Space - 2002

Paul writes – Mark Berry; way, way, way out west from here, has posted the outline of a recent “meditation” – From Dreaming to Creation. It’s good stuff. Coupled with some learning around contemplative & imaginative prayer…some silence for journaling / drawing, it provides, I think, a very contemporary opportunity to deeply listen to God in the kinds of spaces this meditation provides. It’s also very multi-sensual.

Go check it out here. You can also find an Mp3 recording of an earlier Desert Meditation (if you’re stuck with slow “dial-up,” like me, allow yourself 55mins to download) – run your eye down the left hand column of Mark’s blog – under “audio meditations” – here.

Mark’s meditation(s) fondly remind me of an experiment I tried on the edges of my former church congregation (with the wonderful support and help of Geoff and his family – great people!) in 2002-2003. It was called Space.

“Space results from an invitation to draw aside for a moment from the hectic activity of life. It’s about the creation of sacred space - holy ground – “breathing space” opened up to the possibility of encountering and being moved by God: God most fully revealed in Jesus Christ, and present by his Spirit, through Word, language, music, image, silence, action, and symbol. These gatherings are about the ‘framing’ of space within which to relax, to create, to listen, to dream, to reflect, to pray, and to be replenished and renewed in both the presence of ‘God-who-is-with-us,’ and of each other.

We encourage and welcome your participation to the degree that you are comfortable. Equally, and importantly, you are free to simply watch and listen. This is your space.

Finally, this space is a new ‘frontier’ - an exploration. It’s fluid, experimental, and therefore able to be changed and re-created. What happens and doesn’t happen will be the result of where God leads, and what each of us allows it to be and to become.”

Each time we offered a handout, similar to the one below – it had an outline (so people had some sense of where we were going – something which hopefully encouraged them to relax), an image, some text / quotes (to stimulate, challenge, and to broaden participants connections to the larger Christian tradition and community – hence quotes from Hildegard von Bingen etc).

wherever possible, sources, so that people could take the handout home and go exploring. We used contemporary music (Moby etc) and video loops (courtesy of Visions – I picked up one of their early video’s when in York several years ago. Steve Taylor includes their “loops” as a resource he uses too – see here. One night, in addition to everything else, we projected a live (via DVD) U2 concert on the wall – probably a case of over stimulation that night – but many of us just kicked back, soaked in a sense of God’s presence and watched the gig. Being open ended, people could drift out when they wanted too. Ulimately, we would have shared the curating of space around, and encouraged others to be creative as they curated / DJ'ed our rich Christian heritage & contemporary culture.

Below is the handout we used in September, spring 2002 (remember we’re in the Southern Hemisphere).

Download space_spring_a_season_of_new_beginnings_a_season_of_growth_22th_september_2002.rtf

Comments

[Russ]

Thanks for the links.