As is self-evident from the date of my last post, things have been pretty quite when it comes to me blogging – and that’s not going to change (except that I’m doing it now, which is slightly ironic). For the last few weeks, I’ve been head down finishing off a book with Steve Chalke, which will form part of the teaching foundation for Spring Harvest 2010 – more of that anon, if I choose to continue blogging about such things that is. I’ve also entered a new season in my life – which I’ve alreay reflected on – Which Way Now? As I see blogging as part of what I’ve been doing for the last few years, I’m going to lay off it for the forseeable future while I consider my future options and what form my life will take as I enter this new season.

Thanks for reading.

I read with interest in today’s Independent on Sunday that tomorrow the UK Government intends to set out its plans to meet the UN’s food production targets for 2050.

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.

Following on from the post below - Not Thinking, Just Critical – it’s worth taking a view of the recent edition of Big Questions on BBC iplayer, which had a good discussion as to whether atheism is an intolerant belief.

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!

Regular readers of my blog may recall that last year I was rather taken aback to hear that Antony Gormley had won the latest Fourth Plinth commission with his One and Other concept of putting members of the public on the plinth – given that I had suggested basically the same idea to a member of the then Fourth Plinth Committee during a Radio 5 broadcast, which was discussing the previous shortlist – more here: Familiar Idea.

Anyway, you shouldn’t be surprised to learn that neither the Mayor’s Office, the Fourth Plinth Committee, The Arts Council, nor Antony Gormley’s Studio have been willing to respond to my question – why it is possible to claim One and Other as an outstanding, remarkable, or indeed original work when such a similar idea had already been suggested long in advance of the current proposal? Nor how they felt about claiming that it is about “The democratization of art,” (Antony Gormley), and that it is “a brilliant case of people coming to art and art coming to people!” (Boris Johnson), while ignoring a valid question about this public art project from a member of the public who had already proposed that the public should be allowed to stand on the plinth.

Sadly, nothing on the Fourth Plinth will be done in remembrance of me – but perhaps I should be more than content (indeed, delighted) that at least one hour of this public art project will be given over to remembering Jesus, thanks to Methodist Minister, Ken Chalmers, who will be celebrating Communion from the top of the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square on  TUESDAY 28th JULY 2009, 9-10 am.

You can find out more and give your support here:

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My 4 year-old daughter drew this on the front of my birthday card instead of writing ‘Daddy’. I assumed it was a family portrait – which in a way it is – It’s “Jesus and his friends”. Sweet.

I doubt you will love it as much as I do, and it’s hardly the start of a renaissance in religious art, but I thought it was worth sharing all the same.

For the past four years I’ve been a stay-at-home dad. Sure, I’ve written a couple of books, done some freelance stuff, etc – but basically my day-to-day has been looking after my beautiful daughter – which I guess is never going to change. Except that in a few weeks from now she will be in school full time and like many a parent who have looked after a child during their pre-school years, I will feel bereft, but I will also have a sense of freedom – what am I going to do with all that time?

That’s a good question. Part of me senses a whole world of opportunity is about to open up for me, while the more pessimistic (and dominant) side of my personality fears that I will atrophy – I’ll become a dad who does lunch, or a dishy daddy (the male form of the yummy mummy) who fills his days with consuming daytime telly, window shopping and worrying about whether my daughter is developing an nut allergy simply because I will have nothing else to fill the void where once once Hama Beads and Play Dough, trips to the zoo and days in the park.

Like everyone, I have dreams and I want to succeed and feel that I’m contributing something worthwhile. I feel like I’m on the cusp of something and I’ve carried for years a very clear word that I am to be like Joshua, to be strong and courageous and to enter the promises God has for me. And yet most of the time I really feel like the spies who saw the giants in the land and turned back, never to see what amazing things God could do if only they would trust him.

Being of northern working class stock, my default is to go for what I think I ought to do – take any job going, however soul destroying, as we need the money and it’s a father’s job to provide. But my soul cries out within me, that’s not the path God has called you to. If you believe the father’s job is to provide, then let your Father in Heaven be a father to you and trust him.

I don’t mind admitting that wrestling with all this has been tough for me. And neither do I mind saying that at 7.45 am this morning I was in tears in my kitchen listening to thought for the day on radio Bristol. At the end of her piece, the women speaking quoted some words of Maggie Dawn, which I’ve found on her blog:

“Regardless of what is sensible, and regardless of what you think you “ought” to do, which of the courses ahead of you makes you feel alive, makes your heart open wider, makes you feel hopeful and as if the future is opening up not closing down? That is the route you should go.”

I think God is trying to tell me something.

Inspired by the BBC’s Poetry Season, particularly by those performing their poems at ‘Poetry Slams’, I did a ‘Communion Slam’ last Sunday, which seemed to go down really well with people at my church, given the enthusiastic responses I got after the service. Basically I wrote a poem/liturgy which I ‘performed’ by way of invitation to the communion. But even as I write this, particularly thinking about the dramatic communions we used to have in the Parish of Northolt, I guess all liturgical communion could be thought of as a slam.

Anyway, if you are interested, here is the unperformed text.

Do this in remembrance of Jesus

Give thanks.

Eat it

Take a cup

Forgive as you have been forgiven.

Over the last few months I’ve become involved in one of the most inspiring, deeply spiritual, theologically grounded, community-orientated projects that I’ve ever come across – EarthAbbey.

To quote the homepage:

EarthAbbey is a movement of people helping one another to live more in tune with the earth. We work to pomote:

• A rich relational life between human beings
• A compassion toward the earth and its creatures
• A sense of interconnectedness of all life
• Wisdom and justice in relationships
• Human fulfilment and the nurture of the inner life
• A way of living that leaves the earth better than we found it

Our inspiration derives from Jesus of Nazareth whose life and mission was to bring about a peace which embraces all creation.  We pursue a life-affirming, creative spirtuality that is open to all.

As part of my input, I helped edit EarthAbbey’s first ever publication, The Dream that Inspired the Bible, by EarthAbbey’s founder and visionary, Chris Sunderland.

To say it’s an interesting, challenging and inspiring read about sums it up. As does John Drane’s view that it, ‘Opens the possibility for a renewal of our entire way of being.’

You can get hold of it here: EarthAbbey Publishing.

]]> http://alanmann.wordpress.com/2009/05/14/faith-in-an-emerging-agriculture/feed/ 0 alanmann EarthAbbey The Dream that Inspired the Bible