Quartz at St Johns Dumfries
We are working away and sticking peoples symbols to mirrors. Every ‘Nugget of Joy’ will contribute to the overall effect.
This Sunday, the 18th of December, will see the first component of the artwork installed.
As well as for regular services, the building is open for prayer and reflection between 10.30 and 4 each day. You are welcome to drop in and watch the light being gathered and reflected – shaped by all who have contributed.
A busker sets up on the high street. Some people nod and keep walking, some pause to listen, some start dancing. Still more record and share on their phones, or go home and find some piping. Others find some string and a box, or spoons, or even click on a digital tip jar.
The music can linger in your mind like an “earworm”. There are, of course, also those who hurriedly cross the street and mutter about “proper music” or “noise polution”.
If the music is divine potential placed in the pipes waiting to be revealed, where are you in the story?
Interested? Pray about it.
Or you could read some more
We live in a beautiful and fascinating world.
But what has this to do with analogy or creative worship?
If we allow ourselves time to experience wonder, and put into practice the belief that God is generous, then we can train ourselves to notice the goodness in everything.
This video uses timelapse to speed up the process of crystals forming. Where did the idea to do this come from though? Perhaps someone had to spend a day without timelapse noticing the beauty – they then became able to draw everyone’s attention to what they noticed, with the aid of timelapse.
Water is referred to a lot in the gospels. We learn to understand Jesus with an analogy of being thirsty and needing a drink. This is then developed to imagining a type of water that if you drink then you will never be thirsty again. Some people react to the experience of dissatisfaction or continuing spiritual thirst, after they have chosen Jesus, by thinking that “life giving water” is just an analogy and the reality will be encountered in full when we pass through death into eternal life.
Learning to delay gratification is an essential life skill! However, doesn’t Jesus also stress the presence of the fullness of God in life now?
If we spend time watching ripples, experiencing the way light sparkles, the different sensations of taste then we can enjoy the reality of water now. Not just so that we can write blog posts, or make better analogies, but because in living we learn to live and enjoy life.
Art, Scientific method, even suffering can then become cups that hold the living water. If we can encounter and explore reality through them, then religion, worship, can help us express and explain what we encounter as a community. If we practice the presence of God, then we learn to taste the presence of God in something as common as water. Or in the physical and chemical properties of tin.
This page is collecting poems, reflections and examples of the myriad of ways in which people express the good they see in celebration.
Check it out, send in tour thoughts….