What are you Waiting For?

words, story, music and interactive stations for Christmas alterntatives

While you Wait !

Credo Cricket: The History
from www.myspace.com/credocricket

Credo is the name of Urban Seed's café in the heart of Melbourne where an open lunch is served to all comers including many who struggle with homelessness and disadvantage. Credo Cricket takes the values that have shaped this space and apply them to cricket.

Looking for Loopholes in Love, Concept originally developed by
and curated by Mark Pierson for World Vision Australia at Montsalvat, Victoria, October 5, 2006

WELCOME...to this mornings worship curated by Seeds for the TEAR Gathering...

Liturgy for Xaviers Dedication at Dancing Dog Cafe in Footscray which kicked off our Sunday Seeds Gatherings in partnership with Footscray baptist. Due acknowledgement to kester for the circles idea and lots of good words.

Reflection
The face is a powerful symbol for reflection.

Shane Claibourne tells a story of a power point presentation of faces he once used as a response to a talk about scandalous grace. Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch “like me” and the faces came up with the text “like me” , “like me”, “like me”. The faces included that of Timothy McVeigh the man executed for the Oaklahoma bombing.....

The Seeds Meal

Central to the emergence of the Seeds Covenant has been the spirituality of the table. It is the gathered meal that often unites our efforts in knowing the word, growing home and going to engage the problems of our world. Some queries from our covenant point to the table.

How regularly will we come together around a common meal?

Who will be invited and made to feel welcome at the meal?

How will our meal reflect the Eucharist as practiced through history?

How will our meal reflect peace, justice and joy by making reconciling connections with God, others and the earth?

What practical processes and symbolic rituals around production and consumption of our food will shape the spirit of the meal and build a sense of home? (Who’s cooking and who’s doing the dishes? How and why?)

The following is an attempt to make our spirituality of the table more explicit and to make some of the words and processes we have found helpful more accessible. To celebrate and share different food traditions that exist among our Seedy Mobs and to inspire new production and consumption.

Another Queens birthday long weekend and another huge effort attending State Youth Games and curating the Sacred Space. This year without any Oasis Global Action Team punters to help us we went minimal and invited Age Greenwood and the Uniting Church more>praxis mob to run their cafe praxis. UNOH also set up a table selling wares from the Klong Toey slum in Tailand where they work. They organised the go_stand pledge and as our contribution we dubbed our major reflective station the GO_STAND SHOE SHRINE.

Thankfully we were joined by Warragul local Nahkita, who is yet another legend in the long line of Urban Seed work experience legends so we didnt look like total losers...

I would like to borrow your shoes and to hear your shoe stories.

As part of our participation in the State Youth Games and possibly Surrender Conference the Urban Seed/Seeds mobs are putting together an installation for Urban Neighbours of Hope’s GO_STAND. GO_STAND is the way of describing the altar (alt-ernative) call and response time for these events. You can check out the idea at www.myspace.com/go_stand It is about making a commitment to follow Jesus who leads us to the rough places, the unpopular places, to stand in solidarity with our poor brothers and sisters.

As part of the response we are seeking to create a SHOE SHRINE installation using shoes, sand, a simple labyrinth and candle lighting from a “burning bush”...

On Sunday my family joined in the William Cooper Memorial Walk as part of the conclusion of Reconciliation week events which also recognised the 40th anniversary of the referendum that acknowledged the citizenship of indigenous inhabitants of Australia. The walk was organised by The Gathering Place, and commenced at the Living Museum of the West at Pipemakers Park . William Cooper was the founder of the Aboriginal Advancement League and although he died twenty years before the referendum he is credited as a key founding influence upon its success. His family members were present and told of how he lived in an unheated house around the corner from where my family now live. He did alot of his work wrapped in blankets because of the cold. He walked alot around Footscray because he couldnt afford a tram fare. As we walked people stood by the side of the path and read aloude some of the letters and speeches of this great man from the 1930's which was moving and humbling.

Below is the reflection of my father on the recent Cornish Festival in South Australia. Unfortunately I couldn't make it this year, however I am keen to run something there around a Cowethas Peran Sans theme in 2009.

We took a stroll down the Pt Hughes jetty and the first fisherman we met trying his hand was a cousin from Saltash. He hauled in two “tommies” as we chatted in the evening light. He had left Cornwall fifty years ago but there was no doubt that his accent would unmistakably follow him to the grave. The things we talked about were far from profound but it seemed as if our meeting was some sort of sign that another good Lowender was just around the corner....