At BMS Catalyst Live we were entertained a dmade to think the comedy rap jazz duo Harry and Chris.

Here is their 'fear song' (watch out for those ladders...)

Yesterday was a ludicrously long day - I left home at 03:40 and returned at 23:10 or thereabouts. And in between, I spent a full day (09:00 to roughly 16:45) at the BMS Catalyst Live event at St Martins in the Bullring in Birmingham.

Was it worth it?  Yes, it most definitely was! Some well known speakers such as Ruth Gledhill, Stanley Hauerwas (a filmed interview as he'd been unable to travel) and Adrian Snell.  Some fascinating topics from history/biography via ethics, to apologetics and worship.  There was real laughter, and deep thinking.  There were conversations with friends old and new.

I guess it's a bit like a box of chocolates, where different flavours sit side by side, waiting to be eaten. And yes, you can eat a coffee cream followed by Turkish delight and then hazelnut crunch, and somehow it works.

I guess it's a bit like being back at school, where it's maths, and then geography before English literature and RE.  Your mind has to switch swiftly from topic to topic, without time to process what you've heard.

I guess it's a bit like doing theology, as you find yourself making connections between different themes and ideas.  The quest for truth and meaning, the challenges and opportunities of a technological age, the power of story, the need for imagination/imaginative hermeneutics, the importance of culture to shape and inform, the challenge of inclusion and the potential of multisensory approaches.

I was a ridiculously long day.  And I've working hard today to try to catch up. 

It was also a good day, and I am so glad I made the effort to go.

The 2018 videos aren't yet available, but you can look at talks from previous years here... And if anyone fancies joining me in 2020... 

It was a skim through social media posts, and a minister friend observing they were at a meeting in the place where they met the Ministerial Recognition Committee many, many moons ago.  Others commented... and then it struck me, it's twenty years today since my Min Rec at Hillcliffe, just outside Warrington.

I can still recall some of the questions I was asked, and still feel the sense of nervous anticipation along with the certainty that "they could still say 'no'" as I walked the short distance to the room where the verdict would be delivered.

Twenty years ago tonight, I was at a house group bonfire party... a group now scattered to the four winds, but a place where I knew love and support as I explored my call.

Quite where those twenty years went, I have no idea - but I do know I'm glad that they said 'yes'.

Several months back, at an evening service, someone from the Gathering Place led an evening reflection on the theme 'forgive us our debts', drawing on the Lord's Prayer in various translations.  It was so good, I asked them if they'd be willing to share it with a morning congregation... time passed and today they shared a freshly prepared reflection exploring the concept of debt and indebtedness, rooting their thoughts in Nehemiah 5: 1 - 13.

Obviously, I have read this passage before; many years ago (at least ten because I recall where it was) I even preached a series on Nehemiah, but somehow this passage had never struck me until it was read for us today.

It was a very thoughtful, and thought-provoking reflection, rooted in a real-life story of debt-induced suicide, naming the complexity of the inter-relatedness of insititutions and individuals, and calling to mind the words of the Lord's Prayer, according to Matthew, forgive us our debts as we forgive those indebted to us.

The intercessory prayers, led by one of our younger adults, used the framework of the Lord's Prayer and picked up some of the same ideas and nuances along the way.

It was, for me, and I am sure for others, a great service.

I was thrilled to see others exericsing their considerable gifts, and it was a delight to receive rather than to give out.  I was - and am - proud of our Worship Planning Team and their gently increasing role in helping to shape our worship life both visibly and invisibly.

Next week I have two services to construct for Remembrance.  Being blessed with the gift of receiving this morning has encouraged my soul as I being to think about a whole other set of complex topics.

At yesterday's Bible Study we had a wonderful conversation about poppies, the reasons for white and red poppies, the uncertainty we felt at the glittery 1918-2018 Poppy Scotland offering (there are others of a similar nature e.g. sold by supermarkets etc.) and so on.  With fresh eyes and clear minds, our Iranians quickly grasped the danger of triumphalism, of the potential for accidentally offending or shaming those who are German or Japanese or Afghan, Iranian, Iraqi and so on.

We had a wonderful conversation around the great hymn of Philippians 2 - and the self-emptying of God in Christ.  Although we did not link it to poppies or Remembrance, the connection arises quite naturally, I think.

Today, the radio tells me, is 100 years since the death of war poet Wilfred Owen, just days before the end of the Great War.  When I was at school we were made to learn by heart his poem 'Dulce et Decorum Est'.  Although it is mostly now buried deep in my subconscious, I was struck by the truth it expresses, and especially 'the old lie' that it is is sweet and beautiful to die for one's country.

It isn't sweet, it isn't beautiful, it's terrible and ugly, but, in our broken and disordered world we still send young men and women to far away places where they will kill, or be killed, in the name of powerful nations, rulers and governments.

One hundred years ago, and just before the 'war to end all wars' didn't, a prophetic voice was silenced.

One hundred years later, the freedoms I enjoy are inextricably linked with that reality.

Next week we will mark Remembrance Sunday, and will hold the tension expressed in poppies red and white, between shame and honour, and we will pray for peace, the rule of the one called the Prince of Peace.

Oh, and here's the poem...

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.