"Is this really what Jesus told you guys to do?"

I went along to a North Belfast Presbytery service in Carnmoney Presbyterian last night. An eye-shaped building, combining a large (possibly a thousand-seater?) auditorium with the intimacy of a much smaller venue, by virtue of curved rows of seats, and curved, tiered balcony.
I arrived late, and they were already singing. Singing well, actually. The music was not too glitzy, but lively and enticing. I saw a ten-year-old-ish girl dancing along spontaneously.
Isn't this how church should be?
Well, maybe not, actually, though it is far, far better than many less enthusiastic, and unenthusing alternatives. Which leads me to the subject of my recent reading:

Jim & Casper Go To Church: Casper the Atheist is hired by Jim Henderson the White Male American Pastor, to come visit some different churches and receive $25 per visit, in return for his thoughts and impressions. It's an interesting cross-section of church experiences, and should be on the reading list for any seminary. But really the back of the fly-leaf tells the main point: "Is this really what Jesus told you guys to do?"

Now, if that line were to become the test by which church leadership meetings guided their decisions, I wonder what difference it would make...

Feasting on the memory of good things...

In recent days, I've heard myself using that phrase of my mother's: "When it's gone, it's gone." The point was, she couldn't stop us greedily attacking the cake or biscuit tin, to make the contents last a bit longer.

But today I learned that when it's gone, it's still there in our experience. When the farm labourers in county Antrim used to come to work for the season, each day they would be given some basic food: bread, an egg, and a slice of bacon or ham from the pig hung up in the corner.

Eventually the meat would run out, and the workers got bread, and egg, and "point". That is, instead of a slice of bacon, they could point to where the pig used to be.

In these leaner days of January, we could do worse than feast on our memory of good things.

If I remember correctly, in C.S.Lewis' first science fiction novel "Out of the Silent Planet", the extraterrestrial sorns didn't understand the human desire to repeat pleasures. Their practice was to enjoy, and then remember their joys in poetry and song.

It strikes me that the ability to remember, and be satisfied to be glad and grateful, is one of the highest qualities of the best of humans. To sing and make poems seems behaviour specific to humans.

That's not to say that it is our calling to be placid in the face of hunger. But it does strike me that if we in the West could channel less of our energy into more and more consumption, and learn to be content and joyful in the memory and present experience of rich relationships and pleasures, we might rediscover enough humanity to tackle the spiritual and physical greed, oppression and poverty which enslaves our world.

Now, I can see the point in that.

I wonder as I wander

Wondering... As a child, I loved the film, Paint Your Wagon, especially two of its songs: I was born under a Wanderin' Star; and I talk to the trees. Now, rooted in Belfast, my journey is in my mind and outwards to learn to love others - fairly carbon-neutral. I don't know if trees read blogs, but they never listened anyway.

I loved Christmas too, and Christmas carols. I wonder as I wander... I never quite got the hang of "We Three Kings", but kept coming back to look at the Star of Wonder. These ramblings may reflect some of the sparkle of my journey, a pinpoint testimony to a real time and place somewhere in the universe, from which a particular ray of light reached earth, and was noticed by a traveller.

Inspired by the brilliant Truth in Translation at the Lyric theatre in Belfast on Friday night, it's time to put down markers, say where we've been, what we've done, what's been done to us... my own little Truth and Reconciliation Commission, to keep me moving forward and not back, while we find ways of Healing Through Remembering. Maybe when Northern Ireland has done its remembering, we will learn to forgive and receive permission to forget. (Much of this was discussed at the CCCI conference, Divided Past, Shared Future on Saturday.) When we sort ourselves out, we might even start looking at what we're doing to children in Iraq...

Talking of which... I also met Shane Claiborne in Belfast this week, and read The Irresistible Revolution. This guy and his Gospel ring true. There's an integrity and love which resonates with the Gospels' accounts of Jesus. He embodies simplicity, humility, willingness to suffer and take risks in order to follow Jesus. It makes the rest of us uncomfortable. Too much to lose. And too little imagination or faith to see what we might gain... The journey continues...