Reflection on broken rhythms

We've recently moved and in a brief spiritual audit I became aware that it has played havoc with my rhythm of prayer such that my structured/focused prayer times have become sporadic and I have felt backgroundedly guilty about that. Now I would probably have a perspective -if I was someone coming to me for SD- that I shouldn't beat myself up too much in a time of major lifestyle upheaval about this but simply ask if there was enough settling of dust yet to begin to work on reconstruction. Okay: fair comment.



However, I've also becme aware that there is a task to be done before or at least alongside this: what have I learnt from this? Being out of rhythm can throw up the opportunity to discover things about where and how God has met with me that I might not have noticed when in the the rhythm of prayer. So I am asking myself this question now; especially as it is too early to say that a regular rhythm of life has resuemed. Perhaps in the next week or two something of that will occur as holidays end and the kids go back into education. But in the meantime it is time to take stock of wwhat has actually been happening and what I can learn from it. More later, perhaps.

GAs prices and the wider perspective

Guardian Unlimited Money | News_ | The long good buy: "But there are some bright spots. One is that higher prices for carbon-emitting fuels such as gas or oil make the cost of alternative energy sources cheaper by comparison. That should encourage the investment in, and widespread adoption of, renewable energy in the form of wind, wave and solar generators: no panacea to be sure, but no bad thing.



Article is a good brief analysis of the trends.

"

Artificial photosynthesis

PhysOrg: Molecular assemblies created to convert water to hydrogen gas: "The process has been called artificial photosynthesis, says Brewer, associate professor of chemistry. 'Light energy is converted to chemical energy. Solar light is of sufficient energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gas, but this does not happen on its own; we need a catalysts to make this reaction occur.'"



This looks like similar [the same?] research as I reported the other day. A few more details. Again, it looks promising.

Church -dying to self?

"Jesus came to seek and to save that which was lost. Too many of us are here to seek and to save that which is found. "

This is a great and brief empassioned cry about our priorities, and the church dying to its institutional self in order to find its soul [okay so that's my interpretation].

Learning to BE Church

Paradoxology: An Interview with a House-Church Team, part 2"...if I don't help them find their calling and release them, as opposed to “keep on patting them on the back for their participation in my program, never acknowledging the calling on their life -- then I’m simply holding them "hostage" and keeping them from fulfilling their true calling by God. Also, if I never took the time to know my sheep, I wouldn’t identify their true callings in the first place."

As someone who has pastored a reasonably big [UK standards here] church I so identify with this; I got to feeling that the church enterprise had a momentum of its own and that we were really mainly servicing the ministries that met expectations of the crowds but we didn't really manage to make such a great deal of headway with making sure that people got the spiritual growth coaching that they needed. What tended to happen was that they were expected to plug holes in our programme and pay for the upkeep of it all.

I desperately want to see this turned on its head: the really creative thing is helping to make something of what we have rather than trying to force what we have in terms of people gifts and skilss into our module slots. The art of pastoring is like the art of painting or sculpting or putting on a play: the important thing is the dialogue between what we have and what the vision is that emerges.

The reverse of this to some extent in the exhibition at the Baltic in Gateshead at the moment of the Archigram group of architects in the sixties and beyond. In effect they were set free from the limitations of materials and community and imagined the most wonderful ideas and the creativity and exciement is tangible from the models and drawings, but ... that kind of thinking is now being pulled down in its concrete forms and its blighting of communities pulled apart and never able to reform in these alien environments. Why? Because there was no real dialogue with the raw materials and the communities that they set to house and provide built environment for. I'm not saying these men were personally responsible, just that the kind of runaway creativity freed from the constraints of fundamental realities was destructive.

In fashioning church [and the word 'apostle' is linked by Paul with the word "architektwn" interestingly enough] we need to start with the giftings and callings of God to his people and seek to fashion life together and mission with the grain of what God has already given. It's a kind of corporate spiritual directing. I'm afraid, in learning this, I think I rather failed 'my' church at that time. And yet there's me also thinking; how come I didn't pick any of this up in training? Was it not there or did I miss it?

Ah, perhaps I should stop there. Thanks Chris at Paradoxology for this insightful interview series.

Revolutionary Spam Firewall

PhysOrg report on this "Revolutionary Spam Firewall" which seems hopeful but I can't help thinking that it'll be good for a few weeks and then weaknesses will be found and exploited. I suspect that the only real way to stop spam is to make it too risky and too expensive for the spamlords.

Solar Hydrogen Fuel Dream Will Soon Be a Reality

Ceramics seem to be the new wonder materials -here's a breakthrough for catalysing water to hydrogen using sunlight and it should be up and running by 2011.

What kind of postmodernist are you?

Apparently I'm a gender nazi -Can't see how that came out of the results but I changed three answers the second time and it still came out the same.

If you're using IE to read this, be afraid, be very afraid

I'm off IE cos I've linuxed but even before that I discovered this really cool browser that let me configure its options and look to my heart's content; Firefox. It'll work in windows, it's open source and so de-Bills your PC use somewhat ... go on you know it makes sense.

joogle?

How Google Could De-Throne AIM :: Apple-X.net :: Condensing Fact From The Vapor Of Nuance.
Here's an interesting thought -vapourware? Well jabber exists, I considered using it for my IM needs but am sticking with Kopete for the time being as it's on the desktop already [Linux; remember]. But this ... I'm getting into the IM world because it may be a good way to do some of my 'facework', At the moment I'm Billy Nomates in the IM world -so if you would like to be able to IM me or vice versa I'm up for expanding my buddy list.

A year of living generously

Greenbelt News / Events Item
Now this is right up my street and ina way the kind of thing I'm already trying to do and to promote ... so Greenbelters get along to it. I'll blog more if there's enough in it to go with.

The New York Times > Business > Your Money > Investing: Ready to Bet on Alternative Energy? Well, Think Again

The New York Times > Business > Your Money > Investing: Ready to Bet on Alternative Energy? Well, Think Again: "Alternative energy sources typically require huge infrastructure investment to deliver power to electricity grids, or to cars in the case of hydrogen as a substitute for gasoline."



Though this shows up the typical problem of not adjusting ones thinking to the potential new paradigms that a new scenario throws up: in this case a lot of alternative energy is likely to be better decentralised not feeding into the existing grid.... so invest in people who are making wind turbines for ordinary houses and solar panels for roofs. Look at the potential for domestic production of hydrogen as a means of storing surplus energy produced when householders are away .... and so on

Everywhere in chains

Guardian Unlimited | Guardian daily comment | Everywhere in chains
So you thought slavery was a dealt-with issue? Read this and think again.

Paradoxology: The Demise of the "Copy-Cat" Church

This is a pithy reflection on the idea that to be married to the spirit of the age is to be a widow in the next. I think that one of the things that has so depressed me -certainly got me down- about the current church of England responses to decline is that a lot of it is adopting modernist solutions. Now I'm not saying some of this stuff doesn't have its place but I am sure that we cannot manage ourselves out of trouble. The current forms of church are in decline because they don't make sense any more and they aren't what the Holy Spirit is leading us into. There will be pockets where it will continue to be successful and okay but by and large we are looking for new patterns and I'm not even sure that stipendiary ministry as we have known it is a major plank. Though, of course I could just be making myself feel better. That said I believe that I have thought this, deep down, for about 12 years and perhaps even longer. I thought very seriously of non-stipendiary ministry when I was going through selection for ordained ministry.

Greenbelt bloggers - the Wibsite

Well I'm starting to get ready for Greenbelt where I'll be escorting speakers again and hopefully turning up to get a look at some of these other bloggards in real life. See you there peops! [So that's a confirmation that this blogger will indeed be at the festival -but not invited to the emerging church roundtable.... so sad :-( ]

Rain 'factory' that sent the waters surging

Telegraph report.
IIIt's not often that something like what happened in Boscastle last week happens. If you want to understand the meteorological physics a bit tthen this is for you.

Tidal turbines for NY

This is promising though only early days, but still anything like this in USA is good news.

Colin McCabe chides Charles Clarke

EducationGuardian.co.uk | News crumb | Why exams are failing children: "Students now arrive at university without the knowledge or skills considered automatic in our day. But the students are bright and willing and I think that there would be little difficulty in accommodating this change with considerable additional teaching in the first year of university courses."

This open letter to the education secretary is interesting; not least because I suspect that it unwittingly reveals part of the difficulty in all this talk about assessment and exams. The part I've quoted gives the game away: the students are bright and willing [good to acknowledge that because indeed they are for the most part]; so far so good. but they arrive at university "without the knowledge or skills considered automatic in our day". Despite all the good things this article has to say we see the heart of the problem, and I do agree with Prof McCabe that there is probably an overkill of assessment and that there should be room for intellectual growth.

So, what's the issue? "In our day" -in other words there is a harking back to a period which signally failed the majority of children and young poeple because it was elitist and tacitly maintained a hierarchical view of society which deprived those from the 'wrong' backgrounds or with different learning styles of the best opportunities to develop their intelligence and skills. I know -I was one of those kids consigned to a place in society where my abilities would not be encouraged or grown, and that consignment was done when I was eleven.

"Without the knowledge or skills ..." which appears to place the blame for the state of affairs with the kids or with the pre-university education. But hang on a cotton-picking minute ... what is actually happening here is that the pre-unversity sector is responding [however imperfectly] to the idea that assessment should be criteria based and that education should be more than learning to write essays in a particular style. Perhaps the real issue here is that university teaching and teachers are not up to the new job of enabling learning [and come on: we know that university teachers are often chosen for their research ratings not their ability to develop others]. They want it to be like they grew up with, what's familier and what means they don't have to adjust to much [and at one level I can't blame them]. In other words they are implicitly, probably unconsciously, trying to maintain an elitist system because it has already favoured them and it would be easier to generate more of the same. And they'd like the great British tax-paying public to pay for it -in other words the people who have been failed by it would pay the lion's share to maintain it. Perhaps this is somewhat unfair on many, but in the present climate I do feel that a strongly stated opposite case should be put.

The old A levels are held up in this letter as good: I went through that system and I know that much of what we did by preparation was not what prof McCabe seesm to think, and ideed much of what went on in undergraduate courses likewise was about rote learning: except that the learning was of memorising lines of argument supported by memorising quotes. I'm not convinced it was laways thinking for ourselves; mostly it was learning arguments that would win good marks. The only real skill it taught was that of spotting which lines of argument were best deployed for which kind of question; the key skill was analysing the question. I think that what I wouldd want to say is that perhaps it is time to recognise that there are lots of different ways to express analytical skills and they can be faked to some degree under the traditional system as well.

What you end up with under the traditional system is a lot of people who have a limited set of skills of analysis and argument suited to a university environment and traditional university curriculum, but what if the university curriculum is too narrow? And what if the methods it by historical 'accident' has come to favour for discourse are too limited to draw out the potential of a diverse and gifted population? Then we need to stop putting the cart before the horse. I don't think that means putting the simple economic needs [and who defines that anyway?] of a country in the driving seat, I think it does call for a fuller vision of education than a narrowly defined traditionally academic excellence and than the simple meeting of skills gaps in the economy. In Christian terms it is about 'the glory of God is a human being fully alive' [Irenaeus -a former Bishop of Lyons]: human potential being encouraged and allowed to blossom to the benefit of all and all creation.

St Anthony's Priory

I think I've found my spiritual reference point in Durham; the Priory here is a centre for local spirituality training and spiritual direction and I had a chat this morning with one of the team [Paul Golightly] and I think that I can see me being a part of at least some of what they do as a participant and maybe I will be able to offer some things too. -Like perhaps design and put up a web page or two! This is the only reference I could find and it's way out of date.

The chapel is fantastic: newish and purpose built it's in the round and has a round communion table at the centre made out of a tree trunk and the seating is tiered [it could hold about 50 in reasonable comfort]. It's also in beautiful grounds. Apparently the house used to be the Vicarage for St Nick's in Durham and the lsat vicar in it as Vicar was George Carey! I might see what they think about using it as an occasional focus for alternative type services ....

Signing on

This morning I had my first jobseeker's interview: for the first time in 19 years I have joined the ranks of those officially registered as unemployed and it's a strange feeling. I think because the whole system as we now have it is geared [on the whole rightly I think in sme respects] to seeing it as a support in finding work and it does appear to me that this is indeed the mission since it is clear that various kinds of support are offered. But none that less thre is still a tendency for it to hook the justification by works module in me. There is also a certain humiliation in going through this process, though the staff I've dealt with have not been responsible for that; it's systematic by the nature of the beast. I'm doing it because by doing so I can access help in setting up my business for free if necessary and perhaps get other kinds of start up help and advice. That they might also give me a bit of money is a plus but it put it in perspective when the week after my contract in Bradford finished I did a piece of work writing a report for £250 and this is more for two days work than I get signing on. Only problem is that I can't get regular work at that rate!

Row over 'no-fail' A-levels

EducationGuardian.co.uk | Schools special reports | Row over 'no-fail' A-levels: "There was a corresponding increase in the number taking 'softer' subjects such as psychology and media studies - critics say students are 'working the system' for the highest possible grades to secure university places."

The hypocrisy of this makes me mad: like no-one else 'works the system' [whichever it is] to maximise the effect of their effort and chances? In any case shouldn't we be pleased at the greater opportunities there are for people to study what intersts them and that they can excell at. I didn't realise how much I hated this elitist thing that wants assessment in education to suit only the kind of people that made a success of negotiating it in the past [perhaps failing the 11-plus is an emotional driver here? -and the recognition that the one boy from our school that passed it hasn't achieved academically anything like what I and a handful of others did]. Sheesh! My dander it well and truly up.

The soul friendship of Samwise Gamgee

maggi dawn: "Frodo is enslaved by the Ring - in love with the thing that will ultimately kill him. The only way to be free is to throw the ring into the lake. Frodo is weakened by his addiction to the Ring, and the lake is some distance away. Sam, Frodo's friend, is certain that Frodo has the strength to throw the ring away, and knows that only Frodo can free himself. So waht does Sam do? He carries Frodo to the lake, and waits for Frodo to relinquish the Ring. Sam is no 'co-dependent'. He knows he can't save Frodo: only Frodo can throw the ring away. But Sam does literally pick Frodo up and carry him to a place where he can save himself"



It occured to me first, as I read this [thanks Maggi for the reflection], that this was a really good image for life coaching: only Frodo can throw the ring away and Sam knows it but does what he can in order to enable Frodo to do the right thing. It is also a picture for soul friendship and spiritual direction: we cannot take from someone their relationship to and responsibility before God: but we can support and help them to the place where they can do what they have to do.



Of course the sting in the tail of this is that Frodo couldn't/wouldn't do it in the end; it required an intervention from another freely chosen and redemptive in the way that evil often is self-defeating but you can't exactly plan on how -which really bugs our inner control-freak. SO it comes down to doing what you can and not what you can't [do I hear echoes of the serenity prayer?]

New Age and neopaganism

Book logged and reviewed.

Some numbers

heard on BBC news this morning.
1 in 8 lawyers would rather be farmers.
20 schools today in Britain are subject to arson attacks.
10,000 people per year in UK are reported missing.

Turning over a new leaf

An article about the carbon offset schemes of Future Forests.

"Future Forests increasingly makes its money from fees for providing companies with advice on reducing emissions and devising marketing campaigns on how to achieve that goal. "



So ideas like, you've got quite enough material possessions, so why not ask for gifts of trees to be planted? That's the kind of thing they're into.

Minister attacks A-level critics

See what I wrote yesterday ... knocking success, the old British social disease.

Britain's family revolution

A lot of life coaching seems to get taken up with issues of work-life balance and so it is interesting to see this poll showing that younger wrkers are increasingly looking to quality of life issues for fulfilment rather than the workplace itself. Perhaps life coaches are really the sticking-plaster whereas the UK government efforts towards family-friendly working practices are the systemic level of fix comparable to removing the dangerous equipment rather than simply patching up people when it actually hurts them.

Interesting too though, the issues about how these kinds of measures have a knock-on effect and how we manage those too. Certainly I recognize the dynamics of discussion from my own ministry over the last 18 years.

A wider context though is how to share out work so that the disparities between the chronically over-worked and the underemployed are ironed out to everyone's mutual benefit.

Then specifying this to the churches; overworked ministers and priests who would really like to do things differently but can't, partly held in place by the prison/enabler of the stipend/housing/pension package deal ... I need to add this into my thinking about how we manage paid employment in the churches.

EducationGuardian.co.uk | Schools special reports | A-levels 'not being dumbed down'

EducationGuardian.co.uk | Schools special reports | A-levels 'not being dumbed down': "This year's A-level results are expected to show an increase in the pass rate for the 22nd year in succession and the number of A grades is predicted to rise as well." -And people are starting to say that there's a lowering of standards -the bell curve gone mad!

We put more effort and even money into education, better teachers, better equipment and kids who are probably better motivated and we don't appear to have the capacity to beleive that they might get better results because they've worked harder than we did and learnt more. Ptahh! What kind of nation of killjoys are wwe

Wired News: It's Just the 'internet' Now

Lynn Truss has a lot to answer for: not least that I'm now interested enough to blog that at least one major [to me] publication no longer capitalises 'internet' [sic], 'web' [ditto] etc. -just like it doesn't do so for television, radio etc. And ... er... that's it. Except to quote the attribution at the end of the article:
Tony Long is Wired News' copy chief. His previous atrocity against the cult of technology was inserting a hyphen in "e-mail.

Holographic signatures

A confession. I was good at drawing, so much so that I could take a photo of a footballer's signture and with a bit of practice produce a likeness, on demand, that would pass muster. I suspect that it would have given a run for its money to the technique outlined in this article using holography to reconstruct the way that a signature was produced. Though I kind of wonder whether it will get a mush use as all that with digital messaging and PIN's -how often are we going to be signing things?

Green car out for a drive

"A summer campaign by WebEx, www.webex.com, which provides online meetings – and Future Forests www.futureforests.com – a leading climate change business, aims to help educate employees about the harmful effects of business travel."



It was onllly a matter of time before the bottom line started to affect business travel....

Saudi embassy urges boycott of UK universities

I've just written a report for a church to help them decide how they should go forward in their ministry to international students [Wa-hey! My first fee as an independent!]. One of the things I had to point out was the tenedency for universities to treat international students as cash cows. Now it's not universal but some of the stories in this article could make you weep. I was saying in the report that there is potential for churches to be involved in practical support of international students. I also think that we may earn the right and acquire the duty of advocacy. It's a role for chaplaincy which I had been beginning to develop.

Paradoxology: Valuing the Right Questions... AND Answers.

Chris at Desert Pastor has picked up my last blog and found a rather nice graphic to go with it. Thanks Chris! I agree with you that sometimes too we need to value answers too. I suppose that is comes down to that really old philosophers' [as in: goes back to Greek and probably Chinese andIndian too -but I don't know so much about that] thing about asking questions. If we don't ask right questions we can't normally find answers that help. There are lots of potential answers, but only the right questions will get us to them.

Right questions and wrong questions

Darryl at The Dying Church has found some really good right and wrong questions about church and ministry and the future of both. A lot here resonated for me.

Post rate down because...

I've just pretty much gone wholly linux
and I've been tweaking the system and learning about what the capabilities are and how to install stuff as well as making sure that Firefox the browser and Thunderbird the emailer are happy on my system which they are. Though I'm interested to note how much more there is available for windows users compared with Linux users by way of extra features in these programmes. I'm missing being able to save my tabbed browsing sessions. I must suggest to the development community that they come up with and extension for Firefox to deal with that.

Oh, and an intersting fact. You dear reader are almost certainly a Linux user. "But I use windows". Indeed you do -on the desktop- but if you have ever Googled you became a linux user; Google use linux for their servers. In fact it is hard to use the internet at all without being an open source user since well over half of servers are unix/linux or similar [Solaris etc].

Journey to Durham

this is our house at present. We didn't realise how many books we had got and how much for granted we took the space we had in vicarages until here. I've taken bags and bags to charity shops -mainly Oxfam. The new rule is; "you can't buy anything new unless you get rid of something else".

Durham city centre is about 2km away as the crow flies [though magpies are just as likely to fly it from here]. As we leave the street we live on to enter the wear valley path into the city centre this is the view. You can make out the cathedral. It makes me realise how much our eyes focus when the thing looks so big when I look at it from here and then see the photo. A lesson in perception.

Once we've crossed the railway line [on a footbridge -of course -what did you think?] and walked past the farm buildings and all the way to the valley floor we can look at the cathedral again. And a bit further along still...

I really love this walk and doing it three or four times a week [and back often] is helping me to get fit and leaner. Food for the soul; exercise for the body. This next picture I'm really rather pleased with and I can't work out why. At this point we're nearly in Durham city.

There are some spots that make it hard to believe that you're only a short walk from the city centre:

And once we get into Durham proper we can see ...

And to get up there we have to go over this bridge.

Durham has its pretty spots, like this little known street which they appear to be trying to turn into a mini Rive Gauche, just under the walls of St. Nicholas and the Market.

And here is St.Nick's; formally vicared by George Carey and where Pete Ward served as a curate. In front of it is the market square. Of course this picture was taken before our recent monsoon season broke.

There are all sorts of lovely little surprises in Durham, take this

And on the walk back I get to see the same from a different perspective and so this scene fills me with a sense of wellbeing.

Net Publishing Made Profitable

"Publishing is broken," he said. "Sales are low, there's no money, and deadlines and delays are a headache. You have three months to sell a book and then it's obsolete. Last year, I realized all the pieces were there finally for publishing e-books."

This caught my eye because I've been trying to respond to the inner call to get some stuff written. But how to publish? I've got a booklet on prayer in process and a publisher for it. But after that what? I'm seriously thinking of publishing articles online [own website and e-journals] but also offering some to papaer journals including links to the online stuff.

I've recently heard that there is a site that prints books to order -and that sounds quite intriguing: I'll have to follow that one up.

Unacceptable verses

Stephen Lowe was an archdeacon in Sheffield diocese when I was ordained in Sheffield cathedral back in '86. Nice to see what he has said about I vow to Thee my Country. I once disuaded a couple from having it at their wedding [he was an soldier, I think] on the basis that it was not sufficiently Christian for a wedding [not helped in my case by the fact that some hymn books include it]. I did once come across an alternative set of words to the same glorious tune; began something like "I/We give to you our Saviour ...". Anyone know it 'cos I'd love to find those words again. Probably from Spring Harvest in the late 80's or very early 90's.

Anyway +Stephen says that the hymn appeared to call for "unquestioning allegiance to what a country does, whether right or wrong. In particular, people's views on our involvement in Iraq may be at odds with government. In a democracy, we need to be critical of government."

Quite so.

Wake Up Neo!

Hopeful Amphibian blogs about this newish Matrix article. THe new take for me was the interpretation in terms of Gnostic Christianity. When I first saw the film I thought "Buddhist" and this article does do an anlysis in Buddhist terms.

I would, however, say that I think it is reclaimable in more orthodox Christian terms if we start from the idea of the 'god of this world' blinding humans to important spiritual realities. ANyway read it and see what you think.

Why is it important? Because the metaphors for spirituality are just to big for us to ignore; if we are to faithfully proclaim the gospel then we must track this and be able to reframe it to Gsoepl purposes. Apostle Paul is our model: taking every thought captive ....

Scam Me Twice, Shame on Me .

Urban Legends Reference Pages: Notes how there is an interesting new twist on this scam -an offer of you're money back if you've been scammed. These people are somewhat self-aware and that's what's really scarey!

Art world attacks festival's musical focus

"In more recent years, however, the official festival has concentrated exclusively on the performing arts ... the lack is patently absurd."

But not as absurd as the usual situation where "art" tends to mean visual and music and performance arts are usually an afterthought. My wife is an actor and drama teacher by trade and is fed up with the norm being the reverse of what is being complained about in this article. Somehow, it seems to me, it may be good for the other arts to know how it feels to be the Cinderella.

Guardian Unlimited | Today's issues | Q&A: Oil

There are three scenarios for oil prices outlined here. only one of them involves a fall in price and that will still be more than it was and we should remember that the underlying trend will be to increase for reasons the article discusses -reducing supply and increasing demand.

Linux growing

THis cought my eye because I am almost fully Linux now: PC boots into Linux and accesses the 'net via an ethernet card wired to our modem router ]so no worries about finding a linux driver for wifi components though it should be getting easier to do so]. Linux just emerging from geekdom into usability for normal don't-want-to-know-how-it-works-just-let-me-do-stuff PC users. And it may be that I've joined the ranks of those hwo use the world's second most pop OS in the process. It scores over the Mac 'cos it uses cheaper hardware; ie regular intel PC's.

Not managing today?

Interesting: managers looking for meaning in their work and lives that work isn't delivering. Intersting to see the Christian responses:

Encouragingly, some Christians are bucking the trend: one company has capped executive hours at 45 per week; individuals are downshifting, or restricting their own hours; others continue as they are, believing confidently that God wants them to be there, and finding strength through him. (Please post your own insights and stories below.)



However, for the majority of Christians in work, our LICC research reveals that the big issues are stress and burnout, maintaining integrity, relationships, overwork, insecurity and redundancy.



This is a big area that I seem to have been coming across again and again -even before I was a HE chaplain. Not just Christians want to get balance in theirl lives. It seems to be a major theme that emerges from life-cacing work too. My dissertation is on the similarities and differences between life-coaching and spiritual direction. a lot of similarities seem to be about this focus on work-life balance and a search for meaning.



I guess my question is how we help Christians more fully to see their work as a spiritual issue [over and above a source of funds for giving and an arena for witness] and to make sure that churches and pastors resource the working life of fellow Christians?



I think too that those involved in SpiDir have a lot to learn from life coaching too.

Economy drive

Helpful article on the alternatives to purely petrol-driven motoring; hybrids and alternative diesels. Just remember that this isn't the solution only a step or two on the way.

Pastor as spiritual practitioner or spiritual entrepreneur?

Perhaps it doesn't have to be 'and/or', but I certainly found a lot in this that resonated. That many go into pastoring to be spiritual practitioners but what they seem to be required to do is to be spiritual entrepreneurs [or administrators, even]. Perhaps the same is true for teacher in the UK over the last decade or so, and maybe also for GP's ...?

Anyway here's what Darryl at Dying Church said:
"Another model has come into being. Instead of being a spiritual practitioner, pastors are church entrepreneurs. In this model, pastors read business books, attend leadership conferences, develop and execute a vision, and grow the church. In this model, pastor = entrepreneur.

Pastors as spiritual practitioners
Prayer
Bible
Equipping
Spiritual direction
Soul

Pastors as entrepreneurs
Vision
Leadership
Church growth and health
Institution "

As he says there should be a staw man alert on this but it certainly speaks to me.

Debt is personal

Record figures for debt announced a week or so back -okay that could've been down to infflation and business start-ups or somesuch. But no: it's down to consumers. In the OT usury is disallowed; one of the likley reasons being that it was often in effect an oppresive tool to keep ordinary Israelites 'in their place'. In that soicety the onus was placed on the moneyed to be fair. In our society I suspect that there may be a little more shared responsibility -though credit card debt is surely a concern. In those days someone might end up in debt to try to pay for an emergency [the donkey dies and there's loads of stuff to get to market else the kids don't eat]. And while that may be true in our society, I can't help but feel a lot has been about retail therapy and keeping up with the Jones's and I feel more ambiguus about that.

Retail therapy; so named because it takes place to make people feel good [for about a day until the purchase palls and reality is still as it ever was]. It's a hsame that people's emptiness, lack of self-valuing etc ends up fuelling a buying binge [and I use the analogy deliberately] and the habit of this behaviour does end up bankrupting people. I've seen several cases where this has happened or been a danger.ANd what happens is a curtailment of the liberty of the indebted. Yes, they made the buys but they didn't choose too be in a society that measures worth by 'stuff' owned and tells the lie that 'stuff' will fulfill the human longings.

Cristian discipleship must take seriously the idea that identity is constructed to some extent and that we need to find ways to help people construct an identity which derives from God-in-Christ and is held in place by willed commitment which indeed forecloses some options; some choices. IF anyone would save their life they must lose the consumer-constructed life.

California gets serious on renewables

California officials are proposing that half of all new homes in the state be running on solar energy in 10 years, an effort spurred by $100 million in annual incentives paid for by electricity consumers.

Says it all really.

Worthy of hire?

Lately I've been musing: reflecting on my position as an unemployed priest. My issues are a little complex: I didn't want to be unemployed; I wanted to continue being a chaplain at a HE institution but the money ran out so I could not continue. I have moved house to Durham with my wife who is training for ministry and she will be training for two years meaning that I need to discern what is the right way forward for me for two years. Two years is a period of time that most people or parishes or appointing bodies would consider too short to want to make an appointment; they would, understandably, like to think that they have a shot at getting someone with a bigger proportion of their lifespan to offer.

I had over the last handful of years begun to wonder about what my longer-term vocation might be. I had found the parish ministry I had been involved in not as fulfilling as I might have hoped; mainly because I began to realise that my sense of who I am before God is not very well suited to the kind of parish work I had been doing. What I had really felt alive to in ministry has been training, theological reflection, creative expressions of worship and church, cutting edge projects.

I don't see a future in which I am not involved in teaching/preaching and ministering sacraments; that's what I'm called to; it's just that I'm finding it hard to see my other primary callings really getting a lot of exercise in the kinds of parish ministries that I've seen and anticipate will be around in the coming years.

So much for the personal background. Have a look at this: it's is what the CofE webiste says about remuneration:
" Strictly speaking, most clergy are not employed. Most Church of England clergy recieve what is called a 'stipend' (currently averaging £16,910 in 2001), their housing and have a non-contributory pension scheme. Some clergy, however, are actually employed as chaplains, for example, to the Armed Forces, in prisons, hospitals and in the universities. Other clergy and accredited lay ministers serve the church without receiving any direct financial support from it. Deacons, priests and accredited lay workers may exercise such a non-stipendiary ministry in their parish and / or in the context of their secular employment."

So the system is set up to recognize two forms of ministry: stipendiary and sef-supporting. This is because a stipend is not about being employed but about being freed from being self-supporting so that full-time ministry is possible. Thus a CofE clergybeing's stipend is about having enough to live on not being paid what you're worth [in secular terms; of course, theologically, no-one is paid enough, if you know what I mean]. The bipolar system this sets up may need reviewing. My friend, Adrian Riley, expressed it well when he wrote to me in an email that the idea of paying one person to set up something 'emerging' church [comment on a York Diocese initiative] was fairly old paradigm [my words not his]. It named places where my thinking had been going.

You see, it looks to me like the CofE is going the way of more and more ministry becoming like what has been happening in Lincolnshire over the last 40 years or so: parishes combining so that there is more territory and there are ever more churches being resourced in presbyterla ministry terms by one clergybeing and perhaps one or two retired or even Self Supporting Ministers. Or, the other way is to put together a portfolio of things being covered by one stipend; so near here we have a parish priest who is in charge of two churches [and fractions of his time are notionally given to each] and is a diocesan offices [same deal]. Well, it seems to me that this is very inefficient at one level: what if the ideal ecumenical officer for the diocese isn't suitable for the parish[es] that are put with the job? Or If the local parishes don't really have the best part-time college/university chaplain? Of course you can make do and many do and that's okay. But what if we could do it differently? What if we cut the stipend thing out? Let's face it: it's eroding anyway; house for duty means that notional time/remuneration deals are being set up [a stipend becomes worth around .6 of a post while the houe is .4] and the desire to include lay posts in the church's portfolio are tending towards the same -'jobbification' of the ordained/professional ministry.

So here's the thought: Let's not assume that we have to find whole-time jobs: Let's assume that we could do at least some stuff part-time whithout having to find something else for them to do to make up the full stipend. Let's have a whole series of joblets and allow some people to be portfolio priests,deacons or lay ministers.

I'm going to have a go at teasing out my thinking about this a bit more so take this as a part one, to be continued ...

ALt.worship -UK:USA

Adam Feldman has some helpful and -I think- largely true things to say about the differences between alt.worship in the USA and the UK. In 2001 when I was part of the small contingent of Brits at Lake Junaluska for Len Sweet's convention on church in pomo, we thought that a lot of what the USAmericans were presenting as 'alternative' worship was, in UK terms, not that alternative. Not that I'm getting hung up on labels here: simply that the US stuff was more mainstream stadium-rock style whereas we were 'presenting' more paricipatory and decentralized styles ...

Daleks are back!

I know Maggi will be pleased: "The Daleks, Doctor Who's infamous enemies, will be appearing in the new BBC TV series after the corporation settled its differences with the estate of their creator, Terry Nation." They're shooting the new Dr Who now and it should come out on Auntie Beeb next year. So there's one thing to look forward to next year, then. And in our new cable-less home [can you believe it; durham refuses to have cable]it's important to us that it's on terrestrial TV.

Oil up

Slowing world growth: in this case means slowing global warming as well; here's a nice little mess we've got ourselves into; addiction -can't live with it, can't live without it.

Tories promise higher speed limits

Guardian Unlimited Politics | Special Reports | Tories promise higher speed limits: "the RAC said higher speed limits would cause more deaths on the roads and increase emissions of carbon dioxide at a time when the government faces a challenge to meet Kyoto targets for cutting greenhouse gases." Good old RAC -who'd have thought that they might be on the side of the angels at least sometimes ... ?!!!

Against nature?

This story has a special poignancy for me: as a kid growing up in the west midlands with an interest in zoology, going to Dudley zoo was an all too rare [we were poor] treat. So I could picture the place in this story. As to the main point at issue: the cruelty of children. We all know it really. Children show up both the nobility and the wickedness of humanity in stark relief sometimes. We over-romanticise childhood [see Rowan Williams' perceptive analysis of related issues in Lost Icons] and then find it hard not to be over-shocked when something like this happens. There's a whole lot of stuff here to be unpicked about ideas of right and wrong, accountability, socialisation and group behaviour.
It does seem to me also that social attitudes to animals and a certian degree of hypocrisy is detectable here though: there's shock at how these lads treated a young wallaby, but that is comparitively short cruelty and somewhat spontaneous compared with factory farming which is cruel in a systematic and calculated way and socially approved. I'm not suggesting these boys have any idea of what factory farming involves but I am questioning a sense of outrage that many haveat the behaviour of these boys while happily buying the produce of systematic cruelty to animals.

Optimistic mothers have boys, study says

:"'It implies that the machinery of the body is subtly taking into account these kinds of contextual differences,'"
And that's the interesting thing: how our perceptions can have somatic effects; more mind-body interlock discovered; itself evidence that emergent views of reality are on the right lines [in this case because of the somewhat determinitive effect of a higher-level /emergent reality -the mind- on lower-level realities -the biochemistry of a person. Just reading about this 'teleology' in
The Cosmic Dance: Scientific Harmony in the Universe at the moment.

Exponential

Nice picture using electron flow. the description is worth reading as weel as the image worth viewing in large.

A fair trade coffee on the high street

I keep meaning to blog this and I've finally managed to remember while I'm in front of a screen! I went into a Costs Coffee house the other week and staning in the queue noticved the fair-trade logo on their product/price board and then noticed that it referred to all their coffee beans and tea. Wow! So if you want to fiar trade coffee while you're out and about, head for Costa coffee signs.

Now I notice that their website says that they offer a fair trade option on all their coffees, though the shops appear to say that all their coffees are ft; I shall attempt to investigate. However, to be on the safeside, ask for a fair trade americano or whatever ....

Anyway, Costa are able to boast:
"Costa sales have helped fund major community projects such as road improvements in Uganda to allow easier and quicker tea deliveries to the factory (previously farmers had to walk up to 5 hours), and the funding of a woman's association in Mexico providing courses on midwifery, the production of vitamins from local plants and child rearing."

So despite the fact that they are a bit mre expensive [and still at the pint of beer kind of level] I will be giving them more support as a customer.