This morning as part of our service we used a selection of 12 pictures of Jesus stilling the storm, from Rembrandt to contemporary interpretations.  People were given a picture at random and invited to spend a minute looking at it, then to share what struck them with those near them.  The idea being that every person sees something in the picture that says something to them, and that may be the voice of God.

Here is one picture, which I 'borrowed' from another blog and I found very worth sitting with for a while...

Picture From Christ Port blog

For me it is the diversity of facial expressions and reactions that is striking, echoing as it does the diversity of human responses to crises.

... and I am researching stuff around urban hymnody.  So, using my trusty HymnQuest, I did some keyword searches on

City

Cities

Town

Towns

Urban

Urbanised

Urbanisation

Only the last of these failed to turn up any results!  it has to be said, that the ones with 'urban' and 'urbanised' were undoubtedly very worthy but not very singable in my view.

But here is you little challenge...

HymnQuest says it has 40,981 texts, so of these how many contain the follow words:

City

Town

Urban

Then, out of the following hymnals in use in and around my 'patch' which have the highest number of items with references to city/ies or town/s...

Baptist Praise and Worship

Common Ground

Church Hymnary fourth ed.

Mission Praise (complete extra fat edition)

Songs of Fellowship (Books 1 - 4; bk 5 not yet in HymnQuest)

Recognising that SOF and MP are substantially larger collections than the others, how significant is the numerical difference?  (That's largely rhetorical btw).

If you have any of these books, and means of searching them electronically, now go and see just how these references play out and what they might say to town and city dwellers....

Interesting stuff!

I also came across a teeny work called 'Hymns of the City' which contains just 32 items... published by the Urban Theology Unit in Sheffield.

Well, a week on Sunday I start my three week evening series on 'sprituality in the city', so I guess I'd better start reading the books I picked up on the topic!

Today there is little in the diary, worship prep for Sunday as just about there, so I am planning to sit quietly and read a collection of essays called Spirituality in the City (ed. Andrew Walker, London, SPCK, 2005).

My three week series is...

An urban spirituality?

Urban hymnody and liturgy

Praying our patch (an urban prayer walk)

Should be fun. 

If anyone wants to suggest any resources please feel free (I have Crumbs of Hope, Clare McBeath and Tim Presswood).

One of the lovely things about our church community is its racial and cultural diversity.  This is reflected in some lovely African cloth used week by week in Sunday worship, by a wooden celtic cross, by the engraved 'white metal' communion chalices, and so on.  In my office I have one or two little objects brought back as gifts by overseas students.  Recently one of our students returned from a trip to Ghana and Nigeria with a lovely carved wooden symbol mounted in colourful cloth and bearing the words Gye Nyame - Except God.  Here is what the symbol looks like (photo from web):

The beautiful, handcrafted banner is now hanging on the wall of the Gathering Place (and I am desperately hoping no-one nicks it!).  It seems to me a fantastic example of inculturation, a profound Christian truth expressed in a traditional Ghanaian carving - the supremity and sovereignty of God.

As you view the symbol, I wonder what you see and how you react.  I am just thrilled to enjoy it, and hope others will too.

Today has been a good day.

Firstly, I managed to clear quite a bit of admin stuff

Then we had fascinating and wide ranging conversations at Coffee Club

Then I got so engrossed in my service prep it was gone six o'clock when I knocked off for the day

Each of these is good, but it was the last that delighted me... it's been a long time since this happened; maybe my brain is finally returning to the levels I was used to.  Well I can hope.

The icing on the cake... a gorgeous golden sun in the evening sky and the lightest, brightest evening for a long time.

All in all a good day.