futurePRIMITIVE

Welcome to the conversation.

If you have read some of the other things I have written about how amazing God has made people to be you will know this is a passion for me.  I am energised when I think of what people can contribute to making the world more human.

At the same time I can be disheartened by the numbers of people I meet who do not think they have anything to offer and as a result have become passive.  Jenifer Fox writes of the American educational system: ‘The alarming message it presents is that there is not enough to go around for everyone to be successful’ (Your Child’s Strengths).  These words stood out for me.  In the British culture there is an assumption that only some will succeed and the rest will have to put up and serve.

The thinking is that there is only so much success to go around, that it is a scarce commodity, and this way of seeing things is found in the culture-at-large and in the churches.  We have such a limited formula for measuring success - probably formulated by people who are good at the things that are included in it.  But what if success isn’t scarce?

What if the truth is that we just don’t know what it would be like to live in a world in which everyone succeeds?  What if such a world is possible?  What if this has always been a significant part of the mission of the church … restoring humanity as the living image of God?  What if the church is God’s R&D department, a picture of what success ought to look like to the world?

The unfortunate truth is that the church more often reflects the culture in which it finds itself, which in a 1,001 ways - more implicitly than explicitly - is saying there is scarcity and only a few succeed … and it begins early in life: ‘We’re unwittingly sending disapproving messages to children all the time.  In general we do this through the systems we have in place, and specifically with the conversations we have, or do not have, about the expectations and requirements we have laid out for their future success.  I call this focusing on weakness’ (Jenifer Fox).

That some wake up to wanting more comes out in what can be unhealthy ways.  See the tens, if not hundreds, of thousands, hoping to get the final stages of the X Factor, or  Britain’s Got Talent (insert your own country).  I say unhealthy because there is still only one successful entrant, and whilst others have their few minutes or hours of fame, the truth is that fame is for a lifetime in God’s life-in-all-its-fullness plan.

Of course, it must be added that this kind of fame looks different, as Jesus made clear when he announced that he had not come to be served but to serve, but then he added that he offers life in all its fullness, and completes our joy in life lived for others.

What do you think?  Scarcity?  Or can everyone succeed?

If you want to do something of a bible study through this lens then have a look at 1 Corinthians 3:1-9, asking: Why are the people supporting one or other of the apostles?  Is it possible to conceive that the apostles as celebrities in the eyes of the people?  Why do you think this result s in the kind of bad behaviour Paul mentions?  What would it look like if they all realised that they also were co-workers with God, and identified the part of the work they were meant to be involved in (preparing the ground, sowing seed, keeping the weeds out, watering, etc.)?

Welcome to the conversation.

Here is a message I am working on for Sunday, beginning with the scriptures:

The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good,your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is the darkness. (Matthew 6:22,23)Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? […] first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. (Matthew 7:3,5)

I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you. […] You shall see greater things then that. […] you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man. (John 1:48,50,51)

Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. (John 14:9)

 ///

Have you ever seen Fifty First Dates, the romantic comedy with Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore?  It’s the story of Lucy, a young woman living in Hawaii who has suffered a head injury in a car accident and has no short-term memory.  To prevent her from being traumatised by changing the last thing she can remember, her father and brother have been creating the same day over and over again for a whole year.  That is until Henry (Sandler) meets Lucy and begins to fall in love.  But, how can someone who forgets everything overnight have a relationship with someone she never knew before the accident?  Enter the comedy and romance.

I won’t spoil the film for you, but fast forward to Lucy waking up in a strange place to first watch the video that has been made to remind her of what has been happening, then she moves to the window and draws back the curtain to stand wide-eyed and open-mouthed at the completely new and unexpected scenery - a beautiful snowbound bay in Alaska.What must it be like to begin a day and to have our eyes opened to the unexpected?  Instead of seeing the same things over and over again (and doing the same things over and over) what would it be like to see something quite new and amazing every day of our lives?

What might make something like that possible?

I was sharing something of this with a group of around fifteen or sixteen people last week and just wanted to check out how many needed some kind of assistance to be able to see - lenses, glasses, reading glasses, monocles - and discovered there was only one person there who didn’t need anything at all!

For me the truth follows that most of us need help when it comes to seeing things in an amazingly different way … and more than contact lenses or specs.

Annie Dillard is someone who sees far more than I do; listen to this: ‘In flat country I watch every sunset in the hope of seeing the green ray. The green ray is a seldom-seen streak of light that rises from the sun like a spurting fountain at the moment of sunset; it throbs into the sky for two seconds and disappears,’ concluding: ‘One more reason for keeping my eyes open.’

For Dillard, ‘The secret of seeing is, then, the pearl of great price,’ and she gives this advice: ‘The secret of seeing is to sail on solar wind. Hone and spread your spirit till you yourself are a sail, whetted, translucent, broadside to the merest puff.’

How do we do that?

One day a man, going about his work, saw a most amazing sight. It was a bush that seemed to be on fire and yet wasn’t consumed by the flames. I have to wonder if one of the things Moses had discovered in the desert was the art, or ability, of seeing what others miss.

I think Jesus had also developed this art of seeing. When he spoke about sparrows or flowers in the fields he wasn’t simply reflecting living in a largely agrarian society, and he certainly wasn’t being “cute”, rather he noticed things, he really saw the details we so often miss. And whilst he noticed far more than many of us do in nature and what it has to say about the relationship of God with us, he also noticed people - an old woman giving everything she had in an offering, a tax-collector in a tree, the heart of a woman washing his feet with her tears (that no-one else wanted to see, but he did).

Seeing is part of the JesusLife we are invited into, part of the mystery of life in which the invisible becomes visible, and the closer we live to Jesus Christ, it seems to me, the more we see the invisible, the more we see in quite a new way, the sharper my life-sight becomes (though I admit right now it feels as if I can only get down to the “second line on the optician’s chart”).

At the end of leading a group of church leaders through exploring their strengths (talents and abilities honed by skill and knowledge), Edward “Chip” Anderson gave everyone a pair of foldaway reading glasses. His final request was a simple one, it was for everyone to wear the glasses for five minutes each day for the following week: half the time was to be spent looking at themselves, the rest of the time to look upon the people around. His message was simple: from now on they would see themselves and others differently.

He was right. I was part of the group Chip had led, and not because of wearing the glasses, he had helped me to see a day quite differently.

The art of seeing begins in the secret place with God, the place Jesus hurried to at the beginning of each day. I have described this as the first “table” of the day God invites us to - see the meal … another serving.

This breakfast table invitation is something we all receive, coming to us, as it does, with the first-breaths of our new day. It looks quite different for each of us, and it is for us to creatively weave prayer and scripture and solitude through it, but, for each of us it is a place of deepening connection with God, who helps us to see … more.

What does it look like for you? I ask this because it is very important, if we are to become people who see, that we accept who we are as shaped by God. We will not see very well if we are trying to be like someone else or to be the kind of people others want us to be.  Who God has made you to be will shape how and what you see.

In his excellent book Finding Our Way Again Brian McLaren shares how part of connecting with God ‘is that we join God in seeing.’

This thought from McLaren made me open my eyes wide.  Jesus suggests the eyes are the lamp of the body, that, as it were, what or who we look upon lights our eyes and sheds light (or darkness) into our lives.  This simple sentence though from McLaren expressed for me my growing desire to live this day as one who sees things differently.

Life with God is not about living a different kind of day, but to live the day I already have, differently, beginning with God. The days the disciples woke up to were just the same ordinary kind of days as we wake up to - sun, rain, winds, joys, troubles, etc. - but because they were spending time with Jesus they increasingly looked upon their days through “seeing” eyes.

Carrie Newcomer offers these wonderful lyrics: ‘holy is the place i stand/ to give whatever small good i can/ and the empty page and the empty book redemption everywhere I look/ unknowingly we slow our pace/ in the shade of unexpected grace/ and with grateful smiles and sad laments/ as holy as a day is spent/ and morning light sings “providence”/ as holy as a day is spent,’ (as holy as a day is spent).

All these thoughts wrap themselves around a phrase of just three words for me - from Dr Elizabeth Julian, a Catholic nun - instead of talking about practicing our faith, we must explore ‘faithing our practices.’

This is quite simply what Jesus did. On a hillside, with his disciples and a growing crowd, he taught how a deeper life is not a to-do list of great things to be done by great people, rather, the ordinary things of life being carried out with love and goodness and kindness brought out from deep within people. These included: how we speak to one another; relationships between husbands and wives; business relationships; and, friendships. Jesus invites those who would follow him to see all these differently.

Leonard Sweet has correctly said: ‘The spiritual life has earthly dimension - it is a life you can taste, and smell, and touch, and see, and hear. It is reality.’ (The Gospel According to Starbucks).

We are amongst those who realise there is no greater calling in life than to take time - and to use our time - so that we might see God and see people differently. We become helpers of one another and helpers of others, as John Wesley encouraged his people to: “build them up in that holiness without which they cannot see the Lord”.

I understand that the words miracle and mirror come from the same Latin root (miro - to wonder, and mirus - wonderful). What do we see, who do we see, as we look into this mirror? What do we see, who do we see, as we put on those new glasses that help us to see God, to see others, even as we see ourselves … differently?

Leonard Sweet asks, ‘do you wonder and admire the one-of-a-kind miracle you are?’ I would add whether we see this in the lives of the people around us? And perhaps we gasp, because we have seen something more clearly.

Do you see what I mean?  There is more to see than you wake up to now.  God is waiting to meet with us, so that he might touch our eyes so we look upon a day with wide-open eyes, and perhaps with wide-mouthed wonder.

“Look where you’re going!” may then be less of a warning and more of a promise.

 ///

Here are some questions you might find helpful to think through:

• How did the words of Carrie Newcomer help you to look upon your day differently?
• I suggested that Moses was someone who had learned to use his time to see more. Do you agree? What might have contributed to forming this seeing ability in him?
• Do we tend to value or undervalue people like this?
• Annie Dillard says the secret of being sensitive to all that is around us is to ‘Hone and spread your spirit till you yourself are a sail’. Is this your experience? What are some of the practices you employ to be more sensitive?
• Brian McLaren suggests there is a link between connecting with God and seeing more. Is this your experience? What other things have helped you to see more?
• Do you feel comfortable with seeing yourself as something wonderful? Why did you answer as you did?

Welcome to the conversation.

Once more I have written down some of the thoughts I have been working through towards Sunday.

I love food but I love it most of all when I get to share it with others. I guess I am seeing more and more how I need to receive mealtimes as a wonderfully necessary interruption to the other activities of a day.

At the moment my reading at the end-of-the-day is John Grisham’s Playing for Pizza, which I’m really enjoying because it’s set in Italy and I’ve just been there on holiday. Grisham’s novel, like our own experience of Italy, is overflowing with food. Rather than laying out in the sun as human barbecues, my wife and I loved to sit in the local cafes, looking out on a lake - sunshine, sweet breezes, with a slice of torte and a drink … and a good book to read.

Something I had decided to weave through the holiday was the reading through of Luke’s Gospel. I was prompted to do this by something I read in N T Wright’s The Challenge of Jesus just before my holiday began, a suggestion that there are eight meals in Luke - so I thought I’d see if I could spot just what they were.

What I found were many food and meal references in Luke’s Gospel, but here’s my best effort at listing the eight: 1) Matthew’s Party (5:27-39); 2) Simon the Pharisee’s invitation (7:36-50); 3) Feeding more than 5,000 (9:12-17); 4) Pharisees and washing hands (11:37-41); 5) A Pharisee’s invitation and the announcement of the Great Banquet (14:1-24); 6) At Zacchaeus’ place (intimated - 19:1-10); 7) The Passover (22:1-23); and, the meal in Emmaus.

Wright asks us to particularly notice the seventh and eighth meals, pointing to a link between the “week” of Genesis creation and the new creation in Luke: ‘the week of the first creation is over, and Easter is the beginning of the new creation. God’s new world order has arrived.’

Meals are big in the Gospels and the reason for their significance comes into sharper view when we follow Wright’s argument that Jesus replaced the position of the temple in the life of Israel with a meal, his ‘own alternative symbol, the kingdom-feast, the new exodus feast,’ and that ‘Those who shared the meal with him were the people of the renewed covenant, […] Grouped around him, they constituted the true eschatological Israel.’

I reason I share these things is because I have been preparing a message for Sunday and thought I’d do some reflecting through my blog. The worship service I’m involved in is the beginning of something new for a church facing a new beginning - a shorter service followed by a communal meal - and I have more than an inkling that it is something important for the congregation to the extent of shaping its future. I think the meal is going to be lunch for this congregation in more than one way and I’ll tell you why.

Firstly, running through all my thinking about meals is an icon alternatively titled The Hospitality of Abraham and The Trinity, by Andrei Rublev (see above). The icon has become very special to me in the seven or eight years since I was introduced to it, representing as it does, the three travellers received as guests by Abram and Sarai in Genesis 18, traditionally thought to be God visiting the elderly couple.

Whenever I look at this image I am reminded of how God is welcoming me to his table in order to spend some time with him - to be.

Notice the space at the table in the foreground. That’s my place, and that’s your place too. Recently, I have been thinking of it as my breakfast table, the place I sit at the beginning of my day. This first “table of God” in a day for me is a personal one.

The second “table of God” I need to sit at in my day is a communal table: when I meet with others who are God’s people, and we enjoy him and enjoy one another. This is lunch - and this is the kind of meal I think the congregation is going to enjoy.

I don’t know about you but I was very much brought up with the idea that it is important to have “three square meals” a day: breakfast, lunch, and dinner (or, breakfast, dinner, and tea, if you come from Yorkshire, as I do). I was not allowed to skip a meal by my mother as a child, and now I am not allowed to skip a meal by my wife - C’est la vie! But they are both right, and you may be agreeing with them.

When the meal becomes a metaphor, or an icon, we begin to see how many people are skipping the meals they are invited to share at the table of God. Jesus ate at these three tables - Henri Nouwen noticed how Jesus lived his life through a rhythm or cycle of solitude, community, and ministry - there is the “breakfast” of personal time with God, there is the “lunchtime” of time together in community, and, there is the “dinnertime” of missional tables with God, something we see in one of the meals Luke records, about the banquet house of God needing to be full (Luke 14:23).

I know I can’t skip any of these meals, no matter what I might come up with as an excuse: I know more now than ever in my life, how I need the personal time, how I need the community time, and how I need the missional time, if I am to live this life with God - if I am to live the life that is God.

The kingdom meals open a larger and more beautiful world to us. As I reflect on the icon and on Luke’s recording of a number of meals, I became aware of disruption. Although Abraham welcomes the three strangers, it is the strangers who become the host in Rublev’s icon. Is this artistic licence on the part of Rublev or did he see something more, perhaps how in a number of Luke’s meals Jesus is the guest invited to the table but who then becomes the host, most strikingly in the eighth meal, in Emmaus.

More disruptive still is the meal at Simon the Pharisee’s home, where it is actually the woman who gatecrashes the meal, who, perhaps unknowingly, becomes the host - until Jesus points out that this is exactly what she is doing.

I wonder if this is disturbing you as it is disturbing me: What kind of kingdom is this, inviting the stranger and then allowing the stranger to become the host?

I wonder what this will mean to the people coming to the service I’ll be at on Sunday; I wonder what it will mean to so many churches.

Dare we welcome strangers and then invite these strangers to become our hosts?

Surely it’s our church?

Doesn’t it take many years to “get our feet under the table” - before something like this can happen?

These meal stories are highly subversive. Jesus appears to have little problem incorporating some of the most significant kingdom business in a meal, including the mystery and glory poured into the Passover meal.

As I was thinking through all of this, I read these words from Rick McKinley: ‘Have you ever received communion from a beautiful eight-year-old girl who looks at you with eyes of wonder? “This is the body of Christ, broken for you,” she says, holding up a piece of bread,’ (This Beautiful Mess).

Whenever God’s people come together, there is a choice: we can eat some food together because it’s expedient to do so, or we can come to the table of God and enter into the mystery - where the lonely share a meal with others, where hurts are laid down and healing is found, where empty people are filled to bursting point, and where joyless people find laughter, and above all, were love is spread thickly and freely by the stranger-God who is the host of the feast of life in all its fullness.

Are we hungry yet?

Brian McLaren shares this thought: ‘I think this is what happens to all of us when we feel a pull toward God. Not many of us, I think, feel really excited about attending church or singing religious songs or stopping snarky comments or disciplining ourselves to pray. What we feel is that some music is missing from our lives, and we need it; we can’t be fully ourselves as we hope to be without it,’ (Finding Our Way Again).

Do we hear the music? Are we hungry yet? Perhaps they are the same thing. It’s not church we want, it’s to be fed at the table of God, an open table, of love and forgiveness and wholeness and purpose.

How do we become this kind of “church”? Now, that’s a really good, a really exciting question.

What do you think?

Welcome to the conversation.

I am continuing to follow my thoughts towards Sunday. I have reworked yesterday’s offering - hopefully not serving it up as “re-heat.”

I love food but I don’t love it nearly as much if I have to eat it on my own. eating then simply becomes something I have to do for sustenance, but when I eat with others, food and conversation are a delightful fruit and occupation of a shared meal.

At the moment my end-of-the-day reading is Playing for Pizza by John Grisham, a story set in Italy and simply overflowing with food. And as I have just been to Italy on holiday I very much appreciate the scenes drawn by the author. Rather than laying out in the sun as human barbecues, my wife and I loved to sit in the local cafes, looking out on a lake, with a slice of torte and a drink … and a book to read.

One of the things I had decided to weave through my holiday was to read through Luke’s Gospel. I had been prompted by something I had just read in N T Wright’s The Challenge of Jesus, a suggestion that there are eight meals in the Gospel, so I thought I’d see if I could spot just what they were.

If you read through Luke’s Gospel what you will find are lots of food and meal references. Here’s my best effort at listing the eight: 1) Matthew’s Party (5:27-39); 2) Simon the Pharisee’s invitation (7:36-50); 3) Feeding more than 5,000 (9:12-17); 4) Pharisees and washing hands (11:37-41); 5) Pharisees and healing on the sabbath; 6) At Zacchaeus’ place (intimated - 19:1-10); 7) The Passover (22:1-23); (sorry for the emoticon here, it should say “eight” but it won’t go away) the meal in Emmaus. Notice the seventh and eighth meals, leading Wright to point out the link between the “week” of Genesis creation and the new creation in Luke: ‘the week of the first creation is over, and Easter is the beginning of the new creation. God’s new world order has arrived.’

The reason these meals are so significant for us comes into sharper view when we follow N T Wright’s argument that Jesus was replacing the temple with a meal, his ‘own alternative symbol, the kingdom-feast, the new exodus feast,’ and that ‘Those who shared the meal with him were the people of the renewed covenant, […] Grouped around him, they constituted the true eschatological Israel.’

I share these things with you because I’m beginning to prepare a message for Sunday and thought I’d jot them down in my blog. The worship service I’m involved in is the beginning of something new for a new beginning of a church - a shorter service followed by a communal meal, and I have more than an inkling that this is going to be something important for the congregation, to the extent of possibly defining a significant part of who and what this God-community is meant to be.

Running through my thinking about all of this is an icon which has made a big impact on my life, alternatively called The Hospitality of Abraham and The Trinity Icon, by Andrei Rublev (see above). The icon represents the three travellers received as guests by Abram and Sarai in Genesis 18, traditionally thought of as God visiting the elderly couple.

I have loved this icon ever since being introduced to it some seven or eight years ago, for in it I know God is welcoming me to his table to spend some time with him, to be. Notice the space at the table in the foreground. That’s my place, and that’s your place. Recently, it has become my breakfast table, the first place I sit at the beginning of my day. For others it may be a supper table, or a welcoming table for some other time of day. God wants to spend time with us.

The thing about it is that although Abraham welcomed the three strangers, it is the strangers who become the host! This is the thing about a number of Luke’s meal passages. Jesus is the one who is invited to the table but it is he who becomes the host, most notably in the eighth meal, in Emmaus. At Simon the Pharisee’s home, it is actually the woman who gatecrashes the meal who, perhaps unknowingly, becomes the host, until Jesus points out that this is what she is doing.

I don’t know if this is getting to you, but it’s getting to me. What kind of kingdom is this, that invites the stranger and then allows the stranger to become the host?

What does this mean for the people who are coming to the meal on Sunday? Dare they become welcomers of strangers and then invite these strangers to become their hosts? Surely it’s their church? Surely you have to be there for many years to “get your feet under the table” before you can something like this can happen?

I have found these stories of meals to be highly subversive. Some of the most amazing kingdom moments were lived out in meals. One meal holds the unique and crowning glory of Jesus’ ministry … in a meal!

(I share a small table with God in the morning but he also invites me to share a huge table with many others.)

More than simply eating food together on Sunday, this meal holds the promise for a group of people as a living picture of God’s table, a table of kingdom closeness, an icon, or window, into the greater reality of the stranger-God who has visited us and who has become the host of life.

Are we hungry yet?

Brian McLaren shares this thought: ‘I think this is what happens to all of us when we feel a pull toward God. Not many of us, I think, feel really excited about attending church or singing religious songs or stopping snarky comments or disciplining ourselves to pray. What we feel is that some music is missing from our lives, and we need it; we can’t be fully ourselves as we hope to be without it,’ (Finding Our Way Again).

Do we hear the music? Are we hungry yet? Perhaps they are the same thing. It’s not church we want, it’s to be fed at the table of God, an open table, where everyone can find love and forgiveness and wholeness and purpose.

And how do we become that kind of “church”? That is an exciting question.

What do you think?

Welcome to the conversation. It’s good to be back in Voxtropolis after the problems with slowness.

I love food but I don’t love it nearly as much if I have to eat it on my own. eating then simply becomes something I have to do to sustain myself, but when I eat with others, food and conversation are a delightful fruit and occupation of a shared meal.

My end-of-the-day reading at the moment is Playing for Pizza by John Grisham, a story set in Italy and overflowing with food. Having just been to Italy on holiday this Summer, I very much appreciate the scenes being drawn by the author. Rather than laying out in the sun as human barbecues, my wife and I loved to sit in the local cafes, looking out on a lake, with some torte and a drink … and a book to read.

One of the things I decided to weave through the holiday was to read through Luke’s Gospel; I had read a comment in N T Wright’s The Challenge of Jesus suggesting there are eight meals in this Gospel and so I thought to check out which these were: ‘the week of the first creation is over, and Easter is the beginning of the new creation. God’s new world order has arrived,’ (Wright). I won’t include them here but Luke did make a wonderful read at a long sitting, and whilst there are the meals, there are lots of other references to food and eating running through the verses.

The reason I’m sharing these things though, is because I am beginning to prepare a message for Sunday. The worship service is the beginning of something new - a shorter service followed by a communal meal. I have more than an inkling that this is going to be something important for the congregation, to the extent of possibly defining who and what it is meant to be.

I have been very much affected by an icon alternatively called The Hospitality of Abraham and The Trinity Icon by Andrei Rublev (see below). The icon represents the three travellers received as guests by Abram and Sarai in Genesis 18, traditionally thought of as being God visiting the elderly couple.

I have loved this icon ever since being introduced to it some seven or eight years ago, for in it I find God welcoming me to the table - note the space at the front of the icon - to spend some time with him, to be. Recently, it has become my breakfast table, the first place I sit at the beginning of my day. The welcomed stranger becomes the host!

This thought has been reinforced by N T Wright’s claim that Jesus replaced the temple with a meal, his ‘own alternative symbol, the kingdom-feast, the new exodus feast,’ and that ‘Those who shared the meal with him were the people of the renewed covenant, […] Grouped around him, they constituted the true eschatological Israel.’

The meal, for the people coming together on Sunday, comes as a promise for who they might be, welcomers of guests with whom they will share good things at the table of God, welcomers of the strangers who becomes the hosts (think of what that might mean).

More than simply eating food together, it is a living picture of the kingdom of God, an icon, or window into the greater reality of God present with us.

This is simply a first attempt to put some thoughts down that I will hope to be adding to as the week continues. What do you think?

Welcome to the conversation.

I love this time of year: everything is coming alive. This morning, I ran through a shallow glen close to where I live, the trees on either side breaking out into leaf; the smell of wild garlic quite pungent in the air; a stream running through, enjoying itself in the Spring sunshine. I could get quite poetic.

As I ran through all of this beauty I wondered why it is that I enjoy Spring so much. I love the warmth of the sunshine and the brilliant colours but I think it’s because all of this nature has looked so unpromising, even dead, and then it breaks out in amazing colour, smell, shape, and sound, (leaves sound different in the Spring to the Autumn).

Running on, and thinking about these things, I then thought about how human lives can enjoy such a Spring, even after a long time of Winter. Walter Wink, in his book The Human Being confesses: ‘I am bewildered, having lived the greater part of my life, that I know so little about being human myself. I am shocked that I am still largely an amalgam of conventions and opinions and so little in touch with my real thoughts and feelings. Who am I? What might I become? Why have so many of us sold out to miniaturized versions of ourselves?’

But I have seen the Spring and long to run in it. How about you?

(Previously posted on my website: http://www.geoffreybaines.org.uk)

Welcome to the conversation.

Seth Godin tells the story about Threadless.com, a T-shirt silkscreening company in Chicago.   The company doesn’t aim to sell lots of cheap T-shirts or aggressively advertise.  The remarkable thing about Threadless is that they are open to printing the designs of their customer: ‘Every person who visits the site isn’t just a prospective customer.  They’re a prospective designer,’ (Meatball Sundae).  So it makes complete sense for the company to run design competitions.

I love the openness of this company which is ready to learn from and work with its customers.  People are so creative and this story just encourages me to keep learning from others.  Life really is a conversation.

(This blog was previously on my website: geoffreybaines.org.uk)

Welcome to the conversation.

I’ve included the following from what I included on my website for yesterday and today.

I have just begun to dip into Seth Godin’s Meatball Sundae and I just have to share something he says about how to read the book. Seth suggest: You can read this book in ten minutes. Or you can take two hours or even a few days. Up to you. If you want to know what it’s about, just read the executive summary. If you want the high points, jump from one boxed item to another. Or, if you want to dive in deep, grab a pen, scribble in the margins, and start right here.

I love that. It’s a picture of life for me. I want to dive in deep, I want to dive in deep with others. Life is not something that we sort out in a few minutes, or even a more intensive day or so: it’s a slow journey of intention in the one direction.

The exciting thing is, more and more people are getting this and exploring life, as it is meant to be explored - with others. It was a thrill to read of the experiences of my friend Shawna Snow on her website about how her remarkable idea for making the world more human - Reckoning - came out of a ’simple process … “some friends and I started talking …”.

Life is a conversation. Shawna continues, ‘and it is still in this process that it continues to take shape’. Check it out here. It’s all about education, social spaces, and contemporary artistic practices.

Here’s a little more from Shawna’s website because I especially love this question she asks: ‘So, how do we continue to develop the art of conversation, to cultivate this simple, yet seemingly lost for of human interconnectivity that keeps us focused on what is really important? This is where we are at, wanting to cultivate a culture of people that talk deeply and openly about things that matter.’

Let’s talk.

Welcome to the conversation.

As Jesus gets to the end of his message on the hill (Matthew 5-7), Matthew reports that ‘the crowd burst into applause,’ (The Message).  The question Jesus poses is: Would they put his words into practice and therefore make them “foundational words, words to build a life on,” which is what Jesus intended the people to do: ‘It was apparent [Jesus] was living everything he was saying.’

In a conversation a few days ago I was asked: “Are you for real?”

The conversation was about how the ways we walk with God, our strengths and gifts, and our passions explain to someone how they are uniquely by God.  Apparently she wasn’t sure if I really believed what I had been saying about the remarkable lives we have been given to live in relation to God and to one-another.

I do really believe this, but the question made me think more critically of the responses I’ve had over the years from people I have told shared these things with, specifically:  how they walk with God (their spiritual pathways); how they work out and live out their strengths and gifts; and, the identifying and pursuance of the passion that God has placed inside of them.

I think I realise more now than before how this makes little sense beyond it being perceived as another course or programme for people to attend - I refuse to use such words or produce materials for what I am increasingly calling the Way of Jesus - and therefore it does not have the life-transforming impact it ought to have on a person’s life.  The question in the conversation a few days ago for me shone the light on the fact that we need to figure out that we must live our lives for something bigger than ourselves; when we have identified what our life mission is then we want to find out everywhichway to be able to live the Way of Jesus.

It may be that we cannot yet identify just what this specific mission is yet, but we can begin here: Is not the bigger thing, the kingdom of God? Didn’t Jesus say, “Seek the kingdom of God first of all”? Wasn’t the first message - some say the only sermon of Jesus we have recorded - is “Repent, for the Kingdom of God is here”?  Though we cannot yet identify the specific bigger thing we ought to be living our lives for, we can seriously “seek” the kingdom.

Alan Hirsch has written: We can’t seem to make disciples on a consumerist approach to the faith. We plainly cannot consume our way into discipleship, (The Forgotten Ways).

It is not about: What we can get out of this faith thing? but: What can this faith get out of me for the sake of another?

Brian McLaren wants to ask, Why hasn’t the Christian religion made a difference commensurate with its message, size, and resources?, (Everything Must Change). Behind this question are two others: What are the biggest world problems? and, What does Jesus have to say about these?

Jesus told those crowds on the hillside: “These words I speak to you are not incidental additions to your life, home owner improvements to your standard of living,” and the intention is to “work them into your life.”

The day after  the conversation I was thinking about the kingdom and reading Brian McLaren questions.  He too seemed to be asking questions about the kingdom, and then I read how, with a group of young African leaders asking similar questions to himself:, We described God’s kingdom in terms of God’s dreams coming true for this earth, of God’s justice and peace replacing earth’s injustice and disharmony.

Alan Hirsch suggests that a covenanted community around Jesus will be marked by worship, discipleship, and mission. It strikes me that these must be lived as a whole, that one or two cannot stand on their own. Worship without mission and discipleship is ultimately self-centred rather than Christ-centred; mission without worship and discipleship is powerless (non-transformational); and, discipleship without mission and worship becomes faith by groups, programmes, and courses.

It strikes me that McLaren is right to say that the kingdom is not so much the message about Jesus, but is the message of Jesus, that is, the message that Jesus lived out and which we are invited to hear and put into practice.

What do you think?

Welcome to the conversation.

I just thought to let you know that I have updated my website: http://www.geoffreybaines.org.uk.

My hope and intention is to keep this updated on a regular basis - maybe even something every day: a thought or book or a question or a link to something important and/or good.

It’s a mavening thing.