Some words from the space:

It takes courage to step into the space
to take a journey that we know is precarious.

And the steps unbalance us,
throw us sideways,
into a space where we know we just might fall.

The edges of the stones dig into us.
We know they’re coming
but they always find the raw spaces
where we thought we were already calloused:

a memory
a word
a push into a space we can no longer control…

Take hold of a piece of gravel.
Feel its sharp edges dig into your skin.
Let it remind you of your human-ness
and fragility,
of the bitter sweet
harshly beautiful
path we walk.

Jonny has posted a really lovely advent movie, using footage he made of sky lanterns at the Big Chill festival with words from a prayer I wrote a few years ago. I’d use it on christmas eve, i think. He’s made it available as a free download on vimeo – and proost subscribers can download from the Proost site. And let me put in a plug for Proost again – a subscription is extraordinary value, especially with the Australian dollar being so good at the moment…

But given the nature of the days and the work at the moment, things will be sporadic for the next little bit. If you are looking for something to read, go read Jonny Baker’s blogposts about curation. His last one is here, and there are links to the earlier posts there. I’m loving them. It makes what we are trying to do here, randomly and non-strategically, feel much less random and a little more strategic… I love this line that jonny quotes in his last post: ‘a museum director’s first task is to create a public – not just to do great shows, but to create an audience that trusts the institution’ [pontus hultén]. That’s been bouncing round my head all week as i think about the responsibility of what we’re doing with our spaces, and whether we’re living up to it…

We are heading to Greenbelt and the UK in just over two months… Nic and I are organising two groups again this year, each with a slightly different focus. My group will be heading to Telford [we love Telford!], then Liverpool [a first for me], to meet with Dream, and then on to Brighton to meet with the Garden and Beyond, before heading to London to meet with Jonny. It’s a different trip to last year, mostly due to the transient realities of the communities that we visit… I realised last night that I have only scheduled one day off… here’s hoping my group are as resilient and tough as i think they are… Nic is organising the group that will be meeting with church / diocesan strategic thinkers and leaders. I’m staying on for a week or so after, in order to do some research for next year’s trip, which will be focussing on culture / art / spirituality – more of a curation focus than a community focus. i can’t wait.

(Do you think all the good names for groups have been taken? We don’t have a cool name for the basement spaces. We just call what we do ‘the basement’ by default. Perhaps we’ll keep doing that. All these other names seem to evoke landscape and vision and far horizons… which seems a little incongruous when you’re suspending projectors from sewage pipes, and kicking the rat poison out of sight in order to put a slide projector in its place… while hoping the rats don’t seize the opportunity to gnaw on the cord instead of the poison… [reminder to self: buy bleach to get rid of the urine smell at the doorway for next weekend...]. I quite often get told that what we’re doing is pretentious and dressed up. I so wish people would see the reality.)

And just to finish a blog post that’s all over the shop… Do you ever have one of those weeks [years] where everything is too big to write about? writing a blog post or an article feels like you’ve got an elephant to describe, but only the words to speak about the front left leg, and that does no justice to the elephant at all, and in fact the leg makes no sense without the rest of the elephant, but to start on the whole elephant is impossible and unrealistic, and downright silly, because the words haven’t been created yet to make sense of it? I’m in one of those years, i think. Maybe I’m also really aware that when i start to describe the elephant, i’m going to disappoint a lot of people, and they’re all people i quite like, and don’t want to do that to. Who knows. It’s not an angsty thing. Silence is good.

I started studying at the beginning of the year – professional writing and editing. Somewhat ironically, since i started studying writing I’ve stopped writing. It’s not that i haven’t had time, it’s that I’ve become aware of the bigger picture… spending every wednesday night looking around at a lecture theatre of incredibly talented people, who are all so confident and articulate, thinking that we’re fighting for the same column space in the newspaper, metaphorically speaking, and that they’ve all got something brilliant to say that i want to hear… Where do they get that confidence from? So the only possible response to that is to quit study, which i have just done. I don’t like quitting, and normally i stick something out to the bitter end out of stubbornness. But this time? It’s pure liberation. And here’s hoping imagination is born from liberation [which sounds like something brueggemann would say, kind of, although he'd say it more poetically]…

Must get back to working on the budget – which is, of course, just another expression of vivid imagination…

i really like the language if mixed economy that jonny uses in the post. i think i like it because it comes from an ethos of generosity… i’m always surprised by how easily our conversation takes on hints of scarcity in the church, as though everything is a competition in which there can only be one winner – one denomination, one form of community, one style of worship, one way of thinking – that we have to prove ourselves better, or worthier, more creative, more passionate, than the person trying to be church next door. I’m reminded of the Victoria Castles book The Trance of Scarcity where she talks about the message of ‘not-enoughness’ that surrounds us every day, as though there is a fixed amount of everything in the world [happiness, money, love, air]… and how we get sucked into thinking and acting as though we have to fight for our share of it to survive.

The ethos behind the alt worship nosh is the cultivation of a spirit of generosity: a place where we celebrate all that’s good, rather than simply talk about what we’re doing that’s good. a place where we dream of there being 50 alt worship things happening in our neighbourhood, where some of the others might at times even be impossibly, wonderfully more creative than our own [and where we love that, rather than resent it]. The world is, after all, gasping for as much creativity and imagination as we can create – there’s always room for more. Or, more to the point, many of us [in the church and world] are looking for places where we can put our story against some other story, one that reaches beyond us… let’s search out and create as many of those moments, in as many ways and places, as we possibly can.

Years of fighting for space and recognition within the church have crumpled many of us, and made us necessary protectors of our own creative territory… un-learning that takes a lot of time. Our intention for the nosh is that it can be a space where we might be able to practice a different way of being. This year i think we were good at sharing ideas; we’re also learning how to value each other’s stories [not just share our own knowledge]. And down the track – ideally, hopefully – we’ll begin to create a space where we can search out the wisdom, the imagination, that lies somewhere beyond all of us…

thanks to those who came along, and especially to those who put themselves out there and made stuff happen – adele, darren, craig, jonny, mark… sue for cooking such superb food (seriously a highlight), mike for making brilliant coffee, and everyone else for everything else… it was great to spend such an inspiring weekend in your company.

my head is full of things to think about in response to the last few weeks – the labelling of worship, worship and mission, risk and safety in worship, more on wild spaces, cultivating imagination, the power of imagined opposition, resistance and dignity… and there are a few things about to begin that i’ll post about soon. i just need a couple of days to get some headspace back before writing things up.

i put together these wine labels for worship i did at the nosh, but ended up not using them … i’m not sure if i like them or not… maybe i’m not sure i quite understand them.

and finally, a few random inspirations from the last few days:

what the news will be like when the world is fixed

the residents of regents park

newspaper blackout poems

I’ve been thinking over the last few days that we’ve seen quite a remarkable change over the last year or so: people no longer see the possibilities of alt worship and new forms of community as a threat to what’s already existing… it feels like there’s a new sense of grace or liberation emerging. Jonny’s been using the language of the church as a mixed economy – not everyone has to be alternative, not everything has to change – and that resonates with the change in atmosphere. I’m not sure how the change has happened over the last year, but i don’t think come out of desperation – out of a belief that the church will die if we don’t – which i think is a good thing. I’m not sure that many initiatives born of desperation have the strength to last past the first adrenaline rush.

Interestingly, i think tassie’s further on the way down the path than victoria… and what’s happening there is largely lay led, not driven by the ordained – or, perhaps more accurately, it’s seen as a shared journey, not one where someone has authority or wisdom over the other.

Tassie was a fabulous trip – there’s lots of stuff happening on the ground, just bubbling up from out of nowhere. It would be a tragedy to think the church had to put an official imprimateur on it in order to validate it… Maybe the task of the church isn’t to give permission for the new to happen, it’s to stand back and let there be space for the new to grow, and to buffer it from those who say it can’t happen. I’m really looking forward to getting down there again soon.

Jonny’s written a description of things so far… and posted some gorgeous photos. it really was that beautiful…

Friday 30th may – Hobart, dinner and conversation

Saturday 31st May – North Hobart UCA – mission, emerging church and alt worship workshop

Monday 2nd June -

10am – 4pm – Uniting Church centre, Melbourne – 3 sessions on emerging church and mission

6-9pm – Upper Room, Glen Waverley

Wednesday 4th June -

10am – 4pm alt worship master class at CTM, Parkville

7pm – drinks at the pub

Friday 6th June – Monday 9th June – Queenscliff, nosh.

If you’re interested in any of those, let me know and I’ll pass on the appropriate contact details for registration.

apologies to those who have missed out.

there will be more noshes to come…

hope to see you there…