Waiting In The Starlight
After spending the last few months being intrigued by the myriad facets of alternative worship (thanks Adam Cleaveland) and experimenting with a few things here and there, we (myself and our youth director) decided we should go for it and put together an alt worship Advent event. We’ve roped in a few other people to help with stuff and this is what we came up with…

First, reading the Advent section of Jonny Baker and Doug Gay’s Alternative Worship book (awesome, by the way - buy it now!) the theme of starlight struck me. I mentioned it to D (she’s the artsy one, I’m the musical one) and she married it to the waiting theme of Advent. So we had a title.

From there it quickly morphed to the notion of a star labyrinth - 8 points/stations, with an empty manger in the center. One of the creeds from the Alt Worship book seemed like a natural, so I set that to a background of 50 NASA pictures from space - various parts of the earth, planets, moons, solar flares, so that’s one station. Another station will be “light” prayers (with candle lighting, of course) - a lot of them from Evening Prayer. Throw in a Jesse tree, a scripture station and you’re almost set. One other station will be a set of 24 black and white photos to ponder and meditate and the last station will be a payer wall prompted by the question “what are you waiting for?”.

Musically we’ll start with about 20 minutes of live music. So far I’ve got Tim Hughes’ Here I Am To Worship (which could be an official Advent song with a different bridge…), O Come Emmanuel, Come Thou Long Expected Jesus, and maybe (if I can get the music in time) a Maggi Dawn song Into the Darkness and some other stuff I’ll figure out this weekend. Once that’s over I’ve put together a mostly instrumental mix while people interact with the stations. Now, having lots of Enya and Vangelis CDs I’ll confess to a weakness for going with what I’ve got. I also resisted the temptation to use some of my more favorite tracks that are just too overpowering for this. I did, however, stick with Delerium/Sarah McLachlan, even though it gets fairly intense and the vocals are potentially intrusive. But whatever… sometimes you just have to put in stuff you think works. All this stuff just feels right for “starlight”…

Here’s the track listing (all nicely cross-faded with Nero - I love their software…) (let’s see how the formatting works - not, I bet)

Name - Artist - Album
A Day Without Rain - Enya - A Day Without Rain
The Oracle Of Apollo - Vangelis - Direct
Shepherd Moons - Enya - Shepherd Moons
Raincry (Submerged) - God Within - Plastic Compilation Volume 1
First Approach - Vangelis - Direct
‘S fagaim mo bhaile - Enya - Oíche Chiún [EP]
Silence (Michael Woods Remix) - Delerium/Sarah McLachlan - Chillout/A Nettwerk Escape
To The Unknown Man - Vangelis - Portraits
No Holly for Miss Quinn - Enya - Shepherd Moons
Alpha - Vangelis - Portraits
Pulstar - Vangelis - Portraits
Storms In Africa - Enya - Watermark
Sauvage Et Beau - Vangelis - Portraits
The Memory of Trees - Enya - The Memory Of Trees
Hymn - Vangelis - Portraits
Oíche Chiún (Silent Night) - Enya - Oíche Chiún [EP]

The goal is to start quiet, crank up the intensity in the middle a bit (Alpha & Pulstar) and then wind it back down, starting with the driving but lighter Storms in Africa. Oh, and it’s all a nice 75 minute track on my iPod now, too.

So I’m pretty psyched about this. I can’t wait (hah!) to see how it works out. And for once, the musicians can actually participate…

Embracing Worship 2.0 – an Architecture of Participation

We’ve developed a tradition for Advent at Grace, an alternative worship community in Ealing – Nine. It’s a very simple idea for a service (feel free to use it). We take the traditional nine lessons and carols framework and give it our own twist. We find nine volunteers willing to take part who are given one of the readings. They then have to choose a piece of music and do something to reflect/relate to the reading - this might be a piece of art, a ritual, a meditation, a thought, an audio-visual piece. At the service the nine readings are read from the bible and after each one the person does their piece and play their chosen piece of music. Followed of course by mulled wine and mince pies. It’s highly participative and creative. People produce amazing things. On reflection I think it might be an example of Worship 2.0 …?

Something’s going to come
Don’t look so forlorn
‘Cause something’s going to come
I don’t know where from.
I don’t know where
Don’t you look so sad
‘Cause something’s going to come
I don’t know where from,
I don’t know where
Don’t you look at me
Like things aren’t going to be
The way we thought they’d be
‘Cause we’ve got love,
Always
Love always.
La La La-La La La-La La
Stop.

Don’t you turn around
Have faith in what you chose
‘Cause life can sense your attitude
I don’t know how
You’ve got to realise
That hope looks in your eyes
If you look away it flies
Let’s look forward
If you still believe
That things are going to be
Like we hoped they’d be
Then we’ll have love
Always
Love always
La La La-La La La-La La

you could use thisreflection and draw some of your 9 surprises from it your readings could be advent poetry interspersed with some from the advent bible readings. Some poetry I have found really good can be found here

1

poems for Christmas: mary’s song
Blue homespun and the bend of my breast
keep warm this small hot naked star
fallen to my arms. (Rest …
you who have had so far to come.)
Now nearness satisfies
the body of God sweetly. Quiet he lies
whose vigor hurled a universe. He sleeps
whose eyelids have not closed before.
His breath (so slight it seems
no breath at all) once ruffled the dark deeps
to sprout a world. Charmed by doves’ voices,
the whisper of straw, he dreams,
hearing no music from his other spheres.
Breath, mouth, ears, eyes
he is curtailed who overflowed all skies,
all years. Older than eternity, now he
is new. Now native to earth as I am, nailed
to my poor planet, caught
that I might be free, blind in my womb
to know my darkness ended,
brought to this birth for me to be new-born,
and for him to see me mended
I must see him torn.

This poem by T S Eliot was written in 1927. It is believed to reflect his own journey from agnosticism to faith.

2

The journey of the Magi

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For the journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.’
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.

At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.
Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.

Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins,
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory
All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death?
There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt.
I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like
Death, our death,
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

3

the angel and the girl are met
The angel and the girl are met
Earth was the only meeting place.
For the embodied never yet
Travelled beyond the shore of space.
The eternal spirits in freedom go.

See, they have come together, see,
While the destroying minutes flow,
Each reflects the other’s face
Till heaven in hers and earth in his
Shine steady there. He’s come to her
From far beyond the farthest star,
Feathered through time. Immediacy
Of strangest strangeness is the bliss
That from their limbs all movement takes.
Yet the increasing rapture brings
So great a wonder that it makess
Each feather tremble on his wings

Outside the window footsteps fall
Into the ordinary day
And with the sun along the wall
Pursue their unreturning way
Sound’s perpetual roundabout
Rolls its numbered octaves out
And hoarsely grinds its battered tune
But through the endless afternoon
These neither speak nor movement make.
But stare into their deepening trance
As if their grace would never break.

Edwin Muir (1887-1959)

4

The Slip
this poem by Wendell Berry seems especially suitable for Advent:

The river takes the land, and leaves nothing.
Where the great slip gave way in the bank
and an acre disappeared, all human plans
dissolve. An awful clarification occurs
where a place was. Its memory breaks
from what is known now, begins to drift.
Where cattle grazed and trees stood, emptiness
widens the air for birdflight, wind, and rain.
As before the beginning, nothing is there.
Human wrong is in the cause, human
ruin in the effect–but no matter;
all will be lost, no matter the reason.
Nothing, having arrived, will stay.
The earth, even, is like a flower, so soon
passeth it away. And yet this nothing
is the seed of all–the clear eye
of Heaven, where all the worlds appear.
Where the imperfect has departed, the perfect
begins its struggle to return. The good gift
begins again its descent. The maker moves
in the unmade, stirring the water until
it clouds, dark beneath the surface,
stirring and darkening the soul until pain
perceives new possibility. There is nothing
to do but learn and wait, return to work
on what remains. Seed will sprout in the scar.
Though death is in the healing, it will heal.

The rest, as they say…is up to you

Keep it simple. keep it joyful. keep it uncommercial. Best at night.

Reflect on its meaning. This is the time when the SAVIOUR was born! God with us…God cam down incarnationally, with us in the trenches, lived with us in the slums, in our hardships.

Very busy too!