As you may know things are really tough for the central finance for Streetspace / FYT and John Wheatley, Dylan Barker and I have been working hard on funding bids to make up the shortfall. We have submitted loads of grants we are hoping to hear from soon but we are looking at raising around £25000. As employees of FYT, a charity, there are certain processes and procedures that need to be followed and so we are meeting on Thursday where formal warning notices that our jobs are risk will be have issued to all three of us. This gives us another month to raise income or further cut costs or hours and our hope and prayer is it will not get as far as redundancy.

In many ways we see this an important positive opportunity to push into the new world of what pioneering youth work and mission really means and get even more creative with our approach. Our aim for the coming few years had been to transition the whole of StreetSpace from fees and bills to gifts and conversation, but this is going to take time and unless some of the grants come in, or we raise income in another way we may struggle to make that transition.

So I would value your prayers for us, our families and the extended StreetSpace community. As said we have some grant applications already in, and many people I know via facebook already support frontline youth work projects, so please do not divert your giving but if you think you can help us financially you can do so via:
an online donation to FYT using: https://www.give.net/20022128
by phone, text: FYTR01 £(then either 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 10)’ to 70070
To make a monthly donation or one off gift by cheque or BACS, please use this form http://www.fyt.org.uk/…/wp-co…/uploads/FYT_Response-Form.pdf so we can claim the tax back to increase your gift at no extra cost to you.

I am loving Ian Adams morning bell reflections for lent you can find out more here. This series of snowy, slightly out of focus images and words seems to have been taken from a train or moving vehicle. The challenging words bring me up short, and as lent should makes me re-evaluate and prepare myself for the year ahead.

The images and words set off all sorts of connections in my brain and as I sit with them I move from a disconcertion, to peace to hope as I look forward to the Easter. The movement reminds me to sit with the disconcerting feelings they raise and to embrace the words in the now. The peace comes not as a relief but from a knowing that we can live beyond the temporal, (perhaps at times only fleetingly) but we need to embrace the reality of the everyday and ourselves if we are to do so.

I was privileged to be part of the Incarnate Gathering last week, and whilst I was asked to speak I received far more than I gave. The theme was Other and I shared around Other as the space between us. It was great to meet Abdul Rehman Malik who is a journalist, speaker and part of the Radical Middle Way. Abdul spoke on “Everything Perishes Except the Face of God: Seeking the One in a Hyper Diverse World”. His shared stories from the Muslim tradition offered some great insight into notions of Other.

In my usual way this ended up with me putting two and two together and coming up with five. The weekend started me wondering about how notions of Other connect with the ongoing story of fullness of life. We know there can be no fullness of shalom for us, when there is poverty, oppression and disparity for others, when we cannot break bread with others who may differ in perspective. It started me wondering about the points of tension, in the Christan faith that separated myself and Abdul, and the particularity of communion.

One person shared a story of how they had had a passover meal, with people of different backgrounds and faith stories and towards the end had moved into another room to take communion. On the table the symbols the bread and wine were surrounded by the everyday life objects that had unconsciously been placed on the table, a nappy, keys, bags, etc. It was a wonderful image of community and incarnation, yet they were conscious that as they shared communion no matter how inclusive their language was, some would be excluded or exclude themselves from the table.

Now I know I am dangerous ground playing with the Sacrament, but what if communion is another part of the ongoing story. More than that what if by its very nature it has the possibility to include rather than exclude, to help us towards the redemption of the whole of creation, not by seeing other as something that may taint, but as a resource towards wholeness and shalom. Something that helps both us and another creatively hold the space between us, something that recognises difference but imagines and commits to a new way of being.

We need to remember communion has never been a static thing, it is different in different traditions, its elements have changed over time and with different cultures, as have the liturgy and words. BUT Imagine the passover was just the start, the last supper a step along the way, and that the christian tradition thus far has helped us, but now communion once again needs to be re-imagined, perhaps it even needs to be liberated from the christians. It will not be an easy journey as we are both part of a radical monotheistic tradition, but I long for the day when Abdul and I can wrestle in the space between us and perhaps work out what it means for us break bread together.

I have been privileged to hang out with a load of baptists for the past few days looking at Other. I was asked to share a little but loved the input from others in particular Abdul Rehman Malik’s session Everything perishes except the face of God. I wanted to blog the thoughts but I cannot find an order of logic so hear goes a splurg.

I long for the other, I want to explore, I let myself breathe and jump in with both feet.
I find my self caught not by the person but by the space.
The encounter with other brings realization that no difference is found.
A visceral awakening that this space is beyond, a space in between, and space that is clean.
The other is self and together we are held.
The holding amplified, so our uniqueness remains
It is a feeling that cannot be conveyed
but it is feeling that must be expelled.
The other is no longer a stranger in this space that held.
Beyond the words of stranger, of difference, and other
we move towards wilderness, home and mother.