Faith-&-Worldview

Image Source: Christianity Today ** Over the past four or so months, I have listened with rapt attention, waiting for the next episode drop of the Christianity Today podcast, The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill. For the uninitiated, it chronicles the story of Seattle megachurch, Mars Hill and its founder Mark Driscoll. It first came to my attention, if memory serves me right, when its host, Christianity Today’s Mike Cosper, popped in to the Holy Post podcast for a conversation with Skye Jethani. That interview, and the end of the first episode, go some way to lay out the team’s reasons for exploring this story and what lessons they hope to tease out as they go along. As expected, Mark Driscoll looms large over the series - which has one final episode to go. Alongside him, making appearances and/or being named checked are a slew of other heavyweights in the evangelical space, thanks to his involvement in two organisations like The Gospel Coalition and the Acts 29 network. ...

My grand plan for Lent this year was to post a poem a day using the Church of England’s #LiveLent reflections as a jumping-off point, but life happened (we lost G and then went into a full COVID-19 related shutdown) and I ended up stuck on 17 days. Poetry as prayer seemed like a good idea given the difficult season of faith I was in, in which prayer felt alien. It is not an entirely novel idea as I found out with more than a few essays reflecting on the subject, two examples being these excellent pieces at Talking Writing and The Millions. There is a rich history of the poetic form in various religious writing and in their associated rites; some might even argue that the enduring allure of the King James Version of the Bible has more to do with the cadence of its words than anything else. Come to think of it, the Psalms sometimes read like the brain dumps of a conflicted person, like transcripts of therapy sessions. ...

For Lent Week 5, Monday. A response to the CoE’s #LiveLent reflection for the day. Photo by A Perry on Unsplash \\\* Without a care the birds flit blithely between the trees, their bare branches lit briefly as though by the light of exploding stars, bright colours and persistent chirps in their own ways declaring this is good.

For the start of Week 5 of the CoE’s #LiveLent Devotional for Lent 2020. Photo by Dane Deaner on Unsplash \\\* In the swoosh of the wings of the bald eagle diving to snatch fish from the sea - its sustenance elegantly eked by dint of labour day by day - and the quiet resplendence of the colourful coral, goodness resides; each in its way declaring, this is good, this birthing on the fifth.

What if disease is the earth groaning, these bodies daily breaking its cry for relief from our feet pressed hard against its throat? What if…

For Week 3, Weekend of the CoE’s #LiveLent Devotional: \\\* The curse on the slithering snake is to toil ceaselessly, to eke each day’s living from the benighted earth. The promise we hold to is the blessing of the seventh, that after six summers of toil, the seventh brings rest and healing.

For Week 3, Thursday: \\\* The rush of locusts leaves the trees - once lush and green - bare, each fading away in the impermanence, of fields destroyed; the ground mourning the demise of a raw and an exquisite beauty. This is how the earth groans, curled up in pain at the wilfulness of wanton waste, a silent witness to the marks we’ve missed. We bring our clay, our bodies and and our burdens to this place to this aftermath of loss, and hope for redemption, that this place broken in the moment can be whole and holy once again.

For Week 3, Wednesday: \\\* Drop by drop flake by flake the seeds of life are coming and going a stairway between heaven and earth, words watering it with life, calling a harvest from dry things. Each seed is becoming a harvest; of redemption and salvation - joy returning where sadness once reigned.

For the Week 3, Tuesday reflection in the CoE’s #LiveLent Devotional: \\\* Trees planted by the river are blessed with the fortitude to resist the howling of the wind the pounding of the waves and the dying the heat and drying bring. Their roots hold together the soil, their leaves stay green even in the season of forgetting. So hold me, tell my heart to trust, to not waver in this season of distress.

A response to the Week 3, Monday reflection in the CoE’s #LiveLent series \\\* Land and plants the Lord God made each one, called forth by the thundering of His voice. First dry land carved from the gathering of the waters then seeds, each taught to yield it’s kind. And everything- the red earth, white beach lush plain and rugged hill sings as one. My God, how great Thou art.