A few days ago the local news reported that Bolton City Council are putting a 30 day time limit on road side shrines. They want to stop permanent memorials, as they say that they are a distraction for other road users - which they probably are. People are kicking off about it and protesting, the council are going to create a place where families can take their memorials instead. This isn't going down very well - people want their memorial in the place of death.
The shrines reaffirm the importance of place to me, in a society where we're increasingly finding identity in network rather than place, place still has an important value. I also think that there is something quite human about being rooted in a place, being born, living and dying in a physical place connected to the planet. I'm doing a funeral tomorrow morning, the person will be buried 5 miles away from where they died. There is a real and physical detachment from the place where they lived and the family. As place/land becomes more and more scarce i fear that the detachment may increase.
Roadside shrines also fascinate me as they blur the boundary between public and private space. On one level they are a deeply personal expression of grief yet they are located on a public highway where all can see the grief expressed. They are in many ways 'not very British' as they bring raw emotions into the public realm.
I'm also intrigued at the respect that people give to the memorials. There is one at the end of my road on a junction where three people were killed a few years ago but a hit-and-run driver and on each anniversary there is an explosion of candles, flowers and banners on the shrine. However, throughout the entire year the shrine is respected, people stop at it and pause, there is an area around the shrine that they do not walk onto. It has become sacred ground.
I keep hearing rumour that someone is doing a PhD in them...can anyone point me in the right direction?
I've just got the new Ian Brown album, The World is Yours. It's a great album full of political and anti-establishment rants, included within that is, of course, a rant about Church. Whilst i think that musically the album is great, i have to confess to initially finding the lyrics a bit passe. To rant about the church is fair enough, to rant about the war in Iraq is fine but I was initially struck by the naïvety of the rants and their lack of thought through political comment.
This from MusicOMH.com 'Street Children puts forward the rather simplistic idea that people with big houses should open their doors to homeless children and let them live there, while Save Us criticises "those whose eyes are closed to the plight of the African child" - laudable sentiments to be sure, but ones which leave Brown with an even bigger messiah than the likes of Bono'.
However, i also wonder whether there is more going on that initially meets the eye. I wonder if the depth comes through listening to the whole album and the subtle theological messages that are coming out through it. I wonder if it's an anti-established religion rant but one that gives a positive message about Christ and God. For example the song before Street Children is called 'The Feeding of the 5000' which is obviously about the miracle of Christ. In it he describes the two fishes as the spirit and the five loaves of bread as the soul, Jesus is referred to as reaching through the darkness as the king of golden rays. The song that follows is street children that starts with a rant about the wealth of the church. It also has a line that says, 'that if i had a home with 10 million rooms i'd open it up for them'. I can't help but make the connect to John 14:2 ' In my fathers house their are many dwelling places'.
There seems to be a movement that goes like this: Jesus feeds the starving 5000 - the church closes it's doors to the starving millions and keeps it wealth - God opens the heavenly mansion to all people...
On Friday night I celebrated the birth of a new moon Scorpio at Findhorn. I stood in the dark of the garden of cluny college of the findhorn foundation surrounded by a group of 11 people, 3 men and 8 women gathered from across the globe.
We walked down to the gardens in silent, moving to a pre-prepared area where we were to light a candle and stand around in a circle. The priestess, an eastern European woman, invited us to hold some silence for a few moments whilst she lit the candle.
In a small bowl she placed a mixture of sweet grass and sage, she then set them on fire before blowing them out leaving some smouldering ashes. Taken a feather she fanned the ashes created a consistent plume of smoke. This bowl of smoke was carried around the circle as we were invited to smudge ourselves - to fan the smoke onto ourselves - and invite blessings down. The bowl was carried around and I covered myself in the smoke from the smouldering ashes.
We were there invited to burn any negative patterns that we had in our lives. We’d previously written these down on a piece of paper, and as the candle was passed around we burnt our papers in a pile on the floor. The priestess cried out ‘Ho’ and we responded with a ‘Ho’. ‘Ho’ meaning ‘I have spoken’ and the response meaning ‘We have heard’.
A bag of seeds were passed around the circle and we were invited to take a seed symbolising our hopes for the new moon. We were invited to hold the seeds next to our heart, so that our energy field could envelope the seed and our positive energy transfer onto the seed. We then individually placed our seeds into a large ceramic bowl in the centre, and as we placed our seed in the soil we called our ‘Ho’ which was responded to with a “Ho’ from the rest of the group.
The bowl was passed around the group and held aloft as we held one another’s hopes and dreams in our hands. The bowl was placed into the centre of the group and we held hands with one another and sang a chant four times through.
We moved to the fountain where water was placed upon the seeds by the priestess whilst a blessing was spoken, finally we moved around the garden in silence before resting at the compost where the seeds were returned to the earth. Placed in a place that would bring new life into the garden, our hopes and dream infecting the whole garden.
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March 15th | The Entrepreneur Imperative
with Bill Bolton 6:30pm – 8:30pm at Nexus
Bill leads the field on thinking about entrepreneurial talent. He has been closely involved in the 'Cambridge Phenomenon' - he set up the St. John's Innovation Centre which now has an international reputation for generating new businesses and nurturing entrepreneurial talent; it helped to launch about 500 businesses - 2 businesses a week for 5 years. He was a UNESCO professor of Innovation and Technology Transfer and is a specialist in Business Incubators. He has written three books, and has developed an entrepreneur evaluation tool that identifies people’s entrepreneur potential and also that of entrepreneur enablers. While his background is in business, he sees entrepreneurs working with three kinds of capital – economic, social, and spiritual. He has also recently written a grove booklet on entrepreneurs and the church.
A changing world is the entrepreneur’s natural habitat. Business, mission, spirituality, social transformation are all environments where there is huge change. So it makes sense to see what might happen if we can encourage more entrepreneurial thinking and activity.
Blah...manchester is a partnership between CMS and Sanctus1.
6:30-8:30pm
Admission free
Venue: Nexus
Drinks served from 6:30
Input begins at 7:00
For a map of the location see: http://www.nexusonline.org.uk
We have a limited number of places. It would help us to know in advance if you're coming, so please book a place and turn up!
E-mail Ben Edson on: [email protected]
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