Definitions

"Holiness is doing the will of God with a smile" (Mother Teresa)

Dutch Priest versus the Trades Descriptions Act

Creative is about the only word of praise which comes to mind for this story from the church in Holland.

"Personally I have no talent for believing in life after death," Mr Hendrikse says. "No, for me our life, our task, is before death."



Nor does Klaas Hendrikse believe that God exists at all as a supernatural thing.

God is not a being at all... it's a word for experience, or human experience”

"When it happens, it happens down to earth, between you and me, between people, that's where it can happen. God is not a being at all... it's a word for experience, or human experience."


Mr Hendrikse describes the Bible's account of Jesus's life as a mythological story about a man who may never have existed, even if it is a valuable source of wisdom about how to lead a good life.

Apparently one 6th of the clergy in this church, a mainstream reformed church in Holland, are atheist or agnostic. It makes the CofE seem like a hotbed of fervent fundamentalism.

If this had been one of the 7 churches of Revelation, the other 6 would have been saying to each other 'well, at least we got off lightly, looks like we're not that bad after all.'

I'm all for rethinking the church, and the presentation of the gospel, but this Dutch bathtub lacks both bathwater and baby. It also seems fundamentally dishonest. If you're an atheist, what's the point in dressing it up in Christian language and pretending it's something else?

Your Phone is Being Hacked

...whether its a landline or a mobile, someone is listening in on your calls. But it's worse than that, they're recording all your emails too, every last poke of social networking, every website you visit whether 'accidentally' (yeah, right) or otherwise. And even when we're not on the phone, or online, somehow every word we say is taken note of, recorded.

The good news is that none of it is going to be misquoted in the Mirror or misinterpreted by the Mail any time soon.

"Before a word is on my tongue, you know it completely Lord" (Psalm 139:4)
"What you have whispered in secret will be shouted from the rooftops." (Luke 12:3)

what am I up to when there's nobody looking but God?

VicAdvisor?

A new scheme in Germany gives people the chance to rate their local priest on things like 'performance' (ugh!) at services' and credibility.

Ratings for priests on the site are represented by sheep, whose woolly coats range from white to black to visually express a priest's rating. The pope and other prominent German priests so far sport light to middle grey wool.

See Bosco Peters blog for a fuller description. Not sure what to think about this. The less of the X Factor spirit we have in church the better, but at the same time church leaders need accountability, and we need other people to help us reflect on how we're doing. But I would have thought a small group of trusted and honest Christians who can tell us the things we need to hear is a better way to do it.

How to Explain Your Diocese

Great vid highlighted by the Twurch of England and produced by Bristol Diocese. A couple of years back I did a survey of all the Diocesan websites and Bristol's was already one of the best, it's now even better. If the 28 Fresh Expressions stories on the latest DVD aren't enough for you (review possibly to follow later this month) then Bristol has it's own collection.

Maybe

After a 3 month sabbatical, I'm seriously pondering whether to resume blogging. I know there isn't the time to do it at the level of the old 'St. Aidan to Abbey Manor' blog, but it was a useful way of sharing ideas and resources. The main problem was that it became compulsive. Hence the removal of anything from the blog which refers to traffic stats!

I've had a fiddle with formatting and appearance, and a new title which is a bit less pretentious and probably more accurate. But if it starts taking more than 15 minutes a day then it's back to Blogger deep freeze.

Part of that may mean less interaction with commenters, and if there are any posts/threads that start me losing sleep at night then they'll be deleted. Yes that's happened. Anyway, one post at a time and we'll see what happens...

Adoption Blessing

It was a great joy last week to baptise the adopted baby son of some friends of ours. I suggested to the family that as well as baptising him, we pray for God's blessing on them as a family unit. Having searched in vain for a family blessing for an adoptive family, I came up with my own. Those familiar with Patricks Breastplate and the CofE Marriage service will recognise some of it.

We stood with the family in the centre of the church, and everyone facing in towards them, the congregation joined in the first and last paragraphs. Thought I'd post it in case anyone else would find it useful.

Family Blessing

Christ be with you, Christ within you
Christ before you Christ behind you
Christ on your right
Christ on your left
Christ above you, Christ beneath you
Christ around you, now and for ever.

Blessed are you Lord our God for you have created joy and gladness, pleasure and delight, love peace and fellowship.

Pour out the abundance of your blessing upon n......... in their new life together. Bless them at work and at play, awake and asleep, in joy and in sorrow, in laughter and tears.

May they love one another, encourage one another, defend one another, bless one another. May their home be a place where n.............. can grow in love, character and goodness, in mind body and spirit.

Heavenly Father, from whom every family on earth receives its name, who has adopted us into your holy family through your Son Jesus, bless and watch over this family, that they might know day by day that they belong to one another, and that they belong to you. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.

Chocolate Christmas

Breaking my blogging embargo as so many people have tweeted me for this:

Who’s looking forward to getting chocolate for Christmas? Anyone got a chocolate advent calendar?


Do believe chocolate can talk? Have you really, really listened?

Listen to the story they tell.

A long time ago, God made the Galaxy,

Beautiful, rich, wonderful

And filled it with people, people he made, people he loved, people like you and me, people who were all special to him. And he gave these people everything. Everything except one tree, one Fruit Pastille others which they were told not to eat.

But the people wanted to do things their own way, so they did a Breakaway from God. Trouble is, after the breakaway everything started to go wrong

Really really Rocky.

Suffering, pain, loneliness, bullying, violence, death

Because we’d chosen our way instead of God’s way

Everything just got really Haribo (horrible)

Couldn’t find Boost or Lion, so I omitted:
(So to give them a Boost God promised that things would change.
One day a special person would come and put things right
I’m telling you the truth, I’m not Lion.)

Many years later, a young woman was FRIGHTENED OUT OF HER WITS

When an angel suddenly turned up

The Angel wondered if he Malteser fear (‘might ease her’) Don’t be scared he said, You’re going to have a son, the Son of God, call him Jesus

A name that means he’ll save people, he’ll make them friends with God again.

And though Joseph was a bit confused, he was a good egg, you couldn’t hope to meet a Kinder man (Kinder Egg), so he decided to look after Mary, and God’s baby.

So the story goes that Mary and Joseph travelled to Bethlehem

Mary was heavily pregnant, and Joseph wondered if she’d Flake out on the journey

They finally found a room full of animals – might not have been a stable, sometimes people lived in a house with a split floor, animals on one level, people on the next, so maybe the innkeeper let them into his home. We don’t know what sort of animals were there, whether there was a Kit Kat, but by morning there was Jesus Nestle ing in his mothers arms.

All sorts of strange visitors started to turn up.

First some shepherds: they’d been up on the hillside, looking up at the Milky Way

When some angels appeared in the sky and said go and see God’s promised saviour

Tell everyone, don’t Wispa, shout it out, God is here.

So straight as an Aero they headed for Bethlehem to find Jesus.

And they were there in a Jaffa

Further away, some wise men were looking up at the planets in the sky: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, when they saw something amazing. By the way: in the ancient world, Jupiter was the ‘king star’, and at the time of the birth of Jesus, Jupiter appeared in the night sky very close to Saturn, which represented Israel. If you were reading the sky you’d see ‘new king in Israel’.

So the kings packed up their bounty – presents for the new king

And came to see Jesus. They didn’t find him at king Herods palace,

But those wise men were smarties, they didn’t give up

And when they found Jesus they brought out their Kingsize gifts, no Twix, just gifts:

Gold for a king, incense for worship, myrrh for death.

And here’s the Crunch (ie)

The baby Jesus is the Son of God, sent by God into the world

He is Divine, wrapped in human skin.

God’s gift to you: but you can only taste how good the gift is if you unwrap it.

I hope you do choose Jesus, but in the end, it’s your selection.

And remember: listen to the chocolates

before you eat them

 
tips:
 - works best if you actually have the chocolates there, but that depends on what's available, and whether you can get to the shops through the snow.
 - if the chocs are lined up in order, you don't really need a script.
 - I justify the use of Nestle chocolates on the grounds that nothing is beyond redemption.
 - apologies to people I've emailed this to, the Fruit Pastille section is missing!
 - for scientific correctness, you can have lots of Galaxys. Not sure what it will do for your waistline though.
 - no copyright involved anywhere, so if you come up with a better version then that's fantastic.
 - comments are off, as I'm not supposed to be blogging, but you can tweet me @davidmkeen