Source

My mind was called across the years
Of rages and of strife
Of all the human misery
And all the waste of life

We wondered where our God was
In the face of so much pain
I looked up to the stars above
To find you once again

We travelled the wide oceans
Heard many call your name
With sword and gun and hatred
It all seemed much the same

Some used your name for glory
Some used it for their gain
Yet when liberty lay wanting
No lives were lost in vain

Is it not our place to wonder
As the sky does weep with tears
And all the living creatures
Look on with mortal fear
(Beneath A Phrygian Sky: Loreena McKennitt)


A disciple asked his guru, 'How am i to attain peace when there is so much noise around this village? Every time I try to meditate, there's a rooster crowing or a child crying or a dog barking. I can't concentrate on my prayers.' The guru said nothing but took the man by the hand and led him into the forest. They walked for some time until they came across a small pool. It was a windy day and the surface of the pond had become choppy.

'What do you see in the pool?' the guru asked. 'It is troubled,' replied the disciple. His master then bid him dive into the pool, to the bottom. When he emerged from the water, his master asked him again what he saw in the pool. 'It is still and deep,' the man answered. 'So then,' said the master, 'you must learn how to pray from the water.'

Euphoria collides....

You know, words are elusive in the aftermath of such beauty. Moments of transcendance are now filtered by the everyday mundane - the juxtaposition of life I guess. Father O'Donohue once told me that the duty of maturity is to awaken one's mind and bring it home; he said that too many neglect their minds and so never awaken their hearts. I guess Greenbelt is such a waking bed, a place, an arena where we come back to the harbour of ourselves and ask who we are becoming. So often we are on the run from ourselves. Maybe if we were to sit down and travel to the heart of our own darkness and face our demons we just may begin to see that they don't quite have the power over us we once thought....

Fear can be like a fog and it's only antidote is love...something this festival is drenched in - a prophetic place of grace where God is illuminated in the mirror of our souls - a place of new frontiers - a landscape where we do not waste our hearts on fear anymore...but instead we look to hope, to possibility, before the euphoria of a thin place collides with the thick hard land of everyday life.

This year there was most definitely a fragrance of something that is in us and yet just out of our reach....

....my grace notes were

wonderful late night conversations with the lovely (want to take you home to meet my mum - she'd love you!) steve beautiful imperfect Pip belfast's delectable beauty Dr 'soon to be lost to the land of the free and exraordinarly brave' Higgins (not everyday you get a large pink brassiere thrown at you when you're on stage!!!!! the Woodie Guthrie of Wales, his side kick the beguiling Stewart Henderson< Ken, Big John Colin, Father 'O' himself and many more.... grace conversations 'that taught our hearts to fear, and grace...that fear relieved'

Talkin with an old prophet over crap hotel pizza (it didn't matter) and a bottle of claret, where I realised that we are not as strong as we think we are. I guess John (Smith) always seemed larger than life - a while back it seemed the only thing he couldn't do was walk on water (and I reckon he'd have got a fair way if he'd tried) - older in years now and awaiting tests on his return to Aus, I realised my own mortality because of his, and you know what? His fragility holds more strength than his Elijah like days ever did...someone who is most definitely on the side of the angels.

Pip describes him as a sensational singer and performer, real communicator rather than smug - flash - 'pretend-pro' performer. Michael McDermott was one of two acts I wanted to see - he did not disappoint. Wearing his heart on his sleeve he expressed an aching and a longing to find his place in this world through his own torture as a beautiful imperfect human becoming. A no holds barred artist - raw, real, sensitive, creative, beguiling and wonderful. Few artists reveal their true selves for fear of rejection, yet there was no bull-shit with this dear broken vessel. He embodied for me what Thomas Merton observes; that "The end of all seeking is purity of heart - a clear unobstructed vision of the true state of affairs,an intuitive grasp of ones own inner reality as anchored or rather lost in God. " A truly inspiring man who took me out of my comfort - thanks Dave for bringing him and for the introduction....look forward to seeing where the connection journeys....

Then there was the rather overweight kid who ran as fast as he could to give back a cool as hell teen god his daily diary that had fallen from his half way down his ass jeans (what is that about?) as he raced through the site on his scooter...not glamorous I know but it was a kindness I rarely see...I pray moments of grace come back on him tenfold...

My almost 'Greenbelt moment' (a bloody close call) was on friday morning as i was waiting in the hotel for a lift to site. I was sat reading when am man i recognised said hi. It was Mark Yaconelli, son of my dear messy departed friend Yac. I was sat in the very same place I was when I met his dad 7 years earlier. We hugged and exchanged a thousand words without speaking....when he left I sat and wept, his mannerisms, looks and rhythm of speech was uncannily like his father's....brought back memories of big moments....

* note, check out mark's talks - outstanding - he out sold everyone, and that has nothing to do with whose son he is!

Then there were my tears as I watched the L'arche community eat flesh and drink blood on sunday morning - they reminded me that the eucharist is the real presence where the veil comes down; the mystery where the balance between light and darkness is most apparent....No wonder Vanier and Nouwen learned so much there...

And on the final night, act number two on my wanted list - Duke Special - wonderful theatre, so original, affectionately funny and so bloody refreshing to see a band having fun on stage. They closed out the festival beautifully.

My 'Greenbelt moment' though came (as they always do) by surprise. It was Billy Bragg's fault entirely. In 'The Rising' on Saturday lunch time, Martyn asked Billy what, more than anything keeps moving and inspiring him to pick up a guitar; what had been his 'I have been to the mountin-top' moment. As the question was asked I instinctively remembered a few people he has worked/collaborated with - Elvis Costello, Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, Tom Waits, Bruce Springsteen and Roy Orbison sprang to mind - but no, none of them had shaped Billy more than a group of women from Weymouth who were terminally ill with cancer. Particularly a lady called Maxine, who loved Dolly Parton. She had breast cancer and had been given only a short time to live.

I guess we all struggle to say that which we need to to the ones we love the most, those who need to hear it. So often we are raised in silence, to do the 'right thing' and what I mean by that is we say nothing at all. The women who attended the song-writing workshops that Billy conducted at the Trimar Hospice in Weymouth during February 2005 had other ideas though. Mr Bragg was invited to take part in the project by Rosetta Life, a charity dedicated to helping those facing terminal illness to share their experiences through the medium of art, poetry, film or song. Every Friday morning for six weeks, he worked with half a dozen women who came to the hospice for palliative care as they fought against the effects of breast cancer.

Billy said that after a couple of weeks of talking about the process of song- writing and a few singalongs, the ‘Friday Girls’ began opening up to the idea of writing a song. Maxine Edgington had the clearest idea of what she wanted to do. In their first one-on-one session, she pulled a framed picture out of her bag and said ‘Look, I’ve been given six months to live. I don’t want to mess about. I want to write the song of this picture’.

When her condition was diagnosed in November 2004, Maxine’s thoughts turned immediately to how she would be remembered, particularly by her fifteen year old daughter, Jessica. Determined that Jess should have positive memories of her after the grieving was over, Maxine commissioned a professional photo shoot which produced beautiful images of mother and daughter smiling together, looking as if they had not a care in the world. This was how she wanted to be remembered. As Maxine said ‘Cancer is terrible, but at least it gives you the chance to put things right with those you love’

Billy performed the song and a few thousand people stopped and wept....the line that broke me was, 'The hardest part of living is giving back that which has been given.' hmmm....

...very much, heaven in ordinary...

So, i guess Gb is a place where strangers don't feel so strange, a thin sacred safe place for those who live in fear of themselves. And somehow it allows us to see that our lives are a beautiful mess, the way they should be...and that's alright, that's ok...because that causes us to kneel, and that my friends is surely the beginning of becoming whole...

I left this years festival recognising more than ever that God lies right here beside us in the gutter, whilst grace like a mother holds us closer than any mary could....my only disappointment was not getting enough space to chew that fat with such good friends as The Very gifted Mr Wroe Shirley Maggie Markus Cary Lovely Jude Pete (though we did manage a couple of organic beers) Rollins Beautiful Steve and the kindly Mog....and yet again I didn't manage to get to the bloody provocative and fantastically good IKON ....next year....please



....it's late tonight, but I raise a glass as it raises me.....the following shots are by the wonderful Andy - he is available for Ok weddings (and other glam occasions).....and can be found at enquiries@s2design.co.uk

Off to a thin place...

So in a couple of hours I get on a plane to join other great humans pulling together what I think is the mother of all festivals – Cheltenham Race Course every August Bank Holiday, for many, becomes the thinnest of places, and, (he says, with a hope resembling something the size of a mustard seed), this year will be no different.

There will be some 20,000 people drinking deep, many broken, some fixed (ish), quite a few lost, some found (ish), all searching, most wanting to cut loose and sing, and maybe just a few needing a secret and a quiet place, a place where their pilgrim dream can come alive. Whoever and however and for whatever reason we all gather doesn’t matter; what does matter is that we do make the journey, that we stand, sit, lay on the grass (or mud if the weather is crap) to learn, worship, drink, feast, but most of all, to laugh and cry…together.

Last year my great friend Pip and I compared the opening ceremony on main stage. The following was read by a beautiful young man who had been rescued from the children street gangs of Durban, South Africa. The wonderful Martin Wroe is the author...who else....


We are not on our own this weekend
We are together
We are not singing solo
We are a massed choir
We are not singing songs for ourselves
We are singing songs for each other
Songs of freedom
Because none of us is free
Until all of us are free
Songs of hope
About a movement of Jah people
Away from a land of war and greed
Away from a world policed by soldiers
From the heart of America
We are going to Exodus land
Where the song of redemption
Is not just for ourselves
But for our sisters and brothers in every country

Redemption songs
From South Africa to the Lebanon
From the Middle East to middle England
From the West Wing to the West Bank
From the House of Commons to the House of Big Brother
Songs of freedom, anthems of liberation
At Greenbelt 06
The sweet melody of emancipation
To hear how the hand of the Almighty
Can free this world from mental slavery
From physical slavery,
From emotional, political and economic slavery
From the slavery of the self
Into the freedom of Love
The freedom of Truth
Who will set us free
Give us your help good Lord
To sing these songs of freedom
We want to be
One Love, One Heart
We want to
Get together and feel alright
Cus way down inside us
And way out beyond us
All we ever knew was redemption songs
Songs of freedom
Redemption songs
Redemption to what we were made for
Dreamed for
Loved into being for
Redemption from slavery and drudgery
From envy and vanity
Redemption from materialism and consumerism
From sectarianism, pessimism and
Loony fundamentalism
Redemption Songs
Where all of us are free
Where we can
Get up, Stand up,
Stand up for the rights
Of the people that Jesus Christ remembers
Even if everyone else forgets them
A song of
Redemption in the poor world
From slavery to the rich world
A song of redemption in the rich world
From slavery to false dreams
We want to hear how the hand of the Almighty
Can free this world from mental slavery
We want to
Get up, Stand up
And not give up the fight
A song about a world where
No woman, no man, no child
Does no crying no more
A song of redemption
where all people choose to
Do justice
Love mercy
Walk humbly and
Live generously
On the good earth
You have
Loaned us
A song of freedom from addiction
To substances which are choking our planet to death
A song of redemption where
Every little thing’s gonna be alright
A song saying thanks and praise to the Lord
And we will feel alright
Saying let’s get together and feel alright
Cus our hands will be made strong by the hand of the Almighty
All we ever had
Redemption Songs
Won’t you help to sing these songs of freedom
All we ever had
Redemption songs
One love, one heart
Let’s get together and feel alright
Give thanks and praise to the lord
And it will be alright
Give thanks and praise to the lord
Cus all we ever had was songs of freedoms
Redemption songs...


Time for our bones to be shaken...again

Here's a glimpse of this wonderful festival......more here when I return in a week

Eddie's heaven....

'There's little white lights everywhere
Your childhood dog in Dad's old chair
And more memories than my heart can hold
When Eva's singing "Fields of Gold"

...in my heaven.'
(Mary Chapin Carpenter)

I read a remarkable short story this week whilst in London Town. It was truly breathtaking, writing at its finest, story telling at its most intoxicating. Dana blogged, 'sometimes, (though when I think about it, this seems to have happened to me more than sometimes) you find a timely more meaningful little nugget left behind. Initially, you pick it up thinking it will simply be entertainment only to realize it has a lingering effect. The message from the story stays with you. The character slips under your skin. And you quickly realize your perceptions may have been nudged in a slightly different direction than you had anticipated........... Good thing I had already read all of Maeve's books. Out of the dozen or so sitting in the pile which I had never read, I chose the right one. Or it chose me......

I will not try to review it (the five people you meet in heaven: Mitch Albom) - that's the thing about a story, a parable; if you’ve got to explain it, don’t bother. Small stories with big points - they hold a strange dichotomy, part sad, part funny – culminating with the sting in the tail. Ben Okri suggests that the storyteller is one who inspires far more than the one who is inspired, the one who remoulds so that the world becomes transformed....Okri further suggests that ‘stories are the secret reservoir of values: change the stories individuals and nations live by and you change the individuals and nations.’ Stories are complex and may not be immediately self revealing, but may leave the listener somewhat undecided and needing to do further reflection and work.

For the record, I reckon the parables of Jesus are more persuasive than his miracles.....

so, here's a couple of paragraphs to wet you appetite....

'Young men go to war. Sometimes because they have to, sometimes because they want to. Always, they feel they are supposed to. This comes from the sad, layered stories of life, which over the centuries have seen courage confused with picking up arms, and cowardice confused with laying them down.'

'There are no random acts. That we are all connected. That you can no more separate one life from another than you can separate a breeze from the wind.'

Dovetailed with these gems Frank McCourt says that author Mitch Albom 'takes us to a new level; that no one is born with anger. No story stands alone. But it's the story itself, the life of Eddie, that will keep you up nights, because it's the story of anyone who takes chances with love and adversity.'

.....truly a tale to keep by your side when you are lost, a story you will return to again and again, because, as Amy Tan suggests, it possesses the rare magic to let you see yourself and the world anew...

5am dreaming....

...I awake having dreamed of this beautiful woman. A couple of years ago I was sitting in a bar in Dar E Salaam drinking Serengeti beer pondering the aching and longing of the regal and beautiful Africa...This is Suzan Segu, she is one of so so many whose life is now fucked beyond what you and i can imagine, she will die soon - she may have already - and leave 5 children... I wonder to what?


Here is another diary exract from the visit to East Africa...

Day 11: Shattered Life: HIV/Aids
Every day 8,000 people die of HIV. 3,000 children become orphans. 14, 000 more people are infected. Only 5% of HIV-positive people who need help get it and world governments spend US$2.6 billion on defence.

Today was the day I had been looking forward to and dreading. I had never before spent time and listened to the stories of people infected with the awful disease of HIV/Aids. Tanzania is among countries in Africa where there are reports of increased risks of HIV infection to women as a result of violence during sexual encounters with family.

This is not what I expected to hear (even though I wasn’t really sure what I would learn this day). We are informed of women and girls being raped by ‘husbands and sundry’. Stories of husbands sodomising spouses, and we are told of bad traditions, and other violent acts, all of which, fuel the spread of HIV infection to the innocent women we meet (and thousands more we don’t).

We are spending a couple of days with The Anglican Church of Tanzania (ACT), one of Christian Aid’s long-standing partners in this country. It is composed of sixteen dioceses throughout the country, and their development vision is a holistic one that calls for an integrated mission of the church to cater for the needs of all in the community regardless of race or religion.

HIV/Aids is one of the top priorities of the ACT programme. Their objectives are to increase awareness of the pandemic, particularly to train religious leaders (of different faiths) to teach the basic facts as opposed to the misconceptions most people have regarding HIV/Aids. Pastoral counselling and homecare is an essential part of the rehabilitation of people suffering from this disease. The dignity of humanity is of paramount importance. What is needed (and what we hear is happening) is that real, positive change is giving more power and confidence to women, which brings a culture of change that transforms relations between men and women within communities at all levels of society.

Through education and courage to challenge systems, which bring social and legal reform, a greater awareness banishes ignorance to the backwaters of culture and empowers particularly women in this struggle. In short it allows the praxis of the theology of hope. That hope, which from within this age of Diaspora, sets free self-surrender and sacrifice for an age that stands on the knife-edge of tomorrow. The work of ACT is giving birth to a remarkable self-realization for these broken women of Tanzania. From the misery of self-estrangement and hopelessness they now see a horizon of a new beginning – even from within their illness.

Yet when you look deeper into the reasons why? You realise that the problem is not just about Aids it’s about poverty. As photojournalist Don McCullin describes: ‘this isn’t just a medical situation. It’s a combination of things. But the primary cause is poverty, which leads to hunger and despair.” Neema takes us to Huduma Afya Maendeleo Kwa Watu Wanndishi Vinavyosababisha Ukimwi, which is a centre for Aids victims to gather together for support, education, friendship and love. These ingredients allow something very special to take place – dignity in life. We meet with a group of women, all of whom have tragic stories to tell, all of whom are living with full blown Aids, all of whom (bar one) will be leaving children behind when they die – this they say is the hardest part of living with the disease. I stop writing at this point because there are no words to describe how I feel.


Two years later? This issue, much like the Parable of the Good Samaritan I preached on a few weeks back, is not about charity...it's about justice. Am gonna say that again....it's not about charity, it's about justice.