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

Over and out.

According to the stat counter down there in the sidebar, this blog has had approaching 100,000 pageviews in the (nearly) 4 years of its existence. Which is nice. And it's enough.

I've been toying for a while with the idea of quitting permanently. Various events recently have hurried up my thought process on this. Part of me (the opinionated bit) will find it tricky - I can't find something interesting or potentially useful without wanting to go 'hey! anyone seen this?' and will have to start learning the discipline of silence. Or I could just email it to the Church Mouse.

The site will stay up for a while, to give people a chance to harvest anything that might have been useful. Comments will stay on  for a couple of weeks, but then get switched off permanently. Once the only traffic here becomes Google searches for Dave Walker cartoons, (a surprisingly high number), then the whole thing will get deleted. That's for purely selfish reasons: it'll be much easier to avoid the temptation to blog if I don't have a blog!

Thankyou to everyone for coming to visit, comment, argue etc. I hope it's been worth your while. Thanks to Steve Tilley, Ruth Gledhill, Matt Wardman and Maggi Dawn for encouragement and inspiration. It's now time for me to put my energies into other things. If you feel like using the time saved from reading my twaddle to pray for me, that would be great.

Alternatively, for local stuff try the Yeovil Blog, for a valiant attempt to make Thomas Hardy funny (almost impossible) try Lost in Wessex, or another of Gary's projects for a former Beaker Person My Gospel Right or Wrong. For new reading matter, try Charlie Peer's excellent new blog. Me, I'll be here. Staying on Twitter for the moment, but we'll see how that goes. If it becomes too distracting, then it might fall victim to the cuts...

Thanks for your company. God bless. David

'The Noise'

Thanks to Tim who's posted some pictures and reportage about 'The Noise' on the St. James Church Blog, and the Yeovil Blog. It's a local community festival, held last Saturday, and handily was in the park just across the road from our house.

The church spent the day giving out free drinks - probably 1000 or so juices, teas and coffees (until the percolator jammed up and the generator ran out of fuel so we couldn't use the kettle). Many thanks to those who came to help (ages 7 to 80), and for the team from Yeovil Community Church and Brympton Parish Council who did lots of the work and organising. Great fun, great weather, great event. Thankfully Tim's picture of me on the counter-intuitive bike isn't the one where I fall off.

Edited 'Highlights'

If you drop in here once every 6 months, this is the post for you! Here are the most popular pages for the first half of 2010

1. That'll Do
2. No Songs Please, We're Blokeish
3. Clergy Bullying 'rife'?
4. Rev
5. The Most Unchristian Marketing in the World, Ever?
6. Trafalgar Square Passion Play
7. '40' by Si Smith (posted ages ago, but always a popular one for Lent)
8. General Synod Headline Generator
9. 'After You Believe' new Tom Wright book.
10. Clegg 'I'm not a man of faith, sometimes I wish I was'

and thankyou to all of you who've pointed people to this site, top referring sites are:
Bishop Alan
Church Mouse
The Beaker Folk of Husborne Crawley
Clayboy
Dave Walker's Church Times Blog
Banksy Boy
The Vicars Wife (not mine!)
Tim Chesterton
Maggi Dawn
Phil Ritchie
Rev Lesley

plus the odd visitor from Twitter and Facebook... Thanks for dropping by.

Start 'Em Young

To cheer us all up after the World Cup, Dave Walker is uploading a clutch of new cartoons, of which this is one. You're allowed to reproduce them if you have one of Dave's licenses - I regularly put one or two onto church publicity cards, mission newsletters etc. That plus a Su Doku ensures that, if people don't read them, at least they don't throw them away......

Full, Empty.

"If you fill your calendar with important appointments
you will have no time for God

If you fill your spare time with essential reading
You will starve your soul.

If you fill your mind with worry about budgets and offerings
the pains in your chest and the ache in your shoulders will betray you.

If you try to conform to the expectations ofthose around you
You will be forever their slave

Work a modest day, then step back and rest.
This will keep you close to God.
(William Martin 'Rest')

Fresh Expressions of Architecture

A quick plug in the direction of the Churchcare website, which I stumbled across this week. It seems to be aimed at Anglican churches, but might be useful for anyone with a listed church building.

There are case studies of redevelopment projects, advice on hosting post offices, visitors, school visits, running a community shop from church premises, and a grants section. Good resource if you're looking at how to develop/rethink use of your Victorian barn/medieval village chapel that somehow ended up as an urban parish church/community icebox with added seating and internal rainfall.

The Last Instrumental Worship Album...Ever!

I've already had a rant about the 'Best.... Ever' marketing and I'm tempted to do it all again. This kind of hype has no place in so-called 'Christian' business.

However, given the title, I can assume this will be the last ever intrumental worship CD produced by Kingsway, hot on the heels of their last ever collections of hymns, worship songs etc. After all, as Phil Groom points out, if the title really is true, then what's the point in producing anything else?

I also note that "The Best...Album in the World, Ever" is a registered trademark of the Virgin group. So if someone produced something that really was the best, they wouldn't be allowed to say so without being taken to court by Richard Branson. Nice.

For something a bit more in depth, Internet Monk is well worth a read today, looking at the whole enterprise of the 'Christian' market and the kind of things it consumes. 

Slightly more modest (actually how could anything be only 'slightly' more modest than this CD title? ) is the 'offer of the decade' from Church House, on hardback volumes from the Common Worship series. Some very hefty discounts.