Bigbulkyanglican

Trains and wi-fi and speed

Travelled today on the new National Express train service from Leeds to London - the train provider whose name is both iconic and ironic.

They have made a big thing of providing free wi-fi - well they have to offer some bribe to cover the manifest deficiencies in the rest of the service which today have included a quite appallingly dirty 1970s carriage, a "quiet carriage" with no signeage (and must be the nosiest such carriage ever), no seat reservations on the return trip which caused a stampede at Kings Cross, no catering etc, etc. Come back GNER all is forgiven?

It's a bit of mystery as to why identical tickets are £40 cheaper if you book them via Virgin booking service but that seems to be life and I couldn't actually get the National Express ticket service to work so it was all to the good.

However the wi-fi on the train is so slow that it took me back to pre-broadband days - (it can't at the moment keep up with me touch typing this post) which set me wondering whether I really appreciate the well-intentioned efforts of the "Slow movement" - what strikes a visitor to London is the frantic pace of life but do we really want everything to be slower?

Forgive and forget?

Forgiveness is a really tough matter, because all too often it is packaged with a explicit/implicit requirement that we also "forget".

I guess lots of other subscribers to the Daily Reflections from Henri Nouwen's Foundation will have been struck by today's contribution:

"Forgiving does not mean forgetting. When we forgive a
person, the memory of the wound might stay with us for a
long time, even throughout our lives. Sometimes we carry the
memory in our bodies as a visible sign. But forgiveness
changes the way we remember. It converts the curse into a
blessing. When we forgive our parents for their divorce, our
children for their lack of attention, our friends for their
unfaithfulness in crisis, our doctors for their ill advice,
we no longer have to experience ourselves as the victims of
events we had no control over.

Forgiveness allows us to claim our own power and not let

these events destroy us; it enables them to become events

that deepen the wisdom of our hearts. Forgiveness indeed

heals memories."

MeSsy cHUrch WEbsite

A Messy Church website now on line here

Reflective reading on gnomes and sin

For my reflective reading I am slowly working my way through Alain De Botton's "The Architecture of Happiness".

It is a truly inspiring book on the social significance of Architecture which I have read twice before.

On this read however I am reading it as a metaphor for Church life, with some interesting ideas developing.

A recent one which had me laughing as well as thinking, is in a section where he writes about the psychology of taste and its influence on architectural choices and decisions.

Now this seems to me to have all sorts of resonances with the subtle and often un-declared influences on congregational life - especially where the needs of a small minority are dominant and obstructive of the spiritual development of the majority, or act as an impediment to the good of the whole.

The quote is:

"We condemn the gnomes while respecting the longings which inspired them"

and I couldn't help wondering whether its spiritual equivalent isn't the iniquitous

" Love the sinner, and hate the sin".

Emerging Church: US view on UK

I have become increasingly intrigued by the cultural gaps which occur between the Emerging Church in the US and the missional/alt worship developments in the UK.

Frankly I have been increasingly bored by the attacks on Emerging and Missional Church from the evangelical wing of the Church in the States, and increasingly surprised by the amount of time and energy that some folk on the UK blogsphere spend defending "new forms" of Church from these attacks, which seem to only give credence to the criticisms.

So it interesting to read a summary of an observant and participatory experience of the UK emerging Church by a large group of people from the US who belong to a progressive evangelical strand of the Church there: see this write-up from Professor Kevin Corcoran from Calvin College.

It is so encouraging to read thoughts like this:

Tolerance and dialogue are two practices those in emergent and altworship both welcome and invite.  Someone who really appreciates our human finitude and situatedness might be more inclined to say, “Here’s how I see things and here’s why.  But, I recognize that I am a finite and frail human being; so I could certainly be the one with blind spots.  How do you see things?’ as opposed to saying “I’m right.  You’re wrong, and going to hell.  End of story.”.

These values of tolerance and dialogue are essential Anglican values which are under attack in the worldwide Anglican Communion by strands of our tradition which have become tainted by this trend to judging others before sharing communion.

Faith becomes chance?

Eucharist Formats

Not too sure of the copyright position on the more recent CW liturgical texts - so please take them as an example rather than copying the text - if someone knows this infringed copyright I would be pleased to remove them.

The first format is for the current Epiphany season and would rate as perhaps midway on our Common Worship liturgical barometer - it tends to be used with a Hymn book, and then specific input on the week-sheet for the gloria, collect and readings. It is a very flexible format in terms of time and emphasis taking about 1 hour.

Download eucharist_epiphany_season.doc

The second format is the traditional end of the C of E Common Worship Eucharistic choices - it can be sung to a choice of formal settings, (and will be familiar to people who remember the former Alternative Service Book), and currently uses Eucharistic Prayer E in Ordinary Time, but could be used with A B and C or at other times of the year all of which have seasonal prefaces.

Download ordinary_time_blue_newsholme.doc

The relative shortness ( they exclude lots of the optional material) gives scope for weekly additions and the valuable introduction of "expectancy violation" - do something different to command attention and preventing the Eucharist becoming stale and routine. But this is certainly more than "rabbit out of the hat" novelty.

Those who were due at Huddersfield on Thursday can have a further selection if they email me - my apologies for the cancellation but I would not have been pleasant company!

This is not an invitation to liturgical critique - simply an example of layouts.

BCP Evensong Word Format

Three interesting streams on liturgy resources going at the moment - for Evensong it is perfectly possible to arrange the BCP format onto a single A4 sheet - see the attached layout in Word format. No more obscure books with jumps around sections - or even two lots of the Lords Prayer

Download bcp_evening_prayer.doc

Magazine Freaks

Having something of a reputation as a magazine freak, and taking a somewhat perverse delight in truly absurd magazine titles, Bishop Alan must win an award for this:

Elephants and trains

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Bird Feeders

I thought my array of bird feeders (which are very popular at the moment) was bordering on the slightly obsessive but these designs prove that there are others even more dedicated in Austria!