Quartz at St Johns DumfriesIt is quite warm at the moment in Dumfries. Warm and humid with a thunderstorm waiting to break. This potential could go anywhere, but until it is released it is difficult to shake the cloying muggy feel of it all.
I am fairly sure that this is not an experience unique to me.
On Sunday we have our introduction to The Examen online and in person where prudent. Here is a short example I found helpful tis evening.
Insight, relationship … balance of practical needs and the things that one struggles to express in words. The desire to leave this world having made a recognised mark?
What do you think and feel?
In the 1980’s and 90’s something called “Alternative Worship” emerged. What happened, where did the explosion of creative energy lead, how many of the communities are still recognisable and what are the people who were involved doing now?
As a start, here are some links to introduce readers who may be unfamilar with the concept. These are pretty much just a scattering of what I found quickly, there is a lot more from the UK and worldwide.
A 1996 TV series filmed some of these services in operation. It was in 1996, and even then the introduction made me cringe. However after a year of lockdown and two seasons with the likelyhood of no festivals the atmosphere looks particularly appealing. This was in an era of slide projectors and VHS and while the internet was running on dial up …
An episode featuring the “Late Late Service Community” in Glasgow who I worshipped with for a while until I moved East to St Andrews.
A photo image archive of Alternative Worship services – with links to the contributing groups.
Based in Brighton, ten events a year, including an advent calendar in beech huts. BEYOND is an opportunity for people to explore
spirituality through a variety of creative approaches.
That is all for just now. Please use the comments to add links to any more that you know of.
Do you make God in your image, or allow yourself to be made in the image of God?
Mowing lawns may seem far off from the worship of idols. However, people put a lot of effort into maintaining standards. Even now many seek the return to normality and call the privileged consumption culture we live in freedom and their right.
The new normal will not be as well tended and tidy as 2019. Perhaps we can reflect on the cracks 2020 revealed. This is an opportunity to make structural changes, give up the appearances we were enslaved by, and nurture the growth of good things we have found.
The seeds of flowers lie in the meadows. They are placed their as potential waiting to be revealed. Don’t mow them before they have time to bloom. Remember how Jesus was gentle enough to let weeds grow alongside wheat and leave the sorting until another time. Be encouraged, have confidence, to live in faith and wait for the good things waiting to be revealed.
What does pioneering look like?
Perhaps some of you are thinking about the wild west. Cutting blazes on trees to mark a path through the Appalachian forests? Or Royal Naval officers blundering foolhardy into unmapped landscapes determined to preserve their Englishness through custom and dress, even if it meant frostbite and cannibalism.
Books like Kepharts “Book of Camping and Woodcraft” (1906) are practical guides for those who read stories like “The Dog Crusoe” (same year) and have bought in to the dream of the outdoors. The pictures of shelters and tents, or sourdough recipes are over a century old now. At the same time as we are sending helicopters to survey Mars though, people are trecking over glaciers with homemade 1000 year old technology.
Pioneering isn’t just about geographical exploration though. The books of games on my shelf are practical guides which help pioneer the construction of community in the post modernity social wilderness of vanishing industry both urban and rural. Billie Smith was one of Edinburgh’s first guidance teachers. The wilderness she worked in is probably less than a mile away from you.
My bookends of “Ash and Elm” and “My Ninian” are also a life story and a practical handbook. The imaginative retelling of the story of the first named pioneer bishop in the British Isles stands at the beginning. Recent research that can provide solid building material for those who are discovering their identity in Heathen spiritual narratives stands at the other end.
If you’d like to look at a practical guide about what Quartz is, or could be, then I suggest reading this “Grove” booklet. On pioneering mission. It is, at least, an introduction – the thing about wilderness though is that you can only learn to live in it if you learn from the people for whom it is already home.
Click here to get a digital or paper copy
News of this came to me through the MORPHE arts network.
One of their members has their work featured and developed as part of this commision.
What has lockdown been like for you? What language could help you communicate this?
Online and in person.
For many years lots of people have been working passionately to make a space and opportunity for young people in the Scottish Episcopal Church to gather.
While they are there they can worship together, experiment, study, learn and lead each other further into the ongoing experience of being Church.
Follow the link to find out how they are adapting to the conditions of 2021. You may be too old to attend, but we only become _too_ old when we loose the interest and ability to find out what the rest of our beautiful but dysfunctional family is up to.
(for those that missed it earlier.)
The journey through Lent is completed now. Quartz met as a group during it, but I also know that other people have enjoyed just reading the posts and walking along in their own way.
Whichever of these approaches you identify with if you have found this way of doing things helpful please consider the ongoing help offered by the Jesuits around the world. You can find out more here:
Once I’ve taken some time out to smell spring I’m sure we will be doing more as Quartz too! Send an e-mail or subscribe to keep in touch.
When time seems to be running away from you. Stand still. Let the movement wash over you, even for just a moment.
The comforter surrounds us and is in us, and we can walk sensitive to the movement of the spirit.
This is not a new post. It seemed appropriate to me this morning though, at a time where everything is tumbling, and no one is sure what will emerge.
Follow the fool, but don’t be foolish 😉
Please click the button to read the original post. You may find it a lot to take in at first. Or, perhaps you are one of those who find this easy to understand and struggle with the ‘normal’ of formal Church. Either way, seek and you will find!