Virtual Methodist

I love the Carol of the Bells... one day I hope to sing it. I love the Muppets... they are guaranteed to brighten up the grimmest of days. Joy is not necessarily about jollity (and certainly not about enforced jollity) but it is good to have a laugh some times... So that said, here is a wee muppet gem... Cheers

Over the next few days I am going to be a tad preoccupied with preparing for seasonal services and the sleigh ride of home communions and visits that are the rhythm of the run-in to Christmas. So for the next couple of days I've pre-posted a few interesting/amusing pieces that I have found elsewhere... Starting with this one on the "equal-opportunity mongrel" that I have had as a regular companion over the years... It is in tune with WhyNotSmile's piece that I referred to yesterday... Please take time to watch... You may not have such an unwelcome pet in your life, but I guarantee that someone close to you does and it might help you to understand and support them a little better... Cheers

Around this time of year Christians are often encouraged to sign up in one form or another to a campaign to "keep Christ in Christmas." Depending on how contrarian I am feeling I will either endorse such a campaign or seek to debunk it... A key factor is often whether the campaign has any sense of humour... One of my virtual friends who is consistently humorous (and I frequently laud her as such at this time of year in my VM Awards , which may or may not make an appearance this year depending on whether I can be bothered) is WhyNotSmile . Last week Mrs Smile took on an atheist campaign that, Grinch-like, seeks to take Christ out of Christmas... There isn't a lot of humour in her response, a lot of her characteristic wit, but not much to laugh out loud at... Instead there is a depth of feeling that is important to hear in the run up to this "season to be jolly..." Let me quote a huge chunk of her piece where she says why she needs Christ at Christmas even mor...

One of the blogs I've been following through advent is Patrick Comerford's "Art for Advent" , and a particular favourite post was the one on the ‘The Census at Bethlehem’ by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, first because I like Bruegel in general, and second because this picture captures the political import of the census noted by Luke. ..  Bruegel translates things to his own time and country, the Netherlands, at that time ruled, with a certain level of ruthlessness, by Spain. Snow has fallen (snow on snow), but that does not deter the census-takers.  We often miss the fact that Augustus' census, like any census, is not about keeping some sort of record for posterity, but is an instrument of policy... and for both the Romans and the Spanish whom Bruegel lived and worked under, it was tied to taxation and social control. Augustine's census was a marker being laid down that the Roman Empire was in charge (even if Herod the so-called Great was still ostensibly t...

In honour of those running foodbanks and putting together emergency Christmas hampers in this season of conspicuous consumption and even more conspicuous inequality... Conspicuous to all but the government. Selah

Yesterday a friend posted on facebook a link to the following excerpt from a 1988 recording of BBC TV's "That's Life", honouring Sir Nicholas Winton, a stockbroker and former banker, who, before World War II, almost single-handedly organised an operation known as the Czech Kindertransport. This involved the evacuation of about 669 children, most of whom were Jewish, to Britain from German occupied Czechoslovakia. 250 further children were due to leave Prague in autumn 1939, but the invasion of Poland and subsequent declaration of war stopped that. Winton kept quiet about his humanitarian exploits for many years, until his wife Grete found a scrapbook in their attic in 1988 listing the children, their parents' names (most of whom perished in Auschwitz), and the names and addresses of the families that took them in. This then prompted the telling of his story on "That's Life" where Winton finds himself surrounded by some of those whom he had saved... (...

Further thoughts from Oscar Romero (and probably not the last this advent), this time explicitly on advent and the  theme of  last Sunday's " Hope and History - Into the Neighbourhood"  candle liturgy -  "The Coming Kingdom of Justice."  Advent should admonish us to discover in each brother or sister that we greet, in each friend whose hand we shake, in each beggar who asks for bread, in each worker who wants to use the right to join a union, in each peasant who looks for work in the coffee groves, the face of Christ. Then it would not be possible to rob them, to cheat them, to deny them their rights. They are Christ, and whatever is done to them Christ will take as done to himself. This is what Advent is: Christ living among us. Archbishop Oscar Romero Shalom

Yesterday in church we celebrated the coming Kingdom of Justice... and I was at pains to point out that, as with the concept of peace the previous week, the Hebrew concept of justice or righteousness is so much richer than ours, which is often reduced to a legal/judicial framework... I might come back to that later in the week as it is a live issue in this part of the world at present. But one of the aspects that our limited understanding of justice/righteousness misses out on is the idea of the whole world order being put right again... Every year my wife puts up an advent calendar... You might think that our boys are now beyond such things, but there is generally a scramble to see who gets to open the window each morning (even though there is no chocolate involved this year). I was mightily please however to see that this year's advent calendar includes a very prominent elephant (above)... It reminded me of our 20th anniversary trip to Munich four years ago when the ci...

This is the second of the Hope and History Advent Candle Liturgies that we will be using in Belfast South Methodist this morning. The feedback was good from last week, particularly from some enterprising folks in North Belfast who had adapted the whole thing into an ecumenical advent carol service. Again, this week I have included part of my sermon for the morning for those of you who are REALLY late in getting your thoughts together for this morning or have decided to give this morning's service a miss... I hope that doesn't apply to any folks from South Belfast Methodist.   VOICE 1:      A green shoot will one day sprout                         from what seems to be the shrivelled stump of Jesse; VOICE 2:      from his roots a branch will bear fruit. VOICE 1:      The Spirit of the ...

On Thursday night when I heard that Nelson Mandela had died I posted on facebook: 'I pray that Mandela may rest in peace, but the key thing for me is that when alive he worked for peace. He said "If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner." I don't want the peace of a graveyard, but the peace of a reconciled community.' Mandela did not always pursue a path of peace, at least not in terms of non-violence, but he was an unequivocal champion of justice, an intrinsic component to that more holistic perspective on peace contained within the Hebrew concept of shalom... I think the phrase "the peace of a graveyard" came from a quote by that other iconic hero of peace and justice Archbishop Oscar Romero that I had been reading earlier yesterday, where he said:  "Peace is not the product of terror or fear. Peace is not the silence of cemeteries. Peace is not the silent result of v...

Yesterday afternoon I caught Creideamh's rant about Tom's shoes and pseudo-charitable capitalism. Now I wouldn't know a pair of Tom's shoes if they were in front of me... (actually - in looking for the photo on the left I have seen a number of them and doubt I will buy some any time soon... neither my podiatrist nor physiotherapist would approve.) I buy shoes on an absolute need to basis. Indeed that is my approach to all clothing... Wear it until it is no longer fit for purpose (and probably long after), no matter how unfashionable or, at times, unflattering it is... But perhaps I have missed an entrepreneurial opportunity... Perhaps the is a gap in the market for "Peace apparel." Where does this hare-brained scheme come from? Well in preparing for last Sunday's sermon on "The Coming Kingdom of Peace" and this week's one on the "Coming Kingdom of Justice" which features John the Baptist and his unique approach to couture, I ca...

I had a VERY busy day yesterday. And on the whole it was stimulating and encouraging. However, I had to keep hauling myself back to the positive, as there were little annoyances throughout the day... Frustrations with aspects of church politics and practice... and with specific members of the church... Impatience on my part in some things and annoyance at others' impatience in other things... Niggles about practical things like microphones and coffee... I've written and spoken before about my tendency to focus on the negative... But I got home today to find a few of my friends had posted this piece on facebook , featuring this picture among others... Without the light shining on it, it is merely a pile of rubbish with a couple of stuffed seagulls... But you've got to look beyond the rubbish to see the full picture...  (Some of the pictures are more pleasant than others... and there are some who say this is all photo-shopped... But I prefer to focus on the posit...

I was listening briefly to Michael Scott's documentary series "Spin the Globe" on Radio 4 yesterday afternoon whilst driving. It is a series that looks at key dates in history (eg 1066, 1914) and what was happening elsewhere in the world at that time. Yesterday he was looking at 0 AD, and what was happening in Guatemala, Korea and Rome when the main event was, from a western Christian perspective, happening in Bethlehem... I didn't actually hear the rest of the programme (may do so  on the iplayer's Listen Again function ), but by way of introduction he looked at the historicity of Jesus' existence (if not the exact date and circumstances of his birth... that hoary old subject for features editors, bloggers and preachers at this time of year) and a Dermot McCullough, Professor of Church History at Oxford University suggested that the most convincing evidence for the life of Jesus are the "various casual mentions " of him in passing in other works ...

The practice of advent watchfulness is, in many ways an exercise of prolonged prayer... Training ourselves to be awake to the presence of God in the world around us.  Earlier in the year I offered some reflections based on Eugene Peterson's book "The Contemplative Pastor". Well, in that book he points out the difference between the more commonplace tradition of apophatic prayer and kataphatic prayer.  You may not realise it but most of us, particularly in the Protestant traditions, were taught apophatic prayer from childhood, when we were told "Fold your hands, bow your head, shut your eyes, and we'll talk to God." Apophatic prayer attempts to eliminate all earthly distractions that may distract us from communion with our Creator. By contrast kataphatic prayer encourages us to "reach out our hands, lift up our heads, open our eyes and listen to God, using triggers in creation to point us to the Creator - icons, symbols, scripture, ritual, incense...

I first came across this story at the beginning of the year via David Montgomery on Facebook, concerning an experiment conducted by the Washington Post in a DC metro station, but thought I would save it up for advent, as we enter into another period of watchfulness:  At 7.51 am on a cold January morning a youngish white man in jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt and a Washington Nationals baseball cap started to play the violin. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that 1,100 people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. Three minutes went by before anyone stopped. The 64th person to pass, a middle aged man, slowed his pace, and stopped for a few seconds, and then hurried up to meet his schedule. A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the open violin case and without stopping continued to walk. A few minutes later, someone leaned agains...

This is the first of the Hope and History Advent Candle Liturgies that we will be using in Belfast South Methodist this morning (and I hope elsewhere too). It includes part of my sermon for the morning... But let me include a spiritual health warning. If our commitment to the Kingdom of Peace is only a matter of gathering in a holy huddle around an advent ring and reciting this or another form of words, then we are an irrelevance to the future of this world... For me the key part of this liturgy is the bit that may well be neglected in most settings... the closing exhortation and benediction, and what flows from it. The benediction does not just act as a bookend to the opening candle-lighting ceremony, but is about the incarnation of these words into flesh and blood actions in the coming week... taking the promises of peace and making them a reality in a city and world that really needs to know that peace... VOICE 1:       There’s a day coming     ...

My 30 Days of Thanksgiving has been a bit sporadic, but my last one is to you for sticking with me...  But now, as we enter into advent I would invite you to continue with me in 25 Days of Watchfulness; watching and waiting as an "attentive pilgrim" looking for signs of grace in the world around us... For a couple of years a number of friends of Crookedshore participated in a shared exercise of advent watchfulness under the title of " Mockingbird's Leap" ... It was a useful discipline, and I resurrected it last year on a patchy basis here on VM. I thought it would be an interesting experiment this year again following on from the 30 Days of Thanksgiving... I hope you  find it helpful in the midst of the pre-Christmas madness. To kick it off here is a reblog of a piece I posted last year . It is inspired by the last set of prayers in David Adam's wonderful wee book  "The Rhythm of Life"  which are a short set of devotions for a Saturday night, un...

I post this, in part, by way of a thank you to my mother in law, 20 years down the line.  It's an adaptation of something I wrote for the Methodist Newsletter for December and shared with our own congregation last Sunday as part of our Home Missions Service, but anyone who has been listening to me over the past 20 years or following this blog in more recent years, will have heard/seen bits of it before. I make no apology for that... It is too important to say once, and I will say it again... Twenty years ago, when I was a mere ministerial student helping out at Sydenham Methodist, my mother in law gave me an early Christmas present that not only helped me in an emergency, but has also helped shape my ministry from that day. She had arrived on the Friday before Christmas, but early the following Sunday morning I got a phone call  saying that Brian Fletcher, the minister at the time, had taken ill and asking me to speak at the two services that day… Since I was only a st...

About halfway through November last year I noticed that various American friends who didn't know each other were posting daily thanksgivings on twitter and facebook... It only took me a few days and a bit of internet surfing to discover that they were all participating in a movement asking for 30 Days of Thanksgiving during November instead of (or as well as) the usual festival of gluttony on the last Thursday in the month. I thought then that it wasn't a bad idea, but that it was a bit late to join in, but it prompted me to engage in 25 Days of Watchfulness throughout in December as a way of observing advent. This year I plan to have another 25 Days of Watchfulness, but that before that I would also observe 30 Days of Thanksgiving here on Virtual Methodist... So, throughout November I'll be posting short blogs that are marks of gratitude to God and to others who are channels of his grace... including this post where I want to put on record my thanks to those who put thi...

At this time of year the newspapers usually come up with a story about some cleric who has disabused children of the existence of Santa and his place in the Christmas story... "Spoil Sport Vicar Equates Santa with Satan!" and that sort of thing... It goes hand in hand with the "Keep Christ in Christmas" stuff that also starts circulating from late November on... This year, not only did a couple of blogs kick back against the "Keep Christ in Christmas" thing, with  "Keep Chi in Xmas" , which I posted on facebook this time last month, but there was also at least one post offering a partial rehabilitation of old St. Nick... But thanks to my friend Lynda Gould, I also came across, on facebook, the following "Anti-Santy Rant" by Glen Scrivener which offers a reflection on our attitude to God and Jesus in the light of our attitude to Santa Claus... You can see a version with Glen Scrivener delivering it to camera, here ... But this is t...