Our joint community Christmas Celebration with the Tree of Life Centre community project & two church groups went really well the other night. It's the first we've done together - with different partners all involved in the planning & prep. We shared music with a singing group, drama by Tree of Life Centre, we all sang a handful of carols led by a team of young musicians and we were lit with candles. Of the 50-60 people there about half were non churchgoers and there was a great buzz about the evening as we all hung around afterwards to share cheese & wine for over an hour!
What was great was different kinds of people working together to mark Christmas which means lots of different things to different people. One of the things we did was a simple way of decorating the tree in the church and community building with our concerns, memories and prayers to God and in connection with the world & our lives. Will post a photo of that again. As a result of all the great feedback we'll be planning some regular events together - probably around Easter and new life, Harvest, diversity and world cultures. Apparently there are at least 35 languages now being spoken in Wythenshawe! It is great to work with difference - it takes longer, is more chaotic and can be stressful but is also wonderfully creative, opens new possibilities and ways of seeing things and shows me glimpses of God all over the place! This celebration has made Advent means a lot more to me having been with these groups of people this year - journeying together for the long haul, encountering a hotch potch of people.
We sang, ate, honoured memories and people, held silence together in thanks, listened to each other and somewhere in there was the glory of God, the wonder of Christmas magic, the grit and hard face of life and christ was born in us there and then - together.
And meanwhile the storytelling in our renewal group goes on with Luke's Gospel being read aloud to each other. I am really getting into stuff about Zechariah and Elizabeth this year. To hear the Gospel read aloud in accents from Wythenshawe, Ghana, other parts of Manchester with hints of Jamaica, Yorkshire, the north of Wales and south of England is great for my ears and my heart. Am thinking we'll do lots more reading aloud of books of the bible next year - maybe during May/June Bible Society campaign in Greater Manchester.
