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…

Monday we’re heading out to the country to take the next step with a congregation as we explore a team approach to prison chaplaincy in their local area. It’s a new model, a new process and all in all it’s pretty exciting. At the end of next week I head to London for the Oxygen tour.

Have I mentioned recently how amazingly diverse my job is? And how grateful i am to have it?

Do you wonder about how to enliven the stories you tell in your ministry setting? Would you like to spend time learning the storyteller’s craft? There are techniques that will help you tell stories with confidence and keep your audience interested! Great storytellers do practice their craft and spend time rehearsing. Three local storytellers are willing to share their secrets with you and help you find your authentic voice.

At the very start of 2010 we are offering Becoming Storytellers, where we will immerse ourselves in sacred stories, learn memory aides, embody the story and tell to each other. There will also be opportunities for individual coaching during the course. Stories will be drawn from the Bible and beyond, and Godly Play will be introduced as one of several story forms.

The course is presented primarily as an introduction for school chaplains, children and family workers, ministers and others who seek to tell sacred stories. Previous participants have found greater confidence and courage to tell stories. Here’s what they say:

“Great presenters, loved their art! I have picked up some skills and feel confident to use them….”
“I would do this course again because there was so much valuable content….”
“I would recommend this course to others….”
“Well planned, well delivered, well received!”

Becoming Storytellers begins with a Story Immersion on Friday 29 and Saturday 30 January, then continues over five Wednesday evenings in February, and culminates in a shared telling on Wednesday 3 March.

Venue: Centre for Theology and Ministry, 1 Morrison Close, Parkville
Cost: $395 for early birds who register before 18 December, or $420.00 by 15 January, 2010
Maximum Participant Numbers: 16
Led by: Julie Perrin, Jeanette Acland and Christina Rowntree
Register your interest: please contact info@ctm.uca.edu.au for a brochure. Enquiries to chris.rowntree@ctm.uca.edu.au or phone 03 9340 8813

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things – reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them – in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last pages.

from Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction

It was number 7 Mark and I were talking about; create spaces with just one person in mind…

I think they might be the framework for my next workshop on sacred spaces / alt worship… I’d rewrite 6 [acknowledge that awful things already happen to people...] and 8 [give participants as much grace as possible, as soon as possible, and let them write the end of the story themselves...].

Welcome if you’ve arrived here after today’s workshop… it was good to spend the day with you.

The sites i recommended this afternoon are proost, jonny baker’s worship tricks, and the alternative worship site which has dozens of links to fantastic communities around the world…

I promised I’d put up where the music was from – by memory, i used Peter Broderick, Lou Rhodes, Sigur Ros and Helios…

The other resources are all available through this site. The water space from this morning is outlined here
The stuff we did in the prison over Easter is here, and the Holy Saturday service at docklands is here [click on the links at the top of the page to take it to the next page for more of the space].
Finally, the upcoming solstice event is advertised here!

And i’d love to hear of where things go from here…

Tomorrow night is the liturgy for the Uniting Care Agencies, boards and whoever else comes along… that’s at Wesley, Lonsdale St, here in the city 7pm. I believe there’s drinks afterwards… at least, i’m hoping so.

Thursday I’m leading a workshop for ministers in Port Phillip West Presbtyery – that’s at Bacchus Marsh UCA and will run all day. Ostensibly, it’s about worship… but i’m really going to talk about beauty, imagination and transformation, and hope that people can make the links.

Sunday 31st May I’ll be at Fitzroy Uniting Church, in Napier St Fitzroy [is there any better located church in Melbourne?], curating a space / worship at 10 am.

And – more about this in the next post – June 20 is the winter solstice space, here in the basement. Mulled wine, art, music, space, company, darkness… it’s just going to be lovely…

We’re going to talk about the easter stuff we did at the DPFC, and about the connection between art and spirituality – and in particular, the use of art and imagination to take us into transformative spaces.

We’re also going to look at the effect of doing that – what creating spaces that invite people into doubt, faith, hope and fear leads to.

[This is stream of consciousness, so it's not edited or wrapped up nicely at the end! It's also very, very long.]

The ‘When hope goes to hell’ space on Saturday was really interesting… The idea that God went to hell is most clearly stated in the Apostles Creed [especially its traditional versions], and it was a belief inherited from very early traditions, and from some interpretation of biblical passages. Psalm 139 gives a poetic version of the same concept. I guess the responses of the women was a microcosm of the community / church: some of the women got the idea instantly, and were right there with it. Some were horrified that we could say such a thing – that we could dare to mention the words God and hell in the same sentence, let alone put them in the same place. One woman was outright angry with me… then she came in the next day with her prayer book open to the Apostles Creed. ‘You were right’, she said. ‘Maybe’, I thought.

The women wrote prayers onto black card at the easter saturday vigil. The funny thing about the prayers was that we had the women writing with black on black so that no-one else would be able to read them. But they wanted them to be read… as I’d move around the room, they’d squint into the black card to find the outlines of their words and read out their prayer to me; by the end they were reading them out to each other. We sort of got this group prayer thing happening entirely by accident.

I feel my journey at times has meant nothing to anybody. That nobody hears my cries of anguish. That I am alone in this dreaded place called hell on earth. If God is in hell with me then he understands. Amen.

The Saturday afternoon was perhaps the most intensely theologically demanding that i can remember. Some of the women lost themselves in the art / meditations… for others there was too much prior stuff that needed to be sorted out before they could trust the process – too many questions that arose. Normally we have the luxury of talking about faith theoretically, and our questions have a buffer zone around them. They’re not life-threatening. But here, choices were being made about relationships, lifestyles and pleas in courtcases based on the conversations we were having. And none of these are simple moral choices – they are infinitely more nuanced and complex than that. I have to say, I don’t think I have the faith to do this. I think what we did only worked because it was framed in doubt – i can’t, with any honesty, write anything but out of doubt / disbelief – but it’s when people assume that there’s faith on the other side of it that I get overwhelmed with the responsibility.

Anyway, there were a lot of questions that came up – some of them asked into thin air, some of them that turned into conversations. We’re going to use them at tomorrow’s workshop – to discuss how we reframe the expression of our beliefs so that they actually contribute to a conversation about the questions that are asked; so that we create a shared conversation about faith rather than a forum with a religious expert offering the answers. For example, if we don’t believe in a physical manifestation of hell after death, how do we respond to the question ‘what actually happens in hell?’ in a way that provokes thought and interaction, rather than shutting down conversation. The real skill is in being comfortable enough with our own world view to be able to refocus a question…

These were the questions that arose on the Saturday. They weren’t just asking me, they were asking each other:

‘Who do you think is in hell?’
‘What did God do in hell?’
‘If we all go to heaven, will I need to be with the people who hate me after I die?’
‘If I can’t believe, will I go to hell?’

[learning number 1: belief in heaven and hell is entirely independent to belief in god... and the idea that there might not be a hell or heaven is inconceivable. there's no prior question in this...
learning number 2: prison gives you too much time to ponder the existential questions of life
learning number 3: invoking the fear of hell is an evil motivator for faith]

‘what if it’s not true?’
[indeed. the great unanswerable question]

‘When i died, i just saw a white light. I reckon that means I’m going to heaven.’
[quite a few of the women have had NDE's]

‘how do i know who i should trust to tell me what to believe?’
[too right.]

I think we imagined that the vigil would be the meditative part of the weekend – and it was in Protection where we controlled the space and time much more – but the transformative moment actually happened on the Sunday morning. This links back to the use of art and imagination. I think it was only possible because of the Saturday – that gave it an authenticity, perhaps, that wouldn’t have been there otherwise.

On the Sunday, we started with Libera’s ‘Jubilate’, which is astonishingly beautiful, tear inducing… and it was like we all found ourselves in Rumi’s field beyond knowing… there was a moment where the questions were irrelevant, where belief itself didn’t matter. We just knew there was beauty somewhere; there was no desire to analyse or interpret it, we just wanted to lose ourselves in it… and after the service was over, when we were having a cup of tea, the women kept going back to the cd player to re-play that song…

Philip Zimbardo ‘The Lucifer Effect: Understanding how Good People Turn Evil’
John Caputo ‘The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event’ [another book worth reading along this vein is 'How [not] to speak of God’ by Peter Rollins.

[The other book that's been really critical in my thinking, especially about the perspectives from which our theologies are formed is Sallie McFague's 'Life Abundant', esp. chapter 2]

The images I showed by Banksy can be found here, the Amnesty International advertisements can be found here.

Someone asked about the music playing behind Kevin’s Psalm this morning – that was Sufjan Steven’s song ‘O God, where are you now?’ – it’s available as a download through iTunes, or if you wanted to buy the cd to take into prison, it’s on his ‘Greetings from Michigan’ cd [it would be a great song to base Holy Saturday worship around].

I forgot to mention that I have a book of liturgies available through Proost [you can either subscribe to Proost for a year's worth of fabulous worship resources, or simply buy the book on it's own! it's available through the Proost website as a pdf download, or at UniChurch bookshop in the city]

If you search through this site, looking under the ‘worship in prison’ category there are a stack of other resources… Email me if there’s stuff I’ve forgotten!

I curated a space for a leadership training event at the Centre for Theology and Ministry [CTM] on Saturday. It was on the theme ‘the memory of water’ … the chapel at the CTM is so perfect for doing installations. The CTM is a new complex, and the architects did a fantastic job of listening and understanding the dynamics of different forms of worship and sacred space. i was in on the initial conversations with the architects – they asked quite brilliant and insightful questions, and it’s reflected in the way the space has worked.

There are powerpoints everywhere, including a number of hidden points in the centre of the floor. There’s also network cabling for internet access. The chapel has full length windows against the back wall, which look over a gorgeous garden…

those windows have mechanically operated blackout blinds, and then the choice of a white overlay blind that can be lowered to cover the black [which is great to project onto]. The skylights have blackout blinds. The lighting is easy to manipulate, the furniture is all easily moveable, and there are good storage spaces which make it possible to entirely clear the room… the space is large, but not too large… next time i’m taking a ladder – i think we could stick a data projector onto the cross beam on the back window and project up high onto the ‘hidden’ wall…

i was even given permission to put hooks in the ceiling if i needed to [i wanted to hang stuff], but there were glass shields on lights that weren’t being switched on, so i could use suction hooks instead.

in terms of the space itself, i think it worked ok. most of the people who came through are very new to this kind of space… it’s such a leap to move beyond participation as reading the words in bold to a prayer on a newssheet…

after the jump are the words for the ‘thirst’ station – we’re using a variation of this at greenbelt, so save the surprise if you think you might get to our service there…

It is easy to be thirsty
when the water is everywhere
when the world is covered with it
when everywhere we look, God is.

But sometimes
it seems the water dries up

and when the cracks appear
in the soil of our faith
we cover them over
with anything we can find,
until even we forget
the thirst that lies underneath.

We no longer wait for rain
and the underground rivers are drying up�

Sometimes faith is having confidence that rain will fall again
Sometimes it�s knowing where water is to be found
And sometimes it�s just having the courage to be found here

cracked
empty
and arid