Mark Scandrette, originally uploaded by mattfreer.

Really enjoyed the company of Mark Scandrette and family who stayed with us at House244 whilst visiting Oxford at the weekend. They joined us for hOME’s Pentecost service and Mark and Lisa spoke about their community ReImagine in San Fransisco and their involvement with their wider community… incarnational radical presence… inspiring… so much so that I’ve just ordered his book Soul Graffiti.

Boy with the purple hat #1, originally uploaded by Matt & Polly.

I’ve recently been re-reading From Brokenness to Community by Jean Vanier, the founder of L’Arch. It is a great little book based on lectures he gave at Harvard, and is one of the best books I’ve read on the area of community. So I was particularly pleased to hear this weeks Something Understood that looks at Hospitality with a rare interview with Jean Vanier.

You can listen to the programme on the BBC iPlayer for a short time.

The conversation covers a number of things that have been on my mind recently, and which come up in the book. For instance our tendency to always ‘do, do and do’, often as a way to get more power and control, rather than to genuinely help others. In relation to this I was again struck by the notion that it is easier to be the person who is offering the hospitality, than the person receiving hospitality, because of the power gained from offering hospitality.

The importance of listening and of celebrating life together – as well as living day to day in the here and now, are themes that also come up in the programme, and the book… not bad for a 30 minute radio programme and a 50 page book!

“We all know well that we can do things for others and in the process crush them, making them feel that they are incapable of doing things by themselves. To love someone is to reveal to them their capacities for life, the light that is shining in them.”

Jean Vanier, From Brokenness to Community

“Our world will only be a place of peace if we listen and understand and are in relation to those that are different.”

Jean Vanier on Something Understood

A while back I finally got round to reading Finding Sanctuary by Abbot Christopher Jamison, the Abbot from Worth Abbey that gained a lot of attention through the BBC TV’s ‘The Monastery’ a few years back. I really enjoyed it and in particular welcomed the chapter on ‘community’, which starts to explore some of what Saint Benedict had to say on the subject. As a result I’ve also started reading further into the Rule of Saint Benedict (having read Abbot Christopher’s new book Finding Happiness and started the Rule of Benedict by Joan D. Chittister) and I’m finding it really helpful in thinking through the whole area of how we endeavour to ‘live intentionally in community.’

In Finding Sanctuary, Abbot Christopher talks of the way Benedict wanted community to be where people can express individuality rather than individualism: “Individualism is simply doing your own thing in your own way and blanking out the other people. Individuality involves bringing your particular contribution to bear on the life of the community…” I have found this a really helpful way to look at the life of community in tension to our culture of ‘me, my and I’.

He also talks of the importance of a rule for community – because it provides an agreed way of doing things, and as a result people know what to expect and what is expected of them, which leads to, “community life sustain[ing] good conversations by encouraging it and contain[ing] good conversation by setting boundaries.” Finally he explains how Benedict put the structures of the rule in place through ritual: “Small rituals can transform ordinary events into powerful ways to build community.”

These points, of rule, structure and ritual, are often seen in the negative by society at large, and yet increasingly I am seeing the liberating role they play in the lives of many, particularly, in monastic communities. A recent example of this was whilst staying at a Franciscan monastery, where I was struck by the rule of silence that was practiced for the majority of each day which enabled the monks to communicate much more efficiently and clearly than most of us stuck in the rule of noise, and also freed them from the need for constant noise amongst themselves.

At House244 we are just starting to work through some of these issues of role, responsibility and leadership – and I’m finding lessons from our monastic relatives really helpful.

Whilst working for CMS I was involved in getting a long awaited resource called 21M finished, and it is now available…

21M is an eight-part DVD resource that explores the Five Marks of Mission, which were produced by the Anglican church to help give a broad understanding of ‘mission’. Others might talk of integral mission or holistic mission. I have some questions about the language of the Five Marks (which I will blog about at another time), but overall they are a helpful tool for a deeper understanding and practice of what the church calls ‘mission’… and hopefully 21M will be a useful resource that enables churches and groups to explore them.

21M aims to inspire churches and groups into action. It uses group activities and games, Bible studies, interviews with current thinkers and practitioners, and examples from around the world to explore the Marks of Mission in some depth. It’s designed to be a flexible resource, but is structured as an eight-week course that could be used by cell and home groups, youth groups (aged 14+), lent groups, and whole churches. Elements of the course could be used alone to explore particular areas of mission. The DVD comes with an in-depth Leader’s Guide attached. Further information is at: www.cms-uk.org/21m

The normal selling price of 21M is £14.95, but apparently it is currently at an introductory offer of £4.95 at the CMS online shop.

I’ve been trying to blog about The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical by Shane Claiborne for a while now… but somehow every time I think about it I can never really sum it up. But that is probably because it is such a simple book about the story of a community of hopefuls just getting on and doing what they feel we are called to do. It’s not complicated… in fact it’s beautifully simplistic. Some people will look at Shane and his fellow Simple Way members and see a naive bunch of optimists… and there were times when reading it that I found myself muttering ‘yeah but it isn’t as easy as that’ and ‘oh come on get real’… But deep down I know these guys have got what I want… that naive faith that makes things possible. I look at them and see a group of people attempting to live the way of Jesus. Not letting the ‘whys’ and ‘what’s’ bog them down, and doing all they can to break down the barriers and obstacles our (western) society has erected to ‘protect’ and ‘comfort’ us.

There is a real danger (which Shane readily admits) that he becomes the ‘pin-up boy of social justice’ and a brand that people embrace but do nothing about (the church is good at saying ‘yeah we do that stuff look here’s our example in action’)… but that would be missing the point completely… the way of this book, and Shane’s example, is all in the practice, and it’s good to see (from what he says in the book and what I hear from others who know him) that Shane isn’t naive enough to fall for the old ‘fame and fortune’ trick, but, thankfully, neither is he letting that potential danger stop him from being a prophetic voice today… It is a great easy read – and Shane is an inspirational writer… so get the book (or the CD version)… and let it inspire and challenge you in The [simple] Way… or you could even go and hear him in person this week (sadly I can’t make it).

We are not a neo-denomination, because we are trying to spread a model of community. We are just trying to discover a new (ancient) kind of Christianity. We are about spreading a way of life that exists organically and relationally and is marked by such a brilliant love and grace that no one could resist it… Over and over, we hear, “I knew there was more to Christianity.” We are waking up. What seemed impossible is becoming normal.

Shane Claiborne, The Irresistible Revolution

I suffered from a post-viral fatigue illness for a number of years and despite many visits to many doctors I got very little helpful medical advice about what I could do to get better. With no quick fix and no drug that can be prescribed, doctors often just don’t know what to do… and as a result you quickly become a pain and inconvenience. A couple of doctors, however, were helpful, and one in particular advised me to take cold baths every morning… So before work each morning I would lower myself into a cold bath, gradually, over some weeks, decreasing the temperature and increasing the time spent in it… and it really helped!

All those cold baths took me back to the invigorating dips of my youth in the Cornish sea… rekindling a love for taking a bracing dip when you can. Whilst living in Devon Black Pool Sands and the Dart on Dartmoor were favourite spots, and in Zambia we managed river swimming at the Mutinondo Wilderness… so I was excited to see recently that the people behind the Cool Camping book guides were bringing out Wild Swimming: 150 Hidden Dips in the Rivers, Lakes and Waterfalls of Britain… and I quickly ordered it. It arrived this week, and it’s great – a photo-guide to 150 magical looking freshwater swims across England, Scotland and Wales. Maps and details of how to find the 150 spots… there’s even a few local to Oxford… as well as advice about how to stay safe, how to do go canoe camping, and even how to make your own riverside sauna!… I’m looking forward to the summer and trying to find a few of the spots!

George Bernard Shaw, Benjamin Britten, Charles Darwin and Florence Nightingale were all advocates of regular cold baths to strengthen the mental constitution and physical state. Cold immersion soothes muscle aches, relieves depression and boosts the immune system… The long-term impacts are also well researched: NASA studies have shown that, over a 12 week period, repeated cold swimming leads to substantial bodily changes known as ‘cold adaptation’. These bring down blood pressure and cholesterol, reduce fat disposition, inhibit blood clotting and increase fertility and libido…

From the introduction, Wild Swimming by Daniel Start

The book, Wild Swimming, is by Daniel Start, and available from Amazon, Abebooks & the publishers.

There is also a Wild Swimming website which has highlights from the book, as well as a regional interactive maps of the spots in the book and, with time, readers recommendations… in fact if you don’t want to buy the book the website gives you nearly all the info from it.

I recently borrowed Blood River: A Journey to Africa’s Broken Heart by Tim Butcher from the Crowther Centre at CMS – it’s a great read and I flew through and have been meaning to mention it for a while…

The book follows Tim Butcher as he attempts to retrace the steps of Henry Morton Stanley across central Africa as he ‘discovered’ the source of the mysterious central Africa river that had it’s mouth on the West coast. After a few years of reading up on Stanleys journey, Butcher attempts to follow the footsteps of his expedition of the 1870’s where they tried to chart what we now know as the Congo River.

It is a well written page turner, giving interesting insights into the history of central Africa. Butcher starts his journey in Lubumbashi, the capital of Congo’s mining of copper and cobalt that is just over the border from where we lived in Zambia – and in so doing he describes well the many issues of the lucrative trade in metals, and inparticular the complex and colourful relationships this trade has with foreign investment and mining companies. In this way the book helps open up the complex and often sad relationship Congo has with it’s natural resources and export trade, uncovering the massive influence of China, as well as unscrupulous local politicians and business men.

Butcher weaves in tales and stories of people he meets along his way, and describes the many skeletons of industry and trade that he finds along this once thriving river. But sadly that is where he usually stops… everything he sees and describes is on the whole in the negative. Congo is described as a land where things once momentarily thrived under the Belgians and then came crashing down after independence. In ways this may be the reality, but it is surely only part of the story…

There are a few glimmers positive stories on the ground as he recounts meetings with people along the way – one of which is with CMS worker Louise Wright – but overall his description of Congo leaves a negative taste in the mouth and sadly fulfills many people’s negative perceptions of a helpless and hopeless Congo, and Africa more generally. Perhaps the negative were the only things the author saw on what in reality was a whistle-stop tour of a part of Africa not generally open to outsiders… but there in lies the reality of this book… it is a well written enjoyable book by a white Brit flying through a land he has read a lot about, but hasn’t really got the time to get to know. It thereby becomes another book on Africa written from an outsiders perspective… which fulfils the stereotypical view of a hopeless continent… and sadly seems unable/unwilling to spend time with the Congolese he meets and learn from them, and share their story.

It wasn’t until I finished reading the book that I read the authors blog and discovered it had recently been put on the Richard and Judy Best Read of the Year shortlist… needless to say a few weeks later it is number 1 in the non-fiction bestsellers and you’ll currently see it in every bookshop window!

Update: Good to see a more positive first hand account on life in Congo from Louise Wright on the CMS website – and she seems to agree with my thoughts on the book:

“Read it – but don’t be depressed about Congo,” she urges. Butcher’s view of the country is that it is “Africa’s broken heart”. “It is quite true what he says, that you go to a place and they’ll show you this was the post office, this used to be the bank, there used to be a ferry across the river here. All these things are true – but they haven’t left people depressed the way he gives the picture…

“People are immensely full of initiative and doing amazing things to survive. People are extremely energetic and positive. The boys in Kalima are always digging up tin – they pack it into sacks and get it out and get their money and get things in to sell. There’s constantly great enterprise – brilliant schemes for making money and making do and find clever ways out of things. I think that sort of creativity and imagination, perhaps [Butcher] didn’t see as much as I do.”

Over the past 4 or 5 months we have both been reading Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture by Michael Frost – another good book that we’d recommend. In a nutshell the book explores ways of being church, or communitas, in a post-Christendom western-culture dominated by consumerism, isolation and indifference, where the church too often harks back to the ‘good old days’.

Frost talks of ‘exiles’ that have left ‘the church’ out of frustration and boredom and are heading out into what he calls the third places of their communities instead (the 1st place being our home, the 2nd our work, and the 3rd, increasingly in the West, often being bars/cafes or I think they could be social/interest groups, yet for Christians the 3rd place is usually restricted to ‘church’):

“Exiles have figured out that churches don’t value people who won’t turn up for every meeting, attend every event, and locate all their significant friendships within the congregation. They have decided to slip away from the ever-spiralling vortex of so-called Christian fellowship. It sucks you in demanding everything of you, leaving you completely socially disconnected from your neighbours, your community. And it won’t be appeased by a half-hearted allegiance. It demands your all, always… Exiles, having read the dangerous stories of Jesus, have decided that the best way to do the Lord’s work is to follow him out into the third places in their community.”

The strongest theme of the book for us explored what it would mean for these exiles to live missionally in a host empire. Frost advocates the ideas of communitas – an intense community spirit, the feeling of great social equality, solidarity, and togetherness – and liminality as ways forward. Alan Hirsch (who co-wrote The Shaping of Things to Come with Micahel Frost, and whose book The Forgotten Ways apparently explores these ideas further) says:

“…the related ideas of liminality and communitas describe the dynamics of the Christian community inspired to overcome their instincts to “huddle and cuddle” and to instead form themselves around a common mission that calls them on a dangerous journey to unknown places – a mission that calls the church to shake off it’s collective securities and to plunge into the world of action, where its members will experience disorientation and marginalization but also where they encounter God and each other in a new way”

The first two sections of Exiles (Dangerous Memories and Dangerous Promises) are the strongest, but later, in the final part (Dangerous Songs), Frost also helpfully tackles the issues of ‘Exiles at the Altar’, speaking out against what can probably be best summed up by the ‘My Jesus, My Boyfriend’ phenomenon of modern worship, and questions the modern church service in a broader context.

Exiles is a book well worth exploring – especially for those wanting to journey into church at the edge and explore emerging ideas of being missional in a post-Christendom culture.

We mentioned The Secret Message of Jesus by Brian McLaren whilst in the UK but until now haven’t had the chance to actually explain much about it. Brian McLaren is a church leader who has written a number of books and is a significant voice in the EmergingChurch movement, particularly in the USA. In The Secret Message of Jesus he looks at Jesus’ message afresh – asking whether the church has misunderstood, or distorted, his message.

“what if Christians were (un)willing to consider the possibility that they have more to learn (and unlearn) about the message of Jesus?” – Brian McLaren

The book examines the historical Jesus, trying to understand his message in the culture of the time. It covers similar ground seen in N T Wright’s academic works, and also explores similar issues found in Colossians Remixed, which we’ve mentioned before. The Secret Message of Jesus probably doesn’t say much more than others have said, but it says it in a very accessible and easy to read way. McLaren takes in the political, subversive and secretive nature and language of Jesus, and explores what it means to be a member of the Kingdom of God (both at the time and here and now) that Jesus talks about. It is well worth a read.

One of the things that really stood out for me was exploring the language of Jesus and why he spoke in parables – Why did Jesus speak in parables, why was he subtle, indirect and secretive?…..

“Because his message wasn’t merely aimed at conveying information. It sought to precipitate something more important: the spiritual transformation of the hearers. The form of a parable helps to help to shape a heart that is willing to enter an ongoing interactive; persistent relationship of trust in the teacher. It beckons the hearer to explore new territory. It helps form a heart that is humble enough to admit it doesn’t already understand and is thirsty enough to ask questions. In other words, a parable renders its hearers not as experts, not as know-it-alls, not as scholars… but as children.” – Brian McLaren

I was pleased to see that Sacred Rhythms (which we’ve mentioned before) has been updated and revised, now reprinted as GodSpace: Time for Peace in the Rhythms of Life – and Christine Sine has started a blog called GodSpace.

GodSpace… looks at the natural rhythms God built into our world and how paying attention to them can strengthen every part of your life. God’s rhythm makes time for all the good things life offers… as well as the creative activity of work, the joy of relationships, and the soothing relaxation of rest. Follow the sacred rhythms and… discover a peaceful, Christlike pace that liberates you from the frenzy of a culture enslaved by time.