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Bulletin

Simon's Blog

  • songs for Advent 6
    Technically, I suppose, this one doesn’t rate as an Advent song. Still, it is the most beautifully truthful song I have heard this Advent season.

    If I’m honest, my own confident professions of God’s imminence--the ones preachers make as routinely as breakfast--don’t always match the reality of my heart. Amidst my own frailty and that of others, I look just as awkwardly as everyone else for a glimpse of something holy, something angelic, something star-like to make love’s birth more immediate.

    But then today, while waiting for the lift, I stared at an infant asleep in a stroller, her bare feet curled together, small and perfectly formed. Moments later, alone, I recognised holiness and it took my breath away.

    There is something about this coming of God in a child that changes the view, that interrupts the horizon, that invades the most ordinary and routine places of life ... forever. Everything is holy now. Everything.

    Peter Mayer’s ‘Holy Now’ may not make the Christmas carol list on Sunday, but it’s a gift to me.

    ‘When holy water was rare at best
    I barely wet my fingertips
    but now I have to hold my breath
    It’s like I’m swimming in a sea of it

    It used to be a world half there
    heaven’s second rate hand-me-down
    Now I’m walking with a reverent air
    ‘cause everything is holy now’
  • songs for Advent 5
    I passed a shop window today with an image of the infant Jesus posted behind a display of cosmetics. Not one for lipstick or facial cleansers, I didn’t notice much about what was on offer but I was taken with the image. Jesus had the complexion of an Islander from the South Pacific, was wrapped in a crocheted Chilean blanket, and was held in the black arms of an African mother.

    When I came home I saw Milton’s link to JT’s ‘Some children see him’ and felt quite moved by it. So here it is, # 5 on the list:
  • songs for Advent 4
    I know. Including a song by an atheist in my Advent list is a bit left field. It could even be annoying. But this is my list so it’s in. The song is Tim Minhin’s ‘White Wine in the Sun’.

    I like it for two reasons.

    First, it’s honest. And that’s a trait I find increasingly attractive. After the week I’ve had, I reckon some honest disbelief outshines a pile of religious posturing, point scoring and bigotry any day. But that’s another matter. Really though, I reckon Minchin’s words probably tap into what lots of people feel this time of year, not just card-carrying non-believers. While there’s something about the Christmas story that resonates, even touches the heart, the institutional and commercial trappings that surround it create more scepticism than belief.

    Second, Minchin’s song celebrates something about the Christmas story that’s well worth a song or two: family, identity, belonging. Sure, it’s not the whole truth, but it’s truth no less. And it’s evidence too of the spirituality—the deeper longings and values—that inhabits the average religious/agnostic/atheist heart. That’s good, isn’t it?

    I’m really not up for telling the world how vacuous and empty its celebration of Christmas is. Sure, it might be shallow and poorly informed—just like my own—but that doesn’t render it illegitimate. I reckon what people find in the Christmas season—the affirmation of life, the celebration of community and good will—is worth cheering for. Otherwise we become like religious Scrooges who do nothing but turn the lip at the tinsel and good cheer. And what good does that do anyone? I’d rather sit in the sun with white wine, my family and my neighbours, and be quietly grateful for the life that is ours through God’s grace ... that grace expressed so magnificently and openly in Jesus.

    So here it is:
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