Coffee Theology

An enormous mural of George Orwell appeared on the pier in Southwold some time last year.  Orwell spent a few years living in Southwold and his nom de plume was apparently inspired by the river than runs close by.  It was only on this trip to Southwold that I discovered the name of the artist who created the mural, however - Pure Evil, aka Charles Uzzell-Edwards.  I realised I'd seen his work featured on TV . Pure Evil creates, among other things, pop art style portraits with strong eye makeup which drips down their faces, creating a sinister clown-like appearance.  In a 2013 interview in the Telegraph , he explains, referring to his street art: I'm not really interested in being subtle.  I want to make people look; I welcome the conflict. He tells the story of his youthful fascination with guns; of borrowing his cousins' shotgun, going out and shooting a rabbit, and then sincerely regretting this act.  The graffiti rabbits in the Southwold mural are a recu...

I was recently watching a rerun of The Big Bang Theory where Sheldon gets very upset because Amy points out the massive plot issue with Raiders of the Lost Ark.   She remarks that nothing Indy does actually affects the outcome of events.  Apologies to anyone who hadn't already heard this criticism of the film and has now had one of their childhood favourites ruined.  I watched the whole fim from start to finish tonight just to check and she's right.  There's still so much to like about the film though: weird Aztec booby traps, ancient treasure, scary Nazis, a cute monkey and lots of great visual jokes.   The real reason I was watching Raiders tonight, though, was in order to decide whether I could get away with showing the scary Nazi death scene at the youth weekend away.  We're going to consider some stories from the life of King David, including the bit where David brings the ark of the covenant back to Jerusalem, does some scantily clad dancing and ...

Someone asked me to blog on the point of prayer.  Actually, she might have been joking, but as I have been failing pretty dismally at my Lent discipline of blogging daily, I'll do my penance and have a go. There are lots of different reasons to pray.   1. To thank and praise God.  These are really two types of prayer but there is some crossover.  When you praise God for a beautiful day you're also thanking him for making it.  When I'm asked to do a children's talk as part of a service I often use interactive prayer and I usually break it down into praise, thanks, sorry and please.  But I'm not sure my 'praise you fors' and my 'thank you fors' are that distinct. I guess prayers of praise are telling God how great he is without reference to anything he has actually done for you.  I'm reminded of the phrase 'cupboard love' used by my cynical parents when I was growing up.  I love you because I want something out of your cupboard (or because ...

I have a bit of a problem with this blog post.  Commenting on The Casual Vacancy , which ended last night on BBC1, will inevitably involve spoilers and yet I strongly encourage anyone reading this to read the book for themselves.  So I will try VERY hard not to give away anything important. Fans have apparently been taking to Twitter to complain about the changes to the story, and these are legion, although J.K. herself is apparently very happy with the adaptation.  Certainly the main message of the story, the responsibility of all people to seek each other's welfare, comes across very strongly.  Like when the bully Mr Price chucks his stolen TV in the river, with tragic consequences.  Or when the parish council, in Barry Fairbrother's absence, manages to get approval for the local clinic to be turned into a luxury hotel, so that recovering addict Terri Weedon has to take the bus into Yarvil for her methadone and meets her drug dealer on the way.  Or w...

This sermon, which I gave this morning, has haunted me all week.  Initially I was excited about it and had tons of ideas where to go with it.  As the week drew on, I became more and more worried.  Talking about feminism doesn't usually meet with a particularly positive reaction.  Men often find it aggressive; women often choose to distance themselves from it.  Many people, men and women alike, feel that it just isn't necessary to talk about it any more.  We've come a long way since the 1970s. We have maternity leave, the pill, access to jobs at the very highest level in pretty much all fields and anti-discrimination legislation - what more do we want? As I was preparing this week, I found myself thinking about women who are not middle class, white and western, and asking myself what arguments over the biblical teaching on the place of women have to say to their situations.  I found myself drawn to Jesus' 'Nazareth manifesto' in Luke 4: “ The Spirit of ...

Well done to those who survived Café Theology last night, which involved clips from Bridget Jones , Bridesmaids , Skyfall and The Bourne Ultimatum .  The clips were long and the questions posed were many.  One of the books of the Bible I felt myself drawn to when preparing for the service, and which we considered briefly last night, was the Book of Ruth.  It occurred to me a few months ago that Ruth is a book (and possibly the only one - but I would love to be proved wrong) that actually passes the Bechdel test.  A reminder: to pass the Bechdel test, a film (or play, or book, or whatever) has to have two or more female characters who talk to each other about something other than a man.  It's an interesting test to apply to films in particular in order to consider how women are portrayed. The Book of Ruth is just four chapters long.  It concerns an Israelite, Naomi, and her daughter-in-law, Ruth.  Naomi's husband and two sons have tragically di...

It's been an interesting few days preparing for our Cafe Theology service on Sunday evening.  I'm due to preach on the topic of gender on Sunday week, with the title: 'A woman's place'.  As this is a somewhat enormous topic, embracing as it does the relationship of one half of humanity to the other, I thought it might be helpful to get people thinking about the issues in advance (and possibly give me some pointers as to where on earth to start in preparing the sermon).   We'll be considering clips from four fairly recent films - including Skyfall , which I've blogged on before - asking ourselves what view of women these films convey and then considering some texts from the Bible, asking what happens when the Bible collides with these offerings from contemporary culture.  I'm not expecting any easy answers, but it should be an interesting conversation. Some people complain, with some justification, that the Bible is a sexist book.  It was certainly writte...