a place where Normans used to gather to sing, or monks to chant, or Roundheads to pillage. For me, on that one day when I saw it “in action”, it felt like a church, where Christians would celebrate their common faith in God and St Alban, and where travellers on “the road of life”, as well as the A5, were made to feel as if this was home, at least for a short while. This is not my kind of worship, but on that day it was my kind of Church.
Here is the second piece from my first assignment. I wrote these in late December, about the time I posted my first entries on Blog Spot: I hope you enjoy them and that you will stick with me to see how my writing develops over the next few assignments.
Thanks for stopping by,
Damien.
Visit...a place that interests you...(300-500 words)
The Cathedral and Abbey Church of St Alban has the longest nave of any Christian church building in Western Europe. This fact meant very little to me until the day I entered the place by the West door for the first time. I was awestruck, I’d seen nothing like it before, and even now when I wander in as a nonchalant local from time to time I am still taken by the size of this one room and its procession of columns and windows, ending in a vast pipe organ and carved stone screen with brightly painted stone statues of saints and martyrs from St Paul to Martin Luther King.
I am Australian, our oldest church buildings date from the 1820s and were built to look old. St Alban’s was built in its current form in 1077, even the “repairs” date back to the fourteenth century, although there is Victorian mock-gothic as well in some places. The place where I do church is a theatre in the West End, we have no statues of The Virgin, or frescoes of the saints, we have photographs of Freddie Mercury and an enormous LED screen. St Alban’s is therefore quite different to what I have known both architecturally, and as a worshipper.
Recently I attended a pilgrims’ service in the abbey: I was passing by at the time and so went in to look. The nave had been emptied of its thousand chairs, and was filled with people. Children ran around the columns, playing chase-and-hide; older people sat on blankets on the stone floor eating picnic, (it was raining outside), tourists with cameras looked at the frescoes while pilgrims sat anywhere they chose, just watching the scene and resting their feet. The service was lead by the sub-dean, who joked his way through the lessons, songs, and sermon; it was all very light-hearted and welcoming for those who had travelled a long distance to be there, and just as much for me who had “popped in” uninvited.
This is a cathedral which feels more than just a place where Normans used to gather to sing, or monks to chant, or Roundheads to pillage. For me, on that one day when I saw it “in action”, it felt like a church, where Christians would celebrate their common faith in God and St Alban, and where travellers on “the road of life”, as well as the A5, were made to feel as if this was home, at least for a short while. This is not my kind of worship, but on that day it was my kind of Church.
Assignment One point One for my Writing Course
Hello all.
I haven't been in for a while, but I have been busy. I have been studing writing with a crowd in Manchester and so have been working on my assignments. Here is the first one for your reading pleasure: the important people in Manchester liked it.
Tell us in about 300 words why you want to write...
I want to write because I enjoy writing, and always have done. As a child I often made my own little books and newspapers, and I enjoyed English writing tasks at school and university. Now, as an adult, I still enjoy writing letters and stories for friends; but I would like to take this further and make writing part of my career, if not a new career entirely. There are many things I want to write about, both in fiction and non-fiction genres, or perhaps a mix of both. In the past I have been a school teacher, and liked to teach through stories; I would like to write in this way too, perhaps sharing new ideas with people through anecdotes, or even “parables”. I would also like to write stories for others to read simply for pleasure.
My hope from this course is that I will pick up tips on how to write “properly”, to improve my written English, and also to learn the best ways of seeking publication. I want to write better than I do now, and I want to be able to be published so that I can share my ideas with others.
In the future I would like to be a platform teacher/speaker in the church, teaching from my books about the things I have learned in life. Writing is then a means of sharing information with those who would come to hear me speak, or even for those who’d rather just read than listen, (as I usually would). I don’t want to be a vicar or an “evangelist”, but to be a teacher in the broadest sense, and I see writing as the central part of that.
I have set a target to be teaching from my first published book by the time I am forty. I shall turn thirty-six in May.
I haven't been in for a while, but I have been busy. I have been studing writing with a crowd in Manchester and so have been working on my assignments. Here is the first one for your reading pleasure: the important people in Manchester liked it.
Tell us in about 300 words why you want to write...
I want to write because I enjoy writing, and always have done. As a child I often made my own little books and newspapers, and I enjoyed English writing tasks at school and university. Now, as an adult, I still enjoy writing letters and stories for friends; but I would like to take this further and make writing part of my career, if not a new career entirely. There are many things I want to write about, both in fiction and non-fiction genres, or perhaps a mix of both. In the past I have been a school teacher, and liked to teach through stories; I would like to write in this way too, perhaps sharing new ideas with people through anecdotes, or even “parables”. I would also like to write stories for others to read simply for pleasure.
My hope from this course is that I will pick up tips on how to write “properly”, to improve my written English, and also to learn the best ways of seeking publication. I want to write better than I do now, and I want to be able to be published so that I can share my ideas with others.
In the future I would like to be a platform teacher/speaker in the church, teaching from my books about the things I have learned in life. Writing is then a means of sharing information with those who would come to hear me speak, or even for those who’d rather just read than listen, (as I usually would). I don’t want to be a vicar or an “evangelist”, but to be a teacher in the broadest sense, and I see writing as the central part of that.
I have set a target to be teaching from my first published book by the time I am forty. I shall turn thirty-six in May.
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