Excrement, vomit and jumping off bridges

'If you were in a pit, with no means of escape, up to your neck in excrement and someone threw a bucket of vomit at you, would you duck?'

Eek, now that is an unpleasant image.

Now I am not for one minute suggesting belonging to the EU is like being up to your neck in excrement, nor am likening a bucket of sick to leaving. I am amazed however and left feeling slightly incredulous that much of the media, social or otherwise is having a swipe at those who voted, with best intentions to leave. It is interesting that from the demographic make-up (and I am aware that this is generalising and there are many exceptions) those who voted 'in' were generally those who are home owners, middle class, better paid, university educated, with savings/pensions etc. Those whose current position was okay, stable. Essentially those who voted in wanted the status quo because the status quo was okay for THEM. Nothing wrong with that, but that seems to be a fairly reasonable generalisation.

What about those for whom things aren't so good? What about those who don't own their own property and can never see a way of doing so? Those whose rents are skyrocketing because 'buy to lets' can charge what they want and they do? What about those on zero contract hours or feel that they have unfair competition from those willing to work for less? What about those whose benefits are being cut to the point where surviving seems impossible and they still get the blame for 'bleeding our country dry'? What about those who have become jaded by cynical politics and corrupt politicians? Those who are disenfranchised, who feel when they are asked if they would like a change feel that they have little or nothing to lose? They vote 'leave'. Years of the rich getting richer and austerity that hits the pockets of the poor to 'save the country', that all starts to add up. For those who have little, or perceive they have relatively little, change is a good thing. I really get it.

Today I ran over a bridge that crosses the M5. For the last 6 weeks I have crossed that bridge and it has been okay. For the last 6 weeks I crossed that bridge and didn't think about throwing myself off, this is different because for the 18 months before that crossing bridges had become difficult for me. Now I don't think for one moment that I would have actually done it but I kept thinking about it, the idea just kept coming into my head. I don't want you to feel sorry for me, nor worry about me or judge me - it was a thought, a thought I had no control of. Was it depression, mental illness or sadness? I don't know and I also know of the many reasons why it would have been a terrible idea, not least the poor person who would have had to scrape me off the motorway.

Jumping, ducking, leaving might seem like a good option when what we feel we might leave behind is worth less that what we actually already have.

With the pit of excrement there is no good choice, though my sister - a nurse would say she would duck every time. With the bridge there is a terrible choice, a choice I will never make and I am so glad that that is no longer present in my mind. With Brexit, I still don't know but I will not blame those who voted 'out' because they were hopeful for a brighter day and a better future, I just hope for all our sakes we can build one.

Negative splits

Today I ran, as I sometimes do. Today, as I ran, my head was full of questions and worries and concerns, like many of us I am sure. I was trying to run a negative split. Now I am not a good runner but I can always try to be better. A negative split is when the first half of your race/run is slower that the second half – you finish faster. Now in order to do this you can start artificially slowly and ‘save yourself for the finish or you start out at a pace and as you become more and more tired you just try harder. Today, when I ran, I tried to do the second and two things happened. I had to stop after 5.5 miles (I wanted to do 6) and I was absolutely wrecked and shattered by the end of it. What started with good intentions, enthusiasm and energy became increasing harder as the task before me became increasingly more and more difficult.

I voted in. I can tell you why, kind of. I am not stupid, I read the news, I can work things out but my vote was far more instinctive than it was logical. I was brought up in a very working class household on a council estate, 5 years in St Pauls, the rest in Fishponds - all Bristol. It was all wonderfully, multicultural and I am the better for all of that. My dad (yeah not father he is my 'dad') probably would have joined the communist party if there was one, he is a hardworking, honest man who was made redundant time after time at the hands of Thatcher and when Tebbit said 'get on your bike' he already had, literally cycling wherever work could be had. All of that makes it hard for me to be Conservative. But, all that said, I am not a socialist with a big 'S' and when I voted conservatively with a small 'c', it was a hunch that things are better as they are, that Europe with all its bureaucracy and red tape has, at its heart, socialist ideals that people were more important than politics. Naïve eh?

I remember as a child playing with Plasticine; that wonderful, malleable substance that was limited only by the imagination of my 4 year old mind. In my day you could only get it in grubby, greeny brown. Well actually the reality was that my Plasticine was so loved, so played with that in time the variety of colours have melted into one indistinguishable lump, a homogenised mass. The wonderful blues and dashing reds had melded with the luminous yellow and vibrant green and in their ‘gathering’, in my hands had literally become indistinguishable from each other, the colours were there but had bonded to serve what was literally a larger purpose.

Now I love colour and variety and difference and eight (or 27) little balls of colour, separated have so much potential. A house needs its yellow thatched roof to sit upon its red bricked walls, bedecked with white sashed windows on top its verdant green garden. A pink faced clown (pink = red + white forever mixed) needs a mop of yellow hair, white smile, red nose. And every time I created something bigger from the smaller balls, however hard I tried I would always leave a bit behind – green in the yellow, blue in the red - until after all my creativity – browny, greeny, homogenous unity.

There is a saying that ‘you can take the boy out of the country but you can’t take the country out of the boy’. My hunch to vote ‘in’ was that despite any protestations and determination to leave Europe for right or wrong reasons, we are European. We have become increasingly so over the past 40+ years and whatever we do to deny that ‘European-ess’ I suspect any way to delineate or redraw any of the boundaries: social, political, financial, can only be artificial.

So as I ran I wondered and pondered and worried not so much whether Brexit is a negative or positive split but whether it is in any way viable. Can we actually unroll all those little balls and when we do so what kind of Great Britain, what kind of England, what kind of Europe will we be left with.

Beheld beauty

It is said that ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’, this questions whether lack of observation means there is any intrinsic beauty at all. It is also said that ‘it has to be seen to be believed’ – in each of these the perception makes a difference.

Quite recently I was in the car park in Sainsbury’s Pinhoe;  it was a grey, wet and cold day (in July!) and there seemed to be very little appealing in the rows of parked cars and unkempt hedgerows. In the midst though I saw the most beautiful, crimson flower, it was almost as if it was struggling to be spotted amidst all the grey. Yet I spotted it! It only took a moment to stop and look, to enjoy. Instead of hurrying into the shop to but more stuff I spent a few seconds to enjoy, to notice something beautiful.

My mind was taken back to the film ‘American beauty’ and the scene where the plastic bag is blown around in the wind, the protagonist says this:

“That's the day I realized that there was this entire life behind things, and this incredibly benevolent force that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever... Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world, I feel like I can't take it”.

Sometimes in the midst of unkempt hedgerows and difficult times instead of looking for the ordinary and focussing on what is wrong we need to consider what is good – look for the beauty. In it and in the process of looking,  we may be surprised to find the beauty that we discover, not least in ourselves. If we take the time to stop and look and notice. 

I wrote this little ditty to help me reflect and remember what I had encountered.

In the dead rows of hedgerows, today I spotted this.
Midst Audis and Fiats and 4x4 monstrosities.
In the tumble of weeds and exhaust-breathed brambles it lives.
Striving for recognition, pushing away toofast lives, in toofast lanes - shopping or motorways.
Weighed down with pulchritude I stopped and saw and noticed and felt, lighter for one moment.
In the dead rows and hedgerows, today I spotted this.

Broken and poured out

My two days with Rob Bell ended with a run around London and a train journey on Thursday morning – Maundy Thursday.

My two days were a mixture of the everyday profane – tiredness, impatience, frustration yet with a glimpse of the divine – wonder, awe, inspiration. There was something profound and mundane, something transcendent and something ordinary.

Maundy Thursday is the day we remember ordinary bread broken with extraordinary friends, the washing of feet in the most astonishing of circumstances, of bleak tears poured out in the depth of human sadness and abusive kisses.

Rob Bell spoke for more than 12 hours with stories of science and faith and cosmology and love and purpose and meaning and said so much of worth but there is a message that, at least for me, is writ large. I am invited to be a Eucharistic person - to be broken and poured out in service and in love. Now that sounds a bit bleak doesn’t it?

At the end of the two days he said ‘which of my stories did you enjoy and remember the most?’ I immediately remembered the ones where he had told us of his mistakes, when things went wrong and for Rob it seemed that in the midst of the pain of being broken and being poured out that he found meaning and purpose and a reason and an energy to get up and try again.

It was on Maundy Thursday that Judas betrayed Jesus, it was on Maundy Thursday that Jesus crumpled in the garden despairing, that he broke bread and poured out wine as a forward recognition of what was to be. And soon all would be broken and all would be poured out: life, hope, friendship,  everything of  import, everything of matter.

Yet this would not be the end but instead a start.

Maybe being broken is an opportunity; the first step to being remade, maybe being poured out leaves room to be filled.

May we know that in our 'brokenness and poured-outness'  that there is meaning.

Broken
       Poured out

Intentionally,
         with purpose

In service
         In love

Knowing

        and waiting
           to be filled and renewed.

Just the way it was always meant

Today is the first day of lent, the days 'lengthen' and Easter approaches, it is often the time when people decide to stop doing something.

As I write ‘Cornerstone Runners’ (the first group formed in Cranbrook) has just celebrated its second birthday; it was two years ago that a few of us set out in the darkness for a 4 mile run towards Exeter and back. We are now backed and insured by ‘Run England’ and have 8 trained leaders – in any given week on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays between 20-40 runners go out for a bit of exercising and socialising. We have had couch – 5k, half marathon training, staggered starts, hill runs, crocodiling and the infamous ‘run to a pub’. Unsurprisingly the latter seems the most popular.

So why do we run? For some it is about fitness, others losing or maintaining weight, some might have personal goals to train for, many enjoy the social side and some just love running.

For me bits of all of the above are true, apart from the last part – I have said this before I don’t love running. Running is hard: my legs ache, it is tiring, I get hot and cold and wet and I can find many excuses NOT to go. So why do it? For me I guess it started as a challenge, I said I could never do it, I said it was impossible for me so I didn’t do it – a bit of self-fulfilling prophesy. This impasse was enough to make me try, to see if I had the mental stamina and discipline to go beyond my self-imposed limitations and although I will never win any races and am one of the slower members of the group, I can do it.

As church minister for Cranbrook people sometimes ask me what my job is, what my purpose is. Might I say simply this, I believe that inside each one of us are possibilities we negate because of self-imposed limitations, primarily - ‘I can’t. I believe that we often undervalue who we are and what is possible. I believe that we are made for much more and sometimes we just need to have a little bit of faith, often faith in ourselves.

So stop whatever you want this lent but alongside all that 'stopping' might I add, a cessation of the often wrong belief that you just can't. Might I also suggest that in all that stopping there should also be a starting - maybe start believing that you just might be able. In my experience a bit of practice, perseverance and self-belief goes a long way. For me lent, and the journey to the cross, is about a journey through the dark waters of the improbable and even the seemingly impossible to a place new place of belief, self worth and life in all its fullness, just the way it was always meant.

Cranbrook - an update - 'Let it go'

Greetings from Cornerstone church in Cranbrook, I want to start by telling you about Lillie…

  
Lillie is two years old, she came to Harvest Messy Church with her brother Harry (6) and mum Lisa, they were one family of over 100 people who came to celebrate harvest and share a meal that day, only a couple of weeks ago. Like many people in Cranbrook they have little church background but love belonging to what is happening, be it: coffee morning, toddler group, running group, family worship, family film morning or on this day Messy Church.

At the end of the Harvest service we sang the very traditional ‘We plough the fields and scatter’, Lillie (actually most people) didn’t know the words but she came to the front with many other children, caught up in the atmosphere of worship and celebration and span around singing her heart out, she sang her favourite song, the one she knew the words to – Lillie sang ‘Let it Go’ from Frozen – it was heart melting.

Lisa starting bringing Lillie to church because a few months ago I had taught some worship songs to the children at Cranbrook’s Primary School St Martin’s – Harry (Lisa’s son) had 2 favourites ’10,000 reasons’ and ‘Hide me now’ – he loved them so much that he persuaded his mum to find them and play them on YouTube at home – listening together the family were drawn into an understanding of God that was new and they wanted to know more.

This is a tiny snapshot, a single story, from the myriad of encounters that people are experiencing as doors are opened and the grace, love and inclusivity of the gospel is shared in Cranbrook.

Cornerstone church is at the heart of many of the activities that happen in a development that now has more than 800 homes occupied and is planned to have more than 8000. At the recent Great West run, nearly 20 runners (several of them new to running) ran the half marathon, the vast majority of them wearing ‘Cornerstone runners’ t-shirts. One of the runners said ‘I am not religious but the way the running group includes everyone epitomises the way that Mark and Cornerstone church includes everyone’. It is this ethos of inclusion and sharing God’s blessing that underpins all we do and the reason we have: car washes, litter picks, film night, choir, board game evenings, coffee mornings, quiz nights, toddler group, Messy Church, family fun days, family film mornings, home church, family worship, an ‘Exploring Christianity’ course, mothering day lunch, as well as harvest, Christmas, Easter and other celebrations.

There is another function that I undertake and that is liaising with authorities: East Devon Council, the consortium of builders, Eon (our heat provider) South West Water, the Police, Schools and many more. Part of the reason for this is that the Facebook page that I set up 18 months ago now has 1303 members! As a result of this I am regularly sent messages concerning a whole gamut of subjects, as a result I have been able to bring together groups so that, as a community, we can speak with a single voice – this has been a huge boon – I include a few quotes, not to big myself up, but to indicate the importance and significance of these relationships:

This is what the CEO of Eon Heat wrote:

“As one of the key figureheads of the community you have always strived to resolve issues in an amicable and constructive manner with the interests of the whole community in mind. This has been a huge support in getting necessary lines of communication open between ourselves and the local residents and I genuinely feel that without you facilitating this we would not be where we are today… I feel that your involvement has been instrumental in bringing this new town together and creating a positive and vibrant community.”

The projects director form East Devon’s Growth point wrote:

“You have played a pivotal role in helping to ensure that Cranbrook is not just a collection of houses in a field but has developed as a genuine community.”

The head from the Primary said:

“The school has worked closely with Mark and the impact of this work (and the school’s own strong Christian identity) is evidenced in the culture of the school, the opportunities the children have to engage in whole school and class-based collective worship and in the opportunities children are given to respond to experiences they have.  The school is inclusive of ‘all faiths and none’ and sees its role as ‘opening the door to worship’ for the children and their parents.  The school’s Christian identity is clearly identifiable and provides the bedrock for the school’s philosophy and practice to grow; a philosophy and practice of love, inclusivity, warmth and respect.”

Finally the Project manager for Cranbrook recently wrote:

“With a little reflection, I'd like to take a moment to note what a remarkable journey it has been … and how it is evident that the a burgeoning physical development of Cranbrook is truly being matched in equal if not greater measure by the ever growing vibrant and vital community within the new town. It must be said that we truly respect and value your remarkable skills and endeavours and not least for the link function that you provide between the Developers and the Community; it’s always good to talk and the two-way dialogue that we have certainly enables the Consortium to gain an understanding of views and opinions within the community and, where we can, to enable us to respond to that through partnership working.   So, it goes without saying that we hope and trust that for many, many years to come you will continue to play a key role in the development of Cranbrook as a new Community”

I am a little embarrassed by these comments and incredibly humbled but I wanted you, the people who have encouraged, supported, prayed and resourced me to see the fruit that has come from the vision of the church to get involved more than 12 years ago.

Harvest was the place I started and Harvest is where I will conclude with this letter. In Luke’s Gospel Chapter 10, verse 2 Jesus speaks to his disciples and says: "The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field”.

I have now been working in Cranbrook for two years, it is not always easy, but I love what I do and believe with all my heart that God is in it. There are so many opportunities here to be ‘church’ in a completely new way and to encounter ‘gospel – good news’ in ways that I had never dreamed of – yet at the core there are a very few of us, and many at the very start of their Christian journey. A number of Christian families have, understandably, continued to go to their existing churches in Exeter (while being wholeheartedly supportive of what we are doing), where their families and friends and familiar patterns of worship are. That has left us a little short of workers – might I ask you to continue to support the work that has been started here by praying for some more workers, called to serve in this amazing place.

So I will end with Lillie and pray that people will continue to be drawn into a deeper understanding of their worth in the eyes of God, that they will learn to dance and sing and delight in who they are, the way that they were created to be, and that their songs will be included and joined with the songs of others as we continue to learn what it means to be children of God, wherever we are.