Can't get me, I didn't say 'amen'-off-ground-no-returns ahhh ha ha!

In sunday's service at Wakefield Baptist Church we prayed:

We pray for the Church

in it's stand for the poor,

in it's love for the the outcast and the ashamed,

in it's service to the sick and the neglected,

in it's proclamation of the Gospel,

in this land and in this place.

I like this prayer, it's my prayer. I didn't write it or lead it, but I prayed it and continue to do so. That said, it does need criticising, or rather I do if I'm to pray it.

"We (1st person plural) pray for the Church (also 1st person plural)"

'We pray for us', or 'I pray for me' is what's going on here essentially.

When I first read it, it took me a few moments to work out what I was actually praying for and this realisation came in several stages.

First: I could see 'poor' and 'outcast' etc and I thought 'Ooh, this is my kind of prayer, I'm going to like this prayer, I'll probably mean it'.

Second: I knew, before I could workout why, that it wasn't a prayer for the ashamed and the sick. It was then that I realised it was a prayer for the Church. 'How right is that' I thought 'that I spend this time praying for the Church rather than for the neglected, directly?'

Third: at this point I got to have a go at myself with one of the gripes I often reserve for those morons who are part of the Church but don't get it (that's a lot of people in my book, by the way).

This prayer starts here, 1st person singular. The Church is not some vague 'them' or other. It's not seperate or apart from, it's 'we', me included. If I am to criticise the Church (and I do all the time for multiple offences) I am to criticise myself. If I'm to criticise myself I am to call myself into change. If I am to do that and do not change, I'm wasting my time and my breath, both are quite valuable to me.

I could see how crap I am in my stand for the poor etc, and I appreciated this prayer from myself (though I did note that I'm not as crap as some people and poured mini-congratulations upon myself). The horror with prayer, and this prayer particularly, is that as one prays, one must surely open oneself up to the potential of having God answer the prayer through one. You dig? I can't pray for God to save you from drowning and leave it at that if I'm the one holding the ring, I've then got to throw you the ring too. So it is with this prayer; I pray it, I then have to be brave enough to let God answer, which means I have to be ready to do my part. (Ghandi's "Be the change you want to see" anyone?)

I guess this means I'm still working out if this is a prayer I really mean, it might just cost me something.

Movies, Yaaaaayy!

Films I've seen for the first time in the past couple of weeks are 'Crank', '3 burials of Melquides Estrda' and 'The Assassination of Richard Nixon'.

Crank - Do not make the mistake of assuming the title is not cockney rhyming slang. I watched this one evening, after spending a lovely day with friends eating cake in the sunshine, as a fun way to wind the day up. I knew it was going to be a trashy action movie, I didn't know how much I'd regret watching it. The story revolv - ha ha ha ha ha 'story'! It's about a gangster who's been poisoned in his sleep, when he wakes he's got about an hour to live - if he keeps his heart rate sky high. Mayhem ensues in what is, ultimately, a blank cheque the film makers had written themselves.
If you ever find yourself in the position where you've been kidnapped, you know the police are going to bust in and rescue you in about 90min and your kidnappers say "you've got a choice, we'll either kill you now, or you can watch 'Crank' with us and then we'll kill you", just tell them to get on with it and kill you right there and then.
This film is so brash, mindless and misguided it even features, what is essentially, a rape scene (which is played for laughs), where the audience is put in a position where it's expected to cheer on the lead character who is committing this atrocity.

3 burials of Melquidas Estrada - Tommy Lee Jones directorial debut, brilliant (in it's true 'shining brightly' sense)!
It's about the promise made by a Texan (Jones himself) to a Mexican friend that, should the friend die in the US, he'll return him to his home town in Mexico for burial. Melquides (the friend) does indeed die and the journey back to Mexico is made all the more tense by the kidnapping (by Jones' character) of the killer, to accompany and assist him in the task.
Actually that's not what it's about, that's the story; it's about loyalty, friendship, trust, grief, US/Mexico relations, hope/ambition, isolation and penance.

The assassination of Richard Nixon - Sean Penn is awesome in this! Set in the early 70's, this is about a man who is so committed to honesty and fairness, that when it means he's actually unable to function in a corrupt world, his commitment turns to bemusement and, finally, to an anger focused on the most significant abuser of power and truth of the time - Nixon. Lots of comparisons had been made to taxi driver, and rightly so for a number of reasons, but I would cite one of the main differences as being how identifiable the main character is. This, obviously, adds enormously to the horror.

One of the things I do from time to time, if I know I'm going to be busy, or there's alot of films on their way I want to catch, is list them. I thought this might be an interesting place to make and keep that list.

The lives of others
This is England
Half-nelson
Fast-food nation
Days of glory
Inland empire
Spider-man 3
Grindhouse

Any thoughts?

Don't look here.

I've just seen this report on a piece of work, by graffiti artist Banksy, being removed. This guy's stuff is brilliant, very peace-loving, very anti-establishment, often funny or poignant and very creative. Search his name under google images or check out his book 'wall and peace' to see the stuff he's done. He's a little bit of a hero of mine. Here's the report http://uk.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20070420/tuk-uk-britain-art-fa6b408.html look at the terms it's reported in; his work is given credibility by either how much money it's worth, or which celebs have bought it. Both of these factors entirely miss the point of his work. The spokespersons final comment did cause me to smirk though.

Where i'm at.

Blogging's rubbish, computers are even more rubbish and headaches induced by fury at sodding computers and blogs are particularly rubbish! I can't sort out putting a photo of me on my profile (how apt, given the title of the blog); I've accidentally deleted forever Rob's comment, and other people have had difficulty leaving comments at all. Blogging is also quite fun though, hence my return to this seat in which i've wasted much time and sworn in too rich a manner and quantity.

I thought it might be helpful to explain a little bit about some of the things that are racing around my head these days, since that's probably what will most affect what i blog.
I was raised as a fairly traditional, conservative, evangelical, charismatic, Christian (although at the time i was just a 'Christian', because in my mind, that's the only sort of Christian there was). I don't want to talk disparagingly about that though, since it has served as foundational in my spiritual journey. Also, support given me in what i'm doing now and the way i'm doing it, by friends and family who come under that banner, has been deep, genuine and even liberating. What i will say is that, somewhere in the past 5-10 years, i've moved away from a form of Christianity which looks to contort what the Bible says into a list of moral behaviours, to a form of Christianity which looks to contort what the Bible says into a principle: love.

The Christ i now see in scripture actually loves people and is far more interested in justice, peace and freedom, rather than a privatised, individualistic 'holiness'. This has changed my guilt. The story about planks and specks in people's eyes now makes real sense to me. Where it used to be about grades of personal sins; swearing = speck, having sex before being married= plank, it's now about personal sin V corporate sin. I'm not talking about corporations in a buisness sense (exclusively), i'm talking about stuff people do corporately, eg. concern ourselves with status symbols while people starve - plank! Buy products which either save us money or make us feel cool, which have been made by people who are desperately exploited - plank! Have spare rooms while people sleep on streets - plank! pay tax to a government who then spend it on warfare - plank!

Am i naive? Yes.
Am i an idealist? Yes.
Am i living according to the kind of morality i laid out above? No.
This is my question:
a) What if we actually believed, and lived like, Jesus was serious when he said 'whenever you do/refuse to do this for the least of my people here, you do/refuse to do it for me.'
b) How do we begin to figure out how to do that?

Please excuse me, i'm going to spend some time weeping and repenting before continuing to live my life unchanged.

ps. for more on these kind of questions, and subsequent questions, go to dan hussey's blog, jody gabriel's blog and ben brown's blog. These are some of the people who have been key in my thinking about how radical i'm prepared to be to follow Jesus (don't hold your breath with Ben and jody's blogs though, i'm considering running a book on whether either of them will ever post again and which one will be first).

who is blogging for?

How do?

Interesting that i start my first post with a greeting, suggests i intend this to be read by those who aren't me. It suggests that i think whatever it is will be recorded in/on this tiny patch of cyber-space is worth reading; that i have something to say of such interest and magnitude, that i need some sort of platform. Or is it just a place where i can record some of my less dark musings? If that's the case, why use such a public space; why not just keep a diary with a tiny 'my little pony' padlock, like the good old days? (i never had a diary with a tiny 'my little pony' padlock - maybe that's what i'm making up for here). Is this whole blogging thing a tiny part of our societies current obsession with celebrity? - read me, love me!

Actually I was struck by something yesterday as I was reflecting on catching parts of 'You're the one that I want' and 'Any dream will do'. One of the things the Bible says is that God has put eternity on people's hearts; essentially that there is part of us, as created by God, which is concerned with somehow finding a place for ourselves in eternity. It occurred to me that this whole celebrity obsession thing comes from a huge desire to make oneself known and remembered as widely as possible. If that isn't testament to having eternity on our hearts, what is? The other thing which struck me, which i haven't been sickened by in quite the same way with previous shows of this nature, is their ability to bring out, highlight and then exploit, for entertainment purposes, some of this countries psychologically damaged/ disturbed people. Brilliant! Let's put that on telly, cos we all need a little light entertainment on a Saturday night.

Anyway, read my blog cos i need to be affirmed and remembered. I'm reckoning on blogging about once a week on stuff of slightly more substance than that of what i had for tea or where i'm going at the weekend. I might blog again before this weeks out cos this is just a taster, a bit of a practise.