St. David's Day

As a special themed life group tonight we looked at St David and all things Welsh before having a short discussion about patriotism and nationalism

St. David's last words, at the end of a long and fruitfullife of missionary endeavour among the pagan Welsh, were apparently 'Be joyful, and keep your faith and your creed. Do the little things that you have seen me do and heard about. I will walk the path that our fathers have trod before us.'

'Do the little things in life' ('Gwnewch y pethau bychain mewn bywyd')  is probably a very good maxim for living. Little things can mean a huge amount. It always amazes me what people remember - little things you say or do that meant a lot.

Patronising the poor, as Christians do sometimes

This is a rant about something that cropped up in our life group (that’s a midweek church meeting in someone’s house for all you non-churchey folk) last week.

We were talking about stories in the news and one of the stories led into a discussion about poverty, social exclusion, and how many areas of Wales may benefit from money being pumped in to improve things, but the people who live there don’t really see the benefit.

One person then came out with a classic comment about how ‘in poorer areas you do see that they have a better sense of community’. I don’t know why but that just tweaked me.

There is something so unbelievably patronising about that viewpoint. ‘Oh, those people living down in the slums, they don’t have all the nice things that we have, but they do have a better sense of community, so that makes it okay that I’m richer and they’re poorer.’

Somehow the fact that the poorer ends of town have a ‘better sense of community’ justifies inequality. But here’s some news. I live in one of the poorer parts of my city and I’m not so sure this mythical ‘better’ community exists. True, I’m on nodding, and even first-name, terms with some of my neighbours, but that’s because I don’t have a long drive and high hedges to act as a buffer zone. But I wouldn’t say we were mates.

You only really understand a community when you live in it. So, saying ‘oh there’s a much better community down in Grangetown, or up in Llanedeyrn, or [insert whatever crummy end of town you like]’ is only really possible if that’s where you live. Proximity and a dense population are not the same as community, whatever people may think. But it helps us to sleep easier in our comfortable middle-class beds to think that them poor people might not have the same comfort, education opportunities, aspirations, hopes and dreams down there in poorville. But at least they’ve got one thing that’s better than we have. Community.

A few years ago I was in a Baptist church in Grangetown. A large proportion of the membership didn’t live in Grangetown. They had been born there, bettered themselves and moved out – to Dinas Powys, Penarth, Llandough, and so on.

But they had this mindset that revolved around the church building. Every suggestion for outreach or evangelism was centred on that church building – knocking on doors in the neighbouring streets, having a ‘church fun day’, running a stall at the Grangetown festival. And those things are all well and good, but they weren’t based on relationships or communicating with people we knew. Why? Because the people we knew were generally people living in Dinas Powys, Penarth, Llandough and so on.

That church had a very set form of mission. ‘We want to reach Grangetown.’ I was told as much when I asked people why they had this fixation on knocking on strangers’ doors instead of talking to parents at the school gate where their kids went to school. ‘Oh, people wouldn’t come to church here.’

Why not? People come to IKEA here. (In fairness, IKEA wasn’t built back then, but there were other things people came to in Grangetown.) People travel. It’s not unheard of for people to cross a city to go to a church they like. (I do, now!)

But then I got it. You see it was about reaching those poor people in Grangetown with the gospel. You know, Grangetown, the place we all left as soon as we could afford to. So, even though we didn’t know anyone who lived there anymore, we would ship in, do some evangelism, and then ship out again. They needed the gospel and we would give it to them. Then we could retreat a safe distance, secure that we had done our duty of evangelism.

How patronising is that? To knock on someone’s door and tell them the good news that God wanted to share their lives, and then bugger off to another part of the city because we didn’t.

My cracker joke

Another groaner from life group. We'd had some leftover Christmas crackers and I was challenged to come up with a better joke than the ones people were reading out. Given that for some reason, the majority of jokes we'd had so far were about frogs, that was my theme. here's the joke:

"What do frogs watch on pay-per-view?"

"I don't know, what do frogs watch on pay-per-view?"

"Frog's porn." (Frogspawn, geddit?)

Like Bob (and, I guess, Ziggy)

Conversation at life group with a member who's going to Mali...

Kim: "I'm not sure what Malian culture is like..."

Me: "Lot's of reggae."

Kim: "Reggae?"

Me: "Yeah. Like Bob Mali."

Oh, how we laughed...

National identity

Last night's life group discussion was on immigration. Debate got a bit heated at times too.

One of the questions we had in our sub-group was "What makes a national identity?" And I was thinking about that and I said: 'Well, it's the people, surely.' Yes, there's the cultural heritage, the historical legacy of what's gone before, but really we are responsible for the national identity.

The big questions about being British revolve for me around not so much whether we are British, but what do we want being British to be. Is our national identity what we are, or what we choose? Are we bound by what we've inherited or are we free to shape our own destiny?

So, those things we like to think characterise Britishness - the ideal of fair play, of justice, of standing up for the underdog, of doing what's right even if it's hard, of rejecting tyranny, of showing compassion for your neighbour and even your enemy - as evidenced by the many, many stories of German airmen who landed having been shot down and were immediately offered a cup of tea. All those things are actually related to who we are as people and how we behave towards others.

And if it's about choosing to live like that, then really it's not a question of colour, or where you were born.

The other true religion*

*it's a paradoxical statement, but then I am disturbingly post-modern

A few years ago I was told to look after a work placement girl from Canada, who's dad worked for a fundamentalist Christian organisation. I was showing off how wise I was and quoted Jedi Master Yoda, "you know, from Star Wars..." "Star Wars?" she asked incredulously. "Yeah," I said. "It is the other true religion."

On Wednesday I'm going to be doing a talk on the spirituality of Star Wars. I don't want to give too much away ahead of the evening, but in terms of understanding concepts of God in a technological age, the cultural impact of the Star Wars films in my generation can't be underestimated. The conflict between materialism and spirituality predates post-Modernism as a popular movement, and certainly at the dying end of the Modern era, the films explore a definite yearning for something more than the world we can see.

So far I've got 12 clips ready from the original trilogy to illustrate my points with regards to conceiving and perceiving God; the duality of matter and force; and the mastery of evil within and the possibility of redemption.

Oh, yeah, it's going to be good.

More banned chocs

Life group social at ours last night and, as usually happens, we were inundated with sweets and stuff. One guest brought some Nestle After Eight chocolates which weren't the flat kind of After Eight's I remember, but were more like 'proper' chocolates, complete with minty fondant filling.

Why does evil taste so good?

Be my Valentine

One of my favourite Valentine’s Day experiences was a few years ago now, when my little brother was till at Uni. We were traveling back from the far North and stopped off to see him because he’d just been dumped and was feeling miserable. We took him out to tea at Pizza Hut where we were the only table for three in the place and the incredibly cheap candles sputtered wax all over the table in artistic patterns.

Why does this stand out? I think it’s because people can be so selfish on Valentine’s Day. It becomes all about you as a couple. I’d like to think that Cathy and I have a relationship that’s bigger than just the two of us – yes, we want to spend time together, but not at the exclusion of people who need some TLC.

Cath’s exciting gift today was a framed set of US stamps with the word “love” on; presented to her by a Mr Potato Head (which I’m sure will remind her of me). She gave me a mug that told me I was “the cat’s pajamas” – a mystifying turn of phrase that made me feel good nevertheless. Tonight our hot Valentine’s Date will be going to our life group where we’ll each be discussing a news story that’s caught our eye in the past few days.

Without wanting to spoil the surprise for anyone, my story is going to be about boffins finding the scientific equation to determine the “beer goggle effect” that makes women appear more attractive when you’ve had a few. I think the principle that I’ll draw from the story is “isn’t God great to give us beer to make ugly people more pleasing to the eye!”