Street Angels: now a part of 'Big Society'

It has just been announced that Street Angels has been awarded the Prime Ministers 'Big Society' Award.  This being received by Paul Blakely MBE of Halifax Street angels who pioneered the approach,  which is now operating in 100 towns and cities across UK (including Woking)
Woking Street Angels also got an honourable mention in the House of Commons by Woking's conservative MP, Jonathan Lord, during a  debate on Hackney Carriages.

This blog's painting is loosely based on Van Gogh's Angel, in Oil Pastel......  another Angel keeping watch at night.....    I've not blogged about Street Angels for a while but have been out 3-4 times this year so far. So come reflections on the evenings...... 

Sat 31st December  New Years's Eve
a night of 2 halves (as often is the case)  of partying and fun up to around 1 or 2 am with incidents forming the sting in the tail after 2 and 3 am.

An African man was frolicking on the wall outside Woking Station under the Canopy, running along recklessly. I was concerned he might stumble and hurt himself so went to talk to him.  He got into a quarrel with a couple  and was pulled down from the wall onto his head (a very loud cracking sound!) by a passer-by who was not involved at all. It seemed to me to be a moment of blatant racism.
The Police cordoned off the area because it was a potential GBH.  I had to go and give a statement to what I had witnessed and left my fellow angels to stay with the injured man and wait for the ambulance.   I later learned it had not arrived for some reason and the police had taken him to the hospital in a van for a check up. I had no idea what happened to him, and feared the worse.

 New Year's Night:  'All is calm. all is bright' 

 Friday 13thJanuary 

I like the new Outside lights jackets - they really do glow in the dark!  Outside lights set up a table under the Station Canopy and serve free teas and coffees. They are also available to chat and talk about issues of faith. They are a great complement to the walk-about service of the Street Angels.
As for the evening itself,  the highlight was being sung to by an elderly traveller who had an excellent voice and a real twinkle in his eye.  

Outside Lights glow in the Dark

Friday 3rd February
Very Cold night - we think it was around  -6 degrees. It was so cold,  some youngsters even wore coats!  So we changed the pattern to one hour out and half hour in just to keep warm.  We  helped one very cold  girl, with a blanket and eventually managed to get her into a taxi, and she definitely did not want her boyfriend to follow.
We witnessed a fight outside Spec Savers - a bunch of blokes making a spectacle of themselves
As usual we gave out lollipops which seemed to cheer people up in the cold.  There was quite a lot of broken glass around which we ended up cleaning up.   Definitely decided hand-warmers would be a great idea and maybe even a hip flask !  Team 2's pedometer recorded 8.6 miles walked during the night shift - no wonder it was quite tiring.
The Quake had a Goth Night with about  800 youngsters, who dispersed like smoke at the witching hour.
One great relief for me was meeting Mohinda from Congo, the guy who had been pulled from the wall on New Yera's eve. He said he'd hurt his hand and not his head whihc he claimed was made of iron! However he did have a big scar on his forehead. He also tended to talk a lot about nothing, definatley not right in the head .....

Minus 6 at night:  A cold and frosty morning

Friday 16th March
The majority of the evening centred around Agnes, a young woman from Poland, who was seen by one of the Angels sitting with her two pink suitcases.   She had been kicked out of her cousin's after  a dispute over money and could not return and was intent on getting the bus back to Poland on Sunday (it does a pick up in Woking!)  She did not have quite enough money for the bus (it costs £75) nor for anywhere to stay. She'd been hoping to sit in a waiting room at the Station til the morning and go to her agency and see if she could get some more cash.   Different Angels spent most of the night talking to her  under the canopy or in MacDonald's  and guarding her luggage. Also trying different hotels and B&B's. The Police were in a similar position of being concerned but not being able to act.  We were all using smart phones to surf the Internet for solutions.

Eventually someone put her up in Holiday Inn (not on our usual circuit) and we encouraged her to come to Christchurch the following day to talk more, after she's been to her employment agency.    An unfinished story -  which highlighted her vulnerability, and also the lack of facilities to sit and keep warm in Woking in the wee hours of the morning.

No room at the Inn

For me these evenings highlight the effectiveness of the ministy and the contribution Street Angels make to the Big Society. It also illustrates some of the gaps there are that need plugging....

Wrestling with Angels

'Wrestling with Angels' is the title of a book by Rowan Williams,  subtitled 'Conversations in Modern Theology' (SCM 2007  ed Mike Higton). The picture is based on one I found on the Internet, which I painted and used for an essay I wrote on 'Faith Seeking Understanding' in Summer 2006.   But the painting for me has come to symbolise theological struggle. ......

The story is related in the Genesis narative:

Then Jacob was left alone and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. (Gen 32:24-30)

So much theology can be sterile abstraction. ‘unfruitful, abstract theology that gets lost in a labyrinth of academic trivialities’  Karl Barth paraphrasing AMOS  ‘ I hate, I despise your lectures and seminars, your sermons, addresses and Bible Studies…When you display your hermeneutic, dogmatic, ethical and pastoral bits of wisdom before one another and before me, I have no pleasure in them… Take away from me your …thick books and ,,, your dissertations…your theological magazines, monthlies and quarterlies.’ (Barth ‘Evangelical Theology’ 120 in  Migliore, Daniel L. Faith seeking Understanding : An introduction to Christian Theology  2^nd edition Erdmanns 2004 p6) 
  

Anselm coined a phare, a slogan: ‘fides quarens intellectum’  ‘faith seeking understanding’,

FAITH  

‘I pray, O God, to know thee, to love thee, that I may rejoice in thee’  Anselm

Faith is itself an engagement with the Divine Other.  Faith is engaging with the living God  - entering the ‘mystery of God.’  Theology is not about solving issues and discovering truth. It is about discovering God. Gabriel Marcel suggests  ‘unlike a problem which can be solved, is a mystery which is ‘inexhaustible’  Migliore/ p3   (Eph 1:19)

SEEKING

Christian faith prompts enquiry, searches for deeper understanding, dares to raise questions’  (Miglore  p2)

‘Searching the Scriptures’  is a key part of the seeking after God (Jn 5:39).  Perhaps our greatest struggle is with the text of Scripture itself and understanding in what way it is the ‘word of God’. The two extremes of liberal rationalism, which seems to leave little room for divine inspiration and conservative evangelical ‘Biblicism’, (McGrath  p 177 explores the Old Princeton School and the origin of concept of absolute Biblical infallibility) which appears to leave no room for human fallibility. The struggle with understanding the relationship between divine inspiration and the human fallibility of Scripture is as complex as seeking to understand the divinity and humanity of the Son of God!

 UNDERSTANDING

‘Christian faith asks questions, seeks understanding both because God is always greater than our ideas of God and because the public world that faith inhabits confronts it with challenges and contradictions that cannot be ignored’ (Migliore pg 4)

The idea that somehow ‘truth’ can be ‘possessed’ seems almost an anathema. Faith must be  always seeking, always searching, always desiring. The ultimate goal is God. (Ps 42:1)

So is theology rationally ‘thinking’ about faith?   Or is it more ‘faith’ doing ‘the thinking’? The dominant question in the New Testament  is still  ‘what must I do to be saved’, rather than ‘what must I know.’ It is not information about God but ‘the life-giving and salvation-bringing self-disclosure of God’ (McGrath 201) Revelation does not abolish the mystery of God, but is its starting point. Thinking is but one part of the outworking of this mystery. ‘faith sings, confesses, rejoices, suffers, prays, and acts’ (Migliore 7)  Faith is relational as well as rational. Experience is the starting point. The outworking, practical application, and relevance of the Gospel - the Good News of Jesus Christ - is in the transformation of human lives (including mine). 

FAITH SEEKING UNDERSTANDING

The dominant image I am left with is of WRESTLING, particularly wrestling with words. Jacob wrestling with the ‘man’ becomes a metaphor of theological struggle – desperately seeking after God  - wrestling - and afterwards trying to understand the meaning of the encounter  ‘you have striven with God and men and have prevailed’

I particularly like the final picture because it is overlaid with words and part of our struggle is with words and ideas, trying to find language to describe the indescribable.  And the apparent theological impossibility of being succinct!

It is a struggle with others (‘God and man’) over meaning, but ultimately a struggle alone (Gen32v24).  It is a ‘laming-naming’ experience in that the ‘battle’ results in both ‘bruising or brokenness’ (Gen32v25), as well as the ‘blessing’ of a new identity (Gen32v28).  Any theological encounter should have a similarly profound effect on each of us. 

  

India is ........ Global Video Challenge

My son, Jonny has produced a video of his trip last year to Kashmir where he was involved in helping teach 90 India school kids to ski on a golf course!   They were all from CMS-founded Tyndale-Biscoe School in Srinagar (which celebrates its centenary this year). The invitation to help came when they visited the school, as part of a visit to the Diocese of Amritsar, following on from the SACYN conference in Nepal and the Asia CMS CoMP conference in Amritsar in 2010. Jonny came along as photographer and took pictures of all the CoMPs.

We also went with Bishop Samantaroy up to a Youth conference in Gulmarg run by the Diocese of Amritsar and visited the T-B school in Srinagar, near the famous Dal Lake.  A conversation with the principal’s son over a cup of tea, lead to Jonny being invited to return and help teach skiing to kids at the school.

You may also remember that the beautiful (wooden, Chalet style) daughter school in Tanmarg was also burnt to the ground by a mob in reaction to an alleged Koran burning by a pastor in the US. Ironically the only Korans burnt were those in the school library burnt as a result of the arson attack!   Kashmir remains a fragile, conflict torn region and peaceful encounters, like the ski school, are all the more necessary.

Jonny and Stefan had both served with Skiers for Christ (SfC)   - a specialized ministry to skiers and snowboarders. They desire to share their faith, in practical ways, by serving the skiing and snowboarding community.  So they undertook the trip as a joint AsiaCMS & SfC enterprise in Feb 2011.   

This was one of 3 AsiaCMS interchange projects in 2011, including Chuli teaching cricket to Nepali Girls and Frederica facilitating Community Art in Pakistan. All three trips found their origin as a by-product of the SACYN conference meeting in Nepal

Stephen, the CMS Coordinator for India helped to set it all up and to orientate them on their exchange trip.  They also visited Dr Lalita in Pune and made a video of her work   called Positive + Children

The video Jonny made of Kashmir is stunningly beautiful......    

He also entered a briefer version of the video into the India Is Global video challenge and got through to the final round - one of 30 finalists - the outcome all depends on social network voting.

His video can be found on the India Is website.  (or You can cut and paste in the following link...http://indiais.org/rateit_eachvideos.php?userid1=372&videoid=3   and then you have 5 votes ..... so make them count…  that's the Challenge...

 

Global Video Challenge: 'India is ........ for Skiers'

My son Jonny has produced a video of his trip last year to Kashmir where he was involved in helping teach 90 India school kids to ski on a golf course!   They were all from Tindale Biscoe School in Srinagar. The invitation to help came when we both visited the school, as part of a visit to the Diocese of Amritsar. We also went up to Gulmarg where the video was shot.......  all I can say is that is was stunningly beautiful......     The original video is on vimeo and was part of the Serious Fun Vol 2    video magazine put out by sfc
He also entered a briefer version of the video into the India Is  Global video challenge and got through to the final round - one of 30 finalists -  the outcome all depends on social network voting.

So my request is for you to vote for his video, (it does not however work on the internet explorer you would have to use Firefox, Safari, or google chrome.) You can vote through Facebook or by signing on with an email account.  When you vote for it please let me know so I know who has already done so.  At this point of time Jonny is in 7th place and needs a BIG BOOST - YOUR VOTE can make all the difference   Please pass this on to your friends .... that's how viral campaigns start. We have until 14 March ...

His video can be found on the India Is website  You can cut and paste in the following link...
http://indiais.org/rateit_eachvideos.php?userid1=372&videoid=3   and then you have 5 votes ..... You only need to vote for Jonny's video !!

I'll keep you posted on the results..... Let's go viral

Decentered Interconnectedness

My picture ‘Decentred Interconnectedness’  is based on ‘Academic with an Open Book’ - a picture developed by Gert Swart and Zak Benjamin  - see below -  on the front cover of 'Renewing Biblical Interpretation' (Ed Criag Bartholomew). 


'Decentred Interconnectedness'   has the central image of a person - the student/ thinker with one hand on a open book and the other by the bottom of a spiral staircase.  He is surrounded by words : 

• 'Thinking' and 'Biblical' in blue above the window  - the quest for an intelligent open evenglicalism ; 
• 'Father, Son, Spirit' in yellow as light from the window -  a Trinitarian revelation, emenating from the Sun/son - illuminating all knowledge and mediated by the cross of the window.
• 'Knowledge, hermeneutic, light, truth' to the right of the spiral staircase - are all part of the struggle and goal of theology.   
• The words at his feet 'Decentred Interconnectedness' were the title of a course at Redcliffe and represent the interconnected, networked, post-modern world of today which is no longer centred geographically on the West or philosophically on a single meta narrative.   
• The writing on the overall is arabesque (it reminded my of the orange jumpsuits worn by prisoners in Guantanamo Bay Dentention centre)  The arabic/urdu style of writing was a representation of my engagement with Islam and Inter-faith dialogue - one of my (many) areas of interest ...... and further study is the opportunity to re-examine a host of such issues..... 

Rembrant's 'Philosopher in meditation' (1632)

..in the Rembrant there is a distict feeling of Yin and Yang - the tail of one half starting from the top of the stairs to the pool of lighincorporating the window and the philosophers head. The tail of the other half starts from the light at the feet of the philosopher, and goes up the stairs to a 'pool of darkness', completing the Yin-Yang motif, In Chinese Philosophy Yin and Yan are opposing principles omplementing each other, but in the Rembrant the tension between them in focused i the person of the philosopher with his 'light' head and 'dark' lower body'

   

The Rembrant is full of contrasts that express the tensions in the painting between: 

• light and darkness 
• the known seen lower stairs and the mysterious forbidding unseen upper stairs 
• ascent and descent  along the stairway (to heaven or to forbidden knowledge?)  
• the open book and the closed, meditative philosopher 
• The male philiosopher sitting in the illuminated light of the sun radiating through the window, the hidden, excluded woman working (cooking?) in the dim light of a fire hearth - outside the circle,  on the margins...    

There is also a circularity, mandala, a striving for wholeness. The excluded woman stoking the fire is significant - outside fo the circle in 17rth century Europe. The philosopher's book is open but the philosopher seems closed adn diosconnected fromt he book, the world outside and whatever lies at the top of the staircase! The philosopher is at the centre of the unresolved tensions in the context of a light-darkness struggle for wholeness'   

‘Academic with an Open Book’ -  Gert Swart & Zak Benjamin

'in the Swart-Benjamin reworking the content has been compressed into a square that creates a feeling of stability. Within the square there is a n obvious circular feeling whic speaks of resolution and completness. Bith the square and the circularity speak of whleess. The fugure of the academic has been flattened and opened up to create a sense of urgency and hope. The ethos of the 'Academic with an Open Book' is thus radically different from the Rembrant' 

Thus, in a variety of ways, 'Academic with an Open Book'  represents ‘the possibilities and challenges of academics working with the Bible as Scripture. The reworking alerts us to the potential and significance of an open Book – the open Book mediates resolution and potential wholeness into our brokenness. But that very possibility calls for urgent re-examination of a host of issues…’ (Bartholomew et al., 2000 p xxi) 

Or going back to my picture  A new 'decentred, interconnected' world  is literally at the student/academic's feet!  

The Christmas Story: Good News of Great Joy

I offer two little films from New Zealand which re-tell the Christmas narrative. I feel they capture the spirit of Christmas beautifully, with genuine charm and gentle faith.........   
 

Good News of Great Joy (2011) 

 

The prequel to our film, The Christmas Story http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWq60oyrHVQ as told by the kids of St Paul's Church Auckland. Anyone is welcome to show this film publicly, but not change it in any way, nor make money out of it. Except for Joe. You can buy his music here: http://les-enfants.bandcamp.com/

The Christmas Story (2010)

 The Christmas Story' (2010), as told by the children of St Paul's Church, Auckland, New Zealand. Anyone is welcome to show this film publicly, but not change it in any way, nor make money out of it. Except for Joe.  Good News of Great Joy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttInl1ewJVo

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

Another oil pastel of a girl partying, inspired by a series of large painting I saw in a London Restaurant.  The originals were done by Paul Lemmon as part of an Exhibition: 'a Slice of Lemmon' put on by the Art Movement.  Other picture featured  in previous blogs

Given the near freezing temperatures it made me think how COLD it is on a Saturday night in Winter Woking when you are just dressed up to party. We were on another 'street angels' shift from 10pm on Saturday night til 4 am on Sunday morning.  

'Saturday Night and Sunday Morning' was the name of a novel by Alan Sillitoe (1958), which was made into a film with Albert Finney (1960). Over half a century ago. It portrays life in the raw, in the urbanised sprawl of the industrialised Britain. The drudgery of factory work as a machinist during the week and spending wages at the weekends ,"drinking and having a good time".  Nothing is new under the sun   and the same pattern continues for many ...... The traumas of the week are played out at the weekends

Mind you we cannot see beyond a small glimpse of what people are going through. As Street Angels, we meet people 'by chance' on the streets and get involved with a  few for a short period of time.  I was patrolling with one of the newly commissioned angels – ‘the reinforcements’ which meant we could now cover Saturdays as well as Friday nights.

It always starts out quiet with people intent on going out and ‘having a good time.’ So that’s the time we walk and talk and get to know each other and greet one and all.  Galaxy Cabs have constructed a new control centre – and we met the Pakistani owner and ended up talking about his father who died early in the year aged 102!  He had served in the British army and been evacuated from Dunkirk.

Michelle from Maybury was very drunk and had been kicked out of RSVP and couldn’t get into Chameleon. She was sitting on a wall on her own  and could hardly sit straight. We stayed with her and tried to get her to contact her friends.  She was COLD in her minimalist dress. We walked her to MacDonalds and sat with her for a while. She wouldn’t have a coffee but ordered a burger. And we couldn’t stay there all night. Outside again we tried a space blanket, but she just looked like an oven-ready chicken.  It was only when a policewoman suggested she go home that she agreed, so we found a taxi and that we thought was that.

It was only later we discovered she had been sick all over the back seat and the taxi had returned to base. She had stumbled out and according to the taxi-driver was escorted home much later, by the police. As I said you only ever hear part of the story…. 

Otherwise the usual picking up bottles,  and giving out our trademark 'lollipops and flip flops' (not so many tonight). We also got called out to the other side of Woking Railway station in response to a radio call about a distressed girl,  but whatever the situation was  had finished when we arrived.  Back on the Chertsey Road, a couple were having an argument opposite Subway but they made it abundantly clear they didn’t need any ‘interfering do-gooders’. We just ensured CCTV kept an eye on it, cos the girl had banged her head against a shop window lots of times  

After 3am the Chameleon punters spilled out onto Chertsey Road and a fight broke out on the street    It looked like 10 against 2. But it was really difficult to work out what was happening   I thought they were messing about.  But one lost a number of teeth, the other had cuts a round his ears. The odds were certainly stacked against the two guys.  The angels, called a police officer and talked to the guys afterwards as the police took verbal statements and generally calmed things down. One thing I learned from the incident is how very difficult it is, as a witness to a fight, to work out what is going on. I’ve no idea how people stand up in court and tell ‘the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth’.  I’m sure CCTV camera’s help. But so much is open to interpretation.

At the end of the shift, in the wee hours of Sunday morning, as we were making our way back to base, we met Mark, a bouncer at one of the clubs, who had been in the army ('The Vikings') and was wounded in Helmand. He knew my fellow angel well from the army camp in Pirbright. I was impressed at his cheerfulness, given all he had been through. Funny how some people seem to come through trouble and rise above it, discovering the newness of Sunday morning, whilst others seem to fall victim and get stuck in the perpetual round of Saturday nights.........