>The colour of training and a bit of juggling

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>Tim Ling uncovered this for a recent conference:
Reed Learning asked its course delegates “what colour is training?”
Replies: green 44%, blue 18%, yellow 11%, red 10%, black! 5% & pink 5%
Fascinating insight or utter nonsense?
Well – some would describe green as the colour of growth, development and transformation. It is also thought to stimulate new ideas and change.

In the meantime, here’s something to do while listening to your ipod – especially if you love the Beatles. You will need balls and it will intrigue passers-by.

Paco forgiven

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Madrid is full of boys named Paco, which is diminutive for the name Francisco, and there is a Madrid joke about a father who came to Madrid and inserted an advertisement in the personal columns of El Liberal which said: PACO MEET ME AT THE HOTEL MONTANA NOON TUESDAY ALL IS FORGIVEN PAPA and how a squadron of Guardia Civil had to be called out to disperse the eight hundred young men who answerd the advertisement.

So begins Ernest Hemingway’s short story “The Capital of the World”

>A time forgiving

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>Red is the colour of Christmas.

I was supposed to have assembled an advent wreath for my wife’s school last night. It comes to her going this morning – no advent wreath, and the search for candles begins. “You need red candles” says I. “Why?” says she. Because …. the holly (crown of thorns) bears a berry as red as any blood thinks I as I hastily assemble the case for RED. And then there’s the robin’s red breast of the Christmas card, the poinsettias – and the awareness that Chrismas marks a time – let’s run the two words together – forgiving.

Miroslav Volf tells the story of his parents’ forgiveness for the soldier and the childminder who caused the death of Miroslav’s five year old brother, Daniel. He had slipped out under the nanny’s guard to go and play with the real soldiers of the nearby barracks. The bored soldiers welcoomed the diversion of their playmate. One of them put Daniel on a horse drawn bread wagon. As they went through a gate on a bumpy cobblestone road, Daniel leaned sideways and his head got stuck between the gatepost and the wagon. Daniel died on the way to hospital. Both parents forgave the child minder and the soldier. Why? “Because the Word of God tells us to forgive as God in Christ has forgiven us, and so we decided to forgive” said his parents. Human history is adorned by heroes like these people who say that enough is enough, and who, inspired by Jesus’s forgiveness, find themselves able to forgive. Miroslav’s father said: “why should one more mother be plunged into grief, this time because of the loss of her son, a good boy, but careless in a crucial moment …?”

Red is the colour of a time forgiving.

>Now this is beginning to look like Christmas

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>It will be difficult for the media to find room in their schedules for the “true meaning of Christmas”, but stuck in a media backwater – the media backwater equivalent of downtown Bethlehem – is a prizewinning film by Macclesfield Vicar and cartoonist, Taffy Davies. It’s worth a look at what he has managed to convey in a 60 second film, though I have to confess a preference for the first draft.

I was at a preaching workshop with taffy a few weeks ago. We heard Bishop Keith Sinclair telling us how he writes Sunday’s readings out in longhand as part of his sermon preparation – after that he often gets his moment of inspiration. Taking the story into a new medium (writing it rather than reading it) helps us to see new meaning.

Advent and the adult Christ

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It is an adult Christ that the community encounters during the Advent and Christmas cycles of Sunday and feasts: a Risen Lord who invites sinful people to become the church. Christmas does not ask us to pretend we were back in Bethlehem, kneeling before a crib; it asks us to recognize that the wood of the crib became the wood of the cross.

—Nathan Mitchel, quoted in, LITURGY WITH STYLE AND GRACE by Gabe Huck and Gerald T. Chinchar. (Archdiocese of Chicago, Liturgy Training Publications, 1998, page 97. Paper, ISBN 1-56854-186-4 in Preachers’ Exchange

>Asda Christmas Protest

David Herbert4 Comments

>That bloody Asda advert! It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. (Health warning – please only open this link to the advert if you are happy to go nuts!)
Actually it looks like they are trying to sell a Christmas survival kit. You’ll get through it with smiles, stuffing and silly hats. The Christmas adverts for Iceland, Tesco, M&S are all like a bushwacker trial – fingers down throat – is that Christmas? “I’m a Vicar get me out of here”.
I have started a petition to protest – where are the dark clouds, where’s the light shining in the darkness, where’s the young pregnant girl, where are the crowded streets, where’s the baby?
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Oh no it’s not!

Franciscan Benediction

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May God bless you with DISCOMFORT …
At easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships,
So that you may live deep within your heart.
May God bless you with ANGER …
At injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people,
So that you may work for justice, freedom, and peace.
May God bless you with TEARS …
To shed for those who suffer from pain,
rejection, starvation and war.
So that you may reach out your hand to comfort them
And to turn their pain into JOY.
And may God bless you with enough FOOLISHNESS…
To believe that you can make a difference in this world,
So that you can DO what others claim cannot be done. Amen
A Franciscan Benediction

Leonard Cohen and his band of angels

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At last we see Leonard Cohen – a brilliant concert at the NEC in Birmingham. Jeanette and I both commented on his music being a strong thread through our lives.

Fantastic band of musicians, The audience was spell bound at the end by the singing of the “sublime” Webb Sisters (pictured above) singing “If it be your will”. Here it is – beautiful.

The concert led me to think of this all as a sign of heaven – I mean the band playing together, round one another, giving way to one another, respecting one another – producing harmony in spite of the underlying knowledge shared by LC that there is no such thing as “our perfect offering“.

And on the other hand, I am preparing for our “patronal festival” – church dedicated to St Andrew – and wonder why we use individuals so much as our “icons” of God, instead of community, band, group, family and Trinity. In that case, I wonder what communities (or what sort of communities)become the windows for seeing God’s love. Is it the local church, the communities of reconciliation? Is it the bands of artists who play together, the teams of scientists who work together and the local Christians who pray together?

How about this:

I am so often accused of gloominess and melancholy. And I think I’m probably the most cheerful man around. I don’t consider myself a pessimist at all. I think of a pessimist as someone who is waiting for it to rain. And I feel completely soaked to the skin. … I think those descriptions of me are quite inappropriate to the gravity of the predicament that faces us all. I’ve always been free from hope. It’s never been one of my great solaces. I feel that more and more we’re invited to make ourselves strong and cheerful. …. I think that it was Ben Johnson, I have studied all the theologies and all the philosophies, but cheerfulness keeps breaking through.

Leonard Cohen quoted in “The Joking Troubadour of Gloom” – Telegraph 26th April 1993