Pete Rollins' talk at blah... manchester tonight was fascinating. I'm sure there are people who had heard it all before, but I found his talk a breath of fresh air.
I loved the image of being so absorbed in someone/God you don't notice the colour of their eyes. And I really related to the feeling of being so absorbed by something (a painting, the Bible) you can't take it all in. I think that sums up much of my faith.
Lots of anecdotes and lots of images.
And challenging stuff too. I had never thought about slavery being abolished not by people who had stood up for Biblical principles, but by people who had come close to those who had suffered and therefore had reinterpreted their understanding of the Bible in the light of this. This has a lot to say for the plight of homosexuals in the church now, and no the struggle isn't over (thanks Phil for your posts).
Confession time. I was bound to enjoy Pete's talk tonight as I was already a 'fan'. He is the founding member of Ikon who ran an astonishing service at Greenbelt last year. The service still sends shivers up my spine now. I remember sitting in a room full of stones while an artist painted homophobic insults on the body of a motionless guy (pictured). She kept painting, even after the service had finished. Combined with funny and moving stories of people's experiences of sexuality, we were encouraged to 'blunt' our judgements of other people - putting jiffy wrap on the stones we (often unintentionally) throw every day.
Having said that, thank goodness Ikon don't blunt too many of their stones. Sometimes we need a bit of ouch! to keep us going.
Sorry, Laura, that's the second time this week I have 'gazumped' one of your posts by posting later on the same day!
By 
Fat Roland, at 12:02 AM BST
twas a good evening... Pete is always good value... not just in terms of words per minute either!
By 
Mark Berry, at 12:48 AM BST
A good night – nice to see some familiar faces too.
I particularly liked the fact that started off talking about how the title was meant to confuse everyone: it was not meant to be elitist/ intellectual but to open everyone up to asking questions.
Pete’s such a good communicator – and a great storyteller! I love that he can make all this deconstructionist thinking and philosophy of religion accessible by telling a joke about a rabbi and the Pope, or a tall tale about a cat and a tree…
I rarely write notes when someone’s speaking (thinking that generally the stuff that I like/ need sticks in my head and the rest goes in one ear and out the other). But last night I wrote a fair bit whilst he was talking. And my concluding notes were: “Leave it behind, take it apart, abandon it, lost it, go beyond it, give it up, lay it down.”
In fact, the whole thing reminded me a bit of the kingdom, grace, judgement stuff that we were looking at on the weekend away recently – grace for the little, the last, the least, the lost and the dead.
Ditto my previous comment Fats – yours is a better post than mine would be...
:-D
By LauraHD, at 9:49 AM BST
I was sorry to have missed it (again), but the deacons meeting had to take presidence (sigh)
By Graham Doel, at 11:10 AM BST
