Video: Holy Land trip 2018

Right, one year down, two to go! I will write or video an update about my third term and how I'm doing come the start of second year, but for now I will be uploading videos of the adventures I've been having over the summer!

Just to give you an idea, I was in the Holy Land for a week, then I went to Taize for five weeks. I spent a week in Scotland with friends, I was at Greenbelt (and talking on a panel of all things!) and soon I will be flying out to Johannesburg for a month long placement!

Hopefully that excuses my lack of updates. You can see I'm busy doing ordinand-y shenanigans. 

So without further ado, the first video of my pilgrimage to the Holy Land!
(It's a tad long, but trust me, stick around for the hilarious ordinand double-act sketch!!)

LGBT ordinand

A sermon by a bisexual ordinand

 in a school chapel, 

speaking on LGBT history month.*

*including my story, bisexual nuns, Peru, Frida Kahlo, and textiles.

Video has no visuals, just the audio, as I was at a school, so cannot show the footage that includes the children. My audio equipment failed, so the sound is just the inbuilt camera mic - I recommend putting on the subtitles (button bottom right of the video) to follow more easily.

Going Further: the heart of my faith = sharing the good news?

See this post for an intro to this series.

What is the heart of [the candidate's] faith: the good news they would wish to share with others? 

This is a very well-timed post to write considering my recent conversation with the rector about her reservations concerning my faith - what my relationship with God looks like, and how I express it to others.

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So turning to the question, my immediate response is the heart of my faith is a trust in God, and the the good news I wish to share with others is that they can trust God too. God is for everyone. That doesn't mean everyone should be Christian, be religious, or even put Jesus at the centre of their lives. Jesus is the good news but the Messiah, the Son of God, the Word Made Flesh is so much more than the bloke from Nazareth.

Jesus embodies the right ordering of creation, that God and humankind are in harmonious relationship. That is the good news, that is what Jesus being born into the world and fulfilling the Law shows us. God is for everyone because everyone should have a relationship with God. I like John's gospel best, even though it is dense as a jungle and a bit mind-bendy, because of the emphasis on the Spirit and that beautiful prologue about the Word. To have a relationship with God through Jesus is to know the Word by the power of the Spirit, and I don't think that necessarily means knowing the bloke from Nazareth.

I think our mission is to spread the Word, and the Word is however God best has a relationship with each person. Our Word, our story is a unique back and forth between each of us and God. Sure, I think the Christian church and being a follower of Jesus of Nazareth is probably the best road for the majority of people. But the 'majority' of all humankind that has lived, is living, and will live, still leaves a whopping number of people who are the minority (the minority of a massive number is still a big number).

I like the 'many paths on the mountain' pluralism metaphor. If God is the destination, the top of the mountain, there are many ways up the mountain. There are lots of places to start from, there are paths that intersect, and cross, and converge at points. And the top is big, so when people are looking to it, and reach it, it looks different to each individual. Exclusivists, those that say their path is the only one, imagine the mountain has a fence, and a gate to only one, fenced path. Pluralists think it's a free for all. Inclusivists like me think Christ has cleared one path, without any barriers, but some people want or need to go another way and it's just as legitimate, just maybe not as easy.

Terrible drawing of exclusivism

Terrible drawing of inclusivism

Terrible drawing of pluralism

I feel like the perception that is most pervasive among both religious and non-religious folks is that all religion is inherently exclusivist, and that doesn't sit right with most people in modern western first world culture, AND a lot of people in cultures of eastern religion (eastern theological thought is often a lot more pluralistic). I want to share the good news that it isn't like that! God is vastly more complex and loving than to have a boxed in, one-size-fits-all relationship with humankind, when humankind is beautifully and wonderfully made intrinsically varied and diverse. God has created each us as a unique soul so why would God need uniformity in our relationships with God?

The heart of my faith is a trust in God. Some people have trust issues; their relationship to God looks very different to mine. I rejoice with anyone who has a relationship to God and want to invite others to see the glory of serving the Creator who is at the heart of the world. But I don't want to tell them they have to trust God, or follow Christ, or anything other than what Jesus summed up as the only universal truth that everyone can take to heart is 'love God, love neighbour'. Everything else is up for debate, including what that looks like in different people's lives.

I feel the only evil we have to overcome is human evil, and the how and why are right there in the Great Commandment. I don't like overuse of 'evil' as a concept, which links to the terrible messages most people are getting about religion. I am religious because I want to see a better world, and following God in my way gives me the tools and strength to do my part in bringing about that better world. It's not a dogmatic as 'do what God says and you will receive the kingdom of heaven'. More like 'form a relationship with God and seek the ways of love that bring about the kingdom of heaven on earth'. The Word, and Love, are huge, world-encompassing aspects of the vastly greater reality of God, and for me, they are the aspects on which my trust hangs as the heart of my faith, and the aspects I feel called to express and bring people to, in their own way, by the grace of God partly working through me.

Video: Seeing myself in Peter

In reference to the video, this is what I wrote this morning:

"At the moment I'm in the middle of reading the book Jesus and Peter: Growing in friendship with God. I've wanted to get to know more about Peter for a while, and this is the book my rector recommended. I've always liked Peter, but it was this past Palm Sunday that it started niggling at me, because I played the part in our dramatic performance of the Passion story.

(Yes, our church doesn't care about casting historically accurate genders in it's dramas - the point of dramatising the story is to make it more affecting, and seeing your pew neighbour up there denying Christ, betraying Christ, or being Christ makes it very effective, regardless of the gender they are.)

Thinking about Peter as I stood next to the person playing Jesus, it struck me, I think for the first time, how real the people in the gospel stories were."

Will ya just calm down Peter?!

I thought about this when standing with the friend I mention in the video; thought of Peter standing next to his friend Jesus just I was standing next to my friend, and both our friends handing out wisdom and trying to calm us down.

Peter in the gospel is a passionate, hell for leather kind of guy. Good intentions, not so much forethought, rushing in confidently but often crashing around a bit. I can SO relate. Calm, helpful Jesus would probably have had conversations similar to the one my friend had with me, getting Peter to slow down enough to think.

I suspect Peter probably had times when he felt overwhelmed and torn as well, trying to balance talking to Jesus, praying, checking with the others, getting supplies, sorting the money, scheduling the travel plans, keeping all the Jewish needs seen to, eating and drinking right, staying out of the sun when it was hot, keeping up with the news locally and from other cities, maybe even contemplating romance, possibly having medical issues, enjoying getting a tad drunk sometimes, doing a heck of a lot of walking, thinking about his fishing days and missing his dad...Anyway.

Just like I talked about Paul in another vlog, Peter had his period of stumbling, but both men became pillars and leaders in the early church, in Acts. I read the outcome of the their stories and think "Oh I want to get there too! How?!" and the answer is the same as for them: through Jesus. Simple and complex at the same time. At the moment, I have Peter's enthusiasm and Paul's clouded vision. My relationship with Jesus and our journey together mirrors theirs as well - through prayer and community; and their example in the NT's pages gives me courage to keep going.

The book about Peter talks of 'mature discipleship'. That's a great phrase for how I see my calling, the end goal, whether that be in the form of ordination or not. I'm like Paul, without Peter's advantage of being the same spacetime as Jesus the incarnation - my relationship is with the ascended Christ, the Son of the Trinity. So my discipleship is not following him around for three years and sorting his travel arrangements. It's moving towards him in prayer, centering my life on his example, and helping others do the same, bringing humanity closer to the coming of the kingdom of heaven.

He will meet me in prayer, and in community. And very much in the meeting of souls when I talk to my friends. Jesus for me is my friend, the person at my shoulder, often with a warm, comforting, rock solid hand on my shoulder, giving me the strength with the Spirit, wisdom from the Word, and a guiding, if not always obviously, path from the Father.