We’ve produced an advent candle lighting liturgy for congregations to use, with the hope of echoing the imagination of the prophets for a world created around restoration and justice.

Please download, distribute, adapt and use as you would like…

From week one:

God of the Advent,

Illuminate the world around us
so that we will see the cracks and stains
that mark the foundations of our community.

We pray for courage to look for your coming,
even though we know it will mean
that we will never see the world
with the same eyes
again.

Come, Lord, come

Response: Let light fill Your world.

Advent Candle Lighting – pdf

Don’t put your faith in the breaking of day,
although that will come,
but let your faith be that peace can be found, even in darkness
and that love can survive in the longest of nights…

- the blessing from tonight’s midwinter service

Tonight’s most surreal moment was before the service when a couple of the men saw that i had candles with me. I found myself having a conversation with them – these two quite large men, with prison tatts and shaved, scarred heads – about whether we like our candles scented with rose or lavender.

It was a lovely service, with its predictable share of unpredictable moments. We had a couple of psalms in the service – one from the bible, the other written by one of the men from Exeter prison and adapted by Nathan from Port Phillip. I asked whether any of the men wanted to read the first psalm and David, sitting next to me, volunteered. He would have had the reading age of a 6 year old, i guess, and stumbled over every second word. One of the other men, across the room, predicted the stumbling and chimed in with the words that he knew David wouldn’t get, so it became this sing-song reading of the psalm – it was really quite moving and lovely.

And part way through the service Ross switched off the lights, and the service continued just with candlelight. It was really beautiful.

When i was writing the service yesterday i remembered a conversation that the basement space crew had in the booth at the back of the Wesley Anne about what gets us through the longest nights – about how it wasn’t the idea of dawn, it was food and wine and company. I was thinking yesterday how these men don’t choose to be together – they tolerate each other, mostly, and their relationships are more alliances for survival. It would take a miracle to make them company for each other, the kind of community that brings you life – a much more difficult miracle than one that turns bread and wine into body and blood… but you know, as i listened to David stumbling through his reading, and i watched the men lighting candles, and holding the moment for each other as they did, and as we sat in silence and darkness for a long, long moment at the end, i wonder if we didn’t actually get close to that. i’m under no illusions it will have lasted more than 30 seconds after we finished, but maybe we need to honour the tiny moments as being remarkable just in themselves…

This was the communion. it probably won’t win awards with the orthodox police, but it did the job here. The rest of the liturgy from the service is at the end as a pdf:

In communion, we remember the story of the night
before Jesus’ death.

That must have been a long night.

With all the fear and confusion and loneliness
that Jesus and his friends must have felt,
together they found at the table
the food and the company
that would help them survive the night to come.

As the story tells us
On the night before Jesus died,
he had supper with his friends.
He took bread,
thanked God,
broke the bread,
and gave it to his friends, saying:
this is my body, given for you.
Each time you do this, remember me.

After supper he took the wine,
thanked God for it,
and passed it to his friends, saying:
This cup is the new promise God has made with you
in my blood.
Each time you do this, remember me.

We thankyou, God,
that we can remember you in this meal
that this bread and wine
are ways that we can put back together
and make whole
the promise of hope
and peace
that your life offered to us.

We pray, God, that your Spirit will make this bread and wine
signs of life
that we can carry with us
into the night time:

promises that we are not alone,
promises we will not be left empty.

Amen.

The whole liturgy as pdf: ppw_midwinter

I had a meeting near Kinglake today. As i was driving up the hill they were saying on the radio that the bushfire cleanup had finally been completed. It was weird hearing that and driving past this…

It was even weirder that just around that bend was the council sign saying ‘check your fire alarms and clean your chimneys now’.

The new green is garish, and clashes with the memory of the dusty colour of eucalypts… but it’s beautiful, and surreal in a Dr Seuss kind of way.

All the media reports from the royal commission into the fires are about how to never let it happen again. It still feels like we’re side-stepping the real conversation – how we learn to live with the realisation that we are human and fragile and all too mortal… but maybe that’s something we can’t focus on, at least not for too long, because it’s too blinding in its intensity.

I’m in Port Philip Prison on Thursday, for a midwinter service. I wrote this prayer for that today, while in a cafe in kinglake:

We gather today in search of the hope
that is tenacious and resilient enough
to be our company through the longest nights
and the darkest hours.

You have your work cut out for you, God.
We are not easy to convince.
We are not content with clichés
about light at the end of the tunnel
or glib promises of the dawn that will break.

We need to know how to survive this darkness,
how to find love in this most barren and desolate place,
how to live in this long night
and not simply wait,
holding on,
for its end.

Because it might not end,
and we need to live.

So we wait in the darkness
and pray for peace

we wait in the fear
and pray for wisdom

we wait in the loneliness
and pray for grace

we wait in the confusion
and pray for company

we wait in the emptiness
and pray for imagination

and we wait in this horror
and pray we will live.

It didn’t quite work like that, but as with all things in the prison, it worked in its own way.

It was a very different group to last time I was doing writing in there. We read a couple of psalms, we talked about the solstice and the longest night, we handed out the templates… and then there was silence, and blank looks. We offered the option of people taking them away and doing it themselves, later in their cell, and there was enthusiastic nodding… so we’ll see what comes out of that! Quite a few men who didn’t come to worship came up afterwards and wanted copies of the templates to write their own as well, so we’ll see whether they come back too… It’s always unexpected. I have a backup plan for the worship, if we don’t get anything – and either way it’s going to involve lots of candles and communion at the end…

Last night worship was planned for 5pm, but dinner was late, and then medication… so it was about 6 before we started. And then two minutes in, the dessert message came across the loud speaker, so the men traipsed outside, got their icecream and brought it back in… By the end of worship, those who had had their medication for depression were completely zoned out and nearly falling over.

I haven’t been back there since christmas day, so in the hour or so that we were waiting around for dinner and medication and whatever else, they were asking questions about what i’d been doing and where else i’d been. I mentioned i’d been in the women’s prison over Easter. I was sitting next to Craig, who shivered and said ‘I’ve heard they’re scary in there’. It was like i had instant [undeserved] street cred for daring to go in there. It was somewhat ironic coming from someone as big and threatening as him, who has spent his life in and out of prison, is decorated with prison ink and battle scars – the kind of person i would instinctively cross the street to avoid outside [in fact, the kind of person who makes me catch taxis home so i won't even be walking on the same street]. The truth is indeed contextual…

I’ve been reading Marilyn Robinson’s book Home for the last few days. I was talking about it yesterday to someone, saying that it’s everything she doesn’t say that makes the story so beautiful – that the space she leaves between words and sentences is filled with this kind of fragility that leaves us aching. As we were leaving the unit last night, Alf appeared. He’d waved at us from his cell door earlier in the night, and then he came down and sat outside the room where we were holding worship, i think to wait for us to come out. He told me that he’s decided to give up his medication, to try to manage things on his own. It felt like there was such importance behind those words. I don’t know what it was – that he was taking responsibility for himself in a new way? that he’d decided that he wanted some kind of different future? I don’t even know what the medication was for… But in the silence between his sentences, i felt that same kind of aching i’ve been feeling as i’ve been reading Home. That sense of the other that’s found in the meeting point of resilience, fragility and longing. Maybe it’s that sense of holiness that comes only in the encounter with that which is most broken and is trying to be human.

So we go back in a couple of weeks to think about the longest nights again. And i feel so lucky that i get to encounter human existence at its most raw and most fragile. Who would ever want to be anywhere else?

I wasn’t going to do spaces, but i have lost my voice [as has most of melbourne], and though it will be back by sunday, it won’t survive a service. So spaces it is…

It’s Pentecost Sunday. We’re using Ezekiel 37:1-14, Rabbit Proof Fence [by special request of someone in the congregation], lots of music, silence and the spaces. i’m kind of hoping that they’re not in the mood for some grand celebration. It looks dark, but it ends on a gently optimistic note [well it will, the blessing hasn't been written yet]. And i wrote it with this little community in mind, so hopefully it reflects their story and context, and might not make sense anywhere else…

The spaces go something like this…

1.
[images, large mound of sand]

The bones lie dry in our valley too
telling their stories of discarded dreams
and broken trust;
disillusionment, fear and tiredness.

If this is a story you know too well
or if those you love are living it,
take a handful of sand.
Let it trickle back into the ground
in the shape of your prayer
for yourself,
for the church,
for the world.

If you can speak with Ezekiel’s faith
into these stories with the promise of life,
take a handful of sand.
Let it trickle back into the ground
in the shape of your vision
for life,
for the church,
for the world.

pray for God to breathe life
into all that is lost…

2.
[sandpaper, images]

The world fights for breath.

We hoard our last gasps of oxygen
for fear there is no more to come.

And as the world slowly dies around us
our fear is that our lifelessness is too much
even for you, God,

that there is nothing more you are able to do.

Rip the shape of those things
you are unable to trust to God
into the sandpaper

if you can, leave them here,
to be held by the faith of this community.

3.
[bread, wine, images]

surrounded by the desolation and tiredness
we search for what keeps us alive…

the hunger for god
the memory of jesus
the promise of the spirit

take the bread and the wine
let their story of faith
be your story of life

4.
[black card, black pens, white pens]
in the valley
when everything is stripped back
to bare bones
it’s hard to tell which are ours
and which are theirs

we realise how fragile
the things that gave us shape and colour,
uniqueness, diversity,
- that defined us against each other,
are.

the most resilient part of us
- what’s left when everything else is gone -
are the things we have in common
with everybody else.

write your grief for what has been lost in black
and your celebration for what remains in colour…

5.
[newspaper, black markers, written onto black card]

you do not give up
on the broken and the lost

you do not give up
on the fractured
or the shattered
or the dying
or the dead

you do not give up
on the fearful
or the hateful
or the impossible

you do not give up
when there is no heartbeat left
or no heart at all

you do not give up
you do not leave us for dead

thank god.

when you ready
and if you would like
add to the newspaper the situations in your life and world
that you need God not to give up on…

It confirmed for me that the way we work with hope – the language we use to invoke it, and the role we believe we play in offering it – is absolutely central to our understanding of faith. And how we understand hope isn’t determined by our alignment with a particular religion. The gift for me this morning was finding so much in common, in the struggle with these questions, with the Muslim and Buddhist chaplains. Not that our answers are the same – actually, perhaps it was the realisation that we had a lack of answers in common; that we liked each others’ determination to keep asking the questions.

But the blank faces from those who are in a different place – who are confused and bewildered by the fact that we haven’t worked this out yet, like they have, or sorted through the doubt – makes for a pretty exhausting time. I think they would say that doubt is good, but really only the kind of doubt that has faith at its core. I think I’m talking about something different. I have absolutely no concept of the being of God at all. None. But I’m absolutely, completely committed to the things that have always been attributed to God – the event of God, as John Caputo would say. Does make me faithful, or doubting? Who knows [and it was a rhetorical question anyway].

But I had a moment of insight at the end as to why talking about hell was so confronting for many of the women. One of the Muslim chaplains said ‘you’d think that if you were a Christian, being told that Jesus has broken the chains of hell would be something you’d like to hear’… and I realised that part of it is that the women don’t want all that is Good to be sullied by all that is Bad – that God will be made dirty by descending into our hell, and they need God to be pure; the place to escape to beyond our hell. Greg, one of the christian chaplains at the juvie said that he can’t play Nirvana in worship – the lads only want Hillsongs. Not because they believe Hillsongs theology, but because it’s so removed from their reality.

Not everyone has that reaction, of course. For every 10 people you get in prison, you’ll get 35 different theologies… which is about the same number as you do outside prison. And, in the end, when i wonder what the hell we were thinking trying this, I’m reminded of the woman who sat down next to me on Holy Saturday and started a conversation by saying ‘If God’s in my hell, then I guess it’s ok for me to tell you this…’

I know I keep saying that being in the prison is surreal, but, you know, it really is. Last night when i left the prison I went to meet a friend for a drink, and when he asked what i’d been doing on the weekend i listed the shopping, the garden, the other friend i’d had breakfast with… it took me five minutes to remember that i’d been in the prison, even though it had filled most of that day, and the one before; even though i’d driven straight to the bar from the prison. It’s that disconnected from everything else, that incongruous.

I was reminded this weekend, though, that when you’re in prison, it’s impossible to forget that you’re there. It’s not just the physical reminders [the razor wire, the incessant loud speaker announcements, the bloody musters]; it’s that every story comes back to being inside. Every relationship is defined by separation, loss, grief. Every conversation about the future is clouded with ‘what if’s’ and ‘perhaps’.

We sank into the easter story this weekend – i kept holding my breath, wondering whether we were pushing it all too far and expecting too much, but the women kept coming back for more, and participating above and beyond our expectations. Doing the three days was a great idea, although absolutely exhausting. The attendance was amazing, and the women just kept coming back for the whole weekend. Last year there were 6 at the good friday service – this year there were 45. For some reason this was the right moment to do what we were doing, and they come from nowhere to be there. and they hung around for hours afterwards… we couldn’t get rid of them.

We offered each service in mainstream and then again in one of the protection units [the protection units house those who would be in danger in mainstream]. In protection we had the same four women come to worship all weekend. It was very intimate, and quite terrifying in a sense – i was so aware of the responsibility behind what we were doing. I kept thinking yesterday, as we were talking about Jesus’ presence in hell, ‘i hope we’re right… i hope we’re right…’. What we’re offering is so dangerous if we’re not.

You can always tell when worship has ‘worked’ – it becomes more than what you took into it, more than the sum of its parts. I know that what we prepared was good, but it means absolutely nothing if it doesn’t go beyond that. Each day, though, the worship became a thin space, very raw, really quite beautiful.

The three handouts from the weekend are here:
dpfc_gdfriday
holysaturday1
[i added in the artist credits, where i had them, to put up here - that's changed the formatting slightly, but you'll get the idea]
eastersunday1
[I wasn't able to get permission to put Sunday's image up here, so i stripped it from the pdf -but trust me, it was gorgeous...!]

Thanks so much to the artists whose images we used, especially on saturday – Fr Michael O’Brien, Jan Richardson and Jonny Baker. It’s the first time we’ve relied on images to tell much of the story, and it worked, largely due to the quality of the images themselves. For the vigil we had a number of images printed up largescale and laid on the floor on pieces of black card and the different reflections… the women wrote their prayers onto the card. My favourite: ‘Dear God, we are all in this together. Amen.’… One of the women asked to keep the large copy of Jonny’s photo – she said she wanted it as a reminder that razorwire could be beautiful.

You never forget you’re in prison. As I mentioned in a previous post, we invited women to sign letters to the Nepalese Government and to Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister as part of the Amnesty Stop Violence Against Women campaign. There were a few letters left unsigned at the end. One of the women who’s in for fraud amongst other things, gathered them up in a pile and brought them over to me. ‘I could sign the rest with made up names if you’d like’, she said…

Call to worship
And so love is unstoppable
even by death,
life is not destroyed
by having been through hell,
and light does not stay smothered
by the darkest of nights.

We are not people of fear anymore.
We know now how this story ends.

Jesus is risen
He is risen indeed

Welcome to worship.

hymn

Bible reading:
[probably Mark's version of the resurrection, though that's not confirmed...]

Reflection on the story

Prayer
We don’t know what really happened
or if we have the faith to believe whatever did
but the resurrection doesn’t depend on our faith

so come anyway.

We are too cynical for this:
We have trusted, and then lost, too often,
and we may need to sit this one out

but come anyway.

And, heaven knows,
we are probably waiting for it in the wrong place entirely
because life hasn’t come in the ways we thought it would before
and you have never done what we expected.

Come anyway,
right to where we are.

Prove us wrong
we pray

today.

amen.

Prayers for the world
We’ll invite the women to pray for the places in the world that are waiting for resurrection – to light tealights and place them onto the image on the floor.
- play Leonard Cohen’s ‘Anthem’

[I'm not sure we'll use the following prayer - if so we'll rework the above slightly to include it]

It’s easier to believe in a miracle that happened 2000 years ago
than to believe another could happen today
but your resurrection gives us the courage
to pray for the impossible,

so we do:

from systems of oppression, resurrect freedom
in acts of racism, resurrect love
where there is violence against women, resurrect justice
in places of destruction, resurrect a future

from the war in Iraq, resurrect peace
from the corruption in Zimbabwe, resurrect hope
from the bushfires and earthquakes, resurrect healing
out of financial collapse, resurrect liberation

out of our despair, resurrect promise
out of our fear, resurrect courage
out of our loneliness, resurrect compassion
out of our grief, resurrect life

we pray to believe the impossible can happen
we pray to live as though it will be so.

amen.

hymn

blessing:
Send us into the world, God
ready to encounter resurrection:
to point to love’s presence
to light another’s darkness
to speak your peace into the world’s pain.

and may we go as people who know there is another end to the story
and who will not live with fear anymore.

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ…

I’ve always said that it would be great to do Holy Saturday in the prison. Now that we’re doing it, i’ve realised it’s redundant; sort of like doing Lent in a bushfire ravaged community… Nevertheless, we’re not letting reality stop us, we’re doing it anyway.

The women have said that they would like a vigil, so we’re offering what’s basically a sacred space that they can wander in and out of on the Saturday afternoon. All the normal prison pre-requisites apply – no props apart from paper based products and pens with transparent casings [yes to cardboard, no to long lengths of black fabric, black markers, paints etc]; no movies, projection, and a small selection of music [on a terrible cd player!]. It sucks, because holy saturday has to be the best day to do multimedia stuff…

Each of the stations will have a printed out image, and black card with black pens to write / draw responses. We’ll have music in the background – some Sinead O’Connor, Gorecki, stuff like that. I’ll add the images when they’re sorted…

Theologically, the women are largely very traditional / conservative in their views. Although many of them have never been to church, they know what they know about religion, and this is not the place to play with it! I keep wanting it to be abstract and meaningful, but it really just looks pretentious for the context…

The words for the spaces are after the jump:

at the entrance

Traditionally
the church doesn’t do worship on Holy Saturday
because God is dead.
We breathe a sigh of relief
now that the crucifixion is over
and wait for whatever comes next.

But the story of Easter
says that after Jesus had died,
things didn’t just pause until Sunday.
Instead, he went to hell.

This is not a time of worship.
Instead, it’s a space
to look for God
in places of hell in our lives, this prison and the world.

Move around the spaces,
read what’s written there,
look at the images,
and if you would like, write a response on the card.

Stay for as long [or short!] as you would like.

Space 1

We wanted a God who would take away hell
and banish it forever

Instead we have a God who enters it.

What difference does it make to have you here God?

If God is here
what do you want to say to God?


Space 2
Today might mean nothing to you

perhaps you have grieved too often
and too much,
and you’re over it.

If today just feels empty
and nothing out of the ordinary
that’s ok.

Let it be what it is.

But if you would like, wait here in the emptiness.

Know you’re not alone.

Space 3
We’re used to things going to hell.
There are too many things we trusted in
that no longer have life:
dreams
hopes
longings

justice
peace
love

If you are able,
tell God what it is like
to live in the remnants of dreams that have no life left -
when peace is dead and buried
when hope has gone to hell.

Space 4
We are not alone.
Much of the world lives in some kind of hell

so pray for all those around the world today
who find the loneliness overwhelming
and the fear all-absorbing;
who do not know how they will survive tonight
or tomorrow.

Hold faith for them
that God is with them.

Write your prayer for them on the card.

Space 5
God
if you are in our hell
we pray that we will be in your resurrection.

Don’t leave us behind
when you go.

Reading 1
Mark 15:1-5

Reflection:
You taught us to stand for truth, Jesus
which would see though our arrogance,
and give courage in our uncertainty;
which could break down our defences
and uncover the world’s fear;
which would challenge our judgements
and lay bare our shame.

It isn’t just you who is facing this trial, Jesus.
With you is the truth we need to live.

[extinguish candle]

and we wait here at the foot of the cross…

[silence]

Reading 2
Mark 15:6-15

Reflection:
You taught us to believe in a love, Jesus
that would enter into the pain of the world
with a gift of compassion;
that would break the powers of evil
and transform them with light;
which would know the grief that holds us barren
and could shape it into life

It isn’t just you who will be nailed to the cross, Jesus
With you is the love we believed in.

[extinguish candle]

and we wait here at the foot of the cross…

[silence]

Reading 3
Mark 15:16-20

Reflection
You taught us to live in grace, Jesus -
to trust we are found
when we think we are lost;
to not be held captive
or entangled by judgement;
to hold fast to a promise
that this world will be made new.

It isn’t just you who will be hanging on the cross, Jesus,
With you will be the grace we need to live

[extinguish candle]
and we wait here at the foot of the cross…

[silence]

Reading 4
Mark 15:21-24

Reflection

You taught us to trust in hope, Jesus -
to live as though the world will, one day,
treat the weak with compassion,
offer freedom to the prisoner,
bring comfort to the afflicted
and give peace to the mourning

It isn’t just you who has been beaten by the world, Jesus
with you is the hope we need to live.

[extinguish candle]
and we wait here at the foot of the cross…

[silence]

Reading 5
Mark 15:25-32

Reflection

You taught us to walk by faith, Jesus
to believe the impossible could happen
in every moment and every place
to live as though it would
right here and now

It isn’t just you who hangs here dying on the cross, Jesus
with you hangs the faith we need to live.

[extinguish candle]
and we wait here at the foot of the cross.

Reading 6
Mark 15:33-40

Reflection

You taught us to be people of justice, Jesus
and confront evil that would stifle love
and systems that oppress;
to speak honesty into power
and truth for those betrayed

It isn’t just you who hangs here helpless, Jesus
with you is the justice we need to live.

[extinguish candle]
and we wait here at the foot of the cross…

Reading 7
Mark 15:42-47

Reflection
So we wait here
in the shadow
of all that we once knew;
amid the wreckage of a life
that used to make sense;
holding onto a faith that now lies empty

it isn’t just you who has died on the cross, Jesus
but all we are sure of
and all we learnt to trust.

[extinguish candle]
we wait here at the door of your tomb
wondering how we are to keep faith in you…