The Perfect Christmas Stocking?

With only a few days left before the'big' day, i am left wondering / worrying about what to put into a Christmas Stocking to amke it perfect?
the usual things like nuts, chocolate money, satsumas, smellies, socks? or do people do more unusual things?

Lee Abbey

Couple of weekends ago some people from Foundation went to Lee Abbey in Devon for the weekend there are some photos on my flickr site. click here to see

Peace

Tonight i did the little service at Foundation - it being Remembrance Sunday i decided to do something on peace. below is some of the liturgy we used:

We opened the service with:

Lord,
lead me from Death to Life,
from Falsehood to Truth;
lead me from Despair to Hope,
from Fear to Trust;
lead me from Hate to Love,
from War to Peace.
Let peace fill our heart, our world, our universe.
Peace Peace Peace
[by John Johansen-Berg]

I then asked the group to draw their reposonses to peace, pin them to a cross and light a candle for peace

we closed the service with the responsive prayer and the Peace:

Leader: Jesus, you are our peace.
R: In you we become new, one single humanity.

L: Come among us with your gift of peace:
R: Not as the world gives, in fear and suspicion, but as you give, in love and truth.

L: Come among us and banish the weapons of war
R: Speak peaceably to every nation, that your rule may extend from sea to sea, to the ends of the earth.

L: Come among us with the new covenant of love.
R: Sweep off the earth the instruments of destruction that all living creatures may lie down without fear.

L: Come among us with good news for the poor,
R: With release for prisoners and captives, with sight for the blind. with deliverance for the oppressed, with the fair distribution of the resources of your world.

L: Come among us that we may hunger and thirst to see right prevail;
R: That we may show mercy, that we may be peacemakers.

All: You are our peace. You are the way, you are the truth, you are the life. Fill our lives with your spirit of love, joy and peace. Amen.
[by John Ferguson]

I used music from Taize and Late Late Service through-out the service

Lindsey and Jenny's Civil Partnership

At the end of October, Foundation had its first civil partnership celebration, this was actullay my first time at a civil partnership as well. There are some photos on flickr of the covenent cermony and party!
i thoroughly enjoyed the day and had the priveledge of being Jenny & Lindsey's chauffer for the day!

80's revival

Last night Gayle and I went with some friends to an 80's disco, to raise money for one of Gayle's godchildren school in Horton (nr Chipping Sodbury)
We seem to have spent the last few weekends tracking down our costumes, which was quite fun really. Girls seem to have it a bit easier at the moment as 80's are in for them but for men it was a bit harder! I managed to track down a very cool (!) new romantics frilly shirt from a shop on the Gloucester Rd, so it was down the New Romantics road I went, getting a dodgy wig and scarves to tie around wrists and waist.
For this was a bit of trip down memory lane, I've not dressed up like this for a good 20 years, when the make up was applied I was back there reliving my mis-spent youth!
Gayle got herself a rara skirt and legless tights with legwarmers and her hair was great - all backcombed and then tied up with lace (very Madonna-esque!) - apparently this is how she did it every weekend while she was mis-spending her youth in Nailsea Scotch Horn Disco's! Gayle also dug out her original Duran Duran sweatbands and scarf - she was a real Duranie when she was young!!
The four us applied plenty of spray on glitter - now everything we touch seems to be glittery - will we ever manage to get rid of it!
The disco was entertaining, Gayle and her friend seemed to know all the words to all the songs, whilst I claimed I didn't remember many - being more of the Goth type then and lost in some university haze!

Is it really a year...

Last weekend was our wedding anniversary so we (including Frank the dog) went to Stow-on-the-wold in the Cotswolds and stayed in a nice B&B.
Great pubs, great food, peaceful walks with plenty of wildlife - with rabbits and pheasants that Frank enjoyed chasing! The only thing that spoilt one walk was that one farmer had insisted on locking the gates on a right of way - but we still managed to get through - well over actually!
A couple of highlights for me was Hailes Abbey which was very peaceful (see small island), Toddington station with the steam engines running and the Cotswolds falconry centre. Various slide shows on flickr.

On Sunday evening we went to Loch Fyne in Bristol for a meal - it was absolutely fantastic, delicious, i had kiln roasted salmon with a mushroom and whiskey sauce - yum!

Who do you think you are?

i've put some photos on flickr of Foundations September Service Who do you think you are?
click on photo or link above to see them all

Banksy again

Meant to blog this a few days ago but not got round to it. Banksy has an art show in a warehouse in LA, amongst the other pieces which includes a great graffiti piece of 2 older women knitting jumpers with slogans and a piece which continues Banksy's assault on Paris Hilton's 'musical' career, is an amazing piece which is an elephant situated in a lounge environment! The elephant is painted the same pattern as the flock wallpaper (aside from the ethics of painting an elephant...) I thought this piece was brilliant. Gayle informed me that on Radio 4 that morning the presenters were discussing why on earth Banksy would put a pink elephant in a lounge and they didn't seem to get it (or maybe this was fained ignorance?) - but strangely it is a metaphor Gayle and her colleagues use all the time at work - in the context that racism is the elephant in the corner that no one ever talks about and pretends is not there.
Apparently a spokesperson for Banksy said the elephant represents poverty - the elephant in the corner some people choose to ignore. There are pictures of the show at the BBC news website

Another Banksy piece that hit the news last week was he had managed to get a life size replica of a Guantanamo bay detainee in the enclosure of Big Thunder ride at Disneyland

Freshly Squeezed Water

Last weekend Gayle and I (and Gayle's parents) ventured down to the Organic food festival at the Harbourside. after getting over the shock of having to pay £3.50 each entry fee (compared to last years free entry!) we had a great time. Making the most of our fee we grazed our way round the stalls with hordes of Bristolians enjoying the organic fayre that was on offer.
I particuarly enjoyed the organic beer (no surprise there) and the cheese and breads they had on offer. The most hilarious stand was a "Freshly Squeezed Water' seller, I am sure they were just selling filtered water but the name made us laugh so much we never got to find out what it really was!
We also enjoyed a demonstration by Sophie Grigson (famous chef type) and the owner of Quartier Vert and the newly opened Bordeaux Quay on how to use stale bread - yes really!

One thing that did occur to me whilst we were browsing was how exclusive this Organic food club is. we could have spent a fortune on food (20p a plum in some cases) and with the £3.50 entry charge, it means this type of event is only open to people with a certain amount of money, if the Soil Association are wanting to encourage us all to eat more healthly and more organically they need to to review how accessible these kind of events are, so it at least it would be open to the masses! Interestingly the cooking demos were sponsored by Sainsbury's, which was quite a surprise to us, but unless we use our consumer power to influence the supermarkets i guess they will never change. I personally think it was a clever piece of marketing by them!

Women's place

Of late there seems to be many conversations happening around me that are about gender issues and inequalities. We seem to manage avoid discussing this subject frequently.

How do we start these conversations in a constructive way?
How to we enable people to be able to voice their experiences without it becoming a blame game?

Discussing this with my wife it felt like as men we often assume that because women within our groups are not being vocal about their feelings that everything is alright (appreciate this is gross generalisation) and so carry on regardless, thus making it harder for women to voice their experiences, thus making us men assume everything is ok for them and so the circle goes on.

This conversation has been going on for years within the church. Alternative worship groups and Emerging churches don't seem to have broken this male dominated culture. Though in the established church there is a higher representation of women than men within the congregations the men are still the ones that hold the power primarily, what are our alternative worship groups doing to challenge this inequality?

Greenbelt 06 - pictures

I have posted my Greenbelt pictures on flicker, there are some nice ones of the Foundation Poetry shed!

Greenbelt 06

Just back from Greenbelt 06 - good to catch up with friends, and spend time with people from foundation. I even got to spend sometime with my wife this year, who had managed to delegated some of her normal responsibilities to Ben and Ian who did a fantastic job with the New Forms cafe. The farm seemed to be the highlight of Gayle's weekend, who now wants a pig as a friend for Frank! I also had a great birthday - thank you foundation for the amazing chocolate cake. I have some pictures and reflections to come but my initial thought is GB needs to bring back the edginess and risk into areas of the programme. I am sure also that conversations within foundation started at Greenbelt will rumble on for sometime!

The masked ball

last weekend Gayle and I made what is becoming an annual pilgrimage to the Beautiful Days festival nr Honiton Devon, with some friends. We had a great time despite the somewhat dodgy weather and it is good to get Gayle away from the computer the weekend before Greenbelt! Beautiful Days is a festival set up by the Levellers and the festival is a mixture of music: ska, punk, folk and reggae and a few other genres thrown in for luck and art including sculptures made out of exhaust pipes and good ale!
I have uploaded some pictures on flicker

Last weekend i revisited my youth

Last weekend I revisited my youth, not as you might expect by drinking and clubbing but going on demos!! Friday, Gayle dragged me along to a demo in the city centre organised by the Unions to protest against the attack that had happened on Christopher Kasozi was severely injured in an unprovoked racially motivated attack in the city centre. With about 80 people there at short notice, it was good to make a stand and say Bristol will not tolerate racism. It was also good to meet up with old friends who I use to go to many a demo with and was then persuaded to go on a march the following day against the war in Lebanon and our governments lack of intervention. I know it is easy to have a simplistic view of these situations but I think many of us feel there is a real injustice at work and that the west seems to be happy to let Israel carry on killing innocent people. The demo on Saturday started with about 100 or so people leaving castle park and as we marched through town and up to the top of the Park St we were joined as we went along by people out for Saturday shopping, by the time we reached the top we had several hundred people following us. We had an interesting interaction with the police on the way past college green as there was another protest going on in support of Israel. The police were quite concerned that there was going to be a clash. I guess it was people exercising their right to freedom of speech. The change for me was that in earlier days myself and friends would have got involved in a fight -maybe we are too old for that now or perhaps just a bit wiser.
Have a look on flicker for some pictures

My reflections on Bristol Blah

It seems some time ago already that Blah came to Bristol but the thought provoking stuff is still rumbling around...
the topic that is still going round in my head is that of "flat leadership"
this came up as a question at the end of the sessions, about whether this can really be achieved.
When thinking about Foundation - I think we need to be honest about the leadership structure we have at the moment. My personal reflection is that, even if our aim is to have a 'flat leadership', currently we don't, I personally don't feel we have flat or representative leadership and that rather than pretend we do, we need to be open about who is leading/steering the group.

My next question is whether there is such a thing as flat leadership? In all the alt worship groups and emerging church groups it seems there is always a figure-head, someone who represents the group (ie at the Blah: Karen Ward for COTA, Ben Edson for Sanctus1, Paul Roberts for Foundation) rather than fighting this maybe we should be thinking about how that person(s) can reflect the nature of the group instead of a personal opinion?

Maybe the conversations should be more about how and by whom the decisions are made that this 'figure-head' will represent, rather than how we are achieving what might never be achievable?
Are the people who are steering the group representative of the wider group i.e. men/women, married/single, gay/straight, with children/without children, professionals/non-professionals, employed/unemployed, evangelicals/liberals, intellectuals/real-world doers. Where are the decisions made - in what context? Is everyone who wants a say getting a say? and what is the process by deciding the view we are going with - those who talk the loudest and the most?
And where does God fit into all this?

Foundation go to the beach

These are up a bit late but here are some pics of Foundations' trip to the Gower mid July.


















click on flickr or the picture to see more

The Beat goes on ...

after going to Make Poverty History march in Edinburgh last year, we felt it was only right we supported the local action to remind Mr Blair of what still needs to be achieved! it was a bit of a reunion of those who went last year from Cotham, with the sad exception of Kathy Allen.

speeding fowl

seen on a recent walk

Irish Embassy

Yesterday, as the chair of Bristol Playbus, I was asked to go to the Irish Embassy in London to pick up a cheque for the work Playbus does with Irish travellers in Bristol. I met with the Irish Prime Minister, Foreign Minister and the Irish Ambassador. It was a good day out with Guinness flowing freely from about 11am and very little sandwiches to soak it up with! All in all the guests had a very merry day!

Banksy back in town

this can be seen from Park St!