Blog – Page 19 – Quartz at St Johns Dumfries

Place

Post author By admin
Post date 03/06/2022
No Comments on Place

There is an importance in places. I sometimes wonder what it is like to grow up in the digitally connected world. It is quite possible that many who are now in their 30’s have never been in a place where it wasn’t possible to pick up a device and phone, or latterly video message, a family member and get an instant response.

Homesickness was a part of the whole experience of going to organised summer camps in my childhood. Camping meant heading into the hills for a weekend, or week, with all that you needed and no contact with home. Scotland is small so even then you were usually only at most a day’s walk from a house or a payphone, but still the experience of being disconnected from home started a process of being at home with yourself and companions (if you travelled with some).

When Jesus passed through death the recorded stories describe him meeting his friends in the rooms where they ate together. They met on the beaches of the sea where they had often eaten fish and he had talked to the crowds. I wonder if Jesus walked in the hills, meeting other people in ways that are not recorded. Did Jesus go home to the places of his formative years, and experience them with new eyes?

These stories are part of our creation/alienation/reconciliation story of good news. Feelings of homesickness are real experiences which require us to develop resilience (in many diverse ways!). Feelings of dissonance between our experience of places and our ideas of what they could be or have been can be like losing a limb, or falling physically ill.

When Jesus calls out for his father on the cross this experience of alienation is set in the foreground of the story of the good news. However, perhaps in stories when Jesus is eating fish with his friends on the beach or walking down a dusty road having a chat, we can glimpse the feeling of home which the aching chaos of absence is pregnant with.

Is this why people go on pilgrimage? We don’t seek out suffering, but by placing ourselves in a position of adventure we can heighten our ability for #SensingSpirituality. In leaving home we can develop skills in making ‘place’. In entering the experience of absence, and encountering doubt we can grow in Faith.

… but as friends of Jesus. Not as servants driven by a need to impress a master whos purpose we cannot guess.

A place to make a “sitting place” on the Crichton estate?

Angel Cloud Arts

A Light Touch

Post author By admin
Post date 31/05/2022
No Comments on A Light Touch

Artists help us become aware of the invisible reality we live in. This process can be confusing and leave us questioning things we were certain of, it can also reassure those who experience it – leaving them with the thought “Now I see it, I’m glad I’m not the only one!”

#SensingSpirituality is a project which aims to draw out peoples ability to sense this hidden reality. Skills in #SensingMeaningfulness, or #SensingValues can help us recognise patterns and connections that help provide identity. They can help individuals find something in common with others and communities, even when violence in the physical, “Sensible?” experience of reality is ripping things apart.

Just as we highlight five physical senses, but can be aware of many more, we could talk of five spiritual senses as a path to awareness of all that we can inherit as human beings.

The #SensingSpirituality tag contributes to this by marking moments online. When you are posting a photo, liking, or sharing something why not think about the spiritual (in the general sense) character of your action.

Are you #SensingValues, #SensingMeaningfulness, #SensingChallenge, #SensingMystery, #SensingOtherness, or is it a special moment when all your senses are heightened and in #SensingAwareness you become aware of a subtle change in state sometimes described as being “at one” with your environment.

These moments can also be described as “light bulb” moments. The point of this post though is that all these things are happening all the time. We are just unaware of them. Installations like the Angel cloud in Dumfries or the knit bomb bunnet in Oban can encourage us to “see” the invisible.

Taking a day out a week to rest and restore your relationship with this spiritual heritage is a core part of the Christian and many other tradtions. If you are up for it – you could tag your #SensingSpiritualty moment, and turn your scrolling into art – just like you’d use an emoji.

Dumfries and Oban #SensingSpirituality

Forest Church Outerweave

Singing for trees

Those who like Forest Church may like this :

https://www.crichton.co.uk/event/sing-for-the-trees/

If you go, please comment here on what it is like?

What could we learn from the experience? Where do you recognise the Holy Spirit at work?

And don’t forget the value of a smile, or the worth in experiencing the was a particular ray if light illuminates the green in ways that words fail you to describe.

Arts Fresh Expressions

Chandelier

Post author By admin
Post date 21/05/2022
No Comments on Chandelier

As often happens, an idea for a Christmas installation came from a magazine picture and a chat over coffee.

The idea is to use ‘light’ as a theme this Christmas. Of course, a beam of light is invisible. Light helps us see things, so in order to see light we put things where they will catch and reflect it.

We could use the old chandelier hooks our canopies have been suspended from, or we could concentrate on one big statement piece above the nave alter.

Whatever our final collaberative piece looks like, perhaps over the summer while the sun is high and warm, we can ‘collect’ it’s rays. Don’t forget the beauty of the moon as well!

Experiments inspired from things like the glint on rippling water, or fresh green leaves soaking up sunlight, can be combined into pendant chandeliers or lanterns. Then when the nights are longest in winter, we can look at the artwork and remember the joy and warmth of summer.

Creative Worship Forest Church Interweave

Help needed!

Post author By admin
Post date 20/05/2022
No Comments on Help needed!

This Sunday, the 22nd of May, we will be ‘refurbishing’ some fig trees.

Not actual trees, they have their own built in regenerative processes. These are trees that were made for the All Age/informal service back when it used to meet in the hall. They were used to create a ‘grove’ meditative space on good friday as well.

Now they are being refurbished to help create a forest labyrinth for “Bearfest”. As part of the Quartz contribution, we will be bringing a taster of what we do outdoors into the St Johns building. Visitors will be guided to encounter the wild – where bears still live – and reflect on their relationship with it.

All materials and instructions will be provided. This is a meditative activity, thinking about all the good things trees give us.

For contemplative inspiration you could read “The king of the trees”

To understand the extract in context as a warning to those who choose less than adequate leaders without thinking through the consequences read the whole story in Judges!

Community

Gazing out of the cave

I take words and make them into pictures, so that people can use the skills they have for experiencing visual art to reflect on the text and practice #SensingSpirituality

Arts Forest Church Lent 2022

Forest Church, Easter Sunday

Post author By admin
Post date 13/05/2022
No Comments on Forest Church, Easter Sunday

This is a bit overdue! Here is a wee film to reflect on from our Easter Sunday Gathering.

Several aspects of the new Wordsmith Crafts C.I.C. overlapped this Easter Sunday.

Quartz was the lead project (#SensingSpirituality). We have been meeting as Forest Church for over a year now.

Cluaran (living breathing heritage) skills were used to tell the story of Jesus meeting his disciples on the beach and eating some fish with them, after he had risen from the dead. There was something special about informally gathering where the water meets the earth, smelling the fire, eating the food together, and retelling the old stories.

The Studio (Heritage crafts) held all the equipment and skills we needed to make it happen. Look out for more interesting things this year – although we need a dedicated film crew to catch all the action!

Community

Dove and Blue Boat

I has been a pleasure getting to know artist Andy Brooke (portfolio here) since his families recent relocation to Scotland.

He walked into the orbit of Quartz during lockdown. So, despite living in Dumfries, and the odd meeting with other artists professionally through the Stove Network, his first contacts with Quartz were online followed up with sporadic chats over coffee following as the precautions taken to protect the vulnerable in our communities varied. Interesting times!

Andy has been facing the challenges of working on one of the physically largest commissions he has undertaken so far. He did this during Covid, after moving house, and whilst living across the border from the country it has been be installed in. For it he has translated a design by painter James Dodds into stained glass, and this has recently been installed so you can see the light rippling through the image to wash against the walls of the hall – perhaps we will find a video for a follow up post!

“Dove and Blue Boat” is an updated and very topical version of an ark – a sanctuary in troubled times – with the biblical dove bearing an olive branch of peace from out of the sun. James says he like to think the window depicting a small vernacular blue boat and dove represents love, community, hope and salvation, from the hardship and anxieties of climate change, pandemic and war.

“Former boatbuilder James Dodds’ paintings of traditional boats evoke a deep human need for safety in troubled times”,
says Belinda Bamber in her article in Perspective magazine “Love is a Boat”

The boat is a type that would have been built locally, a type that James helped build when he was an apprentice boatbuilder. The boat has come to signify many things to him. He says “the boat is a vessel that carries my artistic ideas. For the refugee a boat can represent a way to be carried to safety. For a religious person a boat can represent a place of worship and salvation.”

The Holy Spirit is often represented as a dove. In the famous paintings by Piero della Francesca and Leonardo Da Vinci of the Baptism of Christ the dove flies straight down from the heavens. The dove is also a symbol of peace, with its olive branch it offers Noah hope when adrift in the great flood. The Ark is a sanctuary in the turbulent seas. The boat is an ancient symbol for the Church and still resonates. The word Nave comes from the Latin “Navis” for ship, and is still the word used in some churches for the central portion of the building they meet in.

For my part, it was a privilege to work on a window designed by an artist I admire, for a contemporary church building. The building itself is a dynamic addition to the traditional Victorian church it abuts.
Making the window was a kind of spiritual journey itself – with the highs and lows experienced by us all as we go through this earthly life!
Andy Brooke

Keep your eyes open for more work by Andy, and keep up with his current work in Lincluden by following his blog here. (visit his website to read more and about the making of the window here)

Forest Church Fresh Expressions Thought of the Day

May!

Post author By admin
Post date 08/05/2022
No Comments on May!

It’s been a busy start to May.

There was a full weekend at Allanton. We were working with Cluaran and many others using heritage crafts, storytelling, and the experience of fire to help people find peace. On the Sunday we prayed for peace worldwide, and joined with people worldwide via the internet.

There was a lot of packing, unpacking, and sorting too, of course.

A wee snapshot! More to follow…

Today I’ve been working on some “Calling Cards” for the St Johns contemporary service. We will be thinking about vocation. This has a specific meaning in the church setting, but is also an experience that shapes human being in general.

Something to keep in your phone case to remind you…

The Quartz Christian Life Community will meet again on Monday evening. So if you found the Lent group helpful this is a chance to continue the habit of meeting together. Everyone is welcome!

Keep an eye out for forest church, the teddy bear festival, and other developments as the summer opens up before us.

Arts Creative Worship Thought of the Day

Happy Easter!

Have you decorated any eggs this year?

With supermarkets and global supply chains it is easy to forget that for thousands of years eggs were only available when the sun returned and daylight hours lengthened.

As well as looking like the stone which could be rolled away from the tomb for Jesus to walk out, these eggs are a symbol of potential ready to be revealed.

Do you expect that which comes out of an egg to look like an egg though? Continuity of identity is a mysterious thing. The egg shares something in it’s nature with the chicken that is before and after it, but it is healthy and normal for even one particular animal to change dramatically. All followers of Christ’s way share something – can we embrace diversity and remain in unity, continue in a sense of shared identity?

Enjoy the day – and eggs if you are eating them – whatever style you have them in. We will be meeting on the beech opposite Lincluden abbey if you would like to join us

KEEP IN TOUCH!