You are currently browsing the monthly archive for December 2011.
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“New Year Twitter honours list #1 – all those who have given practical help and directed me to resources on here
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“New Year Twitter honours list #2 – all those who have demonstrated the companionship of vulnerability on here & thereby shared their lives
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“New Year Twitter honours list #3 – all those who have tweeted words of encouragement on here just when they were needed
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“New Year Twitter honours list #4 – all those who have stretched a delicate web of prayer across here, beneath which I have sheltered
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“New Year Twitter honours list #5 – all those who have interrupted my slow train of thought, & sent it down a more interesting track
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“New Year Twitter honours list #6 – all those who take online friendship so seriously that they gently rebuke me when it is called for
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“New Year Twitter honours list #7 – all those for whom influence is measured in content not clicks
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“New Year Twitter honours list #8 – all those who have taken the time to acknowledge the gift, insight & wisdom of others on here
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“New Year Twitter honours list #9 – all those who have plundered the riches of hyper-local and trans-local connection on here
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“New Year Twitter honours list #10 – all those who will not rest whilst the ethics/possibilities of this connectivity = <fully explored
Like this:
Butterfly
One of my Christmas gifts this year was a gorgeous book entitled The Rooftops of Paris. It delights in the different perspective of a city afforded by its roof-scape. I especially like these words from French Poet Paul Claudel early on in the book:
Even for the simple taking wing of the butterfly the whole sky is needed.
Isn’t that wonderful? I’m always wary of making New Year’s Resolutions, as they can feel rather like rod for your own back. However, to appreciate more the greatness of all that God has made would be a start. To each of us, fragile and cautious like the butterfly, he has given us the whole sky of creation in which to express our love for Him and all that He has made.
Taken in the Loire Valley, holding my breath...
On watching The Nativity
I have just been watching Tony Jordan’s utterly brilliant ‘Nativity‘ all over again, having received it on DVD for Christmas. As I have commented before, it is gritty, beautifully scripted and tenderly acted. Tears pricked at my eyes once again as the moments of sheer wonder and humble worship unfolded in the stable. This will be watched many more times, I am sure.
However, as I unwrapped the DVD from its cellophane package, I noticed the warning on the cover:
Contains infrequent moderate violence and moderate sex references
Both are true, of course, and the film censors are doing their job by stating them. How appropriate, though, that the story of the Messiah’s birth cannot be told without these things. Into such a world as this, Jesus was born, thank God.
Image: BBC.co.uk
Smartphone
Yesterday I was reading tech review full of predictions for 2012. There was much to savour in the review, but this comment from Ben Holmes of Index Ventures, really caught my imagination:
I think increasingly the smartphone is becoming a sort of remote control for the world around you.
I wonder to what extent that is true? Certainly for many of us the smartphone is a kind of life support system. Without it we feel cut off from the world about us. On its little illuminated screen we read the global news, catch up on the local news from the digital neighbourhood, project our hopes and aspirations out into cyberspace, and seek to be a good companion to our fellow travellers. Personally I am not so sure about the idea of the smartphone as a remote control, since that speaks more of influence than communication. That might feel different, though, if I were using the kind of apps which allow me to set a TV programme to record remotely, or control my finances whilst on the move.
Maybe the Adam Sandler film Click (2006) was ahead of its time? Click on the poster below for another still from the film.
Image: wildaboutmovies.com
So, what do you think of Holmes’ description? In what sense does your smartphone act as a ‘remote control for your world? Comments welcome.
Connectivity celebrated
Over the next few days newspapers and news sites will be awash with reviews of 2011. Prominent amongst them will be pundits commentating on the role of social media in organising protest on the one hand, and spreading violence on the other. In both cases the role of social media will probably be exaggerated in the interests of a tidy headline.
Be that as it may, the power of social media to connect human beings and harness their shared aspirations and talents is undeniable. Whether it is The Littlest Star on a local level, or the Cairo protests on a global stage, social media provides a facility for human beings to magnify the impact of their individual actions. Artists Kyosuke Nishida, Brian Li Sui Fong and Dominic Liu wanted to celebrate this as they had seen it demonstrated in the messages of love and support flooding into post-tsunami Japan on Facebook and Twitter. They came up with the poster below, entitled ’Words can fly’. The artwork is inspired by the Japanese tradition Senbazuri, where 1000 paper cranes are folded to give as a good luck gift to the recipient. In the artwork below, the cranes represent messages of love and support sent after the Tsumani by the people of Montreal to Japan.
Image: wordscanfly
As the birds take flight from the paper, so the words have taken flight from a computer or a phone in one part of the world, and flown to another. I find this to be an overwhelmingly beautiful piece of art. It combines ancient tradition with modern networking, and celebrates the best which the human spirit can offer. You can find out more about it here.
Still thinking about my favourite image of 2011 here on the Preachers’ Blog, but this one definitely comes close.
Like this:
On being prepared
Many years ago I was working in Belgium for the year, and returned home briefly for a visit to the Spring Harvest Christian Conference. One of my reasons for being there was to act with a small theatre company called ‘Potters Clay’. Time for preparations was limited, and many of my lines had to be learnt whilst travelling. I have a distinct memory of standing in the wings still reciting my lines to myself for a sketch entitled ‘be prepared’! It was hard to escape the irony!
There are times, though, when you can be over-prepared, and allow risk aversion to drive you too much. Yesterday Borough Councils in England and Wales revealed the more bizarre requests made to them under the Freedom of Information act. My festive favourite is the request to Cheltenham Borough Council to state what they would do in the event of Santa’s fully laden sleigh crash landing in the Borough:
- Who would rescue Santa?
- Who would round up any stray reindeer?
- Who would clear the crash site?
Interestingly, nothing was asked about contingency plans for present delivery – but I guess that is outside the purview of one local borough!
I am reminded of the chieftain in the Asterix books, Vitalstatistix, who lived in permanent fear of the sky falling on his head. Maybe there is a job for him in a Borough Council somewhere?
Image: asterix.com
For a picture of how a sleigh crash might look you can click here.
An amusing moment for Christmas
Often when I am preaching and want to illustrate the idea of ‘missing the point’, I turn to an old home video from someone who travelled to Cape Canaveral to watch an Apollo rocket launch. At the last moment, as the ground shook and the sky blurred with heat haze, it became apparent that they had trained their camera on a rocket which was not being launched, and they had spectacularly missed the point. If I ever need a Christmas illustration of the same thing, I reckon I might use the one below:
…but old comms writ large
Yesterday I read an article by Maurilio Amorim on the challenges of communicating with a new generation. The article starts well enough with arresting phrases such as ‘world is one large media bucket ‘. However, by the time I reached the end I was reminded of Milton’s phrase from the 17th Century that ‘New presbyter is but old priest writ large’. Of course it is true that our rate of information transfer has expanded exponentially. Of course it is true that ‘ information seeks and finds us whenever we are‘. That aside, though, aren’t the rules governing effective communication the same as they ever were?
In Amorim’s post we are told that:
- Publishers must be aware of the competitive world beyond the printed page.
- Educators must recognise that education is more than the recital of facts.
- Pastors and preachers must develop an understanding of the timeline of faith.
- Employers must acknowledge that there is more to the life of their employees than the workplace.
- Parents must help their children to develop a moral compass, rather than just dressing them in moral armour.
These are all valid points – but are any of them new?
I believe that discussions in this area in 2012 and beyond will need to focus less on what we do in communications (which will always be fundamentally the same) and more on what we are. As Homo Iunctus (connected humankind), how do we actually understand ourselves?
Image: getdigital.de
The Saxon Gospel
I first came across the Saxon Gospel or Heliand some eighteen months ago. I then touched on it briefly in the missions chapter of Who Needs Words. However, it has been awaiting a proper public airing, and will receive it at the midnight service on Christmas Even this year.
As you read the excerpts below there are a number of things to note. Firstly, there are oddities such as Mary adorning the child with precious jewels. Secondly, there is a real tenderness to the way God addresses his creatures. Thirdly, and most importantly of all, we see the Gospel dressed in the linguistic and cultural clothing of its age. God is the Protector, Jesus is the great Chieftain, and the shepherds are horse-guards. Whenever we address full churches at the great festivals we need to take a leaf out of the Saxon Gospel’s book. We need to express the core of God’s message in the language and idiom of those who sit before us…even at midnight!
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Annunciation
It was not long thereafter that it was all accomplished just as the almighty God had so often promised mankind – that he would send his heavenly child, his own son, to this world to free all the clans of people here from evil. There in hill fort Nazareth the angel of God addressed her face to face, calling her by name and saying to her from God ‘health be with you Mary. Your lord is very fond of you. You are precious to the Ruler for your wisdom, woman full of grace. You are to become the mother of our Chieftain here among human beings.’
Birth
At that time it all came to pass, just as wise men had said long ago: the Protector of People would come in a humble way, by his own power, to visit the kingdom of earth. His mother, that most beautiful woman, took him, wrapped him in clothes and precious jewels, and then with her two hands laid him gently, the little man, that child, in a fodder-crib, even though he had the power of God and was the chieftain of mankind.
Shepherds
What had happened became known to many over this wide world. The guards heard it. As horse-servants they were outside, they were men ion sentry-duty, watching over the horses, the beasts of the field. They saw the darkness split in two the sky, and the light of God came shining through the clouds and surrounded the guards in the fields.
Angel speaks
‘I am going to tell you’, he said, ‘something very powerful: Christ is now born, on this very night, God’s holy child, the good chieftain, at David’s hill fort. What happiness for the human race, a boon to all men.. You can find him, the most powerful child, at Fort Bethlehem. He is there, wrapped up, lying in a fodder crib – even though he is king over all the earth and the heavens and over the sons of all the peoples, the ruler of the World.’
Image: www.sheshen-eceni.co.uk
...and the Littlest Star
Readers of this blog who preach will appreciate the particular challenges associated with the last Sunday before Christmas. The traditional carols by candlelight service is a formulaic creature – certain songs must be sung, certain readings must be read, and a particular story must be told. The challenge when telling that story is to find an approach which is neither so straightforward as to be boring, nor so innovative as to be distracting. The faithful want to hear the story again, and the Christmas visitors may want to know why they should take it seriously. Throughout last week I struggled to find my ‘angle’ on the story for this year. In the end, it struck me that the story of collaborative creativity and shared ‘ownership’ which is Littlest Star was precisely what I was looking for. In many ways the tweets below sumarise its lightning journey from concept to print and sale in 23 days:
During the course of those 23 days, one of the many remarkable things which happened is that a little story in my head ceased to be my story, and became instead the story of those who brought it to birth. It became the story of James and Annette and Libby and Chris and Diana and a host of others who were involved in bringing it out. When God ‘wrote the story’ of the world’s rescue, he involved others in it – from a frightened teenage girl and an overstressed publican to a group of shepherds and a posse of mystics from the wrong side of the religious tracks. God’s story became theirs, and in doing so it invaded the hearts of the human race
I finished last night’s sermon by setting out my long-awaited Oliver Farbel nativity set, pictured below. The artist himself describes it as ’a crib ensemble for the secularized mystic or wavering agnostic of our day’, but I am not so sure. Surely it is a crib scene for all of us? The characters are devoid of all race, age, ethnicity or adornment. Any of them could be any of us, and so the story becomes our story
Image: miggylikestheinternet
After the service was over, somebody commented that this nativity set looked like ‘Bible Jenga‘. If that means that it brought some presuppositions tumbling down, then I’m all for it!
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