God? from cheryl lawrie on Vimeo.

I had a call yesterday from Hannah who wanted to throw around some ideas for a service she’s doing around the Japanese earthquake.

It used to be that my first reaction to a disaster like this would be to create a space to acknowledge it, but I’ve been watching some personal apocalyptic events unfold over the last couple of months, and Japan has just felt like too much to even look at. But maybe that’s the point of creating spaces in times like this – to give us the courage to look at them and know them for what they are.

I didn’t write down notes from the conversation with Hannah – she’s going to send them to me when she creates the service – so the thoughts below are a combination of what I remember of the ideas we came up with, and some stuff I’ve thought about since.  The point of a service at a time like this isn’t to be clever, so none of the ideas were spectacularly original. Perhaps they’re comforting in their familiarity.

Some of the tactile ideas:

- using newspaper stories of the disaster and inviting people to highlight the words in the stories that make their prayer.
- having a long path of gravel [that goes around a whole room], that represents different things at different points. At one space, each piece of gravel represents someone’s story… inviting people to put tealights among the gravel in honour of those whose will not be remembered. At another point invite people to take a piece of gravel and hold it tight so the edges cut into their skin to acknowledge the hardness of the world. At another point, praying for those whose dreams and lives are in the rubble. At another point, creating a cairn as a marking point: what is it we know now that we didn’t know before?
- Having bowls of water with salt to make our / God’s tears, for the things that have no words
- Writing or drawing our fears for our own human-ness and mortality onto black fabric with black pen; writing a prayer you don’t have faith to believe or pray yourself onto a white post-it note, and leaving it for someone else to take and pray for you.

One thought: I wouldn’t use images of the disaster, at least as a central focus. I think we know what the disaster looks like, and images at this point run the risk of being manipulative and creating fear and drama that has nowhere good to go. The only place i’d potentially use them would be in a space where before and after pictures of towns were laid out [the ABC has such a good series of images on this], and a third blank piece of paper was given for people to write prayers for the future of those places [that's a twee idea! i'd want to develop that more... and find another way to do this apart from writing on paper! - but you'll get the idea]

If I were doing this with a Christian group, i’d use the story of Elijah and the cave [earthquake, wind and fire - and adapt it to include a tsunami and a potential nuclear disaster]. We used that story after the bushfires here a couple of years ago, finishing the story [which was written on big cards on the floor] in front of the video posted above, with the lines ‘Is this where we are to find you, God, and how will we know you are here?

I’ve been thinking about what the purpose of such a space would be.

- to pray or ’send’ love to those living this disaster

- to remember those who will not be remembered [not least because most of us fear not being remembered and known ourselves]

- it seems to me [or perhaps it's just that i've been thinking about this for the last two years, so I'm overlaying it onto everything] that we need to learn to be the helpless observers. It’s a bloody hard thing to do. I know we can send money [and we have to!], and for some there will be a more active role, but this is not something we can fix. I think i’d want a space that let’s me say how hard it is to be able to do nothing.

- to acknowledge that we are scared, and that we can’t deny our fear.

- to create a moment where love and compassion are put alongside fear, grief and despair

That’s enough… I’ll put up what Hannah does when she does it.

The stations are outlined below, and are here for download on pdf:maps_stations

We opened by playing Padraig O’Tuama’s Opening Collect [from his amazing album, available from Proost]

Before moving into the stations, I read the poem ‘The Centre of Another’s World’, and we played Sigur Ros’s filmclip, Glosoli.

Station one

[cut out countries from a world map, placed on black card with spaces between the countries]

There are many in our world whose map is changing
as we speak:

those who live in contested lands,
whose geography is being shaped by armies and governments
beyond their control,

those who live in countries
ripped apart by floods
earthquakes
cyclones
drought.

If you have a prayer

- peace
life
justice
hope -

for those people
and places,

write it into the space between countries…

Station two

[vials containing ripped up pages from a street directory, screwed up pages from the street directory on the ground]

There are many in our community
who have left all they know -
forced by circumstance and disaster -
and who now navigate inhospitable maps of our own country’s
bureaucratic expectations and
hostile territories.

The dreams that were their roadmap
lie ripped and torn.

Here is a space to
remember another’s dream for them,
and to pray for a different kind of world.

Take a vial with you
if you can work for the hope
that one day all will know home.

Station 3

[altered map - photoshopped to have the names taken out, replaced with new key - stuck to thick foam board, flag pins, markers]

In faith, we navigate a different world:
one where hope, promise and wonder
are flavoured with God’s love,
and where regret, bewilderment and fear
are touched by God’s grace.

Write or draw those things that make the landscape of your life
onto a flag:
the relationships that cause wonder or fear
the decisions that bewilder or offer promise
the places marked by hope or regret…

Place your prayer on the roadmap
as marked by the key.

Let your story stand next to another’s.

Hold faith for each other it is being shaped by God.

Station four
This particular space was quite amazing – I didn’t think it would work [I think i thought people would get tongue tied], but i’ve just been reading through the pages and pages of wisdom that people wrote… It’s really lovely stuff. It’s nice having it on the transparent paper – gives it a sense of non-permanence, and of not being able to ignore another’s wisdom when reading your own.

I love that in the photo below the young woman is copying the ‘rough copy’ she wrote on her hand first…

[handmade book titled ‘A book of faith’, extra blank pages, pens, copies of excerpt from Roald Dahls ‘Big Friendly Giant’]

The world we live in is complicated
and the future is unmapped territory:

an adventure of unimagined possibilities?
a journey filled with unknown threats?

Is it fear or longing you take into the future?

Write or draw your prayer for tomorrow
in the blank page at the end of the book.

Add another blank page behind it for the story still to come.

Station five
[copies of 1 Kings 19:1-8, bread, water, recording ‘Readings from the Book of Exile’ by Padraig O’Tuama]

For all the stories of journeys in the bible
we know nothing of the maps people travelled with.

journeys that would have taken days
and crossed uncharted territory
of land and mind
are condensed in the space between
a full stop
and a capital letter.
Elijah ran from Jezebel
- a refugee in a strange land
with a distant mountain to aim for
and a landscape of fear and despair between.

And in this unmapped space
he fought to make a path to survive

alone
but for the company of unknown angels.

Have there been angels who have brought you bread
when you find yourself despairing
in the uncharted landscapes of faith?

Take some bread and eat it in thanks.

Are there spaces in your life where you need the food of the angels?

Drink some water and make your prayer.

Final blessing

We leave today
going into a future
as yet unmapped
take faith with you as you go;
into the parts of your life not yet travelled by love
into the parts of the world unexplored by grace.
Let compassion and hope be the roads that you follow
today and always
amen.

Last Saturday I was in Traralgon for a day of workshops and a space. Traralgon is a rural community a few hours east of Melbourne. The workshop was for the presbytery – it was a fantastic turnout, and I found it a really interesting day. The difficulty with doing a day like that is that I’m aware that my very presence is a contradiction of what I’m talking about: that context is all-important when it comes to curating spaces and designing worship. I lob into town for a few hours having met maybe two of the 40 participants in the past, and have the audacity to think that a space i offer might make some connection…

Anyway, it’s the imperfection of the medium, and i’m probably the only one who angsts about the lack of integrity involved. And someone from Traralgon just rang and asked for instructions about a particular space i’d described, and told me they’d already talked about how to adapt it, both physically and theologically, for their context, so that’s a perfect outcome!

I’ll put the finished map stations up in the next post.

Tuesday I travelled to Ararat [a few hours in the other direction] where we were meeting with people from the local community in our next step to developing an organic, local approach to chaplaincy within the two local prisons. This is a really exciting move that I’ll talk about in more detail in a while. We’re trying to create new connections and relationships between the congregation and the prisons, to re-establish relationships that might be another step in recognising that ostracism and disconnection can often exacerbate problems of crime and violence, rather than restore life to broken communities and people. I’m watching conversations from around the world about developing missional leadership and communities – this is my current favourite example of what it can mean to do so. I like the complexity of this – it’s not just raised questions of capacity, training and mentoring; it’s also getting right into the heart of communal justice – dealing with the big questions of theology, restoration, human-ness, and just how much we can expect of people and a faith community.

Yesterday I went to Queenscliff, which is a couple of hours in yet another direction to speak at a workshop and curate a space. This was just as lovely – and completely different – to the Traralgon workshop. Whereas many of Traralgon group probably thought I went too far in stretching the definitions of worship, Queenscliff didn’t think I went far enough… I do love diversity.

It’s been a big week, and there’s much going around my head. i’ll keep putting stuff up from the week as it finds form and words. And I must remember to write about hearing Bill Viola last week too…

Secrets and Dreams

August 7, 2010
open 5-8pm

The basement, 130 Little Collins Street Melbourne
[enter off Coromandel Lane]

Fire and Brimstone in a Hollow Formed by Hand, at the Tate St Ives

I’ve been dipping in and out of the book today [penance for avoiding using my imagination by writing reports all day yesterday]. It’s a collection of essays about Weiner’s work, along with photographs and descriptions. As one essayist describes it, his life’s work is ‘the introduction of language as a sculptural material’. As he says himself:

Sculpture by virtue of its state
presents a material reality that by its presence
changes the inherent meaning of whatsoever place
it finds itself
bringing about a change in the relationship of
human beings & objects & producing a change in
the ambience
Caveat Emptor: It can at times block the way

[Weiner, 2006]

I’m thinking today about the myriad of possibilities that the basement space offers [while simultaneously contemplating how easily a myriad turns into a mire...]. I get the feeling we should be trying something new there; that we’re ready for a jump into a different kind of thing. I think the thing that holds us in common, as a group, is that we’re searching for a different way of being human, and a different way of being in relationship with the world and each other… [though i need to test that with the group], but we’ve been limiting ourselves a bit by seeing the possibilities through a singular lens. Maybe it’s time to add in a few other lenses. I don’t know what they are yet.

I just read this paragraph in Weiner’s book [it's a retrospective of his work, and includes a collection of essays]. The last sentences are just brilliant:

During the 1950s and 60s, Weiner grappled with an existential crisis in the aftermath of the war by investigating more conceptual challenges to authority and prevailing hierarchies. Today, his approach – language as the material of sculpture – seems ever more relevant when considered within the context of a culture struggling with information overload and a lack of fixity. His work is generative and generous, capable of embedding itself just about anywhere and empirical enough to engage all of our senses. To experience Weiner’s work is to accept its logic and its material reality, as well as to be seduced by the beauty of its chain of associations and offers of discovery. Entering into it is to risk a state of bewilderment, like stepping into a fog without discernable boundaries, to risk being “perplexed in public.” In that moment, one locates oneself in relationship to the work; afterward, some part of what has been encountered, what’s proposed, stays.

Donna De Salvo, in As far as the eye can see

In the panel on curation that Jonny Baker led at Greenbelt, Martin Poole said that he hoped the spaces created by Beyond in Brighton offer a moment of epiphany. I said that I hoped the basement spaces here offer a moment of grace. I think I still think that… but i wonder whether we also want to offer a moment of incongruence; a moment of bewilderment that once encountered you can’t quite shake. I’ve been wondering if that’s a way that transformation happens – how people make the irrational, incongruous leap into being different, not just thinking differently. Bewilderment’s not quite the right word: I think I imagine something like what happens when you are told a parable, and the world reorients itself, just for a moment… and even though you recover your balance, quick as a flash, you’re never quite be able to shake the knowledge that the axis you think the world rotates on, is not the only one at all.

[dawn]

we had a few queries from people asking whether copies of the images we used at the solstice are up for sale… and now they are! I’ve put all the images into 2 low res pdfs here: solsticeweb and solsticeweb2 [about 4mb each], but if you’d like to see one in a higher res, let me know. The quality of the images is quite lovely… Mike and Blythe are remarkable photographers. i’ve labelled each of the images in the pdf, which would obviously not be in the final print…

The rectangular images are available in two sizes – approx 30 x 20 inch [A$50 each + p&h], and approx 22 x 16 inch [A$35 each + p&h]. The square images are available only in 20 x 20 inch size [A$35 each + p&h]. The prints are on photographic paper.

Anyway, if you’re interested, let me know by email or in the comments, and we can take things from there…

I can’t wait for the solstice.

We’re doing a space in the basement – something completely different to what we’ve done before. It’s not alt worship, hopefully it will be some kind of sacred space, though i think those who want to bring christian interpretations into the space will definitely find ways to do that… We met last night to do some final planning, and it’s really going to be lovely. It’s very low tech [the lowest tech we've ever done - perhaps the trick is to not say we need to go low tech. Every time we say that, we end up with 12 hour set ups...]

i think the lovely thing is that none of us have any idea what we want to say in the space, we just want to embody what the solstice is about… being in company that helps us survive the longest night, finding a story that helps us know we’re not alone…

The space will be open from 8 until midnight on the 20th June, in the basement carpark at 130 Little Collins Street. It’ll be cold, even with heating… When wordpress cooperates I’ll put the poster up…

It’s been a long time between basement spaces, and we’re about to start planning for the winter solstice space. It feels great to be getting back into that kind of headspace – i’ve missed it. If you want to be part of this, we’re getting together for a drink on Sunday afternoon at 4pm to start the process. Email me and i’ll let you know where we’ll be. No skills required, just a willingness to say ‘yes!’ instead of ‘that would never work…’.

Blythe sent through photos from Saturday, which i’ll put up now – more reflections later. Thanks for emails, comments etc over the last few days – it has added some reality to a very surreal, disconnected time. We’ve been flying blind with all this, so it’s been lovely to hear that some people have been able to make use of this too…

Below the jump are photos and a broader description of the space. They go with the space outline i put up earlier. I’m sure you can work out how it all fits together! We took one space out – we decided to hope that everyone else would pray for the people who lit some of these fires, because we don’t have it in us just at the moment – and added another in [making a sign of the cross with ashes - i'll describe that later]

The entry – a paraphrase of Job 2 on the left, an image from Mike and Claire’s on the right.

Elijah’s earthquake, wind and fire story was printed onto cards on the floor, ending up near the screen with the verse ‘and after all this, the sound of sheer silence…’ – onto the screen we projected a loop of smoke with the word ‘God?’ that faded in and out with the smoke. below the screen was a pile of charcoal and ashes, and the questions ‘Is this where we are to find you, God? And how will we know you are here’.

In the centre of the carpark we made a large ‘canvas’ [cartridge paper] with paints and charcoal. We wrote ‘o god where are you now’ and people added their voice to it.

we printed out the newspaper headlines reporting the death toll as it increased during the week, and also cut out lots of houses from newspapers. We stuck a roll of paper to the wall and left charcoal for people to add their prayers. It sounds incredibly confronting, written like that, but it was actually quite a downplayed space, especially in light of the media coverage this week.

years ago, Blythe made these as part of an art installation… and they were perfect for the space too. We put some quotes about the unprecedented force of the fires on the wall, and then a bowl of ashes on the floor, with the following words:

The force of the fire is beyond our comprehension
We are so fragile in the face of its power.

If you would like,
mark your hand with the sign of a cross;

we are human,
we are not alone.

This was the space to say thankyou and to ask why. We strung up fencing wire, and clipped the words to the space to the fence. We attached a large branch of a gum tree next to the words beginning ‘There have been extraordinary moments this week…’ and scattered ashes and charcoal underneath the section ‘There have been moments of absolute devastation’.

mike and claire’s story, which was so powerful and remarkable [and looked great on the wall - we wrote it onto the ipod frames that we've made over the last year or so, and put some of their photos into the frames]

We also brought down the sofas for people to sit around, and created a response space [with a list of things that people can do to help, long term], and placed a bowl with small bags of ashes at the exit, for people to take away with them to remind them to pray… It was all very simple and low key. There was a rush of people at the beginning, a long space without anyone, and then another wave of people through at the end… I honestly don’t know how it went. I felt really anxious throughout, which was perhaps inevitable; too much so to gauge people’s response. In the end that doesn’t matter, i guess. We did it because we needed to do it for ourselves…

I do need to say that I wouldn’t do this with a group of people who had survived the fires. I’d do something quite different. Who knows what yet.

Speaking of the fires, they are gradually being brought under control. The devastation is still unfolding. I flew to Sydney yesterday, and we could see where some of the fires were still smouldering and burning in places. The mountains were black, and there was absolutely nothing left on them… and that went on, for as far as you could see. I’ve run out adjectives – devastating? incomprehensible? – none of them seem to give enough weight to it. The only thing that’s clear at the moment is that these fires are going to change so dramatically how we understand ourselves as individuals and the community… even those of us who are on the sidelines of this tragedy. It’s the loss, of course, which is so incredibly overwhelming; it’s the damage and devastation; it’s also the fear of how vulnerable and fragile we actually are. Do you ever recover from that?

i wanted to keep a record of this quote… from The Age, Monday 16th Feb:

Kevin Tolhurst, Melbourne University senior lecturer in fire ecology and management, said flames would have been about 1200 degrees when they roared across the state.

He said he had calculated the areas burnt and energy released from the fires equalled 400 to 500 Hiroshima atomic bombs and generated 80,000 kilowatts per metre of flame front.