sustain:if:able kiwi

cooking spirituality

A holiday highlight for me was cooking with my 7 year old. Last year I brought her a kids cookbook. A favourite day off activity for me is cooking with her;
: She chooses something from the cookbook;
: We go shopping together;
: We cook together;

So on holidays we made 4 evenings worth of meals – nachos, macaroni and asian salad. I love cooking as a re~creative pursuit, so this combines relaxation and spending time with my kids.

It also reminds me again that food is intrinsic to spirituality. It is one of the things I miss in the move from Graceway to Opawa Baptist. At Graceway we worshipped around food, and so much of our life was spent in cafes.

book crossing

Book crossing is a new form of book club. If you find a book in a phone box or park bench, it could well have been left there on purpose. Open it and your instructions await you.

I like the sheer randomness of this.

I’d like to add this to my thinking on spiritual growth trails. I’d like to add in a random growth trail – where you sign up and get random CD’s, poems, books placed across your path – and together we would search, with a smile, for the God-patterns in this sheer randomness.

doing postmodernity

Getting men to read fiction is the holy grail of publishing. Can men be weaned off newspapers and books about the exploits of elite military forces? This was the headline in a local newspaper on Saturday. Men read less than women. Men read way less fiction than women. For years, publishers have tried to get more men reading.

Penguin’s Good Booking campaign, launched in Britian this month, offered a 1000 pound to any man caught reading a Penguin title.

Time and again, I have been asked to explain postmodernity. I reach for a book I have read, only to be greeted with “Oh, I don’t read.” Many websites on postmodern mission include a list of books.

So how to engage missionally with a non-reading male?
– get them to browse a mall
– watch The Matrix
– learn DJing
– move 7 tonne of sand into and out of a church
– offer them a 1000 pounds
Any other ideas?

PS – I have expanded my thoughts into a piece called blokes and books here.

passion(ate) letter to mel

My article on Mel Gibson and the passion, they one that caused so much trouble (see here and here) has been published and is now also published on the web.

Headings include;
My movie of disbelief
The framing
The framing of violence
Gender relationships
Over-hyped
Evangelism by art

Please, if you are a Kiwi and you read it, why not also go and buy a copy of the magazine, as they have kindly put this online a monthly earlier than normal, due to the circumstances surrounding it.

easter thinking

great post over at barky’s blog on presence and absence.

It’s interesting to note that the resurrection story begins with the words ‘he is not here’. A turning point in the Christian narrative is founded on an absence of Christ and the absence of God.

At the start of this Easter week I’ve been thinking about this – how absence shapes the experience and spirituality of the disciples.

it formed part of my easter sermonic reflection. mark applies it to the church. i applied it to our spirituality in general. for some easter resurrection is celebration of presence. for others easter resurrection is hope of life because God feels absent. this is much tougher, but potentially much more fruitful.

Bible survives trip down flooded river

A whole new take on casting bread upon the waters here.

smiling

From here :: Critical reading of the draft of a friend’s book: inspiring – and no small privelege to be asked. (I’ll blog on it when it’s published.)

food for thought

I ran out first “creative conversation” here in Christchurch last nite. In Auckland we called these missional dinners.

Recipe
some random friends
an interesting guest (in this case Olive Drane)
food
wine
a facilitated conversation; I ask a question and away we got.

Last nite we dined out very richly on this;
Safe spaces :: “One of the things I have come to appreciate is that people today are searching for safe spaces in which to deal with the experiences that make up their own story of life.” What could these safe spaces look like?