by Paul Field, is a song to which I return from time to time, and which came to mind again today as I was reading the chapters of the book "The Bad Christian's Manifesto" by Dave Tomlinson that our Deacons will be discussing as part of our devotional time at our meeting this evening.

It was one of those mad ideas, I can't even recall where it came from now, except I was chatting to one of the Deacons and mentioned the idea of reading a book together, and they suggested this recently published work.

I think it's been a good experience so far - it will have taken us around six months by the time we get to the end of it, so a lot of commitment to stick with it and recall what we've read.  We don't all agree with each other or with everything in the book, and that's the point really.  We are theologising together, talking about the stuff of faith and doubt, the messyness of real life and the Christ who enters and transforms all of that.

Tonight I am going to use some pictures and two muscial tracks... "One of Us" by Joan Osborne and "God of the Moon and Stars" by Paul Field...

This whizzy new design allows me to add a banner photo - but actually it's a fairly narrow strip of a photo in practice.  So I chose part of my Dibley Dandelion which is somehow a metaphor for ministry and mission... uncontrollable as the Holy Spirit, dandelions and thistles thrive in unexpected places, and send forth their seeds on the wind, not sure where they will go or if they will take root, but doing so anyway.  I kind of hope that my life's work, and indeed this blog, involves wafting some dandelion seeds into the world where some of them just may take root, grow, and seed again for a new generation...

Today's PAYG was on part of the creation story.  The thing that struck me most was when the reflection said:

You are a mircale

You are here because God wanted you to exist

I know a lot of people who, for one reason or another, are at present questioning their own worth, maybe becuase of age or infirmity, education or employment, decisions or disasters.  All of us, even those who are feeling generally content can benefit from a little bit of encouragement.  And this seems to make a nice mantra for today:

I am a miracle

I am here because God wants me to exist

May God bless us all with the wonder of believing that truth

This morning for our all age, all together bit of the service I told the story of "the man with wibbly-wobbly legs"... a telling of the the Markan narrative of the four friends who brought their disabled friend to see jesus, climbed on the roof of the house and broke through to gain acess to Jesus.  But this telling requires as a visual aid four identical strips of card joined together end-to-end with paper fasteners so that you can manipulate them into different shapes... a house, a hole, a bed being lowered and, of course, some wibbly wobbly legs.  It went down well, it never fails to... it is simple and intriguing how these bits of connected card can become images for the story.  And it intrigues me that it never fails to go down so well, because I first saw it around forty years ago in a URC in Northamptonshire.

Which got me wondering, which are the stories (or all age talks or children's addresses or whatever name we prefer) that stick in the mind and why.  Back in those teenage years, I recall one of the GB/Sunday School leaders saying she recalled a visiting preacher who, as he told his story, had put together a fishing rod; she had no recollection of the message, but she recalled how she had watched, spellbound, as the rod was assembled.  There is one I recall for all the wrong reasons, as it was someone telling about a particular (now viewed with suspicion) charismatic evangelist and the sentence, allegedly translated as "in the morning I see a man ahead of me" recalled independently by myself and my (photographic memory) sister as "um bongo titty phoowayo".  Even if it was genuine, it wasn't the best thing to say when a load of teenagers were in the congregation...

Of course, I have no way of knowing which, if any, of the stories or activities I offer will lodge in the memories of anyone  who hears them.

Here is a version of the wibbly-wobbly man told by an American woman... not quite how I tell (I don't ever add on the object lesson/now let's work in the cross bit) it but worth a look see...