I'm a bad, bad, blogger...

....just been too busy/lazy if there's anyone out there who still visits.

Face to faith: Now is a good time for Quakers to reassess their priorities and find their tongues, says Michael WrightComments (…) Michael Wright The Guardian, Saturday December 6 2008 It is easy for faith organisations to get their priorities misplaced - to strain out gnats while swallowing camels, as Jesus vividly put it. When the preoccupation with certain doctrines, traditions and practices blocks the path to spiritual creativity, and turns the focus away from the foundation values of justice, compassion, integrity and peace, it is time to take stock.

I left the Anglican ministry eight years ago because I felt its priorities were awry. It seemed more preoccupied with issues of sexuality than with those highlighted for concern in the gospels: the widow giving her mite, the madman among the tombs, the halt, lame and blind, the victim of robbers, and the wastrel son who returns home a penitent. When a bishop would not ordain our curate because the curate's wife would be participating in the laying-on of hands, I thought the leaders of my part of the church had lost an important part of the plot. Compassion had taken second place to dogma.

I am heartened that the Religious Society of Friends (the Quakers), which I then joined, has recently taken stock and identified a set of priorities for the next six years which I can feel committed to. In a new document, Together in Worship and Witness, new ideas are encouraged from anywhere within the society. This bottom-up attitude is a Quaker characteristic, coupled with an emphasis on evaluating ideas with discernment.

The document encourages us Quakers to relate our spiritual life to how we actually behave. The first Quakers strongly challenged the tendency of people of faith to keep a rather tenuous link between prayer and practice. The historian GM Trevelyan, in his English Social History, wrote that for Quakers "Christian qualities matter much more than Christian dogmas. No church or sect had ever made that its living rule before."

Quakers are known for a lot of silence in our meetings for worship. We are also known for often being hesitant to articulate our values and beliefs: we do not do evangelism. The new document is asking members to look at this again - to find our tongues, and then to use all modern means of communication to get our message across.

That message includes the encouragement, not to Quakers alone but to everyone in society, to live simpler lives, to help conserve our environment and to act responsibly towards anyone we can help. The current world economic crisis seems to me to be the result of neglecting the importance of building an economic and social system on sound ethical values. We are being encouraged to find a voice for today, and challenge those values and practices which have led to the economic and social consequences of the economic crisis. Quakers call this "speaking truth to power".

Waging peace rather than war is integral to the Quaker way. We are being invited to look afresh at how we and other people deal with conflicts. The most constructive ways are those which lead to better communication and understanding, and imaginative ways of building better relationships - not just between individuals and within local communities, but also on the national and international scene.

The criminal justice system is badly in need of the fresh vision that Quakers like Elizabeth Fry and John Howard brought to it in the 19th century. We are being asked to give priority to initiatives that reflect Quaker values, like restorative justice (bringing victims and perpetrators face to face), and circles of support and accountability (which support sex offenders to live in society after prison and avoid reoffending).

The Advent cry is to long for the rule of Christ in the hearts of people, to see justice and compassion rule, for this world to be the domain in which the fruits of the Spirit flourish: "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control". The creative bit is to apply that in life as we know it these days. It is a challenge not just to Quakers, or even just to Christians, but to all people of faith.
Michael Wright is a Quaker

PLEASE.......

London's bendy buses have been the subject of heated debate from the start - some of us love them, apparently many of us hate them - but they are about to be associated with a very different sort of controversy.

This week the UK's first atheist advertising campaign was launched, supported by the British Humanist Association and others. The idea is to place posters on buses to proclaim the message: "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life".

When I first saw it, the campaign slogan puzzled me. Believing in God doesn't cause me to worry or stop me from enjoying my life. On the contrary, religious faith deepens and affirms my passion for life, my joy in being human, my love of the tremendously rich and beautiful world in which I find myself. Faith also reassures me that in times when life is hard, when anxiety and sorrow shape my experience, God is as present and attentive and relevant as in the good times.

So I certainly don't connect the idea of God with fear and apprehension, or the inability to chill out and enjoy myself - but I can see how the less positive associations may have come about.

Historically a whole strand of religious art depicts the horrors of hell by showing the damned receiving punishments appropriate to their specific sin. And where there has been an obsession with sin - or perhaps an over-emphasis on our shortcomings and their eternal consequences - it has given the impression that life before death has very little significance in itself.

But if all that seems to matter is "have I really done what I need to do in order to ensure that my sins are dealt with and my place in heaven secured?" then surely we've missed the point. Religion then fails to be the enriching and exciting experience that it can be here and now.

I find the Christian faith deeply liberating. It encourages me to live well and creatively and to grow in my understanding of the world. I think it also teaches me that God's love is spacious and allows us to engage positively with those who hold different beliefs from our own.

I notice that the atheist posters do not say "There is no God", but "There's probably no God". This does leave room for debate, and surely that's a very good and life-giving thing. After all "Enjoy your life" could just as easily be a religious slogan as an atheist one. In terms of the impact on our lives here and now, the two approaches might have more in common than we usually admit.

The Rev. Rosemary Lain-Priestley on BBC Radio

The difficulty of Tattoos for Christians

Two of these are mine and one isn't. Why is the one that isn't causing so much trouble for the one who posted it first? HereIs there something unchristian about tattoos per se? Or are Christians getting their nickers in a twist about a penis?

The Fat Lady Seems To Have Sung Early

For John McPain and Sarah Failin'.

Amen!!!