The passing roar of traffic becomes a distant soundtrack. As the trivia pours out of my brain and on to the carpet, the sensation of silence becomes a luxury. My head, feeling heavier, droops and my shoulders fall. Watching the little hand move around the clock face, I realise I have never knowingly been so quiet, for so long, while awake. The hour ends, people shake hands and either make small talk or leave. It was like yoga without the movement.http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2175616,00.html
Tuesday, 25 September 2007
national quaker week
i came across this article in the guardian yesterday, riazzat butt tries out a quaker service being unused to silence...
Saturday, 1 September 2007
significant comma?
i was at greenbelt again this year and wanted to share a bit from the sermon at the sunday morning communion service, the sermon was given by ann morisy. she said that when we say the creed there is a very significant comma and that perhaps we should pause when we get to that comma. the comma she meant was the one in the phrase below:
born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate
her point was that this comma encompasses the whole of jesus' life on earth from the time of his birth to the time of his death and that perhaps we should not pass over it so quickly, there may be things we should learn from how jesus lived...
----------------
Now playing on foobar2000: The Arcade Fire - [Funeral #09] Rebellion (Lies)
via FoxyTunes
born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate
her point was that this comma encompasses the whole of jesus' life on earth from the time of his birth to the time of his death and that perhaps we should not pass over it so quickly, there may be things we should learn from how jesus lived...
----------------
Now playing on foobar2000: The Arcade Fire - [Funeral #09] Rebellion (Lies)
via FoxyTunes
Monday, 20 August 2007
Let nothing trouble you — St. Teresa of Avila
just back from barcelona thought i'd share this prayer of St. Teresa of Avila a Spanish mystic of the C16 ...
Let nothing trouble you.
Let nothing scare you.
All is fleeting.
God alone is unchanging.
Patience
Everything obtains.
Who possesses God
Nothing wants.
God alone suffices.
From The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila Volume Three translated by Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriquez (c) 1985
from carmelites.org
Thursday, 26 July 2007
The Complex Christ | Signs of Emergence: Religion: Ignore God, It's About The Sacred
short article about another article that looks at the anti-religious backlash (have i got that right?)
The Complex Christ | Signs of Emergence: Religion: Ignore God, It's About The Sacred
The Complex Christ | Signs of Emergence: Religion: Ignore God, It's About The Sacred
Monday, 16 July 2007
prayer
“I don’t know what prayer is, but I do know how to pay attention.”
(Mary Oliver, poet)
i found this on maggie dawn's blog, which is always worth reading, link below.
http://maggidawn.typepad.com/maggidawn/2007/07/poems-prayers.html
Sunday, 1 July 2007
next house group 18th july - note change of date
next and last before summer - our "traditional" end of term nibbles, drink & chat - so not much different to our usual meetings :-)
Friday, 15 June 2007
next house group - 27th june
our next house group will be on 27th june - we will be watching a c4 documentary about the situation in Israel/Palestine, this is being done by ron liddle, the same person who did the documentary we watched about athisism
Thursday, 7 June 2007
Three ways to make sense of one God | Ekklesia
This is an interesting (and quite long) article about the Trinity.
Three ways to make sense of one God | Ekklesia: "For example, I once heard a well-known theologian wrily observe that grasping Trinitarian language is not too difficult... once you realize that ‘one’ and ‘three’ aren’t numbers in a sequence (but rather ways of speaking of a singularity embracing beyond the merely numerical); that ‘persons’ in the Trinity are not human persons (the Greek means something like dramaturgical ‘masks’ or ‘appearances’, and was deliberately chosen to avoid what we now denote by ‘personalness’); and that ‘substance’ applied to God doesn’t mean ‘stuff’ (but true essence beyond our knowledge of ‘thingness’)!"
...
All of which brings us to that remarkable and famous icon about the Trinity painted around 1410 by Andrei Rublev. If we are swimming intellectually, this image will, I hope, begin to make what is being said more approachable. First, let’s be clear, this isn’t (as the untrained modern eye might assume), a representation of ‘God in three figures’ - a sort of celestial tea-party. Absolutely not. An icon is something to look through, not at. You need to go beyond the immediate appearance to ‘see’ what is ‘hidden within and beyond it’, so to speak. In this case, the three gold-winged figures are the visitors encountered by Abraham as he camps by the oak of Mamre. As he talks with them he finds himself mysteriously in conversation with God through being drawn into their curious communion, symbolized by the chalice. This only works if the picture, like the doctrine, is figurative – the opposite of what our modern minds fear, thank God, which is naive ‘literalness’.
Three ways to make sense of one God | Ekklesia: "For example, I once heard a well-known theologian wrily observe that grasping Trinitarian language is not too difficult... once you realize that ‘one’ and ‘three’ aren’t numbers in a sequence (but rather ways of speaking of a singularity embracing beyond the merely numerical); that ‘persons’ in the Trinity are not human persons (the Greek means something like dramaturgical ‘masks’ or ‘appearances’, and was deliberately chosen to avoid what we now denote by ‘personalness’); and that ‘substance’ applied to God doesn’t mean ‘stuff’ (but true essence beyond our knowledge of ‘thingness’)!"
...
All of which brings us to that remarkable and famous icon about the Trinity painted around 1410 by Andrei Rublev. If we are swimming intellectually, this image will, I hope, begin to make what is being said more approachable. First, let’s be clear, this isn’t (as the untrained modern eye might assume), a representation of ‘God in three figures’ - a sort of celestial tea-party. Absolutely not. An icon is something to look through, not at. You need to go beyond the immediate appearance to ‘see’ what is ‘hidden within and beyond it’, so to speak. In this case, the three gold-winged figures are the visitors encountered by Abraham as he camps by the oak of Mamre. As he talks with them he finds himself mysteriously in conversation with God through being drawn into their curious communion, symbolized by the chalice. This only works if the picture, like the doctrine, is figurative – the opposite of what our modern minds fear, thank God, which is naive ‘literalness’.
Sunday, 3 June 2007
next house group 13 june - the trap
just a general reminder, next house group will be 13th june, not 6th as far too many people away on the 6th.
we will be watching the documentry "the trap"
we will be watching the documentry "the trap"
Thursday, 3 May 2007
black gold - the movie
the url for the film that julia mention at house group.
http://www.blackgoldmovie.com/
http://www.blackgoldmovie.com/
Do verses from the OT apply to us today?
Question I asked Jonathan:
I've been meaning to ask you for ages a question about the verse "you" choose for this year. This is an academic question, I in no way wanting to object to the pastoral side of this choice. This is a verse from the OT, and therefore was given to the people of God in a specific situation for a specific purpose. How is right to claim this applies to us today in the specific way you are doing?
Jonathan's Answer:
Thanks for your interesting question about the text for the year. I think there are several different ways to come at answers to your question.
One is to look at what the text may have meant in context. Some of the key OT commentators see it as being about looking forward to a new saving act from God which would be based on the pattern of God's saving acts in the past (e.g. the Exodus) but which would enable God's people to move into a new phase of salvation history beyond the Exile. In this sense, it would be possible to understand the passage as being fulfilled through the return from Exile. One problem with this approach is that it leaves the passage fairly firmly in the past. There would be little in the way of application that could be drawn out for today. On this basis, we would say that it is a prophecy that had a particular meaning for the people of its day but one that has little relevance for us today.
That isn't the way that the commentators see it however. Their argument is often that this passage demonstrates the way in which Israel's understanding of God developed and changed as it moved beyond the old traditions by witnessing to a God who was always at the front edge of Israel's life. The implication of this argument is that God is always doing something new and we need to look out for it - which is the main way in which I have used the text so far. This is an argument that comes out of context but it is the context of what this passage meant in the development of scripture rather than what it meant in the history of the Israelites.
This argument also links to an understanding of God that is found in several different parts and genres of scripture; the theme of God's creativity and the issue of the extent to which God's creativity is ongoing. This passage bases its statement that God will act in a new way on the implication that God is creative in an ongoing sense. It seems to me that it is important in our understanding of scripture to see the way in which individual passages link to the wider context, themes and issues of scripture as a whole and by talking about this passage in terms of God's ongoing creativity I am seeking to do that.
Interestingly, the way of understanding the development of scripture that the commentators are pointing out seems to me to be very similar that of Jesus. What Jesus does in his ministry, particularly in his symbolic actions, is to retell aspects of the story of Israel (the saving acts of God) and to apply those stories to himself. Where the OT texts see Israel as the servant of God, Jesus applies these texts by words and actions to himself. This is why the Gospel writers are able to point to so many OT texts that they say are fulfilled in Jesus' life, death and resurrection. Now, this is an approach to scripture that is not about understanding it in context in the way that we usually mean today. The writers of the OT texts that Jesus acts out, reinterprets and fulfills did not have Jesus in mind when they first spoke or wrote nor was Jesus, in his actions, trying to understand what those texts meant to the OT writers at the time that they wrote or spoke.
Another way of approaching the passage is to claim that its meaning wasn't fulfilled by the return from Exile but is fulfilled by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and I have also used this approach on some occasions in speaking about the passage and intend to do so some more in future. Again, this is not a way of understanding the passage based on its likely meaning for the person who wrote it at the time that person wrote but I don't think that it is invalidated for that reason.
I think the Bible is rich in layers of meaning (look, for example, at the allegorical way in which Paul interprets scripture in Galatians 4. 21-31; just like Jesus he pays no attention to what the passage he is interpreting meant to those who lived it out or to those who wrote the story down) and wish to use a variety of different ways of interpretation in order to reveal that richness as I preach (that is my aspiration - I do not want to claim that my inadequate attempts at sermons equate to the richness that is found in scripture). I think we need to be quite careful about our use of approaches to Biblical Criticism that we don't see used in the Bible itself and which we bring to the Bible out of our own (in this case, modernist) culture; often we can't see the problems with and limitations of these approaches because we are so emmeshed in the thought-patterns of our own or recently-passed culture.
I hope this helps in understanding where I'm coming from and in understanding why I think that one of the ways in which we can understand this verse and passage is to apply to ourselves in a way that is different from the way in which people at the time are likely to have applied to themselves. There is much more that could be said on all of this and I'd be quite happy to discuss it further either by email and in person.
I've been meaning to ask you for ages a question about the verse "you" choose for this year. This is an academic question, I in no way wanting to object to the pastoral side of this choice. This is a verse from the OT, and therefore was given to the people of God in a specific situation for a specific purpose. How is right to claim this applies to us today in the specific way you are doing?
Jonathan's Answer:
Thanks for your interesting question about the text for the year. I think there are several different ways to come at answers to your question.
One is to look at what the text may have meant in context. Some of the key OT commentators see it as being about looking forward to a new saving act from God which would be based on the pattern of God's saving acts in the past (e.g. the Exodus) but which would enable God's people to move into a new phase of salvation history beyond the Exile. In this sense, it would be possible to understand the passage as being fulfilled through the return from Exile. One problem with this approach is that it leaves the passage fairly firmly in the past. There would be little in the way of application that could be drawn out for today. On this basis, we would say that it is a prophecy that had a particular meaning for the people of its day but one that has little relevance for us today.
That isn't the way that the commentators see it however. Their argument is often that this passage demonstrates the way in which Israel's understanding of God developed and changed as it moved beyond the old traditions by witnessing to a God who was always at the front edge of Israel's life. The implication of this argument is that God is always doing something new and we need to look out for it - which is the main way in which I have used the text so far. This is an argument that comes out of context but it is the context of what this passage meant in the development of scripture rather than what it meant in the history of the Israelites.
This argument also links to an understanding of God that is found in several different parts and genres of scripture; the theme of God's creativity and the issue of the extent to which God's creativity is ongoing. This passage bases its statement that God will act in a new way on the implication that God is creative in an ongoing sense. It seems to me that it is important in our understanding of scripture to see the way in which individual passages link to the wider context, themes and issues of scripture as a whole and by talking about this passage in terms of God's ongoing creativity I am seeking to do that.
Interestingly, the way of understanding the development of scripture that the commentators are pointing out seems to me to be very similar that of Jesus. What Jesus does in his ministry, particularly in his symbolic actions, is to retell aspects of the story of Israel (the saving acts of God) and to apply those stories to himself. Where the OT texts see Israel as the servant of God, Jesus applies these texts by words and actions to himself. This is why the Gospel writers are able to point to so many OT texts that they say are fulfilled in Jesus' life, death and resurrection. Now, this is an approach to scripture that is not about understanding it in context in the way that we usually mean today. The writers of the OT texts that Jesus acts out, reinterprets and fulfills did not have Jesus in mind when they first spoke or wrote nor was Jesus, in his actions, trying to understand what those texts meant to the OT writers at the time that they wrote or spoke.
Another way of approaching the passage is to claim that its meaning wasn't fulfilled by the return from Exile but is fulfilled by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and I have also used this approach on some occasions in speaking about the passage and intend to do so some more in future. Again, this is not a way of understanding the passage based on its likely meaning for the person who wrote it at the time that person wrote but I don't think that it is invalidated for that reason.
I think the Bible is rich in layers of meaning (look, for example, at the allegorical way in which Paul interprets scripture in Galatians 4. 21-31; just like Jesus he pays no attention to what the passage he is interpreting meant to those who lived it out or to those who wrote the story down) and wish to use a variety of different ways of interpretation in order to reveal that richness as I preach (that is my aspiration - I do not want to claim that my inadequate attempts at sermons equate to the richness that is found in scripture). I think we need to be quite careful about our use of approaches to Biblical Criticism that we don't see used in the Bible itself and which we bring to the Bible out of our own (in this case, modernist) culture; often we can't see the problems with and limitations of these approaches because we are so emmeshed in the thought-patterns of our own or recently-passed culture.
I hope this helps in understanding where I'm coming from and in understanding why I think that one of the ways in which we can understand this verse and passage is to apply to ourselves in a way that is different from the way in which people at the time are likely to have applied to themselves. There is much more that could be said on all of this and I'd be quite happy to discuss it further either by email and in person.
Friday, 27 April 2007
house group 9th May
Next meeting will be as above - we will be thinking about faith & politics, do they mix? should they mix? see Julia's original post below for more details. Thoughts links etc. can be added to comments of this post...
hg after this will be looking at "The Trap" documentary
hg after this will be looking at "The Trap" documentary
Wednesday, 25 April 2007
Science& Faith
interesting article in guardian...
"The God disunion: there is a place for faith in science, insists Winston"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/religion/Story/0,,2064897,00.html
/ link should work now if anyone has tried it before and had problems.
"The God disunion: there is a place for faith in science, insists Winston"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/religion/Story/0,,2064897,00.html
/ link should work now if anyone has tried it before and had problems.
Sunday, 22 April 2007
housegroup discussion material
Is it right for church leaders to make pronouncements about politics? Can it be classified as being 'prohetic'? When should they speak out and within what boundaries? This came out of an article I read in the Church Times a few weeks ago written by Canon Alan Billings who among other things is Director for Ethics and religion at Lancaster University. I quote a little at the end of his article :- ' The modernchurch seeks to make up for its loss of political power by being preachy and didactic. As long as it does that, it will give its members the impression that the real business of politics can be done somewhere other than through the practise of politics itself. Those who think they are being prophetic are contributing to the disillusion with politics'. He had started his article by commenting on Archbishop John Sentamu pitching his tent in the cathedral and making some comments on the conflict between Israel and Hizbollah in the Lebannon.
Thursday, 19 April 2007
Rowan Williams - the church needs to listen properly to the bible
Rowan Williams gave a lecture on this topic in Canada recently, link to full text below. But I want to quote once section in particular speaking about scripture...
"... a written text requires re-reading; it is never read for the last time, and it continuously generates new events of interpretation. It is fruitful of renewed communication in a way that the spoken word alone cannot be. So to identify a written text as sacred is to claim that the continuous possibility of re-reading, the impossibility of reading for the last time, is a continuous openness to the intention of God to communicate".
http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/sermons_speeches/070416.htm
Warning, it's pretty dense stuff :-)
"... a written text requires re-reading; it is never read for the last time, and it continuously generates new events of interpretation. It is fruitful of renewed communication in a way that the spoken word alone cannot be. So to identify a written text as sacred is to claim that the continuous possibility of re-reading, the impossibility of reading for the last time, is a continuous openness to the intention of God to communicate".
http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/sermons_speeches/070416.htm
Warning, it's pretty dense stuff :-)
Sunday, 15 April 2007
Wednesday, 28 March 2007
Rowan Williams sermon - slave trade
http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/sermons_speeches/070327.htm
above is a link to the archbishop's sermon from the service that marked the 200 year anniversary of the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade. for those a the lent course this is the service that jean mentioned.
above is a link to the archbishop's sermon from the service that marked the 200 year anniversary of the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade. for those a the lent course this is the service that jean mentioned.
Tuesday, 20 March 2007
templeton prize acceptance speech
Maggi Dawn, always interesting, has a quote from Charles Taylor's speech on getting the Templeton Prize. Fits in with our dicsussions of the trouble with athisism, well worth a look...
http://maggidawn.typepad.com/maggidawn/2007/03/templeton_prize.html
http://maggidawn.typepad.com/maggidawn/2007/03/templeton_prize.html
Thursday, 15 March 2007
Giving fundamentalism a secular boost | Ekklesia
Giving fundamentalism a secular boost | Ekklesia
"Media atheists of the narrower kind are fast becoming the new best friends of fundamentalist Christians. For every time they write about religion they are doing very effective PR for a fundamentalist worldview. Many of the propositions that fundamentalists are keen to sell the public are oft-repeated corner-stones of the media atheist's philosophy of religion."
He doesn't hold back here, but I think he has a point...
"Media atheists of the narrower kind are fast becoming the new best friends of fundamentalist Christians. For every time they write about religion they are doing very effective PR for a fundamentalist worldview. Many of the propositions that fundamentalists are keen to sell the public are oft-repeated corner-stones of the media atheist's philosophy of religion."
He doesn't hold back here, but I think he has a point...
Friday, 9 March 2007
I really must get out more...
In an idle moment in the office, or rather, searching round to do anything to avoid 'phoning a particular client, I wondered with all the bad press the internet gets which is more of interest to people, love or hate?
A search in Google on each word gets 228 million hits for hate, but a decisive lead for love with 921 million.
A search in Google on each word gets 228 million hits for hate, but a decisive lead for love with 921 million.
Thursday, 8 March 2007
Thinking Anglicans
Thanks for the link, I have not seen this site before, but I instantly knew from the name what flavour of opinion this would be! So the name worries me a bit, are we saying that those who won’t agree with this particular taste are unthinking? Seems a bit arrogant to me.
What do the rest of you think?
What do the rest of you think?
Tuesday, 6 March 2007
Mustard Seed Shavings: The God Delusion 8&9
This is an interesting post that links in with our discussion of "The Trouble with Atheism"
Mustard Seed Shavings: The God Delusion 8&9
Mustard Seed Shavings: The God Delusion 8&9
How do I add a link at the side?
Where there is two links including the church's web site. Or can only managers do this?
Work Based EMail Group
Jonathan's Work Based EMail's are now managed as a google group. See the home page. I've added the emails Jonathan has sent out already. All new emails will go via the group.
Monday, 5 March 2007
Lets get started!
These are the links to Wikipedia articles on slavery I mentioned to Huw on Saturday.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_slave_trade
An issue clearly not clear cut on whom to "lay the blame".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_slave_trade
An issue clearly not clear cut on whom to "lay the blame".
Hello from Jim
Test to see if I can post correctly.
This is an edit, to test adding a label.
This is a second edit
This is an edit, to test adding a label.
This is a second edit
Sunday, 4 March 2007
first post
well the idea here is that we can share ideas and continue discussions in between house groups...
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