Look up

A few years ago my pal Si Smith decided to kick about Leeds; 'looking up'... I'm not sure if he was blogging at the time (si do you have a link?) but I remember him showing me some nice sketches he'd done of the interesting architecture found hidden from the social conscious above the blinding shop fronts and SALE signs and posters.  The work ultimately helped to contribute his 'Stations of the ressurection' piece for CPAS


I've been spending time in Colwyn Bay trying to reacquaint myself with the town I spent a lot of my teenage weekends in, skating about on my blades through car-parks and alleyways, trying to find the best jumps and grinds.  When I was a teenager, trying to get served, and trying to meet girls, I certainly didn't spend much time 'looking up'.

Its quite something really around the Bay, this parade above The Prince of Wales reminds me of Chester...

In fact everywhere you look, as long as its not towards the ominous 'bay shopping centre', you get some different style and period, built for purpose, built to last.

I also managed to find time to indulge in one of my favourite pastimes; looking at redundant churches and big old buildings... these two were on my hit list...

How cool is that? its also up for sale at around £120k...  mind you I was also told that the building opposite is the local spiritualist centre... duh duh duuuh!


This one felt somehow less appealing... but still cool...

It got me thinking about getting into some of the spaces if possible... ( a favourite pastime back in Leeds... )
Alan Whitfield sent me a link to some of the places he's been into to photograph, I love the idea of his exhibition on empty spaces which was exhibited inside a current antiques shop...

...and of course my good bud Barnaby Aldrick's Urban explorations around Leeds which included the olympic swimming pool before they were pulled down.

There's something about these buildings that pulls on our guilty subconscious, nagging away at our lack of stewardship, or broken our relationships, or our sense of selling out, or our buckling under the weight of progress.  


Anyway these buildings are beautiful, and I need to make more of an effort to notice them in my day to day, they help us to live a little better somehow, to restore, to regenerate and savour in the light of the new and the prefabricated.  

commissioning

My mother in law referred to it as a coronation, in fact i was being commissioned.  I didn't really sit at ease with the whole idea to be entirely honest, but in fact it grew on me as the ideas for the service evolved.

There was no real way of pleasing everyone, or avoiding some criticism, but overall, once I'd come to land some fixed ideas about how it should feel; it flowed very naturally, and I was really pleased with the service as a whole.

It was jam packed with ideas based around the brokenness from which a pioneer can begin to work out of. I'd been musing on Jonny's blogging on newness all month and remembered this idea of darkness and unknowing, where the pioneer needs to go into that 'liminal' space to which there may not be a definitive end in sight, if at all.  There were ideas of the letting go of a comfortable 'methodical' (crumbs!) church environment to which we have become accustomed, to acknowledging the brokenness we often encounter beneath the surface of the routine. The promise of restoration through the gospel messages, and the hope of newness in breaking the ground and planting a new seed.

It was a challenge to the church in parts, but also a celebration of the arts and thankfully it was a thoroughly multimedia experience. There was a real sense of denominations coming together, and overall I felt encouraged by the people I met throughout the day...  I'm not sure if its really possible to clarify the role of the pioneer in a neat encapsulated way, but it felt to me like I'd managed to provide people with a mental reference point to the kind of thing to expect. It was certainly very different to what people had expected I think, and that seems like a positive thing so far.

The video might give you an idea how the service 'felt', and the reading 'we are creatures of comfort (liminal space)' was written by Jenny Baker

stupidly after the service I asked one chap who was being rather nice and introducing himself to me whether he was into this kind of thing?
'NO! not at all!' he said and wandered off...

an interesting conversation

I was looking for a mirror in the local antique (junk) shops round here...

'do you have a mirror without a frame that I could buy cheap please?'
'whats it for?'
'to smash... for an 'art' project' (lie)

man fumbles around the back of a large display cabinet containing all the knots that the scouts used to have to learn.

'I bought this for a tenner and was going to do it up... but...'
'I'll give you fifteen then...'
'in that case you can have all these other bits back here too...'
'I don't really want them, anyway that would add up to 21 years of bad luck!!' (plays the colloquialism card)
'not if you mean it!'
'really?'
'if you do it by accident then its bad luck, if you do it on purpose then it isn't...'
'that's just as well? i take it it's cash only'
'you can get cashback at the post office'

I walk up to the post office and back...

''So what's this then some kind of art project?'
a moment of temporal blindness ensued as my life's ministerial experience unfolded in a flash in a corner of my brain, all the times I'd covered my intentions with an easy covering story melted into a somehow all empowering knowledge that I was now being paid to tell the Truth...
'I'm a minister and this mirror will be used to translate a message...'
I've no idea why I said that, I've no idea if I am a minister or not? I've no idea what I am, I've no idea what I'm saying, or where I'm going...
'a minister??'
'a minister. A Methodist minister??! (blimey nora)  we'll get everyone to write everything they hold dear about the church on this mirror and then smash it up...'
The antique dealer didn't miss a beat...
'You'll never believe it but I just threw away about ten old pictures of Conwy Methodist Ministers from the 1850's, they came in frames which I was interested in, and I think we binned the pictures. Believe it, I should never throw anything away... they all looked like hippies too...' nods my way...
'that was around the time of great welsh revival in these parts'
'well here's a story, my partner, she lives in the actual house that the guy who started that revival was born in. He went of to America and came back and started preaching in the local churches'
'He (Evan Thomas) preached in a call to action revival style.  He asked people to make a commitment in their hearts and come to the front by way of recognition and affirmation through witness of that commitment. It brought whole communities to turn to the church and to accept God as their saviour...'
'well there was all sorts of strange goings on at that place, there was a ghostly spirit, which used to move the workmens' tools about the place.  One time a man's tools we moved to the windowsill on the other side of a room across a wet cement floor... no one knew how that happened...'
'perhaps it was the great wars that ended the whole thing?'
'you look very young to be a minister if you don't mind my asking your age?'
'I'm 32.'
'blimey, well I'm a Catholic... non practising of course... if you come in here on a saturday you'll meet my mrs and she'll tell you all about it; the house and everything else...'
'could I get a receipt for these mirrors please, do you mind?'

------------

I could go on and on about this tale, but I won't. All I'll say is that in my searchings for the roots (radicals) of the welsh revivals, and in a mental plotting and landmarking of the history of the methodist church in wales; I seem to be stumbling upon some interesting tales and urban legends left over in the swirling remnants of an ancient culture's memory. 

There's something of a spiritual story in the everyday, the day to day, and the 'by the way', there's a glimpse of life in the seemingly hidden; beneath the surface of the now accustomary catatonic glaze of consumerist brainwash; deep and dying in the confusions of a lost language and buried tradition, there's a yearning for a spark of explorative initiative and an intrigue into 'what lies beneath' the boarded up spiritual chasm left dormant inside every one of us.

I'll probably go along again to that shop on saturday...

first week

I had a great day on tuesday:

I met with Alan Whitfield, who I'd blogged about here and who was kind enough to give me some time.
We had plenty to chat about and I also learned that he's a youth officer in the bay too. We talked about making videos, exhibitions, camera groups, future blinc events, colwyn bay, prophetic art, local art scene, pioneering church, etc etc...

In the aft was a fairly heavy Link-International trustee meeting

In the eve I headed over to Abergele for the first greenhouse collective meeting for people interested in social entrepreneurship in the North Wales area... I met with Jay Butters, and had an inspirational conversation about boomeranging and the idea of the spirit 'within the gathering'... And also caught up with Ruth Cole who runs soup and food kitchens for the homeless throughout Rhyl, the bay and Caernarfon from what I could gather.  It seemed like a most excellent rootsy project which I hope to get chance to visit in the coming weeks... Also in conversations: colwyn bay pier, alternative church, pioneering, ymuno festival, coffee campervans, bothy (in brief), grapes and art in worship...

I had a rubbish day on weds as I didn't sleep until 3am and as a result missed my train to 6.30am train to Oxford cms training... I spent the day trying to imagine the days course from home and attempting to get train tickets refunded...

the calorimetry of consumption

I just managed to catch damien hirst's exhibition at leeds gallery last month thanks to a last minute under the radar fly-through. I'm more than happy i did... totally inspirational! I don't know if he (hirst) does it for you, but for me he's bang on the money, although often not quite as interactive I'd really like, he never seems to lack being able impact deeply on my senses...

For me this wall paper from the 'pharmacy restaurant', a previous and now reincarnated installation from the late 90's, is the stand-out piece as it shouts wildly at my quest for artistic theological reflection, challenging me to engage and refusing to slip my memory...  It shows various pills, solutions and remedies each rebranded with title of an old testament story... Talk about kwik fix yerself religion!  If I get the umption I'll try and reflect fully on this in a later blog, the only problem is I can't seem to get a decent sharp copy of the image anywhere... help!

I circled this sculpture several times; enchanted by her beauty I made surreptitious mental notes under the disturbing scrutiny of the leeds gallery security guard... At around 8 foot I was captivated for a good ten minutes... Hirst's angel seemed to have a lot of human bits inside...

There was the usual innocent and helpless mammal frozen in formaldehyde... I wish it were a lamb...

And a splendid collection of anatomy...

Profound and provocative would set the scene, but I find hirst more than helpful to lead my reflections on the human state, and indeed a place to start my mental act of worship.  He systematically takes on the dark inner, that banality of desire, the calorimetry of consumption... each a day to day experience yet all issues so often ignored by the church...  If we are to attempt to address the pain of real life through the arts then here lies the benchmark.


The arts has all the creativity in the world to offer the church, and the church has the audience required for the arts;

   for me the two should indeed be at one.  The artist to encourage the difficult question, the congregation to address it's own brokenness, each individual at their own pace through a spirit guided sense of reciprocity.   The priest's role is to introduce one to the other, and to invite God into the mix.

Here in my communities I feel my challenge is to build up facilities capable of performing such a function... if you like we can call it church... I have a few other names for it but that's another blog for another time...

day 1 stuff...

Its day one stuff over here today... after a couple of weeks of avid suspense; we finally managed to get a start date landed for my new post.  Most of this was achieved by the tireless efforts of my new boss Cris.

So today is the day! I'm at my desk, like I am every other day, but today feels different, I'm in full-time employment by a large organisation, and I'm back on the payroll after some 6 years!

goodness!