[ hold :: this space ]

I talked about this briefly in a recent post, but i didn’t want it to get lost … Proost have released an amazing collection of movies and music based around the traditional service of 9 lessons and carols for advent and christmas. It’s a whole christmas service, and it costs less than A$25 to download! [Mike and I made one of the movies for it, using the amazing photography of Zoriah]

Of course, if you subscribe to Proost [and you're mad if you don't] it comes as part of the package… I mentioned in a recent post that I start worship planning by stealing from elsewhere - Proost is one of the best sources around of inspiration, imagination and creativity for worship. An annual subscription costs around A$150, and gives access to downloadable books, movies and music. It’s seriously good value.

The context and intro to this worship can be found here
The gathering and station 1 can be found here
Stations 2 and 3 can be found here.

Station 4

The table was laid out with a bowl of tiny kewpie dolls…

Advent can be cruel

for anyone who has longed for a pregnancy
– real or metaphorical –
who waits for the empty space inside them
to be filled with a gift of life;

for anyone who has watched hope be crushed by life’s fragility;

for anyone who has winced at the repetition of proclamations of hope, joy, love and peace, because they know there is simply none to be found…

If it takes all your faith to simply survive advent,
join your prayer to those throughout time
and throughout the world
who despair at hope’s promise.

Take a baby,
hold it in your hand

make your prayer of protest
or your prayer for peace.

If you would like to leave that here, then place the baby in the bowl

If you aren’t ready to leave it, take the baby with you.

Station 5

This wasn’t really a station - we just invited everyone to gather back and talk to one other person, asking the question ‘if Advent is a time of possibility, what is the realisation that would make it momentous for you? What do you most hope for, this advent’. [I don't normally do conversation stuff in worship, but this is a group who know each other and seemed relaxed enough around each other for it to be useful]

Blessing

The world has given up hoping
and maybe we have too.

In this advent
be blessed with courage to hear the call of faith -

to believe that love is being shaped right now
in the womb-space of a waiting world

and to live as though the miracle of hope’s birth
is waiting only for our yes

The context and intro to this worship can be found here
The gathering and station 1 can be found here

Station 2

The space was laid out with magnetic poetry and two readings: morning sickness [a pre-magnificat] and the magnificat from Luke’s Gospel.

Read the two poems:
one biblical, one not -
both faithful.

Is your waiting today
wrapped with fear?

Is your waiting today
coloured with gratitude?

Wait in the space for your prayer to come to you,
and if the words are on the table, write your prayer here.

Station 3

I looped the Isaiah 11 movie that Mike and I made as part of the Proost Nine collection [go buy the collection! it's wonderful]

The table was laid out with copies of Isaiah 11, newspapers, and prints of stories from the last few days, made with this program that makes prints look like polaroids, which fits nicely with the movie…

The world seems anything but fertile.
Instead of being shaped by hope
we are defined by fear
paralysed by dread
and so filled with guilt

we have no space within us
to live with the risk of faith.

It takes courage to believe
the world is fertile space
ready for hope to be planted
for justice to be harvested
for compassion and peace to be born

it takes faith to believe the divine can live amongst us again…
and that we will recognise it
it takes faith to pray for justice, peace, compassion, hope…
and it takes great courage to live them in spite of the risks.

What is the impossible dream you dare to pray for the world this Christmas? Write it onto a picture frame…

an intro to this worship can be found here

Gathering

As people gathered, we had a clip looping of a baby in-utero, taken from the BBC series The Human Body, with the vocal track from Lamb’s ‘Heaven’ playing over the top [Craig Mitchell sent me the vocal track a couple of years ago. I don't know where he got it, but i'm really grateful! I've used it over and over]

Advent is a pregnant pause in our year
a moment of focussing our attention again
on the promise of love
and the struggle to wait for the promise to be given birth…

Station 1

The last scenes from Children of Men were playing, space was laid out with a pile of white cheesecloth fabric… and these words:

The film ‘Children of Men’ is set in 2027, 18 years after the birth of the last baby in the world. Without children, the world has no reason to hope; without hope the world has turned to anarchy.

And then, by miracle, a baby is born.

For those who have never heard a baby cry, never known the promise of hope, peace becomes a possibility. It becomes worth living for.

It’s enough to bring the world to its knees.

If we dare to let go of the nostalgia of the Christmas story…
if we dare to let the promise, and the birth, of Jesus be an intensely political act
- the presence of hope in conflict, the transformation of systems that oppress and powers that destroy -

if we dare to let the truth of this story be as fragile as a baby, carried through battle-torn streets

will the birth of Jesus again be able to offer hope to the world?

and then these instructions:

If this is a truth to which you can say ‘yes’
rip a piece of the cloth to take with you.

Carry it in your pocket through this advent.

I was in Benalla yesterday, a country town a few hours north of Melbourne. I was leading worship for a group at the Uniting Church last night, and then staying for dinner and a conversation. It’s not the sort of gig I normally do, but Benalla has a fabulous art gallery, I like the people i know from Benalla, and every now and again it’s good to get out of Melbourne…

The reason I don’t do this very often is that it’s a really artificial way to work with a group of people. As I said to the group last night, I do this for a living, it’s my obsession. I have access to a stack of resources, and i’ve learnt to use them. I’m also good at making worship work - but i got good at it through years of being mediocre. I started - like most people - by stealing ideas, then tweaking them a little, and then having the courage to do stuff on my own. Sometimes - quite often, in fact - i do stuff that’s crap, just rarely at places like Benalla. It’s a fine line between offering something that will be inspirational, and offering something that’s intimidating.

Anyway… after taste-testing themes for weeks, going through the normal ‘i’ve had my last idea ever’ dramas [yes, the people who love me are very patient], something finally came together last week. I was thinking about advent being the time of waiting - a pregnant moment - so I took the definitions of the word ‘pregnant’ from the dictionary and made stations for each of them. It would work really well as a straight service, split into five sections, rather than stations, but when it’s just me leading stuff it’s much easier to set up stations.

I’ll put the stations up in the next post. I’m anxious about posting them - pregnancy and birth are such raw topics to use in public worship. I try to be so careful with this, and I still get it very wrong. I did something last week that really hurt someone - it was absolutely unintentional [which they knew, but it doesn't make it any easier]; a confluence of events where some language and imagery we were using hit a very raw nerve. I understand much more now why people avoid doing things that connect to personal issues in worship. I’m pretty tempted to do so myself. We hold such power, doing things like this, and the invitation to vulnerability can come at a great cost.

The world has given up hoping
and maybe we have too.

In this advent
be blessed with courage to hear the call of faith -

to believe that love is being shaped right now
in the womb-space of a waiting world

and to live as though the miracle of its birth
is waiting only for our ‘yes’.

[a teaser for worship in Benalla next weekend, heading into advent... the theme is 'a pregnant pause']

we are tempted to think
that this is out of character for you

a momentary fragility
[showing your tender side]

that once the christmas carols are finished
and the decorations are put away,
you’ll get back to power and might.

but in your completeness -
this one chance we get to see flesh and bone
put onto the theory -
this is you:
fragile,
impossibly vulnerable
and at the mercy of human response.

so, god,
are you holding your breath too
in this pregnant moment;
waiting to see if we will answer
yes
to the fragile question
of divine love,
if - because - this is all
you can do.

i mentioned in an earlier post that we’re curating a basement space for christmas this year. just to clarify, the space is open to everyone, but I’m not putting details up here because we want to keep track of who’s coming - and we want to send you an invitation in the mail! please email if you’d like one - and if you’ve already emailed, the invitation’s on its way…

And of course, if you’re wanting to be part of creating these spaces, let me know. A group of us meet once a month to have a drink together, and plan the spaces, and there’s always space for another around the table. We’re taking the spaces into another direction next year which is going to be brilliant…

[for a space in Benalla in a couple of weeks... we're going to explore waiting through the characters in the advent story... this will need work if we're going to use it - i like the idea more than the execution]

what was it like for you, god,
when you were waiting for your child to be born?

did you like awake at night
overawed by the miracle of life,
overwhelmed by what was to come?

did you wonder if you were up to the task -
if you’d know what to do
when he ran away
when he was cheeky or outright rude
when he defied authority

or did you think no child of yours would ever dare behave that way?

did you practice conversations, plan the wisdom you would share?
did you wonder if you’d let him think differently to you?
did you pray for the strength to let him teach you too?

did you despair at the pain your child would be born into
and grieve the limits of your protection?

did the world become infinitely more precious
and overwhelmingly fearsome
all at once?

did you worry you might not love him?
did you wonder how you would be able to ever let him go?

did it change you, god, this waiting?
how are you different because of this birth?

i’m planning some sacred spaces for christmas at the moment, for a variety of contexts and ‘audiences’. today was my big day to make it happen - almost meeting free, working from home, a whole day to get inspired, and pull it together. It’s 3.30 and all i have is a dozen less ideas than i did at this time yesterday. luckily, i know it’s like this every christmas, so i’m not panicked. though maybe i need the panic. either that or gin.

and instead of being a place where we talk about these things, describe them so you don’t miss them when they happen, it would be nice if it was a place to encounter these things, so we go away different… so i started thinking about the wishlist, what i really wanted for christmas… in a space, and really, just in general…

light
a moment of knowing that this night is not all there is
and not all there will be

hope
an encounter with the kind of hope that captivates our imagination
so we can’t help but become more than who we thought we were,
and find ourselves living for something that is all at once
preposterous and impossible

peace
- world peace -
predictable, i guess, and unlikely
so perhaps a smaller moment would do
- just a sign that we want war to stop enough
to relinquish the satisfaction of the moral high ground
to give up our easy stereotypes and caricatures
of nations and people

[to know that any label
Israeli
or Palestinian
Iraqi
Muslim
Jew
Christian
witch
gay
straight
paedophile
murderer
evangelical
liberal
progressive
is never enough
to do justice to anyone

but i digress]

joy
to experience a moment it’s real,
when the theory becomes sacrament,
where we wonder what just happened then…

[That’s all i want for christmas

though i acknowledge
that i’d be happy to settle for less
like those earrings with the origami birds, a le creuset casserole, or the new augie march cd

and perhaps therein lies the problem…]