Graham, Gloria and Gossip! Religion Chat thread (part 4)

[nickelbabe]

I know we've not officially finished the last one, but I wanted to get the link in before we ran out of room!

Everyone welcome - the aim of this thread is to generally chat about church life, or just gossip in general!
You don't have to be a regular church-goer, nor do you have to know what we're going on about!
It's not about debate, it's just about chatting
:)

still no news from lost ? :(

We had MAF Sunday (Mission Aviation Fellowship) this week, but it didn't involve a lot of MAF stuff: just mentioned in the sermon, in the prayers, and a video available to look at after the service.
(which is how I like my non-church-specific events )

We also held a service for the Sea Cadets in the afternoon for Trafalgar Day, which was really good, and a triumph of noone having a bloomin' clue what they were supposed to be doing!
(you'd never have guessed in the end, although the priest's microphone died partway through - all those little cadets patiently sitting there listening intently to very very quiet speaking - very well behaved)
And we only did one verse of the National Anthem because whoever did the programmes missed out an entire line of the second verse...

We had a really nice Celebration Eucharist on Sunday (all-age). The music was lovely and one of our youngsters enjoyed himself playing the drums in church again!
I did the sermon and it went really well! At the end our vicar said... oh you should do that more often!
I just can't understand now how we really got a bee in his bonnet about my 'leading' the service, but he does want me to do sermons more often

mhd what does the sermon need to be on? is it on the reading and Gospel of that day?

I'm glad it went well in the end :)
Vicar just worrying about noting, right!

You don't always have to do the sermon on the gospel, but that's the norm.
Churches often pick themes to do the sermon on - like for example with our MAF Sunday (althought she did link it to the gospel!! )
If you're doing it every now and then, it's safer to stick to the gospel (or pick your theme and link it to the gospel)
A couple of years ago, we had a series of sermons based on Acts, and also a series based on Moses (the only time we had old testament readings since the previous encumbant was there!)

I've been asked to lead the prayers at the Taize service this coming Sunday evening. Only found out on Sunday night.
Does anyone have any good ideas for how to do them in a more contemplative style? I've been thinking of maybe doing the prayer in sections/themes (e.g. world, county, town, church, ourselves) with silences in between to allow for reflection, if that makes sense, but it seems rather boring "uninspired". Considered briefly to have "Oh Lord, hear our prayer" between the sections but then remembered that the congregation that tend to come is small and VERY bad not very good at singing a capella so scrapped that idea.

ginger have a look on the Taizé website they have a section with set prayers I always use them as they are simple and quite general and not too long.

Ginger I've used these as part of an Advent Taize, but they could be used anytime. First line is the prayer, second line is the response:

Come, Lord Jesus, break the chains of warfare and terrorism ?
Come as a light into the world

Come, Lord Jesus, break the chains of poverty and hunger ?
Come as a light into the world

Come, Lord Jesus, break the chains of homelessness ?
Come as a light into the world

Come, Lord Jesus, break the chains of oppression, persecution and denial of human rights ?
Come as a light into the world

Come, Lord Jesus, break the chains of inequality and unfair practices in our society ?
Come as a light into the world

Come, Lord Jesus, break the chains of anxiety and unhappiness ?
Come as a light into the world

Come, Lord Jesus, break the chains of apathy and indifference ?
Come as a light into the world

Come, Lord Jesus, break the chains of sickness, disease and death ?
Come as a light into the world

Alternatively you could use visual intercessions, where you just project pictures onto a screen and people meditate on the pictures, and you play music in the background. I can email you an example of those is you like...?

Ooooh, yes please, Mary! I like the idea of letting people "add their own content" IYKWIM and giving them room to just think. Having said that, I do like that prayer.
Thanks for the link, Blue. I shall check it out tonight.

Mary those prayers are brilliant, shall be nicking them for later use :)

Blue so glad it went well and the vicar wasn't arsey, knew it would go well :)

Sermon is on 'what would Jesus say to the sick' which dh looked at and told me I was doing with him Think we have it semi sorted now, just got to write down thoughts to get them straight in my head. danger is I may cry....

Ginger PM me your email address and I'll send you some...

Glad you liked the prayers. Can't remember where I got them from, but they struck me as very powerful as well :)

MHD - I'm sure the sermon will go well. I think it'll have more potency because you haven't had the best of health. What I mean is, if I heard a single, young man who'd never been in a long term relationship talking about abortion I'd think to myself "And what would you know about that?"

I thought she meant sermons generally (asking her own question rather than replying to to mhd's)
oopsie.
(blame the pg brain, if you want...)

need a

Mary I have PMed.

THanks Mary. Beautiful.

Glad you like it :)

Morning everyone

Just thinking from the prayer thread - what's peoples view on halloween then?

I don't care about it at all.
I don't understand why modern churchies tend to go down the "ooh, Hallowe'en is nasty and it's about ghosts and ghoulies etc so we should avoid it at all costs"
when in actual fact, All Hallow's Eve is the day before All Hallows' Day, and it's the time of the year that souls pass from this earth into heaven.
So, to me, it's a religious thing anyway.
Obviosuly, we now know that souls pass into heaven practically straight away after death, but in the olden days, they didn't know that, and it was most likely comforting for them to know that there was a date when they could all pass over.
I don't get the association with souls being ghosties and hanging around causing trouble - surely they would do that every night before All Hallows'?
As far as I can see, it's just the last time the earth-bound people have to say goodbye to their loved-ones.

I suspect that the view that people have of halloween may well depend on where they live now or have lived in the past. Halloween has a long history in Scottish culture. Traditionally, Scots believed that it was a night when the devil and his folk walked on the earth. Now, I know that the devil is always there, but this is what people believed in the past and I suspect that at some level a shadow of that past belief still exists. Many people believe the Burns ballad of Tam O' Shanter was set on halloween for this reason. I was very surprised last year to see on Mumsnet that many people believed that halloween was an American invention. In fact, the Scots and Irish who emigrated centuries ago took halloween with them into America. I don't like my DSs dressing up as devils at halloween. For me, I just feel uncomfortable with the idea of that, almost as though they are trivialising the devil. I encourage them to dress up as anything else.

My problems with Halloween tend to be fairly practical. Firstly DS is petrified of anyone in a mask and Halloween causes huge problems with this. Even the light party we attended had the pastor in a mask! Then there is the intimidation, particularly of the old, by "grownup kids", pelting houses with eggs or even stones. I know of one family who got a brick through the window, narrowly missing a baby, because they didn't answer the door!

In Sweden, dressing up and trick or treating for Halloween is definitely seen as an American import. Traditionally, it is a day to remember dead loved ones and to light candles (in lanterns so they don't go out) on their graves. People go to graveyards in a steady stream all afternoon/evening. By sunset (4 p.m. in the south, earlier in the north) the graveyards are a sea of candles. I miss doing that and always ask DSis to light a candle from me on our parents' grave when she goes.

That's a nice tradition, gingercurl. We should have a Hallowe'en candles thread on here and, in the absence of a candle smilie lay some in memory of our loved ones.

1st November is the anniversary of the (tragically young) death of someone I knew through work, so I always associate it with her.

Have said my bit re. Hallowe'en on the other thread, but the short version is that I am really not a fan, though it was very different in the US, where the people giving out sweets and what-have-you also dressed up and sat out on their porches so that there was no chance of knocking on the door of someone who didn't want to play. Less of the scary costumes too and more general dressing up. (There were a lot so SpongeBobs last year, as I recall!) We will not be 'celebrating' Hallowe'en, though I'll probably take the girls out for a pizza or something instead, to make up for being a stick-in-the-mud on this one.

Gosh Mary - that's horrible and
Your poor DS being scared of masks too :(

I suppose, I've never really witnessed the dressing up and going around trick-or-treating - I used to live in a really rough area, and noone ever came round. (having said that, my back room was my sitting room, so there were never any lights on at the front of the house)
It's got bigger over the past few years, I think.

I like your tradition ginger

St Mary's has "The Alternative" on hallowe'en - they have a proper party with hot dogs and cake and a bouncy castle and all sorts of activities.

I suppose it's a bit like a "Light Party".

Good fun, but I don't know whether it would be better to have it on a different day, and ignore hallowe'en altogether...

That's lovely ginger :)

I'm uncomfortable about halloween. It's only the name that has christian origins ie from All Hallow's Eve, the night before the church calendar celebration of All Saint's Day, which was actually tagged onto the pagan celebration of Samhain to try and bring to bear church influence throughout life. Samhain is really more the origin of what we see halloween celebrating today as it is when people believed there was a thin layer between the dead and the living and you needed to placate the dead and scare the ghosts away so dressed up in costumes etc to do this.

It does seem that it was glorifying the dark side of the supernatural and therefore All Hallow's Eve was instigated to stop this as such but instead it became more and more what it was with the original samhain.

I have witnessed that the celebration of halloween today still coincides with some seriously messed up stuff and believe it to be dangerous and yet masked as innocent fun. I feel deeply oppressed around the time of it and need to pray for extra protection. I have explained the story of it all to the dc and let them make their own choices, they both prefer to stay away and ds gets really scared like your ds Mary, his cubs are having this spooky sleepover and he hates the thought of it all but we are thankfully away.

We do often have a light party or similar, we don't believe in stifling fun, in fact we want to claim back all hallows eve and all saints day as a celebratory festival with fun and light and laughter. :)

We will however give out sweets and have the house lighted up and dd has made a pumpkin at guides and we will have it in the window becuase we do believe in light, fun and welcome.

That's true about Samhain, but then Christmas is on the same day as the Pagan Yule, and Easter is the same as the Pagan Oestre - the beginning of spring.

all the major christian festivals were given the same dates a pagan ones to make it easier to persuade the Pagans to convert to Christianity. They kept a lot of the traditions too.
We only know the time of Easter, because the Last Supper was on the feast of Passover -and that's a moveable feast anyway.

I feel uneasy about some of it too. I have good memories of halloween as a kid though when it all felt very innocent dressing up and going round the neighbours houses and getting sweets and dooking for apples in exchange for telling a joke or singing a song. There wasn't any of the more sinister side of trick or treating that Mary described. THe only time I got scared was when my Dad played a practical joke on me and I don't think he expected me to be anything like as scared as I was. It all seems to have got much more scary in recent years though. My DSs get scared pretty easily too and DS1 would hate the idea of a spooky sleepover. On the other hand, halloween has a long tradition up here and it would be a shame if the fun, social side of it was lost. I like the idea of a non scary halloween party which just involves dressing up and having fun.