Yesterday for Feig Dan Robinson led a discussion around the implications of the Resurrection. It was a good time with some great input from Dan, which sparked good discussion for us as a community.
I was left committed in a fresh way to affirming the resurrection and for Feig to be a place where people can encounter that New Life, both as a gathered and dispersed community. It reminded me that so often in life and within community we hold in our hands questions and hopes, joys and hurts, times of breakthrough and times of doubt. The Good News of Jesus is big enough to gather all of these cords of life together.
Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. I’ve quoted this before but this is a great description of Lent
"Lent comes every year to recall us to our rightful mind, to the real hard work of dismantling the defenses that not only set up dividing walls of hostility between us and other human beings but also function as lenses that screen out the presence of God. And so, Lent invites us... to step toward that radical remodel that will put lived partnership with God at the center of who we are and what we mean."
Marilyn McCord Adams
Today is also the day when repentance is a particular focus- where we turn around to be to be faced with God’s Big Story of love and welcome, choosing to place our small story into this divine one. It may mean turning from other stories that complete for our devotion. In this place we humble ourselves to…
“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ.”
Last week our family had a couple of days off, the weather was getting milder and so for one day we ventured out into the garden to set about getting it ready for Spring. The hard cold weather had gone, the ground was soft. We cleared the dead leaves and branches out, dug up weeds and turned the soil over, we even pruned some of the bushes to make space for new growth. It was a lot of fun and we all got down in the soil and got our hands really dirty.
As I was digging over the ground it gave me new energy, the smell of freshly dug earth was good. I remembered that Lent was approaching and in some ways what I was doing symbolized much of the heart of Lent.
We make space afresh in our life for Jesus; we are open to having the old cleared away, of digging out that which will choke new life. We may even choose to cut back some of the good to make space for God.
It may be hard work, but it feels and smells really good.
Feig have now been gathering in the Cathedral for nearly 6 months. We’ve blogged about that before. We all agreed that when we made this move it would be important to continue meeting in homes.
We have once such gathering and one or two more in the pipeline. Min and I host a fortnightly get together. We have chosen to read a book together and over food use it as a platform for a hearty discussion and then over pudding and a cuppa to pray together. Very simple and I have to say very deep and life shaping.
We are currently reading Tom Wright’s Simply Christian. He does a great job of painting the story of God by using longings and desires that are common within all of humanity. This really makes you do that hard work of untangling some of the religious language and jargon that sometimes come with a discussion about what it means to be a Christian. These last weeks have been stripping it all back to those basic longings within all of us and we’re looking forward to seeing where it goes as we start putting some shape back into it.
Here are two quotes from Wright that all of us pulled out of our reading:
“[On Jesus] He took the tears of the world and made them his own. He took the joy of the world and brought it to new birth… rose from the dead and launched God's new creation."
“One of the central elements of the Christian story is the claim that the paradox of laughter and tears, woven as it is deep into the heart of all human experience, is woven also deep into the heart of God.”
One of our number asked the most amazing question of us all this week, which we’ve agreed should make a regular appearance, “How has what you read last week affected your life or the way you see the world?” (my paraphrase)
I’m excited and look forward to seeing how the other house groups emerge.
"When my people in their need look for water, when their throats are dry with thirst, then I, the Lord, will answer their prayer; I, the God of Israel, will never abandon them. I will make rivers flow among barren hills and springs of water run in the valleys. I will turn the desert into pools of water and the dry land into flowing springs."
As part of our New Beginnings series this week we looked at Genesis 1 & 2, using a way of reading the Scriptures called ‘Lectio Divina.’ I’m always challenged and humbled by how the Spirit of God speaks to and through a community.
Genesis 1 reveals a God who speaks a giant canvas into being and creates vast spaces on it. This God then stands back and through Words fills in this canvas with detail and vibrancy, with colour and variety. A painter who paints a masterpiece and with utter joy in His voice declares it to be very good. And then Genesis 2 retells the story of a God who doesn't stand back but is intimately involved, up close and personal- a God who in the creation of the world and humanity gets dirt under His fingernails, so involved that He puts His very breath into it. I love this quote from Charles Spurgeon on creation.
I believe that every particle of dust that dances in the sunbeam does not move an atom more or less than God wishes— that every particle of spray that dashes against the steamboat has its orbit, as well as the sun in the heavens— that the chaff from the hand of the winnower is steered as the stars in their courses.
Simon and Hen were part of feig for a time while they were in the UK and, I guess in a way still are now that they live in Japan. I miss them and I miss hearing their thoughts on things. Fortunately Simon writes a blog.
Here's a link his latest post in which he finds it hard to answer the question "Where do you go to church?"
Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer utters itself. So, a woman will lift her head from the sieve of her hands and stare at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.
Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth enters our hearts, that small familiar pain; then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth in the distant Latin chanting of a train.Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales console the lodger looking out across a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls a child's name as though they named their loss.Darkness outside. Inside, the radio's prayer - Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.Carol Ann Duffy
In our feig gatherings at the moment, at the start of the New Year we are considering New Beginnings.
Last week we did a New Year 'Examen', where we consider the presence and absence of God throughout the last year. I discovered the other day that in the ancient Hebrew mindset, they saw themselves as travelling forwards but looking backwards, seeing the tracks made on the journey just travelled. Like sitting on the back of a trailer with legs swinging looking at where you had just been. The movement is always forward (so not wishing you could be 18 again). It is of course possible to glance momentarily over the shoulder and see the journey ahead- a glimpse into the future and the destination, 'We don't yet see things clearly... We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist.' (1 Corinthians 13:12)
Disciplines such as thankfulness, confession, repentance and meditations like the Examen are great ways of considering the tracks we have made as we look back, but head into the future, hoping and trusting that it will be fused with the reality of God.
