once a month we celebrate a full moon pizza party. it is part of our experience and expression of church. a very good friend who is also a follower of Jesus challenged me on it because they were concerned that it was a little too similar to the way NOS expressed church at times. being put in same sentence as NOS is nothing new to me and i value this friendship highly and i am glad it has the strength and trust to allow for such questioning. it was also a really positive question for me becuause i was able to process my reflections on our full moon pizza party in a way i hadn't fully done before. below is my response to my friend's enquiry:
for us it is a way of stepping into one of God's rhythms, that of the moon. in the bible God said to celebrate/recognise the new moon and then in the NT he says not to worry about it but we wanted to get in touch with some of these things but the full moon was easier to get the kids into, in a visual way and pizza is like a full moon because it is round and pale (before toppings!!). it is a time when friends and community come together and bring and share their toppings and some poeple bring dough too. there are so many reflections on it that excite me and lead me towards Jesus and the Father. such as:
-the full moon is the moon's full reflection of the sun which leads me to consider what it looks like for us to fully reflect the son.
-coming together to eat is something Jesus did much of, with believers and those who did not yet believe. he also welcomed the hospitality of those who did not yet believe and i enjoy sharing food that is the amalgamation (right word?) of the hospitality of believers and non believers.
-it is a time of wonderful conversation, laughter, children playing and general catching up which seems to happen less and less in reality now that facebook and other online forums are so popular.
-weekly pizza parties are something our friends andrew and debbie jones have always done for as long as we've known them (6 years). the jones' and the pizza parties always inspired us amd so in creating our own pizza party ritual it feels like we are joining in corporate fellowship with them as our faith community/tribe.
-also, as i think about the full moon i become more aware of the moon in general and finding myself engaging with one of the first rhythms God created connects with my spirit.
i think the next step for me is to get my head into the biblical framework for this bit of our church. when God leads me clearly through lots of confirmation from different sources i don't feel the need to look it up in the bible. but maybe this would be a good discipline to get into, undertaken with a big handful of grace - it's not like i sit around twiddling my thumbs looking for things to do with my day!
Friday, February 22
Monday, February 11
the sun is shining, as is the Son.
oh the sun will come out tomorrow i have been singing to josiah and now the sun is out and it is beautiful and my windows are flung open and my spirit is soaring and the Spirit who dewlls within me is up to tricks and i feel a season of healing and freedom upon me. i am reminded a lot in recent conversations of one of my favourite quotes by the dalai lama, "one must know the rules in order to break them properly" or something along those lines. i think i am stepping into a time of embracing my sensible eccentricity as someone recently described me. i think sensible is not quite right but we will see. i am wearing creative clothes again, i am sewing, the other day i was inspired to make a birthday card and a birthday gift - i have not had the creative energy to make cards for soooo long. and the garden has received the touch of my hands in the last week or two and will no longer be neglected as it was last year. and i shared communion with my dear friend juliet this morning - a wonderful feast of pancakes and mashed banana, greek yogurt, chopped hazelnuts and maple syrup. perhaps i am going to start falling in love with myself - about bloody time.
so back to sorting and cleaning and making the way straight.
shine on me so i reflect Your glory,
live in me so people see Your beauty,
and pour on me so out of me flow streams of Living Water.
(gareth robinson)
bring on the full and intense light of the sun and the Son.
so back to sorting and cleaning and making the way straight.
shine on me so i reflect Your glory,
live in me so people see Your beauty,
and pour on me so out of me flow streams of Living Water.
(gareth robinson)
bring on the full and intense light of the sun and the Son.
Friday, February 1
skipping
haven't blogged for ages - really not sure if anyone reads this blog at all anymore, but for what it's worth, if you are reading then i thought i'd give you my first thoughts on skipping.
skiping - not the rope game you play at primary school but the art of getting free food from skips - the best ones seem to be M&S and waitrose.
we have claire (aka treehouse claire) staying with us for a bit. claire has lived for long time on a protest site near edinburgh and they don't buy food they skip it. so what you do is got to a skip at the back of a supermarket and take your shopping bags with you and look for rich pickings. there are ground rules such as, don't make a mess, leave the bin as you find it (including tying up bags you open and not tipping unwanted food out into the bin), don't jump fences or break and enter (too naughty even for me) and keep cool if the securtiy or police ask you questions.
aside from the obvious things about the art of skipping which are:
1. free food
2. keeping waste out of landfill becasue you eat it and then recycle packaging
3. exciting nighttime adventures
you're also doing other things like making a really important stand for the hard work of others and the damage to the environment caused by our food industry.
for example, in the last couple of days we've rescued prefectly edible food which has been produced in kenya and israel. both these countries are places of serious unrest at present and yet they worked hard, possible for little money, to make a perfect looking grapefruit (possibly getting ill in the process from chemicals used by farmers) or other product which we have then decided is no longer wuite good enough for our western p[alettes. goodness knows why - they look amazing.
or simply that these foods get produced so far away that the cost to our pockets and to the earth for their transportation becomes insulting when we so quickly discard them as unwanted and our wallets just pay the price elsewhere for this waste. the cost to the environment is then worsened, like adding salt to an open wound, by putting the produce and it's packaging in landfill thus adding to many problems we are already dealing with in our country.
last night we came back with a treacle tart, a steak pie, 2 apple pies, 4 figs, 4 punnets of raspberries, 3 punnets of bluberries, a basket of flowering hyacinths, loads of assorted veg, bread, chocolate puddings, crisps, thai green chicken curry, 4 cucumbers, 4 tubs of aaorted margarine, a bottle of fresh juice, stuffed peppers, posh cheeses and other stuff that i can't remember right now.
when the police did a drive by (at the back of waitrose) they were polite and listened to our clear explanation that we were getting food. they asked if we were really that hungry and claire explained that we weren't hungry at all but thought it was unnecessary so much food had to go to waste and all the police said was 'be careful'. they watched from their car for a couple of minutes then drove off. talk about sharing the good news!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
skiping - not the rope game you play at primary school but the art of getting free food from skips - the best ones seem to be M&S and waitrose.
we have claire (aka treehouse claire) staying with us for a bit. claire has lived for long time on a protest site near edinburgh and they don't buy food they skip it. so what you do is got to a skip at the back of a supermarket and take your shopping bags with you and look for rich pickings. there are ground rules such as, don't make a mess, leave the bin as you find it (including tying up bags you open and not tipping unwanted food out into the bin), don't jump fences or break and enter (too naughty even for me) and keep cool if the securtiy or police ask you questions.
aside from the obvious things about the art of skipping which are:
1. free food
2. keeping waste out of landfill becasue you eat it and then recycle packaging
3. exciting nighttime adventures
you're also doing other things like making a really important stand for the hard work of others and the damage to the environment caused by our food industry.
for example, in the last couple of days we've rescued prefectly edible food which has been produced in kenya and israel. both these countries are places of serious unrest at present and yet they worked hard, possible for little money, to make a perfect looking grapefruit (possibly getting ill in the process from chemicals used by farmers) or other product which we have then decided is no longer wuite good enough for our western p[alettes. goodness knows why - they look amazing.
or simply that these foods get produced so far away that the cost to our pockets and to the earth for their transportation becomes insulting when we so quickly discard them as unwanted and our wallets just pay the price elsewhere for this waste. the cost to the environment is then worsened, like adding salt to an open wound, by putting the produce and it's packaging in landfill thus adding to many problems we are already dealing with in our country.
last night we came back with a treacle tart, a steak pie, 2 apple pies, 4 figs, 4 punnets of raspberries, 3 punnets of bluberries, a basket of flowering hyacinths, loads of assorted veg, bread, chocolate puddings, crisps, thai green chicken curry, 4 cucumbers, 4 tubs of aaorted margarine, a bottle of fresh juice, stuffed peppers, posh cheeses and other stuff that i can't remember right now.
when the police did a drive by (at the back of waitrose) they were polite and listened to our clear explanation that we were getting food. they asked if we were really that hungry and claire explained that we weren't hungry at all but thought it was unnecessary so much food had to go to waste and all the police said was 'be careful'. they watched from their car for a couple of minutes then drove off. talk about sharing the good news!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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