However, a couple of years ago, my friend Carrie Kingston broke that trend when she told me about a book she wanted to write. I told a commissioning editor I knew who agreed that the project would result in a great and much-needed book. And now everyone else can read it.

I may get around to reviewing Children in the Way? at some point, but don’t wait for me. If you work with children, get a hold of a copy, I’m sure you won’t be disappointed.

In the mean time, here is some blurb to whet your appetite:

How do we create a church environment that takes proper account of the way children learn? . . . Our grasp of how children learn has developed sharply in recent years. Nurseries and schools constantly review their approach, but churches sometimes employ inadequate practices . . . Carrie Kingston and Isobel MacDougall draw on their immense experience to help churches ensure that children’s encounters with church are positive and enriching.

My own essay was titled, Why Listen?: Considering Contemporary Culture, Christianity and the value of Listening. To give a flavour here is the concluding paragraph:

I would want to argue that, it is both appropriate and challenging to suggest that, like post-Exodus Israel, the people of this world need to live with the knowledge that when they cry out the Church of Christ hears their cries and is both willing and able to respond. As Lucy Winkett wishes to say, listening to individuals and communities around us, ‘reveals a variety of involuntary, visceral lamenting sounds in reaction to forces of destruction.’¹ Therefore, wherever real needs exist, the church has a God-given, Christ-inspired mandate to listen and so be engaged: Asylum, poverty, people-trafficking, housing, education, employment, healthcare, youth issues, crime, marriage, community development, the environment, urban regeneration, international relief, trade justice, globalisation, human rights, taxation, addiction, discrimination, care for the elderly, foreign policy, and metal health, and so the list goes on. ‘All listening begins and ends in God. The God who listens in infinite compassion is the God who creates in each of us the desire to listen to him, to his world, to each other, to ourselves so that, filled with his Spirit, we might continue his work here on earth.’²

THANK YOU.

ALLOTMENT ATONEMENT

Reflective voices weave together the transforming nature of the atonement with the socially inclusive, politically challenging and environmentally and economically transforming process that is working the land. Many tend to think of turning a piece of land over to growing as an escape from the world: a tranquil oasis and a retreat from the chaos and challenges of life. In reality, there is a long history of seeing land given over to growing, as something much more radical. The hope is to enliven people’s imaginations to the possibility that having an allotment, turning your garden over to food production, or even redeeming a local wasteland, is more than just good for the soul – it can be an act of holistic transformation in line with Jesus’ pragmatic vision of the Kingdom of God and a fuller understanding of the atonement.

A couple of years ago, I brought out a book looking at the Fruit of the Spirit and how they relate to our contemporary context (A Permanent Becoming). In the chapter on Joy, I suggested the postmodern pursuit of happiness and the Christian idea of joy actually have far more in common than we often realise. At the end of the chapter, I mused on the idea that churches should be seen as happiness hubs within our communities given that so much of the research on what makes people truly happy can be found in a Christian theology of Trinity, personhood, creation and eschatology. Here’s some of what I wrote:

Happiness Hubs

One of the Psalmists says this: Your people are wonderful and they make me happy.ⁱ

Is church the first place you go to look for happiness?

Lots of people I know think Christians are joyless, when in reality, we should be leaders in the pursuit of happiness. We need big advertising hoardings outside our churches saying ‘Happiness is Here!’

But that means the church has to walk the road that leads to happiness. We need to become living signposts for people to follow towards the Good Life. The elements that produce happiness should be at the centre of our Christian Communities.

People are genuinely looking for a happiness that lasts. So let’s tell them that they can find it with God, through God’s Spirit, within the Christian community, and not play games by pretending that happiness is a worldly pursuit, while we have something altogether better, called joy.

The pursuit of happiness is a legitimate biblical, theological and sociological objective.

Here’s some good advice from Paul Martin. It’s not biblical. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t true or that you can’t find the same advice in Scripture. Actually, I think God would say, ‘Yes and Amen’ to it. What’s more, I think it’s a great place to start if we want to make our Christian communities happiness hubs.

• Take a broad, long-term view of happiness: there is much more to it than immediate pleasure.
• Happiness is good for you, good for your children and good for society, so don’t be embarrassed about making it a top priority.
• Personal relationships are absolutely central to happiness and health. Be connected.
• Be active and engaged: throw yourself into meaningful pursuits.
• Look outwards, not inwards: focus your attention on other people and the world around you rather than dwelling on your own thoughts and feelings.
• Love unconditionally.
• A good education is one that fosters, among other things, social and emotional competence, communication skills, wisdom, resilience and a life-long love of learning.

• Let children play.

The programme told the story of Identical twins, Elizabeth and Caroline, who came from a home where religion was never discussed, but who both came to strong faith commitments – and that’s why the story was so fascinating, for Elizabeth embraced Islam, while Caroline became a Christian. They discuss candidly and movingly about how this has changed their relationship as twin sisters. If that wasn’t enough, it is set against the backdrop of their mother, who shares neither faith, and is dying from terminal lung cancer.

Listen here: Two Sisters, Two Faiths

NB: Get yourself a box of tissues – you will need them unless you have a heart of stone.

It would appear that as well as intensification of farming, locally producedfood will be at the heart of this drive. If this is true, then it has to be welcomed as decentralisation of food production, as well as most other things, such as power, has to be the way forward for a sustainable future.

For those of you who think feeding the population from gardens, allotments and windowboxes can’t be done, then you need to check out what went on in Cuba over at the Power of Community Website.

For those who fear the intensification model of farming, which stripps hedge rows and relies on pesticides and a high carbon footprint, then you need to watch this inspiring film – A Farm for the Future – and take on board the fact that if we are prepared to change our diets a little, then permaculture can give far greater yields per acre than so called intensive farming, producing a diverse range of crops within the same area rather than just a single crop, and maintain an ecological balance that positively encourages wildlife to thrive.

For those who want a say in the Future of our Food, then defra has just launched an online discussion document – FOOD 2030 – to invite your comments about the future of food and what our food system might look like in 2030.

And for those wishing to get off your backside and actually do something about the future of food, then check out EarthAbbey and be inspired to change your life from the roots up!

The Five Acts of Harry Patch
‘The Last Fighting Tommy’
by Andrew Motion

I.

A curve is a straight line caught bending
and this one runs under the kitchen window
where the bright eyes of your mum and dad
might flash any minute and find you down
on all fours, stomach hard to the ground,
slinking along a furrow between the potatoes
and dead set on a prospect of rich pickings,
the good apple trees and plum trees and pears,
anything sweet and juicy you might now be
able to nibble around the back and leave
hanging as though nothing were amiss,
if only it were possible to stand upright
in so much clear light and with those eyes
beady in the window and not catch a packet.

II.

Patch, Harry Patch, that’s a good name,
Shakespearean, it might be one of Hal’s men
at Agincourt or not far off, although in fact
it starts life and belongs in Combe Down
with your dad’s trade in the canary limestone
which turns to grey and hardens when it meets
the light, perfect for Regency Bath and you too
since no one these days thinks about the danger
of playing in quarries when the workmen go,
not even of prodding and pelting with stones
the wasps’ nests perched on rough ledges
or dropped from the ceiling on curious stalks
although god knows it means having to shift
tout suite and still get stung on arms and faces.

III.

First the hard facts of not wanting to fight,
and the kindness of deciding to shoot men
in the legs but no higher unless needs must,
and the liking among comrades which is truly
deep and wide as love without that particular name,
then Pilckem Ridge and Langemarck and across
the Steenbeek since none of the above can change
what comes next, which is a lad from A Company
shrapnel has ripped open from shoulder to waist
who tells you “Shoot me”, but is good as dead
already, and whose final word is “Mother”,
which you hear because you kneel to hold
one finger of his hand, and then remember orders
to keep pressing on, support the infantry ahead.

IV.

After the big crowd to unveil the memorial
and no puff left in the lungs to sing O valiant hearts
or say aloud the names of friends and one cousin,
the butcher and chimney sweep, a farmer, a carpenter,
work comes up the Wills Tower in Bristol and there
thunderstorms are a danger, so bad that lightning
one day hammers Great George and knocks down
the foreman who can’t use his hand three weeks
later as you recall, along with the way that strike
burned all trace of oxygen from the air, it must have,
given the definite stink of sulphur and a second
or two later the gusty flap of a breeze returning
along with rooftops below, and moss, and rain
fading over the green Mendip Hills and blue Severn.

V.

You grow a moustache, check the mirror, notice
you’re forty years old, then next day shave it off,
check the mirror again – and see you’re seventy,
but life is like that now, suddenly and gradually
everyone you know dies and still comes to visit
or you head back to them, it’s not clear which
only where it happens: a safe bedroom upstairs
by the look of things, although when you sit late
whispering with the other boys in the Lewis team,
smoking your pipe upside-down to hide the fire,
and the nurses on night duty bring folded sheets
to store in the linen cupboard opposite, all it takes
is someone switching on the light – there is that flash,
or was until you said, and the staff blacked the window.

You need to scoot along to about 40 mins into the programme, where you will find my good friend and director of the think tank THEOS, Paul Woolley holding his own against various contributors, including one from Camp Quest.

If you don’t know the work THEOS does, then do take a look as for me they are doing a fantastic job representing an informed, thoughtful and engaged Christianity in the public domain.

Given that I live in the West country, and that I have a (totally irrational, intuitive, experiential but it works for me, critically engaged, don’t buy into everything I’ve been told, non-fundamental, earthed) belief in the existence of a god, I’ve enjoyed listening to and reading about all the commotion caused by Camp Quest – the UK’s first residential summer camp for the children of atheists, agnostics, humanists, freethinkers and all those who embrace a naturalistic rather than supernatural world view – (spot the value judgement in that sentence).

In many ways, I’ve got a lot of time and sympathy for what they are doing. Speaking from a Christian theistic point of view, we could do with a lot more critical thinking within the Christian community – even free thinking. And I guess that’s where the aspirations and agendas of Camp Quest begin to break down for me. For even though they claim that ‘The camp . . . seeks to promote tolerance through the understanding that there are many ideas in the world . . . [and that] There is no ‘atheist dogma’ or agenda, but an atmosphere of inquiry is created and the campers are encouraged to discuss ideas of interest to them,’ one can’t help sense that in reality they simply cannot tolerate the idea of a religious worldview, and that belief is incompatible with notions of critical and free-thinking.

While they claim openness to all ideas and worldviews, the website is full of explicit and implied statements that suggest belief in any god is to be pitied as a substandard epistemological worldview. Indeed, they even appear happy to let one of their camp counsellors, burdened with the name Christian, to have a testimony that reads: ‘He grew up as a Catholic but has been sceptical of the whole “sky-daddy” thing for as long as he could think (literally) and shed all remaining superstitions and belief in the supernatural after reading “The God Delusion”.’ Is that supposed to make me feel anymore comfortable sending my child to Camp Quest, which lets remember, has  ‘no atheist dogma‘, than sending her to Christian camp where Johnny believes ‘the world is 4000 years old and that Dawkins is the anti-Christ’?

Such statements do not suggest critical thinking, they are just critical, playing with tired and well-worn characterisation that simply seek to demean people of faith with a sense of intolerant superiority based on misunderstanding and misrepresentation of how belief systems work for the vast majority.

Which is kind of ironic given that on the homepage there is concern that. ‘A recent series of articles in the Sunday Times (printed 28/6/2009) has caused significant media interest and unfortunately the dissemination of incorrect information.’

Responding to one headline:“Dawkins sets up kids’ camp to groom atheists” Those organising the camp would like to make it known that, ‘Richard Dawkins is not setting up Camp Quest UK. The word “groom” is misleading, offensive and inaccurate.‘

Of course, Dawkins would never suggest that those of a religious bent would be found ‘grooming’ children, or stoop so low as to cause offence, mislead people about religion, or say anything inaccurate about Christianity – but he might write this: ‘we should work to free the children of the world from the religions which, with parental approval, damage minds too young to understand what is happening to them . . . Priestly groping of child bodies is disgusting. But it may be less harmful in the long run than priestly subversion of child minds.’

The organisers of Camp Quest are right to be frustrated and annoyed about being misrepresented – Welcome to the world of your own making!