Peacefulness

Hi folks, hope you have a had a good week… This weeks reflection comes off the back of this weeks d-church about Peacefulness. It seems that everywhere we look there are things going on around the world. We live in interesting times! It would be easy for these things to rob us of peace but sometimes it’s also the small things that enrage us… check out this great spoken word clip that illustrates this… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyddcdK1-U8

With this in mind, what if peacefulness was actually an action… something we do? Something we are? In our prep for d-church we came across these things which turn peacefulness into action…

1. Make a personal commitment to nonviolence.

2. When you see someone in trouble, whether he or she is lost, confused, upset, or has fallen, don’t act like you don’t see the person – provide some help.

3. Show a child how to be kind to animals.

4. Speak out against prejudice and discrimination when you see it.

5. When you feel angry, count to ten before saying anything. Then, ask yourself what response will be best for the greater good.

6. When you feel slighted, ask yourself if what happened was really about you or if it was about the other person.

7. When you realise that it was about the other person, find in your heart some compassion for that person, realising that he or she is most surely struggling.

8. Regard people who hurt your feelings as your personal teachers of how to maintain a peaceful nature.

Some questions to ponder… what/where is your perfect peaceful moment? What everyday things stifle your peacefulness? What is peacefulness for you? How did Jesus find a sense of peacefulness? Can you add other things to the list above?

This week we meet at the Red House Farm at 8.00pm, why not come along and join the conversation…

Peace, Rob

Difference… Other… ?

Hi folks, how you doing? There is so much going in the world right now that it is really difficult to know where to begin with this weeks reflection. I have been going to my local pub around the corner from our house, I go occasionally but in the last few days I have been three times, to watch the footie, to eat or just hang out with some friends. I have been occasionally in the past, but wouldn’t say I’m a regular. But as a Leeds United fan living amongst Newcastle United supporters, I stand out a bit!

 

So this is where this begins. The staff have been really friendly when I have gone in and we have chatted mainly about football. It’s a typical sports pub, but it does pull from the locality and more often than not guys finish work and go straight to the pub in their paint and dust covered overalls… As a pub it has a real mix to it… and I have to say I love it!

 

I have been pondering a bit this last couple of weeks about difference. I think like most of us I live in a ‘virtual gated’ community. I hang out with the people I hang out with. I shop in a particular place and I tend to stick to ‘my own kind’. It struck me that over time I have stopped engaging in places and with people that are different from me, so much so that I have a view and an opinion of who ‘they’ are and what ‘they’ may think and believe… I have no evidence… I just know… Right?

 

What I’m beginning to wake up to is that God loves all… no matter who ‘they’ are… just like God loves me… And love, I think, means trying to understand who ‘they’ are… to get alongside, to listen to their story and to hear them… to not judge or critique their world view… but to be present. I wonder if God is asking us to engage with the ‘other’, the ‘different’… however you understand that.

 

A few weeks back I went to the Sikh Temple, they gave a group of us hospitality and talked to us about who they were and what they believed. What struck me after I got home, is that I didn’t know what they felt like when they were on a metro and they were abused for wearing a turban or were sworn at for the colour of their skin. I never would… and then it dawned on me how privileged I am… and in fact… it is up to me… a white guy in his forties to begin to engage with difference where ever I encounter it… to start to dialogue and get alongside those working class lads in their overalls, or to start better conversations with those who’s religion, race, sexuality is different to mine.

 

So… some things to ponder on…

 

What do you think?

 

Do you consider yourself as living in a ‘gated community’?

 

How does Jesus relate to difference?

 

In what ways can you engage with this?

We meet this week at Cullercoats Crescent Club at 8.00pm

Peace, Rob

 

Image from https://www.pexels.com/photo/food-colorful-sweet-bear-54633/

Lament!

I am going left-field for this weeks reflection and taking an idea from a session I was at earlier in the week. Instead of me (or Rob or Andrew) writing something for us to reflect on, and trust me this is my seventh and final attempt of writing something coherent. I want to suggest something different for us to do.

In the comments below I want you to write something that is disturbing you or occupying your mind at the moment. The practice is sometimes called lament but I want you in a word, a sentence or a 500 page rant to say what in the world is giving you sleepless nights or worrying you. Please don’t comment on someone else’s lament, it’s theirs, let them have it (you can react to it though). Get it out of your system.

Once we have done that (Probably Sunday afternoon) I am going to add some questions or thoughts ready for Sunday night so we can reflect and may be (no promises) find a glimmer of light, a way forward, some hope in it all.

Let us see what happens.

See you at the Sportsman 8pm

Picture credit : alice.d : Scream : https://flic.kr/p/4jTTEY : Used under CC BY-NC-ND-2.0 : licence https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/