Listening to the stones

Fig Tree

We're singing psalms on Sunday. Just feels right in the face of the fig tree.

Here's the gathering rite.

when the fig tree bears no fruit
there is a hesitation:
what shall we do?

can we start again
destroy the tree
and plant a new life?

or can we wait
nurture what we already have
and love it back to redemption?

it is a matter of choice.

what say you?
cut it down
or love through to life again?

Let us worship with the Psalmists this morning
the God who always chooses love
over death

Psalm 63

One of the possible readings for Sunday is Psalm 63. Here's a paraphrase of it.

Life-maker -
You hold my life
and I long for you to hold it.
You hold all of Life
and I am held within it.

My very soul cries out for you:
In the morning I linger at the sunrise
eager for the light to embrace my soul;
At dusk I crumple in the shadows
restless for your dawn
to quench my thirst for you.

May my eyes be open to your creation-sanctuary,
alive to the wonders that speak of you
for this evidence is your promised constant
and my soul dances in praise of you.

I will speak words of thanks
and live a life of thankfulness
all the days of my life.
This is my prayer,
in word,
in deed,
through all of life.

On this blessing I shall feast and be satisfied
and my every breath will be a canticle of praise.
May I waken in the morning singing it
and be lulled to sleep at night be it,
your constant-promise,
your forever-love,
your always-presence.

And I will cling to you,
and trust your love
that clings to me,
forever.

Church Magazine

We've just completed the church magazine. Not something normally to blog about but the difference this time round is it is completed by a team of editors taking up the legacy of our previous editor and it is all printed in-house on our new super-dooper photocopier which pays for itself on the saving we make in printing the magazine in-house. That's quite a lot.

It will be available from Sunday and is a work in progress so please offer your comments that will help us continually evolve and renew this collection of wisdom and life that is New Kilpatrick.

 

Chocolate Teapots (3rd March 2013)

Luke 13:1-9

What to concentrate on this week? Why bad things happen to good people or the grace that waits to redeem it all? In many ways they go together: God is in the business of grace but we'd prefer God to be in the business of sorting out bad things.

But these two stories seem to say: God isn't about sorting out randomly tragic acts. These things happen and God doesn't cause them or stop them. God is the grace-giving one, the waiting one, willing to offer another chance to restore our relationships so that they grow  fruitful once more ie justice, peace, restorative relationships.

It comes back to God being all about the relationship and not the intervention into random acts of disaster. If God did do the latter then God would be constantly stopping hurricanes, and road accidents, and famines etc. Clearly that's not what happens.

God instead seems to be in the relationship, not so much in the symptoms of life (bad things, disasters etc) but the cause of life, not the tragedy but the deeper connection we have with each other that doesn't cause or prevent tragedies but sees us through them.

That might sound a bit twee. It is certainly not meant to explain away tragedies when they strike. It just seems a bit more hopefully that God is the one who can restore, redeem, renew rather than fix things which is what happens if God intervenes to stop tragedies. But that is easy for me to say when I've no one directly involved in a tragedy.

Anyway: difficult one this week: Hymns, Music, Creative way of reading the passage?

All thought out

We did a lot of thinking today at the Thinking Day service. Lots of stars all over the place and a great constellation of 'LOVE' appeared magically and unexpectedly at the front of the church.

A million brownies and rainbows and guides too so well done to everyone who helps organise and everyone who took part. Even Dr Who was there. Okay, not in the flesh but his theme tune played live on the organ was fabulous and we went to various times and places in a mini TARDIS.

Great.

Stardust and promise

Once there was a traveller who had seen many things in his days for he was an old traveller and was settling down to retire. He had seen all he wanted to see but he was a disappointed man. Even though he had seen many lands, even though he had seen his wealth grow, he had no children and this disappointed him.

But just when he was about to slip into being a sad old man he was turned towards the night sky and God said, ‘I dare you, if you can, count the stars.’

And Abraham went silent. “I am an old man. I can hardly see the stars to count them and I am old enough as it is! How old do you think I’d be by the time I counted even a small portion of the stars?”

And God said “My childless friend, those stars have names, each a names of one of your children for you will have more children in generations to come than there are stars in the sky.”

Abraham, who had been holding his breath, breathed again, a great sign of faith. He realised he was not going to be settling down after all and from that day on, whenever night came, you could hear him counting quietly to himself.

And here we are, made of stardust and promise. Abram’s children and still counting.

Thursday Night Out

We celebrated the Oscars tonight. A member of the congregation had gone into Empire Cinema in Clydebank yesterday to pick up some posters for a completely different thing and the manager told him that there had been a minister in looking for posters as he was organising an Oscar night.

It wasn't me, so what's the chances of that... and who out there stole our idea before we did?

Anyway, choc ices and popcorn were the order of the day and the winner of the category: What film gives you indigestion was Summer Holiday but I bet everyone is away trying to find the DVD right now.

Actor you'd like to marry category was won by Dirk Bogarde. Hey ho. And most romantic was Sleepless in Seattle. Shindler's List was the film that made us weep and Dirty Dancing was what we wanted to see again and again and again. Finally the film we needed to tell everyone about was Lawrence of Arabia.

That was Thursday Night Out in February and good fun. We're out again in March on the 14th with the Musicals, singing our way through them. Don't miss out. It really is fabulous fun being together and doing something different together. Don't expect to imagine what it is like because it is always different and it is usually a good thing to find yourself in a new place, enjoying it all. You don't get a better invitation than that!

Abram's Stars

spread across
night’s dust covers
galaxies make their way
through the skies
oscillations of light
flickering in the warp of daytime heat
leaving the nighttime atmosphere
now the sun is resting
blips of sliver
in the sheen of midnight
and why do we stare
at such a sight
such an ancient sight
of flickering photons
pulsing in the sky?

because we know
this is not some everyday
atmospheric radiance
disturbing our line of sight
this is the stars
beating out
our names.

Just when you thought it was safe...

Remember way back when everyone was looking for the Higgs Boson (I'm sure they could have found it in my room given the mess of it) there was concern that be searching for it a black hole could be created someone in Switzerland and swallow up the earth? Remember how we all laughed?

Apparently it doesn't seem very funny now. Now that we've discovered the Higgs Boson and you add that into various calculations that have been waiting for the Higgs Boson to come along to get done, then it seems that the universe will be replaced by another universe one day. It will start very small and then more at light speed to replace what we've got  ow with a new universe. It's all a bit cyclical. 

We're not so smart now, are we!Or is it just the nature of everything that we seem to be going round n a feedback loop, never quite learning enough to break from from our human condition? It feels better that that condition is wired into the state of the universe. But surely history doesn't have to keep repeating itself, itself, itself...

Might love be counter intuitive to that?

Chocolate Teapots (24th February 2013)

Genesis 15:1-12 17-18

This is a passage for austere times. When things are thin on the ground, believe! Abram is going through that moment when everything seems against him and the future doesn’t look the way he might wish it to be but then the stars come out and to pass away a few hours, he begins to give them names. He’s still naming them.

It’s when we are at our thinnest and when things seem stacked against us, that it is time to believe again, and Abram does that. He trusts the future which is both a daring thing to do and a faithful thing to do, but ‘daring’ and ‘faithing’ is the same word just spelt different ways.

It is a big lesson for us today to take this time of austerity and live fully as the church, not its old bloated self, but in its leaner, thinner self that has stripped away the excess we can’t afford any more, and hold on to a church much closer to the gospel values of loving God and neighbour. The rest, as Jesus says is just commentary.

Abram takes this one step further, however, and instead of paying it lip services in some kind of gentleman’s agreement between God and him, he experiences a whole ritual that affirms and establishes the vision for all to see. This is the excessive bit, but it is a show of confidence, trust and faith in a man whose life has been thin, weary and ending.

Perhaps then, as faith communities, we ought to live confidently through our rituals, those signs and symbols that speak of the future now, that invite us to live into the future in austere times. Maybe not Abram’s blood and fire version but some ritual that speaks of a God who is as generous with the future in time of austerity as in times of extravagance. Any ideas what that might be for you: a festival? A community project?

Dare believe. It’s one of the things the church does best.