Really good to spend some time last night with the guys from Pompey. Brave Christians of the finest sort: deconstructed everything in order to think and pray carefully about reconstruction. Very generously listened to my ramblings, despite the darts final being on. Exciting times lie ahead I’m sure. Thanks, and welcome anyone who’s having a look after last night.
Comments
5 responses to “Play Up Pompski!”
One question… did you want me to hand around those Bibles with the extra “Kester” Book added on next meeting? And what about those songs “Shine Kester Shine”, and “dana nana nana nana nana nana nana nana Kes-ter” (in Batman theme)?
Seriously, thanks, we will all take the poisen when the meteor arrives, as you outlined on Sunday 😉
(That Komplex enuff for yer old bean!!??)
Not sure where toput this…. reflecting on dirt:
So, Dirt is really about context. What makes an object,action, idea… out of context? Or,the other way around… what is the wrong context for…
When living in Portsea Estate I used to skate to the beach and kneel and paint a circle on the pebbles around me – mirroring (or dirtying) the celtic/bardic practise of laying pebbles on the sand… which you can’t do on SouthSea beach!
I would then pick up my painted (dirtied) stones and carry them back to the Estates. After sunrise, I would kneel in the middle of a road and reassemble my circle (making the road ‘dirty’) while praying.
I have not copywrited this act, do try something similar!
PS. I used to love seeing the confusion people experienced seeing it. And the teenagers never did use the stones to break windows -miracle!
This is definitely ‘dirty’. Taking something out of its ‘clean’ context – prayer, stones, kneeling – forces people to reassess their catagories and boundaries. And is thus re-creative. That moment of confusion is where the energy for learning is created. Love it.
Thought I’d use this space to scrawl….
I hadn’t thought to mention this, but Mr. K-mart, if you listen to the lyrics of System Of A Down’s “Aerials” you find a conversation between the *emergent* and *orthodox* church….
===AERIALS===
Life is a waterfall,
We’re one in the river,
And one again after the fall.
Swimming through the void
We hear the word,
We lost ourselves,
But we find it all?
Cause we are the ones that want to play,
Always want to go,
But you never want to stay,
And we are the ones that want to choose,
Always want to play,
But you never want to lose.
Aerials, in the sky,
When you lose small mind,
You free your life.
Life is a waterfall,
We drink from the river,
Then we turn around and put up our walls.
Swimming through the void
We hear the word,
We lost ourselves,
But we find it all?
Cause we are the ones that want to play,
Always want to go,
But you never want to stay,
And we are the ones that want to choose,
Always want to play,
But you never want to lose.
Aerials, in the sky,
When you lose small mind,
You free your life.
Aerials, so up high,
When you free your eyes,
Eternal prize.
Aerials, in the sky,
When you lose small mind,
You free your life.
Aerials, so up high,
When you free your eyes,
Eternal prize.
===THE END===
Peace out, from dirty-dirty-boy.
A quick bit of thought re: grace, freedom and boundaries…
Aplogies for swears, it’s a diary excerpt.
Grace, despite our better judgment. Grace, despite their ignorance.
What is freedom worth? What restrictions do we place upon freedom?
For the only restriction I see is responsibility for our own actions.
Responsibility cannot be taught, cajoled nor imprinted. Responsibility is our ability to respond.
How do we respond to our freedom? How do we respond to the freedom of others?
How do we protect ourselves from the ways in which the freedom of others impinge upon us?
How do we allow true freedom, but maintain boundaries?
You know what? Fuck this boundaries shit. Every fucking millisecond God lives it with us, letting us fuck it all up cos we aint never gonna learn if we are just told wtf to do. Never. And God is there – freaking out and hurting and loving and giving grace, knowing it is for our ultimate freedom – right there with us. God’s freedom is entwined with our own, maybe.
Will church ever learn this lesson? Seriously, if we are ever gonna truly honour each other as friends, then we free one another to fuck it up and prepare for the consequences, sharing the pain all along. Being like God, being to each other both best friend and most intimate lover – the friend that understands what you must do to be free; the lover that is crushed by the consequences.
Truly unconditional love.
My previous approach was to minimize damage to everyone – not least of all to those of us who would have to pick up the messy pieces – and try and second-guess the future with the Bible, logic and facts. Obviously I am grossly simplifying here. Hello church? Humans don’t need facts, they need humans. Why else is God so fucking unproveable, yet so fucking intimately knowable? Why else did the unseen all-powerful become all-human and killable? Makes you think. Makes you think that the Godliness of God may be directly related to the humanness of Jesus. People say, “the God of the Jews is like almost opposite to the God of the Christians – like from big bad wolf to little lamb chop”. You know what, people are right! God changed. Well, here’s a head fuck for you; maybe God changed when he became human. Maybe experiencing our shit as a shitty little human actually affected the very core of God. Maybe. This is for sure though, I am driven by the humanity of Christ to never again hide from human suffering, from our shared global uniting “poverty”. And I can only do this by the grace of an all-powerful God.
Holiness is not to be striven for, it is to be unlocked. We all know the story of Eden, of how “sin” was imprinted into our DNA because of the type of freedom we chose. Well, at the Cross “holiness” was unlocked for all at a genetic, human level. Buying us a freedom wider than one we could possibly chose for ourselves. In my opinion, if you are striving for holiness, you haven’t suffered enough. Go get fucked up, share in the shit around you, know pain and suffering and you’ll find Jesus and holiness and freedom. This isn’t just about feeding the hungry, visiting prisoners. It’s about boundaries. In our minds, starving with the hungry, shivering with the naked, condemned with the lifers.
Contrary to popular myth, pain and suffering should not lead to the Darkside. Pain and suffering unlock holiness. Pain and suffering lead to personal freedom, and free our fellow travelers on the way.