Coffee Theology

The dark days of Good Friday and Easter Saturday are over.  It all changes on Easter Sunday. Of course, the difficult situation you're dealing with may not have changed yet.  But on Easter Sunday we see a ray of hope - a promise of resurrection.  On Easter Sunday Christians celebrate the amazing fact that when the women went to the tomb two days after Jesus' death, they found it empty.  I'd like to share with you another great piece of art from the clever folks that brought us www.icons-on-sea.org.uk  .  This can be viewed in person at the end of Southend pier:   We see a bunch of flowers taped to a traffic sign, a poignant reminder that someone died there, perhaps not long ago.  They're taped to a 'dead end' sign, which seems to indicate the sad fact that the person commemorated by the flowers has reached a dead end.  But the empty tomb of Easter Sunday shows us that the grave is not ...

On Good Friday Christians remember the day Jesus died.  An innocent, holy man unjustly executed in a most painful way.  The immortal Son of God submitting himself to a shameful death.  On Good Friday, goodness and mercy and justice and peace are put to death.  Evil wins. And on Easter Saturday, nothing happens. Goodness has died, and life goes on. When something terrible happens to someone else, we may try to comfort them.  Or we may avoid them, because we don't know what to say.  If we do have a conversation with them, we may come out with statements which attempt to minimise the person's suffering or provide an explanation for it.  At least he didn't suffer.  You still have your health.  Worse things happen at sea.  Everything happens for a reason.  Your prayers were answered, just not in the way you wanted.  Never mind, life goes on. We find these painful times so uncomfortable.  What we absolutely hate to do is to sit ...

  http://www.icons-on-sea.blogspot.co.uk/ Some friends have created an Easter art installation in central Southend .  Pictures like this one can be found up and down the high street; in shops, attached to railings or, in this case, to a bike rack.  Each piece is creative, playful, provocative, sometimes downright offensive.  Like this 'magazine'.  The cover features Christ on the cross with headlines including: Easter Pin Up!   Body to die for! Give your nails full impact .  I love (loathe?) the juxtaposition of the inane celebrity and beauty topics magazines like this push on young women and the horror of the cross of Good Friday.  On the one hand, a sculpted, hairless, (for most women) unobtainable body with perfectly manicured nails; on the other, a broken, pierced, hairy and bloody naked body racked with pain.  It certainly puts things in perspective. This magazine cover i...

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...