Today was our half yearly Association Day and around 200 of us gathered at a very functional 1960's (?) built and pre-fab portacabin type extended secondary school in Derbyshire. The weather was dull and by the end of the day had degenerated to drizzle. It perhaps doesn't sound like a very auspicious occasion but in fact it was in some measure a thing of colour, beauty, light and hope. Topped and tailed by creative acts foworship combining skilful liturgy, drama, interaction and singing, we had some superb speakers brought up specially from Didcot (bow, bow) to share thoughts on Baptist People - Transforming Communties.
The keynote speaker was Revd Graham Sparkes who allowed paitings by the African American Jacob Lawrence to illustrate the potential for discovering beauty not despite struggle, not even alongside struggle but actually within it. That seemed a word in season for so many in our Association at this time. I wish I could find online one of the paintings he used which showed a wooden stair ascending to a blue rectangle with a yellow-orange circle superimposed upon it. Was it a closed door, blue with a gold handle? Was it the moon in a night sky seen through an open window? Although my first thought was the second of these, either could be valid, functioning not as some crude optimist/pessimist test but a relfection of the ambiguity of life. After all, even a closed door just might open to something wonderful...
In the closing worship we were invited to make our own Salvadorean crosses - emulating in some small measure the beauty that can arise from places of pain and struggle - which were then used to decorate a large wooden cross. Here again signs of colour, life and hope even in a tough world.
As we left, a few of us comented that it is always the same people who go the Association days - the churches who are represented. None of us from massive churhces, though several from large ones. All of us face challenges and struggles wherever we are, but when we come together are encouraged to continue to be what we are - something beautiful for God.