john davies |
||
|
notes from a small vicar
from a parish in Liverpool, UK
Home
About me My talks My writing My wish list Email me: john[at]johndavies.org Subscribe to 
My myspace pages 
My photos on Flickr
Join me on my PARISH WALKS
1 - On rogation beside the River Alt 2 - Bounded by green avenues 3 - Following mislaid tracks 4 - Bringing in the Bacon 5 - Tropical storms over Scarisbrick 6 - Leisure pursuits 7 - The shopping trolley trail 8 - Everyday English 9 - Dog & Gun rogation 10 - Boundary slippage
Related
Talks and articles:
Iain Sinclair in Conversation with John Davies
(at Greenbelt 09: cd/mp3) Walking with the Psychogeographers (Greenbelt 2008 talk) Walking with the Psychogeographers (Greenbelt 08 talk: cd/mp3) Heaven in Ordinary (Greenbelt 2007 talk) Heaven in Ordinary (Greenbelt 07 talk: cd/mp3) Heart of Cheltenham pilgrimage: notes Heaven in Ordinary (Greenbelt Leeds event talk) Reading the Everyday (Greenbelt 06 talk: cd/mp3) Reading the Everyday (Third Way article: pdf) Reading the Everyday (Greenbelt on Iona 2006) Stars of Norris Green (radio talks) Making of the Croxteth Landscape Healing Places retreat programme Towards an Urban Theology of Land Mapping an Urban Parish Donations towards
the cost of my MPhil/PhD theology/psychogeography research project gratefully received via Order online from
THE FIRE
THIS TIME: Deconstructing the Gulf War A permanent record
of the fate of Iraq 
Co-travellers: Pip Wilson Jonny Baker Joe Moran's Blog The Reluctant Ordained ASBO Jesus Dave Walker's Cartoon Blog Paul Cookson Maggi Dawn Dot Gosling: Wildgoose Ellen Loudon Rachel Andrew Walking Home to 50 The Manchester Zedders A Mis-Guided Blog Territories Reimagined: International Perspectives Islingtongue / Leytonstongue Remapping High Wycombe National Psychogeographic Diamond Geezer Danger: Void Behind Door Common Ground Strange Attractor: Further Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary Kristin Hersh Unofficial Fall website Bill Drummond: Penkiln Burn Iain Sinclair Julian Cope: Head Heritage Billy Bragg Rough Trade Second Layer Records Freak Emporium Probe Records Piccadilly News From Nowhere Abebooks The Wire Smoke: A London Peculiar London Review of Books Demos Greenhouse Archives July 2002 August 2002 September 2002 October 2002 November 2002 December 2002 January 2003 February 2003 March 2003 April 2003 May 2003 June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 December 2003 January 2004 February 2004 March 2004 April 2004 May 2004 June 2004 July 2004 August 2004 September 2004 October 2004 November 2004 December 2004 January 2005 February 2005 March 2005 April 2005 May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 June 2007 July 2007 August 2007 November 2007 December 2007 January 2008 February 2008 March 2008 April 2008 May 2008 June 2008 July 2008 August 2008 September 2008 October 2008 November 2008 December 2008 January 2009 February 2009 March 2009 April 2009 May 2009 June 2009 July 2009 August 2009 September 2009 October 2009 November 2009 December 2009 January 2010 March 2010 April 2010 |
Monday, October 28, 2002
Good blog
I'll be posting irregularly over the next few weeks. Here's a good alternative if you draw a blank here: the weblog site of The Homeless Guy. His blogs carry authenticity and his character means there's no provoking any ridiculous guilt trips in the reader, he's just telling it like it is.
Tuning up for a song So I've gone cross-eyed looking at the Michelin map of Northern Ireland, looking for clues in lines and symbols about what the month ahead may hold. The reality is, I've made plans for getting there, I've written a brief paper outlining my aims: "to explore themes of peace and reconcilation; to hear the stories of people involved in such work in their own situations, and to reflect these back on to my home situation", and I've packed my case. It goes against the rest of my life to be so unplanned. But I'm actually content to see what unfolds as my time at Corrymeela goes on. Easyjet - onwards and upwards!
that we will our end & forgive the poet his ambition to stand alone on a high peak surveying the waste. Take the map from our hands which we take for the world & let us be where earth and waters meet & make, for you, a song. Jeremy Hooker - A Hymn to Demeter from Earth Songs (Resurgence) Sunday, October 27, 2002
A remarkable bid for reconciliation
Preparing for Ireland today I have been deeply moved by watching a video Roy Gregory lent to me, of a BBC Everyman programme which spent a year with Jo Tufnell and Patrick Magee.
Jo Tufnell is the daughter of Sir Anthony Berry, one of the four people killed in the Grand Hotel in Brighton, England in October 1984 during the Conservative Party Conference.Ê The bomb was planted to kill and injure as many members of government as possible. She felt that she began a journey that day, of trying to understand why this had happened. One of the bombers, Patrick Magee, was sentenced to 35 years imprisonment.Ê He was released in 1999 under the Good Friday Agreement.Ê Jo Tufnell began communicating with him, and has met with him six times. Their story is an education in what 'finding peace' really means in our violent world. At the first meeting Magee apologised to her, but insisted that her father was a legitimate target.Ê She says that she understands what drove him to do it, but refuses to talk of forgiveness. "There's a lot of pressure on victims to forgive," she said.Ê "I think that's wrong.Ê Forgiveness sounds like something you do, and then it's done.Ê But for me it's a journey.Ê I can only really forgive myself." At their first meeting in Dublin in November 2000 Magee said, "I want to hear everything you have to say.Ê I want to hear your anger. And I want to share what I've been through and why I did it." He expressed his keen sense of injustice, that in 1984 violence was the only way he could see to make his political enemies listen - to "take the war to England". Jo Tufnell reflected, "My sense is that he felt through taking up violence he's lost some of his humanity. Now, with the peace process happening, it was time to redress the past." Jo believes her father would approve of her actions. "People don't have to stay with the hurt.Ê One way is to see humanity in people who would be your enemy." Jo and Patrick's painstaking journey involved hard listening and straight talking, of each seeking to understand the 'other'. Jo was faced with the sense that in trying to build bridges she may be betraying her family and friends, and others who suffered in that bombing. Patrick saw the human consequences of his political struggle. A subtext to their conversations was Jo passing on what her 7-year-old daughter said about their meetings. " Why are you meeting that bad man?" was her initial reaction, angered that Magee had killed her Grandpa. "She's still very angry," Jo said at their second meeting. "She asked me, 'Is he sorry?' I told her, 'Yes, he's very sorry that Grandpa had to die.' She said, 'Oh, does that mean that Grandpa can come back now?' "There's some truth in that for me, that 7-year-old wisdom. If we can talk now, and if I can understand what drove you to violence, and if I can hear it... why did my Dad have to die..." Their remarkable odyssey continued to a point where each confessed to having found personal growth and some form of healing through their journey. Magee said he was a pacifist at 15, only taking up the armed struggle when he saw that the political process gave no possibility for his voice to be heard. Looking back he told Jo that "Taking up violence meant that there was a cost ... it was at the expense of my humanity. Meeting you gave a chance for me to regain some of that humanity." And for her part, Jo said: "I don't see Pat as a bad man. I see Brighton as a result of many factors which are very complex. I suppose there's an idea that someone who's killed my father must be a certain way ... the truth is very different. We make people into perpetrators. And we all can be when the desperation gets too much." November's come early November's come early to the website. Having preaced my last sermon before leaving on placement for much of November, I've posted it up on the sermons page, and also the November Pic of the Month. I'll still be blogging for a couple of days and then whenever I can access a computer on my travels. (Hope this vicious wind subsides so the cables stay up in Antrim.) Saturday, October 26, 2002
Road to - where?
Iain Sinclair's Barbican presentation of M25 London Orbital was billed as "a parallelist performance in three-lane theatre". It was certainly very linear, one artist, speaker, performer after another taking their turn to do their particular thing relating to Sinclair's adventures or reflections at a particular part of the motorway. Or something. So it was a mixed bag, all of it at least 'challenging', much of it of the best quality - especially the leftfield music, Scanner's 'found sound' from the airwaves, WIRE's electro-punk assaults, and a marvellous bit of thrash-metal from Jimmy Cauty and cohorts dressed in fluorescent 'Motorway Maintenance' jackets on a smoking, flashlit stage.
Sinclair's prose was rich as ever and a mixture of his usual demons (Reggie Kray got a look-in) and new observations (a brilliant line about Margaret Thatcher in a tryst with Count Dracula as she cut the ribbon on the London Orbital). His mates were wild and wacky, Ken Campbell especially, describing the arcane art of using the alimentary canal to draw in the spirit of a place, and they were at times wonderful, especially canal-boat-dweller Bill Griffiths, fine pianist and performer of some impressive English pastoral verse. It was an impressionistic evening. The one thing lacking was coherence. Maybe the subject doesn't lend itself to coherence - life on and around a mighty ring road. Maybe the richness and diversity of the discoveries these mavericks made, is good enough for now. Sadly through ill-health J.G. Ballard couldn't take part in last night's show. If he had, then maybe it would have been more intellectually 'together'. Sinclair leans heavily on Ballard when he begins to explore the significance of the road and the life it engenders. He niggles with Ballard's sixties statement, "The motorway landscape is where the future of England reveals itself - and that future is boring", suggests that Ballard has something when he insists that "Through repetition, boredom becomes transcendence". Reckons that "The M25 works - if you stay on it long enough. if you allow it to become the gateway to an alternative reality." The whole project is dark but also revealing, doomy but also prophetic. It's a rich and mixed-up insight into the 'alternative reality' in which many of us live and move today - the road, and the world of "off-highway shopping, gated communities, CCTV, mediparcs, Heathrow, low-concept executive housing, marinas..." To avoid Railtrack chaos I went East Coast to London, so drove back from Leeds to Liverpool last night. Pondering the contrast between the dream-world inside my Rover 214, and the fast, brutal metallic reality of the road while overtaking lorries through rain and spray. Working on a new idea. 'M62 Liverpool - Hull'. Actually, it is the most beautiful motorway in the country, walking alongside it would be a great journey. Passing through some of the greatest towns of England, and landscape rich with resonance, peaking at Saddleworth Moor, where Morrisey meets Myra and .... so on. Bill Drummond might do it, he's a fan. In How to be an artist he writes of how the M62 inspires him, especially "driving it east to west, at the close of day into the setting sun". But could such a project be as insightful as Sinclair's? He's a hard act to follow. (London Orbital is on Channel 4 on October 29, 11.40pm - 1.10am) Friday, October 25, 2002
On the Sinclair trail
I'm blogging from the easyInternetCafe on Tottenham Court Road. Day off - on the Iain Sinclair trail. Tonight at The Barbican Sinclair and friends including Bill Drummond, Scanner, Jimmy Cauty and other urban philosopher-geographers are presenting his M25 London Orbital, a show based around his travels around said circular. It's a one-off; seemed too good to miss. Chance also to meet up with Jonathan for a curates catch-up.
So.. to get in the right frame of mind (I never arrive in London in a particularly together mood) I've decided, in best Sinclair fashion, to walk my way round London today. And already, the short mile between Euston and here, I've seen more, thought more (probably inhaled a lot more) than ever on the dead-zone of the Underground. London equals rush and too many inviting shopping opportunities to linger. More on this, no doubt, over the weekend. Thursday, October 24, 2002
A life on the ocean waves
 The Round the World Yacht Race starts from Liverpool on Sunday. I took an hour today to have a look at the preparations at the Albert Dock, and arrived to find the crew of the Liverpool boat stocking up on their provisions for the year. Seemed to be an abundance of baby wipes and toilet rolls, a few boxes of corn flakes, a fair number of tins of mince, not really much variety by the look of it. Comfort in the form of shampoos, little else of note. An austere existence in store for these folk, it seems. Perhaps they'll restock in Cuba on 5th December at the end of their first leg.
Fred tells me if you have a few grand to spare you can book a trip with them. Attractive idea: but on which leg - Hawaii to Hong Kong (6,000 miles) sounds attractive; or Mauritius / Cape Town / Salvador (5,800) perhaps. Now I remember how ill I get on the Liverpool - Isle of Man boat (80 miles) and think I'll stay on land. Or briefly, next week, in the air. Wednesday, October 23, 2002
Mapping the month ahead
The reading matter is piling up now for my Corrymeela placement which is less than a week away:
Eamonn McCann - Dear God - the price of religion in Ireland John Paul Lederach - Building Peace - Sustainable Reconcilition in Divided Societies Simon Fisher et al (eds) - Working with Conflict - Skills and Strategies for Action City vol 6, no 2, July 2002, which includes various articles on the city in Irish culture Soundings issue 18, Summer / Autumn 2001, 'A Very British Affair' - various perspectives on British identities The Rough Guide to Ireland Michelin Tourist Map 923 - Ireland and OS of Northern Ireland - Discoverer Map 5 - Ballycastle Tuesday, October 22, 2002
Keep it brief
Sifting through a load of old prayers I've written, for potential publication, I'm struck by how 'clever' and wordy my earlier ones were, especially the ones I wrote and performed at theological college, ever so tense and precious. But even last week's are wordy, wordy, wordy.
Today I think the best ones are the briefest. Usually the ones done for all-age worship where everything is precied not to dumb-down but to pack-in meaning accessibly. Thus - pick of the bunch is the confession written recently with a computer theme:
when we receive them God makes our lives better when we delete them we make our lives worse. When your message says: "Love others" and we don't: Dear God, we're sorry When your message says: "Love yourselves" and we can't: Dear God, we're sorry When your message says: "Love me" and we won't: Dear God, we're sorry Help us to love you Help us to know you love us Help us to share your love with others. Amen Words of Forgiveness May God who is full of love, forgive you and free you, heal you and strengthen you help you to get the message and live the new life of Jesus in the strength of the Spirit. Amen. Monday, October 21, 2002
"Look at that scoreboard. Look at the scoreboard. He's sixteen years of age. This doesn't happen..."
From the last blog (profound) to an ecstatic email from Jim Weedon:
If he doesn't sign, I will burn my share certificate. Rooney for England, Everton for Europe... COYB. Do the poets' words carry any force for change?
Consuming desires are endless; I vow to stop them. Bio-relations are intricate; I vow to honour them. Nature's way is beautiful; I vow to become it. I struggle sometimes with Resurgence, "An international forum for ecological and spiritual thinking", because to someone concerned with such things but also conscious of realpolitic, it seems a bit too soft sometimes. It's beautiful to read and deeply inspirational, but can such thinking connect with realpolitic in any sort of effective way - that's the challenge. Or - do the poets' words (blog top) carry any force for change? Well, yes, they do, because they carry three vows - to save, stop, honour - statements of intent which demand positive action, along with the profound vow - to become nature's way - which anticipates activism from a heart deeply immersed in the very stuff being saved, honoured. From there, it's only a short step to, for instance, Democratic US Congressman Dennis Kucinich's major speech questioning the "war on terrorism" and his new Bill HR2459 which aims to create a Department of Peace in the US. From there the possibility emerges of, for instance, an Assembly of the Poor in Sian, a nonviolent people's movement which protests against the government's development policies, championing the ways of the old wisdom which sustained traditional communities for centuries, and still could. From there, because 'there' is at the very heart, deep quality emerges. It's mystical, yes, but that carries a power which can be translated into effective action. It's not that soft after all. Or, at the risk of sounding like a tissue-paper ad, it's soft and strong. So I am strengthened reading Resurgence. It provides encouragement to be part of the forum they promote, to find depth to sustain the struggle:
This is not the age of information. This is not the age of information. Forget the news, and the radio, and the blurred screen. This is the time of loaves and fishes. People are hungry, and one good word is bread for a thousand. - David Whyte, from the Resurgence anthology Earth Songs Sunday, October 20, 2002
Incredible all right
Today a straightforward Sunday - service, home, hone sermon, service, preach sermon, home. Still living on yesterday's glories, sorry that yesterday's blog had such a contrary conclusion, wishing it'd just remained a reverie on Rooney, re-watching the game twice (once before breakfast, once after lunch), and also glowing about another highlight of the past 24 hours - seeing The Incredible String Band at The Neptune last night.
 Paul and I could not believe it - once again we seemed the youngest people in a 'rock' concert audience. And the Band, back on tour after 27 years, seemed truly and almost magically ancient. Looking like the sorts of viziers, merlins, gnomes, jesters their songs conjure, when wizened old Robin Williamson, Mike Heron and Clive Palmer shambled onto stage it was a worry they'd make it through. All but Williamson sat down and stayed static; all spent the evening looking for their reading glasses and shuffling papers on their music stands. Poor old Clive kept taking what we assumed were essential 'comfort breaks' between songs, shuffling in that sideways way of a man badly needing a hip-op. Bringing a whole new interpretation to the expression rock and roll.
ÒThe Incredible String Band were an inspiration and a sign.Ó said Robert Plant in 1979. They were out of the picture by then and I suspect that even though in their heyday they were championed by the Beatles, Stones, Syd Barrett, Marc Bolan and Donovan nevertheless they were always a bit peripheral. Their music's an amalgum of folk whimsy, committed British traditional, epic poetic, singalong blues and (probably the defining mood) chemically-induced daftness. But - what quality. What beauty. All of which, combined, means - what a wonder to see them last night.
What a wonder to see them - still fantastically creative; What a wonder to see them - still, by their evident generosity towards each other and understanding onstage, loving performing these gems, loving introducing new ones; What a wonder to see them - not bothered that they looked and perhaps felt so aged, instead trusting the music to carry them and the audience into worlds of light, energy, joy.
Its rainbow's end won't hold you. Its crimson shapes and purple sounds, Softly will enfold you. It gurgles through the timeless glade, In quartertones of lightning. No policy is up for sale, In case the truth be frightening. You know what you could be. Tell me my friend, Why you worry all the time What you should be. Saturday, October 19, 2002
Lifted
Lifted - by David Bowie's majestic performance of Starman on last night's Later;
Lifted - by David Sheppard's descriptions of his stance against apartheid despite the pain of disagreement with his MCC colleagues in the sixties;  And lifted - especially and massively - by Everton's unprecedented win against Arsenal this afternoon.
The promise of Wayne Rooney already fulfilled days before his 17th birthday, with a fantastic strike that killed off the champs, their first defeat in ten months. Lifted by that despite it putting Liverpool at the top of the table. I noticed in the church mailing today there's a vacancy at the church across the road from the Anfield ground; the blurb says that "the proposed development plans for Liverpool Football Club add another exciting possibility and dimension for ministry". Pure speculation, of course, but, could, I wondered, an Evertonian cleric take on such a position? Possibility and dimension certainly, but shame also, to add to the conundrum. Surely you couldn't put heart and soul into such a place. And would God be so cruel as to call you there anyway? Well, on nights like this, generosity comes easily, town this evening will be buzzing despite the rain, and Walton Breck doesn't seem so Godless after all despite being in the shadow of that red-seat stadium the other side of Stanley Park. Anne and Anxiety On a midnight drive home from Robert & Joan's 25th Anniversary meal I put on one of the new Greenbelt 2002 seminar tapes which arrived this week - Anxious about many things? in which Ann Morisy and Phil Stone chatted through how we deal with anxiety, particularly in the church context. Ann said she reckoned we spend much of our lives organising ourselves against anxiety. I'm not convinced by that because I think anxiety can creep up on you unnoticed and only get dealt with after the explosion or breakdown, whatever. Or once you realise you're listening to psychobabble tapes in the car after an evening's pleasant wining and dining. But I agree with much of what she says - we spend much of our lives with anxiety. Clergy certainly do, but thankfully in our Toxteth and Wavertree get-togethers it's sometimes acknowledged; which cuts down on competitive talk ("my church is bigger than your church" kinda stuff) and allows for a bit of light relief along the way. Ann (being a Bootle lass, she would) also said that laughter is the proven antidote to anxiety, which justifies my intention to take time over the next 24 hours to catch up on this week's tv comedies. I can see how it may work - Coupling: deconstructs the intensity in relationships; The Office: enables a sideways look at working life, rather like the equally excellent Dilbert and all those other nine-to-five strips; and Peter Kay and The League of Gentlemen: they offer brilliant snapshots of the glorious silliness and incongruities in everyday people. Self included. So it's rewind ... relief. Thursday, October 17, 2002
On Waldo
[Blogging on from yesterday's theme...] What appeals to me about Wales and Welshness is the rich culture deeply embued with a sense of the peripheral, which gives it licence to be daring, different, critical, anarchistic.
I lead the occasional service at our local Welsh Congregation although I don't have the language (they put up with my preaching in English, and in the hymns and Lord's Prayer I follow them half-a-word behind). And I find refreshment being among such nonconformists for awhile. It gives me licence to dig into the tradition - or at least, those parts of the tradition which have been Anglicised. And what a rich tradition it is. Reading the latest Planet [The Welsh Internationalist] today I gain energy from an account of the Quakers in Wales - still deeply involved in protesting for peace and justice, risking prison for putting their beliefs into practice at Greenham Common, Faslane, Menwith, and so on. And I'm drawn again into the life and work of the great twentieth-century Pembrokeshire poet Waldo Williams, who, the article tells me, withheld taxes as a protest against military spending, and as a consequence he lost his teaching job and had all his furniture seized:
He does not stand devising consummate design From our affliction. Look, he runs to us, and Secretly, with a secret may not be unlocked, Gives the help of his hand.
Wednesday, October 16, 2002
The Welsh thing
This Liverpool Welsh identity thing I have rises to the surface on evenings like this one, where 'England settle for for a desperately disappointing draw' according to the headline writers but Wales - brilliant underdog Wales - 'grab a brilliant victory against Italy at the Millennium Stadium'. Hallelujah! - as the chapels of the Valleys must be singing; Hiraeth - oh, how I feel it tonight, that longing for home, that urge to be back in the land of my fathers to share that rare triumph with my people.
The reality is, I'm a Davies and three or four generations back you'll find some Wrexham connections in one branch of our family. It does mean something to me, this Liverpool Welsh thing. It's not phoney but I have to admit it's a bit romanticised, it comes and goes and it probably means more to me when I'm living across in Liverpool than it did in those four years I've actually spent living in Wales... still, I won't linger over such sober reflections at this time of national rejoicing. Tuesday, October 15, 2002
The mark of Cains
Quick blog today as my evening begins very soon and consists of the onerous task of helping lead a meeting of our Men's Group. Tonight we begin at 6.00 because the occasion is a guided tour around Cains Brewery ending with beer and sandwiches, all-in for £3.75. It'll be a struggle but I'll get through it. Monday, October 14, 2002
Territories at the edge
David Sheppard writes about the 'inner city'. I'm with him, and I'm sure he'd agree with this niggle, but that phrase seems just a bit inadequate today, to describe the realities of the social and political urban landscape. A bit hackneyed (if you'll excuse the pun, Hackney being an example - it's hardly 'inner', it's out east, but its character fits Sheppard's descriptions of the areas of our conurbations which are lacking in resources, struggling, suffering, (old-fashioned word:) poor).
In the years since he wrote Built as a City we've become far more aware of the poverty of outer estates, of pockets of rural deprivation, in addition to the difficulties of the inner cities. And trends in development seem to be turning back in favour of inner cities; my old Toxteth parish takes in recent riverside developments which transform it into a yacht-club paradise the far side of the dock road (with attendent problems and all sorts of issues - for another blog, not this one). The excellent www.spikemagazine.com today features an interview with Iain Sinclair (see previous blogs) on his new book London Orbital, which describes Sinclair's year 2000 walk around the M25. As the interviewer puts it:
"I was dazzled by the Holloway Sanitarium [now Virginia Park] - the ultimate heritage - asylum conversion," he tells me. "The thing that disturbed me [about other asylum conversions] was the absence of memory - all traces of what had been there before had been cannily erased, including the name." Sunday, October 13, 2002
Interfering Bishops
Impressed with bishops today. One - David Hope for saying he's still a parish priest at heart and so is aiming to leave Bishopsthorpe palace to return to that role in a couple of years. What a great example.
Two - David Sheppard just for being him - I bought his autobiography from our church bookstall today - a man with a rare passion for living up to Christ's bias to the poor, the one thing which inspired me to take Christianity seriously as a teenager and still fires me up today (little else in the safe, safe, church does). He put me forward for ordination. I was honoured. And three - the bishops who presented a sizeable and detailed dossier to parliament to underline why a military assault on Iraq would be so wrong. Janet Davies of the Sabeel ecumenical centre for Palestinian Liberation Theology told me she'd just found out about this, and it was news to me too. People complain about the church interefering in politics. Sounds to me they've produced something every bit as substantial as Blair's 'dossier' (whatever happened to that?) and likely to be more persuasive to anyone with a serious eye on world affairs. Keep on interfering - keep on role-modelling - men (and eventually women) like these three!! Saturday, October 12, 2002
Zipped-up winners
Good to see England dig out a win in difficult circumstances, the mud, the crowd, the crowd trouble, the first half Slovakian onslaught, the background of last night's shootings. Hasn't that part of Europe had enough rain of late? The England bench - Eriksson, MacLaren, Lee, Clemence - looked like a row of old-timers at a bus stop, dressed in their big grey padded macs with the greasy-stained look, zipped-up to their noses, standing dripping in the downpour.
The goalmouths looked like the ones we used to play in at school: which I would try avoiding, not liking the cold and wet, but never could for long, being a right-back. Memory tells me I played football every day of my comprehensive school life, but I still hated it in the winter. Winter seemed to arrive here this morning, too. Chilly and very wet. The blues put off, though, by a successful end to our children's week with a loud thing called a 'praise party' run by a group of very enthusiastic young people from a neighbouring church, which, even though it's not my thing, was a good thing which left us feeling satisfied that what we'd been doing had worked well, lots of positives on which to build. I looked at the leader of Damascus Road, a guy called Matthew, bouncing and dancing and getting-the-crowd-going for a full two hours and recalled when we used to do similar things about a decade ago with our teenage 'Rolling Magazine' roadshows. My energy's long gone for that, I told Matthew, laughingly, later. But a different sort of energy emerges these days. A quiet one. One which tries to enable others to find their energy source and fulfil it. Something I'm working on. Never underestimate the determination of a quiet man: Duncan-Smith, Wilkinson, Eriksson, now Davies: there's a group to grace any bus-stop this week.... Friday, October 11, 2002
Super Lamb Banana still does it for me
 Another wander through the riches of Liverpool's Biennial today. At the Tate I suffered contemporary art overload - too many challenging video installations too early in the morning - and had to leave when confronted with Jason Rhoades' The Liver Pool, "an inflatable pool in the shape of a liver, with audio and pumping equipment, green peas, white virgin Styrofoam beads, salmon roe and white glue".
Still, I managed to find interest in two approaches to filming the natural environment - Clare Langan's journeys through landscapes bubbling with frightening sulphurous life, colours more-real-than-real, "explorations", she says, "of mankind's brief and fragile existence, in the face of the apparrently limitless forces of nature", and Mark Lewis's beautiful films of Algonquin Park, Ontario, Canada [above], where humanity features as part of the quiet activity in the vast space of nature, a boat slowly emerging from out of an island mist, a group of ice-hockey players coming gradually into view in a corner of a vast snowscape. Beautiful.  But the best art in Liverpool today, for me, was in the arena of the general public. Two things: Tatsurou Bashi's Villa Victoria [below] and the now-well-established Super Lamb Banana [left]. The Villa Victoria is the city centre's massive Queen Victoria Monument transformed into a real-life hotel room, on view to the public by day, on hire (at £100) by night, and sold out now till the end of its run late November. A fantastic idea, amusing (would she have been amused?) and one which has caught the public's imagination: imagine waking up with an eighteen-foot statue of Queen Vic at the foot of your bed. It's probably the most-visited Biennial piece, and one we'll all remember gladly.
 Taro Chiezo's Super Lamb Banana has enjoyed a recent repaint. She's pink, for one month only, this wonderfully provocative hybrid seen by tens of thousands on one of the city's main arterial routes each week. Pink to promote National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. I muse, as I look fondly at her, whether Super Lamb Banana is becoming the latest icon for our city. She certainly eclipses the nearby Yellow Submarine for public interest, which speaks of an era well-past now (though still a major lever for our lively tourist industry), she's something relevant in an era of anxiety over cloning, GM crops, food safety, etc, and she's a symbol of new things happening in a city gradually reinventing itself, with some creativity and thankfully quite a bit of wit as well.
Thursday, October 10, 2002
Flashes of now
Moments of sudden illumination. Like, at yesterday's school assembly, in mid-flow realising that I was standing talking to 300-or-more teenagers and they were, mostly, listening closely to me. As if my words meant something. It made me take my own words more seriously as I spilled them out of my mouth, projecting to the distant corners of the chapel.
Attentive moments are rare. I spend so much mental energy either planning ahead ("who's this baptism couple I'm about to visit?") or retreading old ground ("I hope that couple didn't notice I'd forgotten their names...") Thank God for these occasional flashes of now. For light presence. The shock of truth. Today, walking alongside the park I noticed as if for the first time, that the autumn trees had a light of their own; without the aid of sun, they were shining. Stopped me in my tracks. Made me feel alive. Wednesday, October 09, 2002
Big music in a small room
I'm struggling in defiance of the urge to keep on planning, preparing, honing when I know that I ought to have an hour away from it before the evening pusch begins.
 So, as a distraction I have washing around the room the sound of Godspeed you Black Emperor, one of those out-rock collectives who remain defiantly anonymous behind artsy packaging and personnel interchangeable with others of the same ilk such as Kranky label-mates Windy and Carl and Bowery Electric, etc.
It was the pictured graphic and the cd title that goes with it which finally got me listening to them, lift yr skinny fists like antennas to heaven!. David Keenan wrote of this Montreal group in The Wire recently,
From the mouths of infants... I'm deeply involved in running a children's after-school activity week - highlight so far came yesterday:
SMALL BOY - "Don't have sex when you're married" Tuesday, October 08, 2002
A Prayer for Enemies
Found this on Doxos v4 by Huw Raphael, who appears to be an excellent blogger in the Orthodox tradition...
A Prayer for Enemies by Bishop Nicholai Velimirovich (a Serbian Orthodox bishop who opposed the Nazis and was eventually sent to the Dachau concentration camp)
Enemies have made me a stranger in worldly realms and an extraneous inhabitant of the world. Just as a hunted animal finds safer shelter than an unhunted animal does, so have I, persecuted by enemies, found the safest sanctuary, having ensconced myself beneath Your tabernacle, where neither friends nor enemies can slay my soul. Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them. They, rather than I, have confessed my sins before the world. They have punished me, whenever I have hesitated to punish myself They have tormented me, whenever I have tried to flee torments. They have scolded me, whenever I have flattered myself They have spat upon me, whenever I have filled myself with arrogance. Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them. Whenever I have made myself wise, they have called me foolish. Whenever I have made myself mighty, they have mocked me as though I were a dwarf. Whenever I have wanted to lead people, they have shoved me into the background. Whenever I have rushed to enrich myself, they have prevented me with an iron hand. Whenever I thought that I would sleep peacefully, they have wakened me from sleep. Whenever I have tried to build a home for a long and tranquil life, they have demolished it and driven me out. Truly, enemies have cut me loose from the world and have stretched out my hands to the hem of Your garment. Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them. Bless them and multiply them; multiply them and make them even more bitterly against me: so that my fleeing to You may have no return; so that all hope in men may be scattered like cobwebs; so that absolute serenity may begin to reign in my soul; so that my heart may become the grave of my two evil twins: arrogance and anger; so that I might amass all my treasure in heaven; ah, so that I may for once be freed from self-deception, which has entangled me in the dreadful web of illusory life. Enemies have taught me to know what hardly anyone knows, that a person has no enemies in the world except himself. One hates his enemies only when he fails to realize that they are not enemies, but cruel friends. It is truly difficult for me to say who has done me more good and who has done me more evil in the world: friends or enemies. Therefore bless, O Lord, both my friends and my enemies. A slave curses enemies, for he does not understand. But a son blesses them, for he understands. For a son knows that his enemies cannot touch his life. Therefore he freely steps among them and prays to God for them. Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them. The first article I read was about a call to join in prayers for peace and reconciliation by St PeterÕs Church in Drogheda on Saturday October 12, a day of celebration for Oliver Plunkett, Òa tireless champion for peace and reconciliation and an ideal patron to adopt for peace in Ireland,Ó according to church spokesman Tommy Burns. This Plunkett sounds like someone I'd like to meet in my investigations into reconciliation in the NI context. Who is he? It turns out he is no more - but was a pastor at St PeterÕs, who was hanged, drawn and quartered in London following a trial for treason in 1681. Which reminds me of the failings in my first assumption: the 'now' in the question, "what's happening 'now' in Northern Ireland" has a very long lead-lag time...... Monday, October 07, 2002
The spirituality of the web
Sometimes after blogging I go straight onto weblogs.com to see my name in lights but also to play a little investigative game of checking out some other weblogs listed there. Usually one or two names catch the eye and reward a look. One such is theoblogical.org which is devoted to exploring theological issues as associated with internet / new techology. Some good links from there, not least to an article in spirituality.com where writer David Weinberger discusses The spirituality of the web and makes the claim that the very architecture of the web "is" spiritual, even though he thinks that most of the creators of the Net are rational, non-theistic, secular humanists (like himself):
Initiation Developing in your Christian faith in contemporary Britain seems to require you take a course. There are courses from the cocktail set called 'Alpha', courses from the more thoroughly thoughtful called 'Emmaus'. And others. The question begging to be answered is around whether people may be initiated into Christian life by other means. Some must be: working alongside other Christians on social action projects, perhaps. Being mentored by the poorest on those year-out placements which can turn young people's worlds inside out, beautifully. Our church runs on very suburban lines so the academic model still rules. Nevertheless today I was happy to sit with a group of colleagues and dream up a new series of get-togethers for people who've only been around the church for a relatively short time. It's a course, really. But one which will be shaped by interaction with those who choose to take it up. No great prior agenda except the concern to integrate people into the life of the church and primarily into the life of God. Whatever that means for them. We've discovered some good material from perhaps an unlikely source - the Millennium Dome. The videos that were used in the Faith Zone of that project have been compiled by Culham College and the National Society. They're short and lively presentations on the subjects of Church in the landscape, Jesus in the UK, Worship, Healing, Education, Justice, Freedom, Mission and a final section called Beginnings, a series of quotations from children about their world, God, their feelings about their own experience. We felt they'd be ideal discussion-starters for our nascent disciples. Look forward to trying them out. Saturday, October 05, 2002
The city and the sea
Funny girl, Kate Rusby. She stands there singing the sweetest of songs about a girl standing seven years at a quayside waving her lover off to sea and waiting for his return, and then goes into a banter about finding that, with age she's developing upper arm muscles. Distressing for her. She's a Barnsley lass who says that where she comes from they call this physical phenomenon 'Bingo Wings'. (Caused by years of holding bingo cards in the air claiming 'house'). And after all this hilarity she launches straight into another sorrowful song about lost love and longing.
Paul and I were in St George's Hall, Bradford, to see her last night. An enjoyable flying visit across the Pennines. In her needlessly apologetic way Kate introduced one song about a sailor by saying, "Not much connection between Bradford and the sea..." but there I beg to differ because in my mongrel blood I am quarter-Yorkshire, my maternal grandparents being drawn away from the Bradford area to the then-bright lights of booming Liverpool at the turn of the last century. As so many were, either by the prospect of emigrating to start again in America or by Liverpool's commercial promises. Grandad Barker and his brother opened a shoe shop in Waterloo. As we drove through Shipley in the dark Paul asked me, "Do you feel at home now?" Well, maybe I could. Bradford's one of Liverpool's rivals for the International City of Culture 2008 bid. I don't know it well enough to comment on how serious a rival each is to the other. Their St George's Hall is a tidy Victorian theatre, great for a cosy gig like Kate's, but it hardly compares to the breathtaking Greco-Roman conceit which is our St George's Hall, considered one of the greatest neo-classical buildings in the world. If the judging was on architecture alone then surely we'd win hands down. But, 'city of culture' suggests a longer look at what's happening there now, among the people. And one thing Bradford has which Liverpool ought to but doesn't, is a vibrant multicultural life. Last night Bradford city centre had the beauty of celebration about it, shining and twinkling with all manner of colourful lights, draped around the major squares and thoroughfares in anticipation of Divali (Nov 4). Friday, October 04, 2002
Blessed Curses
Lighten up. It's Friday. Enough anti-war stuff, especially now it's now emerged that two-thirds of Americans are saying it's patriotic to question the war (according to Andrew Stephen). Instead, the much-loved Friday tradition of turning to the NS competition for relief and smiles. This week's especially good. Compers were asked to send in curses. There's something for everybody.
Money cheats: May you contract the sickness for which you are claiming sickness benefit Bloggers: My th vwls n yr kybrd dsspr Everyone nervous about their status: May you receive the full confidence of your board of directors And finally, any other world leader: May George Bush decide to change your regime Thursday, October 03, 2002
Under the fig tree
I am frightened we are hurtling towards a war that will have unseen and unforeseeable consequences. For we will not only fight a wicked regime but enter a war that could devastate and destroy our friends. My mind goes back to a visit to Iraq in 1999. I was invited with others, including the Bishop of Coventry, to a lunch with a Christian family. At his table our host welcomed us, our Iraqi minders, secret police, and drivers. He took a large unleavened bread and broke it, sharing it with us and saying in Arabic: "Under God, we are all one, as we share this bread."
Before the meal ended he beckoned me for a quiet word in his garden, telling me in a few hastily grabbed moments what life was like. It was not good: His action that lunchtime put him and his family in danger. "I am making this garden for peace," he said. "It is on the site of a bomb crater. Come and sit down with me under this fig tree." In that moment I reflected on the vision of the prophet Micah. "Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, or ever again be trained to make war. But each one will sit down under his own vine and fig tree with no one to trouble him." Today I wonder what will happen to such people, to one who practices "loving his enemy" if war comes. - Peter Price, Bishop of Kingston, Southwark, in has speech at the anti-war rally in London on Saturday, Sept. 28: quoted in full here, and also in the current SojoMail. Wednesday, October 02, 2002
Unprecedented
Linda's just begun her Youth Ministry course at Ridley Hall; only two years after I left. Significant - the entire Davies generation gets an unprecedented, unexpected Cambridge education! It's less unexpected that it's a church education, though.
I look forward to hearing how her Centre for Youth Ministry (CYM) course balances theology, churchy stuff and wider youth work principles. I've seen it on CYM's library shelves and I'd relish the chance to analyse Paulo Friere's Pedagogy of the Oppressed in our present missionary context, and to take steps, like I haven't for a decade, towards 'doing church' in the light of such liberation principles. I also look forward to hearing whether the food's improved and how CYM liberationists (should they exist after hours of dense and difficult Friere) respond to the oppressive college culture which seeks to crush the free spirit and introduce everyone to a croquet-playing comfort zone they feel disinclined to escape from.... or maybe it's only the trainee clergy who fall for that. Tuesday, October 01, 2002
Essential snippets from Social Criticism Review
Following-up yesterday's blog, some references to back up the argument about 'oil' and the ethical stance:
Far from being the terrorists of the world, the overwhelming majority of the Islamic peoples of the Middle East and south Asia have been its victims - victims largely of the West's exploitation of precious natural resources in or near their countries. John Pilger
The full texts from which these were extracted, and a wealth of other crucial reading besides, are collected in the excellent online library, Social Criticism Review. |
|
 yellow on blue CAT.png)
