A Ludic Vision of a Missional Expression

 Step 1:  A missional expression is about living out your faith in a collective way, about loving your tribe – about knowing who your tribe is.  With this in mind, your missional expression will need a ‘vehicle’.  Most of the time this will be figurative.  However, sometimes it will turn out to be literal…

 

 

 

 

 Step 2:  …(and even have retro cool-appeal) Once you have established what your vehicle is, you need to spend some time examining said vehicle from every angle…

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step 3:  Think it through – is it just your ‘big idea’ or can others get onboard with you?  Once you’ve thought this through it’s time to get going! 

 

 

 

 

 (So for a beach/surf based missional expression here’s how it might go next)

 

 Step 4: Put Jesus at the centre.  There’s not much point otherwise.  Surf, play on the beach, be part of the tribe you belong to in this context.  And as you live authentically it may be that others who share your interest, your passion, will join you…

 

 

  

Step 5:  Be open to others joining you who have a different way of living out the missional expression.  Not everyone will want to jump into a wetsuit and catch some waves.  But how great would it be if a differently gifted, differently impassioned person wanted to be on the beach getting the barbecue ready for when everyone gets out of the water, ready to eat?

 

 

Step 6:  …So it’s not surprising that more people will join in time.  It’s going to be awesome!

 

 

 

 

 

Step 7: Shared beach, shared surf, shared food, shared life, shared love.  Authentic lives lived openly with one another.  And the chance to hang out in a VW campervan? 

 

 

 

 

 

 Okay, this is a playful rendering of an idea we’ve had.  Children’s toys make everything look fun!  Who knows what will happen, but in the meantime we’re going to have some fun on the beach anyway, because it’s what we love to do and we spend far too little time doing it.

Dufi Art

Fancy joining in a national art project to be put together during the Edinburgh Festival?  Check this out (I plan to join in too, if it’s not yet too late):

The National Portrait Gallery of Scotland will be hosting an exhibition later this year entitled Rough Cut Nation.

This unique multimedia project draws together a group of young artists from around Scotland to create a dramatic collaborative installation. For the Edinburgh Festival they will construct a remixed version of Scottish history as informed by street art and graffiti culture, painted, pasted and projected directly onto the walls of the Portrait Gallery.

The project updates William Hole’s original decorative mural scheme of 1889-1898, depicting important events from Scotland’s past. This new installation exploits the empty space produced by the Gallery’s current closure for redevelopment.

The original mural by William Hole portrays elements of Scottish history with strong religious and at times Protestant overtones.

As one of the artist duos involved, we are interested in exploring religious iconography and the use of Jesus as a moral or social catalyst within both Scottish history and contemporary culture.

With that in mind we would like to ask you three questions:

1. In one word, describe who was/is Jesus?
2. In one word, what does Jesus have to do with Scottish History?
3. What impact has Jesus had on Scotland past, present and future?

The answers that we collect from these questions will potentially form part of the final artwork, but will not be attributed to any one individual.
Thank you for your willingness to participate in this project, please send your answers to DUFI.JESUS@GMAIL.COM

DUFI ART | Guerrilla Art & Creativity
DUFI-ART.BLOGSPOT.COM

33 things about me (following BK’s example)

Well, BK did it, and I couldn’t resist so here’s everything you never wanted to know about me.  Thanks to BK for leading the way, it’s been great fun doing it. 

1. First thing you wash in the shower? I begin at the top and work down…

2. Would you kiss the last person you kissed again? Absolutely (it was my little girl, and before that my husband)

3. Do you plan outfits? Well, I don’t close my eyes and randomly select clothes from my wardrobe/drawers, so in that sense I do plan.  Do I spend time thinking through combinations of clothes, and weighing up relative pros and cons?  Virtually never, and it stresses me out when I have to do it (like picking out what to wear for a special occasion because I always discover a wardrobe deficiency somewhere

4. What are you craving right now? Sleep

5. Do you floss? Tried it, strangled my tonsils (suspect I need to practice)

6. What comes to mind when I say cabbage? Slugs (as in slugs ate the cabbages I tried to grow last year)

7. Are you emotional? At times. 

8. Have you ever counted to 1,000? Don’t think so, but I’m pretty sure I know how it goes… 

9. Do you like your hair? Sometimes.  It looked nice yesterday for some reason, today not so much

10. Do you like yourself? I don’t know how to answer that honestly.  Counselling here I come!

11. Would you go out to eat with George W. Bush? Don’t know.  I’ve heard he’s a personable guy, and might be good company, but I’d probably get indigestion from all my inner seething.  It would be interesting to get an insight into someone who so recently (and disastrously) shaped many world events.

12. What are you listening to right now? The distant sound of a radio, and various fans around the place trying to cool it down.

13. Are your parents strict? Well, I’ve been an adult for a long time, so their strictness doesn’t really factor into my life these days.  But when I was younger, they were moderately strict and probably could have been firmer with us.

14. Would you go sky diving? Categorically, no.  Why jump when there’s a perfectly good plane to stay in?

15. Have you ever met a celebrity? Celebrity is a relative term, so when I was younger meeting a local radio DJ counted as meeting a celebrity, a little older and meeting people in bands I liked was really exciting.  A couple of weeks ago we were close enough to Jamie Oliver to (nearly) touch him.  He didn’t speak to us though (someone else was talking to him at the time, I like to think he’d have had a good chat otherwise….)

16. How many countries have you visited? England, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland, France, Andorra, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Romania, USA.  Think that’s it.  We’ve not been abroad for a few years now, lots of UK holidays these days.  Hoping to go to Italy for the first time next year, and I still look longingly at our guide books for a return visit to New York, or San Fran, or a first visit to New Zealand, or Canada or Alaska.  Or any of the Scandinavian countries…the list of ‘would like to’s is really long.

17. Have you made a prank phone call? No.  I’m more of a prank recipient, and have always hated it so wouldn’t do it to someone else (unless it was a really close friend I knew could take it?)

19. Do you have a cell phone? Like BK I can only acknowledge it to be a mobile, but yes.

20. Can you use chop sticks? Very badly, so I prefer not to.  Don’t want my food to go cold / land on the floor.

21. Are you too forgiving? No.  Can you be?

22. Ever been in love? Yes.

23. Last time you cried? Can’t remember

24. What was the last question you asked? “Can I have a kiss and a cuddle?”  (context: saying goodbye to my daughter at nursery this morning)

25. Are you sarcastic? hmm…sometimes. 

26. Do looks matter? Define “matter”.  In the grand scheme of things I’m pretty sure looks aren’t important, but in the everyday world they do affect things (e.g. us getting upset because a child in my daughter’s class called her fat, and even more heartbreakingly, our daughter reassuring us it doesn’t matter.  But her feelings were still hurt, and she’s still little so we don’t want her to be worrying about stuff like that)

27. Do you like your life right now? Yes

28. Can you handle the truth? I’d rather know the truth.  Handling it can be another matter

29. How often do you talk on the phone? Not much, I’m not much of a phone person.  Love texting since I got my new phone though, but calls are expensive

30. Where was your profile picture taken at? It’s part of a piece of art I did a few months ago, so it’s come straight out of my head… 

31. Can you hula hoop? Used to be pretty good, but not so much these days, although I have the occasional secret practice with my daughter’s hula hoop when no-one’s watching…

32. Do you have a job? Yes, but I’m leaving in 6 weeks to pursue a different kind of life, for a while.  Very exciting!

 33. What was the most recent thing you bought? “The Guardian”, a bottle of diet coke and a tub of grapes from Scotmid.

Seeing stars

I’ve just been doing some research for work-related art projects and have discovered the most AMAZING place, just here on our doorstep, with sculpture by the most incredible artists, and a fantastic vision and resource for Scotland…  I’d not heard of it before, although apparently it has only in the last couple of months opened it’s doors to the public.  I wanted to share my discovery of Jupiter Artland with you.  I’m currently planning visits and workshops and more visits and more workshops…

Andy Goldsworthy

The funny thing is, I’d been planning a quick Andy Goldsworthy blog based around an article in The Guardian’s Travel section a couple of weekend’s ago – he’s been steadily installing artworks in mountain huts in a particular part of France, for discovery by visiting walkers.  Never really wanted to go on a walking holiday until I read about it, so I might yet come back and share that particular source of inspiration with you.

Deciding seems to be the hardest word

I recently made a big decision, to leave my much-loved job, and open up some space in our family life to spend time with our daughter as she begins school, to be available for my parents a bit more (although they live a few hours’ drive away) and to create a bit of space to play with art again.  It was a difficult but ultimately very releasing decision to make, although I’m now in the weird hinterland of ‘working out my notice’ and finding myself spending odd minutes rummaging around the shelves behind my desk at work and filtering out ancient catalogues and reports, half-started projects and unfinished drafts of ideas.  Our recycling bin is getting well-used.

Yet it’s hard to make decisions, about anything.  Today I was offered a chance to do something exciting in the autumn, which I’m now straining at the bit to do.  I have lots of questions, lots of thoughts, but mainly I’m wondering – is this something to spend my newly -released time on?  Is this going to be a distraction from those carefully thought-out intentions, or a fulfillment of them in someway?  I look forward to mulling it over for a little while.

But how funny when, tonight, just now, as I read another devotional from “God 360″ this was the closing quotation:

I have not lost my way – it is just that so many ways open before me that sometimes I hardly know which way to choose.  To decide for one is to decide against another.  I never imagined it would be this hard.  Now you know.  The higher a person’s call or vision, the more choices are given them.  This is our work in creation: to decide.  And what we decide is woven into the thread of time and being forever.  Choose wisely then, but you must choose.

-Stephen Lawhead, Merlin

I remember the year before I turned 30 was also the year I decided to study a post-grad in Community Education.  I distinctly remember sitting in a minibus talking it over with a colleague as we waited for the children we were looking after that afternoon to arrive (we worked for an afterschool club).  My words to him were something along the lines of ” I really want to study this, but I’m going to be 30 soon.  If me and my husband want to have a family now would be a good time to do it….but I wouldn’t be thinking about doing this course for another few years then.  It’s like choosing one option closes down the possibility of the other…”.  Of course what ultimately happened was I sort of got the best of both, I got to study and fall in love with community education, and 3 years later had my beautiful daughter.  But I couldn’t have known that and to choose to study comm ed felt like the most serious, ramifications-through-life decision I ever made.  Most of the time decision-making is about being brave and simply going for it.  To stand and look at the doors available to you and avoiding a decision is to stand still and to never get to live a life fully.  Safety is not everything.

Note to self: read this post again (and again) the next time a decision looms.

Love life, love reading

I’ve finally had some time over the last few weeks to get back into reading.  For months I’ve been half-heartedly starting reading books then setting them aside to do the same with a different book.  Or I’ve been so tired and overwhelmed by stuff that I’ve just reverted to my tried and tested ‘comfort reads’.  It has therefore been an absolute joy to lose myself in a book where the story or the central thesis is unknown to me and is just awaiting discovery as I turn the pages.

So in the last couple of weeks I’ve been reading these books:

” A Thousand Splendid Suns” by Khaled Hosseini.  This was lent to me by a friend from work.  We’d been in a book group together and had read “The Kite Runner”, and this book is really in a similar vein.  I enjoyed it, and found I couldn’t escape from thinking that although it is a work of fiction (and subject to feeling a bit derived in places because of that, I felt) the experiences of the characters are not fiction for people who lived through those times in Afghanistan. 

 

The next book I read on holiday was Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road”.  Oh my goodness, this is a breathtaking, terrifying, and traumatic book to read.  The Guardian’s reviewer said it better than I could, so check their review out.

 

 

 

 

 

I read “The Road” over 3 evenings, but found it so overwhelmingly bleak that I had to read something else more positive and hopeful before I finally went to sleep.  This little book, barely more than a pamphlet really, was the solution.  “Art for God’s Sake” by Philip Graham Ryken came to me by happenstance.  A friend had been looking in a second-hand bookshop, noticed this wee book and bought it thinking I might like it – I was touched by this in itself.  The book itself is great, thought-provoking, clear, and, for me, inspirational as I think about returning to some form of art practice in the autumn.

 

 

 

 

 

” The Price of Water in Finistere” by Bodil Malmsten is another book that sort of came to me, although this time I actually purchased it myself.  A good while back, perhaps during one of the times I was off work ill for a while, I had been listening to Radio 4 and this book (although I never picked up the full title, I didn’t forget the name Finistere) was a serialised ‘book of the week’.  The parts of it which I heard were just fantastic, and I still hear the narrator’s voice as I read it now.  I’ve only just started this one, and am in love with it already.  It’s witty and cutting, and paints a picture of a particular part of France which I would now love to visit.

Each of these books has fed, and is feeding, me, mind and soul.  God bless writers everywhere!  Have you read any good books lately?  I’ve also been pondering how I’d feel about one of those e-book things, the Kindle etc.  I think I would miss the feel of pages, I’d miss the texture of a weighty cover or a beautiful binding.  Give me another 10 years, I’m the living definition of a late-adopter.

Bring on the joy

The last 3 weeks have been so beautiful, and so full of blessing it’s hard to know how to begin to describe it.  We returned from a 10 day trip to Cornwall at the beginning of last week, and as a family I think we’re still awash with gratitude and general chilled-out vibes.  It’s not usual for us to feel the benefit of a break much beyond the time the break lasts, and I think there are several reasons for that being a little different this time.

Firstly, this holiday was in the company of my parents and also some very dear friends who we see far too little of because of geography.  Somehow, what could have been a bit of a disastrous mix (my parents and our friends didn’t know each other, we just hoped the size of the holiday home we’d rented would allieviate any ‘in your face-ness’) just really worked.  My parents are having a hard time because of my mum’s recent cancer diagnosis, and my dad in particular has become very tense and over anxious.  Our friends are in that early stage of parenthood when you are negotiating your way through life on very little sleep and facing a new parenting/management challenge every day.  Yet they all just got on so well, and actively enjoyed each other’s company – and so, of course, did we.  And there was that extra sense of delight in seeing two separate groups of people we love taking pleasure in each other.

Being in Cornwall itself was a massive blessing (we were in the same house, in a wee village called Helstone near Camelford, just last September with another wonderful family we are really close friends with – the fact we returned less than 9 months later and are currently seeing if we can organise another trip in October speaks volumes about the place).  I found real refreshment in being somewhere both unfamiliar – that ‘where are we now?’ feeling – and like an amplified, uber-version of the Britain that we know.  Plants and landscape somehow the same but not quite (greener, more abundant, both more friendly and more dramatic). 

The chance to be ‘at the seaside’ was an unalloyed delight.  This time round our daughter was thrilled beyond measure to be near any of the beaches we went too, and as someone who grew up on or near the coast in various parts of the UK  I loved seeing her share the same joy at playing on the beach, in the sea, in rock pools and so on.  I went wading into the sea with her (neither of us in swimming stuff) more times than I care to remember on this holiday, and yet neither of us really minded getting wet clothes, sand in unmentionable places and hair bouffed by the lively coastal breezes.  And there’s nothing like drying off in hot sun to compensate for wet underwear…

I also had massive fun rediscovering bodyboarding on this holiday over a couple of afternoons, something else my daughter and I have discovered together this last year.  I confess I cannot take pleasure into the getting into and out of a wetsuit, and nor can I truly take pleasure in the photos of me in a wetsuit either:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

… I think my husband and daughter look pretty good though.  One aspect of being in and part of the sea (the Atlantic Ocean no less!  sounds much fancier than my ‘native’ North Sea) is something I’ve read and heard people who surf talk about quite a lot, and there are some really good quotes too:

 

(Thanks to my husband’s blog for this photo taken at The Tubestation last year)

In other words, there is a well-documented spiritual connection we seem to find with the ocean.  I’m alternately afraid of and in love with the sea, and personally I think that’s a pretty healthy state of affairs as it can be a dangerous place (and like many of my generation it’s hard to leave the spectre of ‘Jaws’ behind – I long thought it was just me but have discovered it’s a reasonably common thing!).  Yet to launch yourself across a breaking wave as you head a little further out, a little further out, to lie bobbing peacefully on a bodyboard and let the water carry you up and down, to gaze in silent respect as rolling waves crash together from opposing shores of a bay and merge to make a foaming mass of water is to find yourself in a place of wonder and of peace.  The other aspect of playing with a bodyboard that I liked a lot was just that – it was play, and it was completely acceptable to play wholeheartedly.  I am coming to believe, from my position as amongst other things a playworker and playwork trainer, that play can also be a time of spiritual connection.  Sometimes the Godness of the world he’s made is just there to be seen and experienced and rejoiced in.  Playing in the sea was, for me, an experience of the Godness of his world.

Pretty much the highlight of the whole week, if we had to pick one, would be a week ago, when we spent Sunday in Polzeath, first going to church at The Tubestation, which you will learn more about from my husband’s blog so I won’t repeat it here but I do urge you to check it out, then hanging out for a bit there afterwards and being given a fantastic and completely unwarranted gift by our friends of a beautiful piece of art.  We spent much of the rest of the day just playing on the beach at Polzeath, then each of us got to surf or bodyboard as we chose, and all of this was sandwiched with the eating of lovely icecream and yummy chips.  It was a perfect day.  If there was one day that left us seriously trying to figure out how to make a move to Cornwall so we could become part of the community in Polzeath and get involved in The Tubestation, then that was it. 

And now, back home in Edinburgh, back at work, back amidst the worries and mess of normal everyday life, it seems like a dream that we’re still somehow carrying with us.  Life is good today.  Tomorrow my mum begins her treatment for the cancer they found a few weeks ago, and my prayer above all else is that life will somehow continue to be good, even through that, for all of us.

Honesty, drawing and Tracey Emin

To be honest, I’ve always been both fascinated by and simultaneously repulsed by Tracey Emin’s art.  It’s always seemed to me so brutal and so ‘flesh ripped open, here, look at me, look how gross this can be’.  It makes me feel uncomfortable, but somehow, like driving past a car crash, I just can’t stop myself looking at it.

I have a Tracey Emin book which I’ve only managed to glance at (am I afraid of her?).  It was a gift from my sister, very thoughtful and shows me she knows my fascinations, but I can’t quite face up to it somehow.  Even now a quick flick through has shown me at least half a dozen chapter headings my inner schoolmarm feels queasy at contemplating. 

But today I found myself getting excited as I jumped into my car to drive to work after stopping to pick up The Guardian to read at lunch time.  “How to draw by Tracey Emin” the header said.  So at lunch time I lost myself in the 3 pages of her drawings and her writings about her drawings.  Now, Tracey’s not one for a subtle image, nothing coy or twee.  And, being easily embarrassed, it was surprising to me that I was so blown away by her drawings that the content of a couple of them didn’t cause me to hide under my desk while I looked at them. 

In fact, her love for drawing and the power of art to become what we feel and what we remember is infused through the whole feature, for me anyway.  I was especially -moved? is that a bit cliched? – by her drawing ‘Ripped Up’ from 1995 and the accompanying text about the memories of having abortions.  Tonight I found a related section in her book ‘Strangeland’ and it stopped me in my tracks with it’s pain and honesty.  I can’t quite bring myself to quote it here, but instead I’ll quote her text from The Guardian today:

In 1995, even though things were going much, much better for me, I was still plagued with the memory of my abortions from 1990.  Mainly, because the first abortion I had didn’t work.  I was very ill and had to have another emergency operation.  Along with the pain and the guilt, I felt that I had to find a way to deal with this.  I made a series of drawings called Abortion. How It Feels, followed by another series called A Week from Hell.  I have tried to do abortion drawings since then, but they have never had the same intensity.  I think in 1995 I was still feeling the trauma of what Ihad been through.  I had just about stopped the yearning for a baby, and was coming to terms with my own creativity instead.  I know abortion is different for every woman, but I suffered the most digusting amount of guilt – when, actually, all I had done was make the right decision.

“Ripped Up” 1995 Tracey Emin

I find it so challenging to contemplate that depth of honesty and truth and personal pain in someone’s artwork.  I admire it, although as I look at a return to art-making myself I wonder if it’s something I wish to aspire to.  My illustration background was always about expressing other people’s ideas, other people’s thoughts.  Why do people enter the art disciplines they do?  Are illustrators there to represent the world on behalf of others or to carve their own unique path of expression? 

Anyway, I’m no Tracey Emin but there are lessons  I should learn from her I think.

Who am I?

So this last week saw me take what I feel is a pretty momentous step, and which I’m both delighted with and terrified about.

I qualified as a community education worker 8 years ago, and that role has both defined me and expressed what is important to me ever since.  It took me a long time to ‘find’ the profession too, I’d had my fair share of years in the wilderness wondering what I was supposed to be doing with my time here on earth, and I suppose it was no small coincidence that all the various little jobs, volunteering roles and areas of interests were what eventually channelled me into doing a postgrad professional qualification to enable me to practice as a community educator.  I have also been so blessed to have the chance to work for an amazing organisation for most of my post-qualification years.

So why, then, have I just quit my job?!

Since becoming a mum, in fact since becoming pregnant 5 years ago I’ve had a sort of split in my mind.  I wanted to continue to do the work I loved, that I could see also did so much good, but I wanted to not have the mad juggling act of parenthood combined with busy working life.  Financially we were in no position for me to stop working, and to be honest when our daughter was a baby I was glad to reclaim my self, to have a space where I was independent again (as much as any employee can be anyway).  As the years have gone by we have intermittently re-examined that position to see if our finances offered flexibility for other choices to be made, but until now that has been a pretty laughable proposition.

But this last 6 months or so have brought together a number of jigsaw pieces.  I’ve rediscovered a passion for art practice, and have had some creative juices stirred which could do with an outlet.  Our daughter is about to begin school and that presented new organisational challenges which we were struggling to reconcile (whilst being aware that everyone else manages these things somehow!).  As my mum is facing a longish period of ill-health and I’m feeling the distance between us, it would be great to have a bit more time and flexibility to head up to my parents to help out now and again.  And finally, once our daughter heads off to school we’ll free up enough money (from nursery fees no longer being paid) to make a career break for me a realistic idea.

We worked all this out about 3 weeks ago, spent a couple of weeks mulling it over, praying it through, and finally, last Monday I handed in my notice.  I’m not leaving immediately, I’ll be there for the rest of the summer but already my mind is shifting to new projects for the autumn, my eye is being cast calculatedly around the house as I assess areas to tackle when I have time.  I’m reimagining my mornings, getting up very slightly later, walking our daughter to school rain or shine (I’m getting rid of my car too, won’t need it) and getting to know other parents in the area as we gather at the school gates.  I’ve been busy looking at art and craft workshops I’d like to do, pondering possibilities and just listening to what excites my soul as I consider opportunities.

I also had a small crisis moment, induced at last week’s small group in our home.  So tell me, what do I say now when I get asked what I do?  I hate ‘housewife’, it sounds empty and demeaning.  (is that just me?  would I feel different if I hadn’t been a working parent?)  Apparently I’m going to be on a ‘career break’, but since I never regarded myself as having a career that doesn’t seem right either!  And although I have an art degree and I’m planning on (in a gentle and not particularly purposeful way) taking time to do more art, I baulk at calling myself an artist – artists are people other than me, I feel.

Can I still be a community educator even if I don’t have anyone to ‘educate’?!

I wonder how long it’ll take me to reconcile this?  I’m sure I’m not the first person, the first woman to feel like this, and I certainly won’t be the last so any insight and guidance will be much appreciated.

All-consuming

Found this remarkable interpretation of consumer society.  Statistics as art…now that’s got to be worth a little look.  The world really is a greedy place.  Or should I say full of greedy people?