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It may in some ways be somewhat familiar.

Below is a collection of words from Headspace from the other week that explored worship and music.  It’s more a series of questions, really, about why I might not generally particularly like worship music.   The questions are largely rhetorical, however, if you feel the need to comment…

The first thing to say might be that it’s not exactly the official Headspace line - that we don’t like ‘Christian music’ or ‘worship songs’.  But it seems like a reasonable proportion of those of us who have made Headspace our spiritual home over the years, for a variety of reasons, have a certain aversion to it.  Hence, rarely do we have any even vaguely conventional worship music in Headspace.  Very little unconventional worship music in fact.
 
But why is this?  Do we not like music?  Ok, so we try to affirm that worship takes a great many shapes – but why does it so rarely take the form of music - and why, specifically, so rarely worship music and hymns? 
 
I would think we all have different reasons for it (those of us who aren’t fans).  I don’t think it is simply that ‘it isn’t very good’, or ’shite’.  I don’t like a lot of it, it’s true a lot of it is not good (or at least not to my taste).  New songs are often trite and theologically questionable (perhaps ‘orthodox’, but so closed to interpretation that you appear to be claiming a certain particular (often conservative evangelical) line by singing it).  Old hymns can be beautiful, but are often not (or don’t come across as) exactly joyful praise.  Rather they sound like dirges.
 
I think I question how, for me at least, singing along with any of these songs is actually worship.  I don’t feel that that’s what I’m doing, or that this is the best way to do it.  I like songs, music, singing.  And I like the communal aspect of getting together and finding commonalities through music.  But worship music seems to be claiming something else.  And is that what it is?  Worship?
 
Is it songs to God and Jesus, or songs about God and Jesus that I have most of an issue with?  Is it praise to sing, for example, versions of the creed: ’We believe in God the saviour, maker of the universe…’?  However much it makes sense as a communal activity, is it worship?
 
Is exposition of theology worship?  There are songs which express good orthodox theology, but does that equate to ’praise’ or ‘worship’?
 
There are adapted chunks of scripture – not just the psalms.  One that springs to mind (ok, I found it in a music book, but l do remember it) – which brings up another question – ‘I the Lord of sea and sky’.  The verses of which are from the point of view of God!  Is that worship?
 
And then there are ones which just reference God – for example: ‘I will speak for those who have no voices/I will stand for the rights of the oppressed/… I will lift up the weak in Jesus’ name.  Fine sentiments maybe, but worship?
 
A hymn I do like is Here is Love:
 
Here is love, vast as the ocean,
loving kindness as the flood
When the prince of life our ransom
shed for us his precious blood.
Who his love will not remember?
Who can cease to sing his praise?
He can never be forgotten
throughout heaven’s eternal days.
 
On the mount of crucifixion
fountains opened deep and wide.
Through the floodgates of God’s mercy
flowed a vast and gracious tide.
Grace and love like mighty rivers
poured incessant from above
And heaven’s peace and perfect justice
kissed a guilty world in love.
 
Theologically orthodox, I would think, but perhaps open enough to interpretation (for me? Maybe…), quite poetical language and musically with a lift in the second half of each verse potentially towards some kind of connection with wonder and joy.  But is it worship?
 
By asking if any of this is worship, I’m not saying it’s not.  This is what I do ask myself.  So perhaps it’s me.  If my answer tends to be ‘it doesn’t really seem to be to me’, is there something wrong with me spiritually that I can’t easily worship in the ‘conventional’ way?
 
But is it conventional?  In what way is standing as a congregation, looking at books, or all facing the OHP - or more technologically impressive things nowadays – conventional worship?  Is this how it was always done?  Is this how it was meant to be done?  Are there not innumerable ways to worship – explicitly as well as implicitly? 

But what about music?  Are we in Headspace not to worship through music?  I hope that’s not the case, and nor do I think it has to be.  But I think we can always remember it’s not the only way.
 
So the summary of all my questions, I suppose, is, when it comes to music: is praise/worship therefore in what we sing, that is in the words we use, or is it in the very act of expression, of connecting with emotions we don’t have words for; or the right words anyway?  And in fact, does trying to fit the words in sometimes/for some actually detract from the act of worship?
 
So can music, whatever it’s expressed purpose, be praise and worship?  (Not ‘is’ music…praise and worship – that’s a slightly different but also prescient question.)  And likewise might other things we do that connect us with inexpressible emotions, and bring our minds towards God, worship?  Do we have to be told to think about God to actually think about God?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0417745/plotsummary

Just like the average headspace meeting.

Here is what Headspace might not be.  But then it might be some small fragment of what it might be.  So I thought I’d post it.  Hopefully it’s at least suitably ambiguous.  Any thoughts, anyone…?

Headspace is a group of people who gather together, armed with their doubts to celebrate their faith: faith in God, and in each other.  Their corporate faith: their individual faith.

Headspace is made up of people passing through, exploring this terrain of faith, and of earth, but loitering long enough in this place to call it home.

Headspace believes in God and Headspace doesn’t believe in God.  Only the God Headspace can’t conceive of is big enough to be God; the God Headspace believes in.

Headspace is the sum of its parts.  But Headspace is more than the sum of its parts.  And those parts are swimming, in flux, ever changing.  Each of us make Headspace what it is.  And none of us is in stasis.  

And so neither is Headspace.  Which makes it hard to define; and means this is no definition. 

Headspace is defined not by words, but by what we make it

In the tensions integral to creation,
     in the way that this world was made;
In the tensions between each other,
     our disagreements and our differences;
In the tensions within each of us;
     those questions unresolved and irresolvable;

When we feel drawn in all directions;
     that is where faith is faith,
     and we are drawn to God.

We participate daily in your creation, Lord.  That is the wonder:  we, the creation, create.

All: May we never tire of the wonder!

May we see you in what we create.

All: May what we create be pleasing to you.

May we embrace this: to create with our God!

All: Our lives, the world around us…

We wonder at your creation, Lord, and our place in it.

Amen

We must create, but understand it alongside destruction.  It is we who decide what is termed ‘creative’ and what is termed ‘destructive’.  It is not ‘all the same’. 

We make our choices in the face of this knowledge; the knowledge that when we create, something is destroyed.  When something is destroyed something new is created.

We cannot escape this: indeed, it is the very stuff of existence.

We are destroyed by creation even as we are created by it.  One day the destruction will overtake us.  But something new will still be created.

Until then, how will – how do – we take part in the creative process, what part will we take in God’s creation?  What will we create?  What will we destroy?

It is the question we answer with our lives.

As my microphone etiquette might not be quite what it could be, I thought I’d post here what I said in the introduction to last night’s service.  Or tried to say.  More or less, anyway.

Do we perhaps place overly spiritual meaning onto mundane things, things which have entirely natural origins?  Or to avoid this, do we perhaps go about our lives ignoring the value – the miracle – in natural, apparently everyday things?  Do we blank out thoughts of God, God who is before, behind, beyond – and in – them?

Does God fit into the gaps in our knowledge and understanding?  Does God shrink in the face of what we know and understand about the universe – or rather does our concept of God grow the more we find out about creation?

This week is the penultimate in the series on the elements, and we’re looking at water.  Water has huge metaphorical as well as literal, spiritual as well as physical, significance in the Bible – and though we may not always notice as readily as perhaps we should, in our lives too.

Water quenches our thirst, one of our essential requirements; it washes us; it feeds plants; we produce it from our eyes when expressing extreme emotion – which perhaps isn’t surprising, as our bodies are made up of somewhere in the region of 60-70% water; it is used in a whole variety of religious activities – the cleansing being represented most obviously in baptism in Christianity…

But of course this is not all.  Water has negative connotations too, floods and tidal waves for example bring death and devastation often to vast areas, the power of the ocean (or even smaller amounts of the stuff) is overwhelming.  Water can – and all too often does – carry life-threatening diseases.  

And it can also have ambiguous connotations, when we consider what it shows us of the cyclic aspects of life.

Just thinking for a moment about water, you realise how much more there is to it than just the turning on of a tap.

A number of stations have been set up exploring some of these aspects of water – and more.  The idea being for us to take some time and meditate on the significance of the apparently insignificant.  Of course we know it’s not insignificant, but it might be something we all too easily take for granted. 

In the face of the imagery, spiritual and otherwise, you may like to consider (among other things) – is God in the gaps, or rather, is God constantly dancing tantalisingly beyond our grasp, above, beneath, around and through the gaps.  And the bits in between…?

This is (one of) the recurrent question(s) of a society which, like it or not, is moving towards a postmodern way of thinking.  What is?  No not that.  Rather, how can every point of view be acceptable, and equally valid, when some assert the suppression of others? 

This blog is getting a bit more popular.  For those of you interested in numbers, we had 860 hits in April.  Probably not by 860 different people, but it’s impressive nonetheless.  Well, I think so.  So now might be a reasonable time to ask ourselves whether some opinions are not acceptable; whether some things cannot be said.

We do have the same problem in actual Headspace meetings, but the internet does present different problems.  Or perhaps they’re much the same, just to a different extent online.  A problem with the internet, blogging and posting and so forth is the relative anonymity of it.  You (and when I say ‘you’, I do of course mean ‘one’) can say anything, and there it is for anyone who cares to read it to see.  Who cares about the consequences?  Secondly, it’s not a conventional conversation.  You can say what you like and you can’t be interrupted.  You can’t be asked to clarify mid-flow.  You can just keep going for as long as you like, and only then can people respond.  Often in kind – if they don’t agree or if they find it offensive, their response can just as easily be offensive to the recipient.

So what can’t we say?  Is there anything we can’t say?

Well, it’s not my place to make up any rules.  Obviously.  But how about a suggestion or two, simply because I’ve read so many message boards and blogs and such like which end up becoming slanging matches – generally between the few most vocal commentators. 

Firstly don’t expect everyone to agree with you.  When you say something, people have a right to reply.  Even if they’re wrong.  Especially when you’re wrong.  Be controversial, but always be prepared to back up what you say.  And accept the possibility that you may be wrong.  Think about what others have actually said, and try to understand where they’re coming from.  Imagine you’re actually saying it to actual people.  You are.  Say what you want here, but don’t necessarily assume that it’ll be left for everyone to read if it is truly offensive.  (Although that does raise the question of who decides…)

Language is a wonderful thing, but it is limited – there are ambiguities and there is confusion, as we all have at least slightly different understandings of the world we find ourselves in and the symbols we use to represent it.  And much as I love language I think it would be fair to say that miscommunication – in fact language itself – has surely been an essential component of all atrocities, war and oppression that humans have ever carried out.  Nothing more than small scale violence would be possible without such an advanced form of communication. 

So does that mean we should rid ourselves of language?  Or should we try to communicate a little better?