Lenin and the Trouncer - spot the difference

Anyone see the difference? Our lovable Richard Trouncer and Vladimir Lenin. Two peas in a pod if you asked me. That is to say looks-wise rather than behaviour types.

Afternoon Tea on Sunday 29th at 3pm

Note to all mooters. You should have received an email from me, giving you information about an important event this Sunday open to all who perceive Moot as their Spiritual Home. If you did not receive this, please contact Ian

Cyberspace as Spiritual Space

One of the things we have been thinking through in Moot, is how cyberspace and information technology have contributed to a new post-secular culture of spirituality. One of the foundations of our approach to culture in Moot, is the understanding that consumerism when coupled with information technology is driving new forms of spirituality. Well continuing in this thinking, I was encouraged when I discovered that a BBC Radio 4 episode of 'In Our Time' is devoted to the exploration of how Cyberspace has contributed to a new understanding of spiritual space in our world. To listen to the recorded podcast, click here, (You will need Realplayer, which you can download for free).

This is an important subject, as we try to understand the antecedents behind social and cultural change, and post-secularisation appears to be a significant social movement coming out of postmodernism.

For the last few months, I have been exploring how new monasticism as an authentic expression of Christian community and Ekklesia can relate to our new post secular culture of spirituality, which I hope to compile into a book by February 2010. I am holding the hypothesis, that New Monasticism and the basis of monasticism in the contemplative/mystical Christian tradition is a suitable model of missional Christian community to relate to a culture of neo-spirituality and superstition.

Thanks to all you Mooters

Thanks to all you mooters and moot friends who came on the weekend away, to Arundel, which I hear is still there even though it rained for 2 days. So amongst the pool competitions, speed connect four, jenga, table football, meditation, movement workshops, jigsaws and scrabble, I hope you enjoyed the time out for our community as much as I did. I think Thomasin again, helped plan a great menu of sumptuous food. Don't forget we have a Christmas party coming up very soon! See info on this here

We have also been thinking we may explore some form of spiritual retreat weekend next year, taking the meditation and reflection as the focus for 2.5 days. If you have thoughts on this as something you would like/dislike or have thoughts, please do share them in the comments.

Recession Pride and Prejudice

I sat in a sold-out Barbican earlier this month, packed with Guardian devotees cheering a hundred copies of the Daily Mail being shredded on stage. I found it very uncomfortable at the time, but on reflection I've felt quite harrowed by the spectacle. Guardian / Daily Mail? Red / Blue? It felt like an other-side-of-the-tracks closing of ranks, and taking comfort in homogeneity.

I told a colleague about it the next day, a life-long Guardian and Radio 4 fan, and she agreed with my discomfort and said, what a fall for our pride in our free-thinking or open-mindedness - she said how long before a man reading the Mail on a Tube surrounded by Guardian and Richard Dawkins covers, gets sneers, or even jeers, or jostled, or tripped up and no one helps?

A friend of mine who works in global security and conflict stuff told me recently about some research he'd been very impacted by this year, about apparently ethnic or religious conflict being actually tracable to 'have/have not' resentment in many, many examples around the world, so much so that the researcher argued very strongly that it might always be the actual root cause of conflict.

In three or four discussions lately on here, started by Sam, Jonny and one of mine, I've been thinking about history's recorded recessions and accompanying resentment and though I don't know enough to track it well but things like the 1920s strength of the Ku Klux Klan in America on the heels of the Great Depression, or the Nazi Party's rise on the back of post- WW1 poverty in Germany, stick out to me. If anyone knows any more examples I'd be very interested.

"What will survive of us is love"

Thinking of friends who are grieving today.

An Arundel Tomb, from Philip Larkin's The Whitsun Weddings, 1964

Side by side, their faces blurred,

The earl and countess lie in stone,

Their proper habits vaguely shown

As jointed armour, stiffened pleat,

And that faint hint of the absurd -

The little dogs under their feet.

Such plainness of the pre-baroque

Hardly involves the eye, until

It meets his left-hand gauntlet, still

Clasped empty in the other; and

One sees, with a sharp tender shock,

His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.

They would not think to lie so long.

Such faithfulness in effigy

Was just a detail friends would see:

A sculptor's sweet commissioned grace

Thrown off in helping to prolong

The Latin names around the base.

They would not guess how early in

Their supine stationary voyage

The air would change to soundless damage,

Turn the old tenantry away;

How soon succeeding eyes begin

To look, not read. Rigidly, they

Persisted, linked, through lengths and breadths

Of time. Snow fell, undated. Light

Each summer thronged the glass. A bright

Litter of birdcalls strewed the same

Bone-riddled ground. And up the paths

The endless altered people came,

Washing at their identity.
Now, helpless in the hollow of

An unarmorial age, a trough

Of smoke in slow suspended skeins

Above their scrap of history,

Only an attitude remains:

Time has transfigured them into

Untruth. The stone fidelity

They hardly meant has come to be

Their final blazon, and to prove

Our almost-instinct almost true:

What will survive of us is love.

An Evening with Dave Tomlinson - Re-enchanting Christianity

On Weds 11th November 7.30pm onwards, we welcome Dave Tomlinson to talk and discuss his influential new book, re-enchanting Christianity. This book which came out this year, has influenced a lot of us in the Moot Community.

This discussion will be part one of two gatherings, one now, and one in January looking at different aspects of Dave's book.

We are currently exploring how to develop relationships further between St Lukes and Moot, as there is much we share in common.

Venue: The Spirituality Centre, Lombard Street, London.

MONDAY 9th NOVEMBER - INSPIRING CITIZENS

What does it mean to be a citizen of London in one of the most multi-cultural capitals of the world?

With Neil Jameson of London Citizens and the Strangers into Citizens campaign, Grace Cowley of Mother's Union and Iman Suliman Gani

from the Balham Mosque, who highlight tensions, aspirations and needs of some of those who are living and working in London.

Time: 7pm

Venue: The Main Church

holistic recession. it's not all money

I've been thinking about receding and dereliction, and the financial alongside the emotional, physical, natural, cerebral etc. threads of our humanity. My CEO is speaking about these as lean years, like Joseph's seven years of want after seven years of plenty. A challenge and another depth of being human, not a dualistic good/bad, not straightforward 'we had, and now we have not'.

As charities and corporates alike face mass redundancies and budget freezes, I have been thinking of the privilege of being called up to fight harder, stretch thinner, see the value of our resources with almost fresh eyes, and work harder at stretching them to their fullest; stretching ourselves, myself, to our furthest.

And I have been thinking this is a holistic thing, not just a financial or material one.

"I began to understand spiritual life in an entirely new way, as a journey deep into Godlessness rather than out of it. Increasingly I see that it is in going deeper into the derelict places within us, where we curse and deny God, in resting without flinching in the knowledge of our distance from God that we encounter Christ waiting for us in the depth of hell."
The gift of self, Heather Ward

Contrasting with this in my head is something William Blake wrote in a letter after a late, fresh, conversion-type experience, when he felt himself in a place of tremendous spiritual and holistic abundance:

"...he lays his Hand upon my Head & gives a blessing to all my works; why should I be troubled? why should my heart & flesh cry out? I will go on in the Strength of the Lord; through Hell will I sing forth his Praises, that the Dragons of the Deep may praise him, & that those who dwell in darkness & in the Sea coasts may be gathered into his Kingdom. Excuse my, perhaps, too great Enthusiasm..."

What is occurring to me is that recession and dereliction are spiritual things, holistic things, human and otherly, and that they are bigger, fuller, than simple good/bad algorithms. Like God, I guess.

I was sitting in the chaplaincy after yet another dose of Anglo-catholic spirituality and I found out from my friend Michael that some people were going on a vigil. This Vigil was for a gay man who got beaten up outside a gay bar by 20 teenagers, luckily the guy survived. Judging by his partner who turned up for the ceremony he probably isn't much older than me. It still shows that we are far from a peaceful society when things like this still happen, but having said that the entire street where the vigil was packed with probably close to 1,000 people who turned up to condemn the attack. I wanted to encourage moot in its inclusivity and equality because there are very few places where people who struggle with their sexual orientation can go within the church and be loved rather than tolerated. We should all ask ourselves how far we are prepared to go to love our neighbour as ourselves and build a community where these values are enshrined. I just wanted to end on a question: How can we be counter cultural and better show love that as christians we are required to show, but don't always show to our neighbour?

Wild Wednesday: Martin Newell joins us to discuss radical discipleship and political action

I am pleased to say that Martin Newell of the Catholic Worker community and the Trident Ploughshares, who we interviewed for the podcast last week, is coming to chat through the implications of this form of radical discipleship on Weds 4th Nov, London Centre for Spirituality Bookshop 7.45pm. For more info on Martin, see the blogpost below.

Recession Pride and Prejudice

I sat in a sold-out Barbican earlier this month, packed with Guardian devotees cheering a hundred copies of the Daily Mail being shredded on stage. I found it very uncomfortable at the time, but on reflection I've felt quite harrowed by the spectacle. Guardian / Daily Mail? Red / Blue? It felt like an other-side-of-the-tracks closing of ranks, and taking comfort in homogeneity.

I told a colleague about it the next day, a life-long Guardian and Radio 4 fan, and she agreed with my discomfort and said, what a fall for our pride in our free-thinking or open-mindedness - she said how long before a man reading the Mail on a Tube surrounded by Guardian and Richard Dawkins covers, gets sneers, or even jeers, or jostled, or tripped up and no one helps?

A friend of mine who works in global security and conflict stuff told me recently about some research he'd been very impacted by this year, about apparently ethnic or religious conflict being actually tracable to 'have/have not' resentment in many, many examples around the world, so much so that the researcher argued very strongly that it might always be the actual root cause of conflict.

In three or four discussions lately on here, started by Sam, Jonny and one of mine, I've been thinking about history's recorded recessions and accompanying resentment and though I don't know enough to track it well but things like the 1920s strength of the Ku Klux Klan in America on the heels of the Great Depression, or the Nazi Party's rise on the back of post- WW1 poverty in Germany, stick out to me. If anyone knows any more examples I'd be very interested.

MOOT SEEKS ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

Politics and that..

Well, it appears from what I can gather from the other side of the channel that the world of politics is as heated as ever.

I'm really glad that some of these issues are being wrestled with on here but as a little side note I wanted to throw this extract from Jean Vanier's Community and Growth into the mix. Despite being written a little while ago, I still think it has a lot to say to today's situations.

"Some Christians are very taken up by politics. They can be terribly anti-communist, forming rather fascist organisations to fight the "red devil." Or they can be fiercely anti-capitalist, fighting for new structures and redistribution of resources. Both these tendencies can lead to a centralization- whether to protect the free market economy or to further wholesale nationalization.

I sometimes wonder if these fighting Christians wouldn't do better to put their energies into creating communities which live as far as they can by the charter of the Beatitudes. If they did this, they would be able to live by, and measure progress by, values other than those of material success, acquisition of wealth, and political struggle. They could become the yeast in the dough of society. They would not change political structures at first. But they would change the hearts and spirits of the people around them by offering them a glimpse of a new dimension in human life... of inwardness, love, contemplation, wonderment and sharing.

My personal hope is that, if this spirit of community really spreads, structures will change. Structures are - tyrannies excepted - the mirrors of hearts."

p308-309

I love Jesus' image of the kingdom of heaven as a mustard seed, maybe we need to start thinking smaller.

Hope all's well, am gutted I can't make the weekend away. Hope to hear from you all soon.

A couple of thoughts

I watched (as Im sure a lot of other people did) nick griffin make a bit of an idiot of himself on question time. I just wanted to put a couple of thoughts out there and see what response I got. Its been really interesting being in Liverpool, especially from an ethnic point of view because it is very homogenous (white, in layman's terms) and coming from south London it has been surprising how much of a contrast in attitude there is towards those of ethnicity in the north of the UK and the South. A few of my friends from areas like Yorkshire and Bradford feel overwhelmed and in the minority when it comes to feeling comfortable in their home town and these areas in particular are areas where the BNP has managed to gain a foothold. From my own experience I have felt less uncomfortable (and I realise I have got to be careful what I say here) around Liverpool than I have around areas of south London. I realise that the BNP offers nothing except intolerance, but if we left them to the side for a minute what are we to do about the hundreds of thousands of people who feel that they have to turn to an openly racist organisation to be heard?

I look forward to some (heated?) discussion on this.

Podcast interview with a Christian activist

In this month's podcast, Ian Mobsby interviews Martin Sewell, who is an ordained member of the Catholic Worker Movement, and a political activist. Martin talks about his sense of vocation, identifying with a monastic rhythm of life, where going to prison can be seen as an extended version of a monastery cell. Martin talks with passion about the cost of this form of discipleship, particularly around the area of just resistance, and shares his hopes for what might be. To listen to the podcast, click here

Christ, Friend God and the Kin-dom Podcast

In her last gift to the Moot Community, Jemma Allen explores 'Christ, Friend God and the Kin-dom' in the Moot Eucharist on Sun 11th October. Jemma is off back to New Zealand tomorrow. I am really grateful for all that she has brought to the Moot Community and to me personally. So do listen to this important podcast which goes deep into our ethos and focus of the Moot Community.

Friendship is not some gimmick that we can market as a way of successfully living a Christian life. It is not even primarily about about an act of will or making friendships in a calculating way. Friendship as a spiritual practice, as the mark of a disciple, as a proclamation of the Good News of the Reign of God – this friendship is about entering into authentic relationships, relationships of vulnerability and trust, relationships of mutuality and care. In allowing ourselves to be affected by who we live with and how we live with them, by the gifts we receive in and from our friends, we open ourselves to being transformed by love and so enlarging the realm of God: the kinship and new community proclaimed by Christ. That, my friends, would be Good News!

T S Elliott

Given that we are using T S Elliott's poem of St Mary Woolnoth at the moment in worship services, thought people would be interested in a programme about him on iplayer click here

The need for non-monarchial language for God

Have you ever noticed how often the word "Lord" is used in Church. We Christians use it heavily for naming God. The problem is, that it is, as a word, quite anachronistic to modern parlance. For many Lord and King, creates a sense of an outdated approach to governance, a hierarchical approach to social organisation. In our brave new post-secular culture, we need to be careful not to be lazy about our language for God, and the importance to seek out constantly changing language as a metaphor for God.

I have just met up for a coffee with Padraig, who talked about an indigenous South African word for God as the 'Big Big'. I like that as a metaphor, as it is saying that God is bigger than the biggest thing you can imagine, so the God that is outside of our imagination... so encourages the sense of transcendence without imposing majestic androcentric understandings onto God the Creator. He also named another metaphor used by a friend of his for God, as 'The Bigest' I like that too.

On Sunday, Jemma Allen, our friendly New Zealand Priest continues her unpacking of a theology of friendship, to talk about the Kin-dom rather than the Kingdom, which again reconstructions an understanding of friendship as the locus of God's purposes to draw all things back into restored relationships with the divine.

Water needs to be included in Climate change negotiations

Believe it or not, but the climate change negotiations at Copenhagen and the United Nations are not including water on the agenda, which threatens serious side effects for impoverished farmers around the world. A coalition of Progressio, a Catholic Institute for International Relations, and the SCC have joined forces to get water included in the negotiations. They are asking people to fill in an online petition, which then can be sent in into your MP. I've done it and it takes less than 2 minutes of your time, so go on do it now, click here

I like progressio's vision:

Development means building skills, strengthening communities, finding solutions. It means challenging the structures and policies that keep people poor. It means long term, lasting change. And the way we do it is through people.

On Saturday 5 December 2009, ahead of the crucial UN climate summit in Copenhagen, tens of thousands of people from all walks of life will flow through the streets of London to demonstrate their support for a safe climate future for all. The Wave is organised by the Stop Climate Chaos Coalition. Join The Wave - the UK’s biggest ever demonstration in support of action on climate change. They want the UK Government to Quit Dirty Coal, Protect the Poorest and Act Fair & Fast. Add The Wave to your Facebook and Tweet this.

What's the Plan?

• Assemble: 12pm, Grosvenor Square
• Climax: 3pm Encircling of Parliament
• Dress code: Blue!
• Map click here

Corey Hau

For those who attended last nights short Autumn Night Prayer Service in the rear of St Mary Woolnoth, here is the image that was on the front of the service sheet.

You can read more about the story here.

Corey Hau is a great photographer (and a great friend of mine) whose work can be viewed here

Exhibition: Cecil Collins - Fools and angels

Follow title link to details of an exhibition at Central Saint Martins of the work of visionary artist, poet and philosopher Cecil Collins.
In his words: ‘I believe in a new and virgin romanticism, a cosmic romanticism, based on contact with the rhythm of eternal life.’
Cecil Collins, The vision of the fool and other writings, Golgonooza Press, Ipswich 2002

Change to Wild Wednesday this week Weds 7th October from 7.45pm

Unfortunately our speaker for Weds 7th Oct can't make this weds, so we are going out for a drink in the Wheatsheaf near London Bridge Station, (note new address is 24 Southwark Street SE1 1TY), for more info on the pub click here

For more info contact Richard or email here

Jonny loves moot

Those of you who are not following Jonny Baker's blog (and if not, why not? You should be!) Might be interested to know that he's given moot's latest podcast a really good write up.

To quote: "I recommend a listen to ian mobsby's interview with stuart burns which is on the moot podcast. stuart is the abbot of the burford benedictine community. i visited burford priory a few years back to have a look at their grass labyrinth and learned how to mow one. the community has since moved from burford but i have heard from several people what a wise guy stuart is. a few pieces stood out for me..."

Have a look.

Monbiot on Population growth

I've just come across a great article by George Monbiot on the subject population growth.

Published in the Guardian, he shows how climate change has nothing to do with population growth, but is in fact related to consumption and wealth of and by the rich.


You can read the full article, but consider this quote:

"People breed less as they become richer, but they don’t consume less; they consume more. As the habits of the super-rich show, there are no limits to human extravagance. Consumption can be expected to rise with economic growth until the biosphere hits the buffers. Anyone who understands this and still considers that population, not consumption, is the big issue is, in Lovelock’s words, “hiding from the truth”. It is the worst kind of paternalism, blaming the poor for the excesses of the rich.

So where are the movements protesting about the stinking rich destroying our living systems? Where is the direct action against superyachts and private jets? Where’s Class War when you need it?

It’s time we had the guts to name the problem. It’s not sex; it’s money. It’s not the poor; it’s the rich."

I couldn't have put it better myself.

Read the full article in full.