[ hold :: this space ]

Leave it to the unclean to ask the question most necessary:
have you come to destroy us?

a question asked by those who know
that the search for freedom
is a quest not guaranteed
and that hope, unrealised
will break us…

liberate us from the demons
that would stop us from searching,
and from glib hope that doesn’t honour fear…

[isogeting Mark 1:21-28]

i met with the prison chaplains on Monday to start our little foray into Mark’s Gospel. According to the scholars and their commentaries, the stuff we’re really going to have to sort ourselves out on is Mark’s worldview - issues of unrealised kingdoms and the danger of hope; demons; chaos and absence. Coincidentally, they’re themes that resonate quite nicely with prisons too.

The trouble is, the stories in the gospel might be about confrontations with systemic oppression and the evil that dehumanises, but in their telling they don’t easily offer much to those living within it at the moment. Even the commentaries written around Mark - even [perhaps especially] Ched Myers’ - are written from and for those who have the resources and capacity to go face to face with oppressive systems.

it works for us that there’s no happy ending in Mark, post-resurrection, just fear and terror… which is perhaps the only credible response to the resurrection - and indeed to the idea of hope, for those who live permanently in the darkness of easter saturday. it’s not fear of what is hoped for, but fear of hope - at the power that hope, unrealised, has to destroy.

we come to worship.
there are no easy answers here,
no sentimental comfort
and no guarantee of hope.
just each other, held together by the need to begin again
and a story that tells us how it can happen.
welcome to worship

We’re beginning a process with prison chaplains in a couple of weeks which involves looking at Mark - next year’s lectionary gospel - and getting them to explore how the gospel can be interpreted from within and into the prison context. The plan is to put the chaplains’ insights together with some prayers, images and music to create a worship resource that they can use throughout the year.

i’m preparing for the workshop that will kick start the process, and opened up Francis Moloney’s commentary on Mark to discover this quote on the dedications page:

Bella memorized, repeating phrases, until her fingers were so tired they gave up resisting and got it right… But when she finished memorizing - bar by bar, section by section - and played the piece without stopping, I was lost; no longer aware of a hundred accumulated fragments but only of one long story, after which the house would fall silent for what seemed a very long time.

Anne Michael, Fugitive Pieces

i keep getting frustrated by fragments. i just want the long story without the work it takes to get there… here’s to memory and rehearsal, patience and resilience…

Hi to those who have come here after today’s prison chaplains workshop in Geelong. I really enjoyed the morning. These are the resources that I mentioned:

Philip Zimbardo ‘The Lucifer Effect: Understanding how Good People Turn Evil’
John Caputo ‘The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event’ [another book worth reading along this vein is 'How [not] to speak of God’ by Peter Rollins.

[The other book that's been really critical in my thinking, especially about the perspectives from which our theologies are formed is Sallie McFague's 'Life Abundant', esp. chapter 2]

The images I showed by Banksy can be found here, the Amnesty International advertisements can be found here.

Someone asked about the music playing behind Kevin’s Psalm this morning - that was Sufjan Steven’s song ‘O God, where are you now?’ - it’s available as a download through iTunes, or if you wanted to buy the cd to take into prison, it’s on his ‘Greetings from Michigan’ cd [it would be a great song to base Holy Saturday worship around].

I forgot to mention that I have a book of liturgies available through Proost [you can either subscribe to Proost for a year's worth of fabulous worship resources, or simply buy the book on it's own! it's available through the Proost website as a pdf download, or at UniChurch bookshop in the city]

If you search through this site, looking under the ‘worship in prison’ category there are a stack of other resources… Email me if there’s stuff I’ve forgotten!

to use before a bible reading

people: we come broken
reader: this is a story of hope

people: we come fearful
reader: this is a story of peace

people: we come cynical
reader: this is a story of liberation

people: we come empty
reader: listen for the story of life.

I’m leading a workshop tomorrow for Anglican prison chaplains…

welcome to worship

there are those who say that this is a cop-out -
an avoidance of reality
an escape from responsibility
and a denial of the truth.

They can’t know the courage it takes
to come here today,
to face the parts of ourselves we’d rather deny,
the things we’ve said and done that have hurt and destroyed;

to imagine a life
and a world
where all is made new.

welcome to this time and space
where we dare to hope the impossible can happen
and we pray for courage to believe it just might today.

back at the office today, listening to the gale force winds outside and revelling in the freedom that comes from not having looked too closely at my diary for the next few months… by memory it’s not a busy few months, event wise, and the plan is to focus heavily on worship in prison … including working with a group from the women’s prison to plan a christmas alt worship service… [i suspect a midnight mass is completely out of the question, but it would be wonderful...]

this is a psalm from William in Exeter prison…

How long must we wait, God?
Every day is the same.
Time to do yesterday again.
Each door, each day to keep me.
No news from home.
No home for hope.

How long must we wait, God?

The only things that happen are
the rattle of keys
banging of doors to keep me
Feed me, watch me and work me.
The circle I walk has no end.

How long must I wait, God?
All we do is what we’re told,
When we’re told.
How we’re told.
Till we’re old.

How long must we wait, God?

Every day we ask for a breath of different air.
An old face to see new.
A family to bring me home.

How long must we wait, God?
Every day we wait for a gentle touch
the softest breath
freedom for my mind
The walk with no doors

How long must we wait, God?

a few things coming up…

the newly formed communal justice network from Port Phillip West presbytery will be meeting on July 13 at Marngoneet Prison, near Lara. We’ll be sending information out about this tomorrow to the people who indicated interest at the workshop a few weeks ago. If others from the presbytery are interested in being part of this then let me know. Places are limited on the day - we’re going inside the prison, and we can’t get large numbers in - and we will need to know by the beginning of july.

we came up with an idea while in a meeting this morning. we’re going to give different prison chaplains passages from the gospel of mark [next year's lectionary gospel] and ask them to reflect on the passages as they speak into prison culture, and what the perspective of prison has to offer the passages, as such. i’m going to spend a day with prison chaplains in october facilitating this - i think we might be able to link it with some of the psalms that have been and are about to be written by people in prison, and some of the liturgies we’ve developed, and create a really useful resource… I’ve also said I’ll do a full easter in the women’s prison next year - Good Friday, Holy Saturday, Easter Sunday. It sounds fantastic in theory, in practice it terrifies me…

I had a good time at the workshop this morning - thanks so much to the chaplains for welcoming me in. If you ever get the opportunity to hang out with prison chaplains, grab it…

In the course of the conversation i realised i need to think more about how to create an environment in prisons that immediately make it obvious that people are coming into a different space when they come to worship - how to turn a room that, 15 minutes before, has been used for drug education or anger management sessions into a sacred space. It’s not just about aesthetics, it’s more atmospheric than that - creating an environment that gives people permission [incentive] to be present differently to how they are present in every other part of their life in prison, from the moment they walk in the door, even before we’ve said a word. We do that all the time with installations, etc - the moment people walk into a room they know something different is going to happen, and that they can be different in that space. It’s much harder in prison where you have so little control over the environment. i also think it’s more important in prison than in any other worship context i work in. We might play around with some ideas next time I go into the Marlborough Unit with Ross.

I confessed to my control-freak nature… i script every word in worship, including instructions - which is not my normal practice for anything else - i didn’t even have a workshop outline written down for this morning, just a vague idea in my head. People are much more likely to ‘lose’ themselves in worship if i’m not stumbling or searching for a word. My task as curator is to be guardian of the space - to make it safe enough for people to be vulnerable. They have to trust me for that to happen, and trust that i’m not going to take them somewhere that is too vulnerable or unsafe. They also have to not be waiting for my next slip up…

We used Alf’s Psalm in the gathering… i asked the group to read it through silently and find a line or two that particularly resonated for them. I read the psalm out loud, and people spoke alongside me when it came their lines. It was surprisingly moving and beautiful.

I also used this prayer, which i’ve put up here before

this is a holy space and a sacred time
not because god is here in any special way -
god is no different in this place
to anywhere else -
but because we are here in a special way

in this space and time
all of who we are
is welcome

so bring the broken, darkest parts of you -
the parts which strive to be beautiful
and those which are nothing but flawed -

put them next to mine

as together,
in this holy space and sacred time,
we let them be shaped
by god.

welcome to worship.

off to speak to prison chaplains this morning. these two quotes are rolling around in my head. as all other words seem to have disappeared from my mind today, we might just meditate on each of them for the three hours.

No good book has ever been written that has in it symbols arrived at beforehand and stuck in. That kind of symbol sticks out like raisins in raisin bread. Raisin bread is all right, but plain bread is better.

I tried to make a real old man, a real boy, a real sea and a real fish and real sharks. But if I made them good and true enough they would mean many things. The hardest thing is to make something really true and sometimes truer than true.

- Ernest Hemingway [via kottke]

If the face of the Beloved
does not make you gasp in wonder
and laugh ecstatically with joy
then you must be like a stone
good only for building prison walls.

- Rumi

i’ve been asked a number of times recently what my process is for writing liturgy - and i’ve been trying to find ways of articulating it for a workshop i’m leading on wednesday.

in writing liturgies for prison, i try to find words to name where we are, and to name what it is we wait for - what the ancient stories of faith tell us god does. it’s not that we have any confidence it’s going to happen again, but we know [from those ancient stories of faith] that this is the only way it can happen again.

the act of faith that is the foundation of the liturgies is not believing in god, or the actions of god, rather it’s that the telling and the asking will not break us. or that the breaking will not be the end.

i’m really hopeless at writing hope. i know people do write fabulous liturgies from a perspective of faith - of the wondrous things god does and will do. i don’t.  i write best from a perspective of faithlessness. i honestly don’t know if god - whatever / whoever god is - will do what god does again. when i’m most honest to that,  people tell me they see themselves in what i write.