We brewed a beer - and it was good

Solace hosted 'Take up beer for Lent' recently and it was brilliant. The creation of Marcus Curnow (marcuscurnow.wordpress.com/), the concept was for a small bunch of people to meet every week of Lent, brew a beer together and read through the bible readings for Lent from the common lectionary. Solace recognised this as a great idea and invited Marcus to make use of our facilities to make sure this happened. Marcus generously agreed to travel each week from Footscray and we made it happen.

The brewing journey was replete with risks, exotic ingredients and simple fun. We brewed a Celtic amber ale kit brew from Brewcraft in Heidelberg, sanitising the equipment, mixing together the wort and setting up the fermenter at Solace's place in Heidelberg Rd, Alphington. The fermenter chortled away during all of Solace's activities for a few weeks, bringing smiles of anticipation to the faces of Solace people experienced in the ways of home brewing. Bottling the brew was frenetic and much fun, a brilliant label was composed by the group and affixed to the bottles after a nervous two-week wait for the brew to mature. On the final night we opened a few bottles and tasted it. Some bottles were flat! But the beer tasted satisfactory anyway. The final bottle opened had a creamy head and the possibility remains that the rest of the brew will taste magnificent. Everyone agreed that brewing together had been fun and a great experience of stepping outside the usual consumer experience and undertaking the risk of producing something special for ourselves.

Each week we read another section from the bible, all the readings being traditional Lenten ones. Marcus did a great job helping us grasp the cultural nuances that shaped the original writing. One of Marcus' techniques is to interpret a contemporary political cartoon together, as this requires similar skills to reading the bible. Our small group of men (some women said they would come, but couldn’t make it in the end) took to debating the meaning of the cartoons and the bible stories with gusto - perhaps encouraged by tasting some highlights of the brewer's art. Each week we all gained a deeper understanding of a bible story and all achieved a fresh perspective on the world around us. We had joked about 'reading the bible through the beer goggles', but Marcus genuinely helped us see the text in a fresh way, bringing out how those who are tired and perhaps disenfranchised by the games the powerful in society play may react to these ancient stories of wisdom.

A theme throughout the season had been 'coming of age'. Both beer and wisdom stories have a profound influence on our coming of age rituals in Australia; all of us could recount stories of starting drinking beer as young men. Also, all of us could acknowledge that authentic food was a part of our spiritual lives, as is the bible stories. The journey together brought both of these themes together in a powerful way. All of us quickly became enthusiastic about what we were achieving together. The lessons we learnt together during Lent defy simple articulation; but each of us finished with a profound sense that we had learnt something that would enrich and encourage us on our life journey. Perhaps we learnt that making a profound connection with another person is a necessary part of reconciliation; perhaps we learnt that the promises of power are hollow compared with the chance to become aware of our place in a wonderful living creation. Whatever we learnt, we will look at the world in slightly different ways from now on.

Thanks to Marcus and all the good men who participated.

THE HEAVENLY BANQUET

I would like to have the men of heaven

In my own house:

With vats of good cheer

Laid out for them.

I would like to have all the saints,

Their fame is so great.

I would like people

From every corner of heaven.

I would like them to be cheerful

In their drinking.

I would like to have Jesus too

Here among us.

I would like a great lake of beer

For the King of Kings,

I would like to be watching heaven’s family

Drinking it through all eternity.

Autumn at Sunday Stuff

We've started our Autumn season at Sunday Stuff. Highlights are the return of our labyrinth (this week May 8), our famous upside down week (29 May), the creation of mugs for our hospitality (June 12) and the legendary yule feast (June 26). See www.solacechurch.org.au/sundaystuff for all the details and a down-loadable program.

Liv's Easter Journey

During our Easter journey we have been exploring how we might breathe new life into the liturgical saying of Easter Sunday "Christ is Risen! He is risen indeed!"
Some of the sessions have involved looking at the meanings in Mark, Luke and John's crucifixion accounts.
In those sessions we have tried to encapsulate the story succinctly and even replace "Christ is risen" with a short slogan that reflects some of these meanings
(it has been hard)

here are some of mine (taken from all three accounts)

death done God's way is victory
You can't keep an innocent man down
Jesus: just ask
Man's doom can not defeat God's hope
put all your eggs in God's basket
all things have come to pass



For me this Easter it turns out that the account by Luke has had a big impact and stayed with me these last 10 days. It is a doom laden account -with the wailing women (the greek chorus) and Jesus' prediction of a terrible future for Jerusalem as well as darkness when he dies. This fits my mood of these last months. (I have nothing to complain about but feel hemmed in by such bad news within our own country and round the world -both natural and human.) Within this setting Jesus acts as a confident hope filled man. It has been stark and shocking to me this Easter. He confidently offers paradise to the one dying next to him and his last act is to place all that he is into God's hands. He remains full of trust to the last. To the one next to him who also dares to trust he grants everything.

This last week when i have felt low or divided about how i want to live i have muttered to myself "Into your hands i commit my spirit". For me it is an act of throwing myself forward into a greater god-shaped future. Its about putting all my eggs into God's basket and choosing God's way as my way in all circumstances and God's being as the home of my spirit (my very self) at all times. A few years ago i realised that something had changed for me in my relationship with God, that i could sense a good God despite of or independent of circumstances. My trust of God was getting unhooked from how i was treated by life. This is a basic article of faith...blessed is the name of the Lord -he gives and takes away...Job chapter 1. But i am slow to learn it, and slower to live it. The idea that God is good despite there being lots of data in the world that some say proves that God is either wicked or non-existant is a foundation for living faith. However for me i can sense that only in these last years has it moved from my head to also inhabit my heart and i "know" it in a different way. Therefore the path to "more" with God continues to present itself as the best one for me to walk fully and deeply and it feels increasingly unsustainable to "hedge my bets" as well as unappealing.

In Luke Jesus does not waver and knows that even in this extreme situation God is his sure hope. For me to say this Easter "Christ is risen" is to own something like "all my bets are on Jesus" .

In committing my spirit to God i am of course committing my feet to walk his paths, my mind to his thoughts, my heart to his heart and so on. In daily life for me this means to keep finding practices and habits that make my heart soft and compassionate (i tend to respond to the many mundane tasks in my life by going harder and becoming harder), it is to keep forgiving and making space in my heart for those i am in long term relationships with (I am so much better at making new friends than keeping old ones close), it is to have a commitment to doing justice (I prefer to get away with whatever i can rather than acknowledge that in life i have already been given and taken so much). It is to make a place in my heart for a quiet and confident hope for the world alongside the muted grief and pain from the newspaper headlines. For me to say this Easter "Christ is risen" is to own something like " though doomed by the world, your ways offer me life"

What will it mean to you when you say "Christ is Risen! He is risen indeed!" this Sunday.

Easter week at Solace

Easter holidays have started here in Victoria, and Solace is celebrating running our first seasons of Tuesday Stuff and Sunday Stuff at our new venue in Alphington. Easter week is fast approaching and we're anticipating a fantastic time. Details on gatherings are given below, but first a comment on the meaning of Easter.

Easter is the time for celebrating and reflecting on Christianities central event: the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Many Christians greet each other on Easter Sunday with the words 'Christ is risen', and replying 'He is risen indeed'. At Solace we are exploring together what it means to affirm 'Christ is risen'. There have been many attempts at explaining the meaning of the death and resurrection of Jesus over the course of the church's history. Many of those attempts have gone beyond the gospel accounts, some using the epistles plausibly, some using other parts of the bible with less credibility. At Solace we are encouraging each individual to reflect on the meaning of 'Christ is risen' for themselves. In our conversations about the meaning of 'Christ is risen' we come to a meaning that we as a dispersed community hold as truth.

One theme that has already emerged is our attraction to the opportunity to be transformed personally: by love, by grace and - mysteriously - by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We've considered contrasting ideas about Easter from Marcus Borg and from Keith Green. Really different men, different ways of understanding bible and yet both are excited (in their own way) about the opportunity for positive and loving transformation.

We hope that you also will reflect on what 'Christ is risen' means in the coming weeks and find your own excitement in this age-old phrase.

Easter Week at Solace
April 17 10am Palm Sunday
April 22 2pm-3pm Good Friday
April 24 10am Easter Sunday
See Solace Lent and Easter events 2011 for more details and locations.

Solace Alphington is up and running

Solace has secured a new venue in Alphington for all our activities, office and resources. We shifted in before Christmas 2010 and have been fitting out ever since. We secured a commercial lease of a shop-front and dwelling in prominent Heidelberg Rd Alphington.

The new venue will help us grow the organization and better serve all our fantastic supporters and punters. Having a single place for everything is going to save heaps of time by getting rid of setting up, travel, packing up. We'll be more innovative too: both because we have the time and because we will have to adapt to a typical shop-front space. The lessons we learn about commercial leasing and using this type of building will be made available to other Christian communities: sharing the benefit around.

Sunday Stuff and Tuesday Stuff have made the move already. Both congregations are settling in well and enjoying the new space. Rebekah Pryor is our first artist-in-residence and her exhibition, 'homecoming' has launched and proven very popular already. A new group are meeting on Monday nights to brew a beer for Lent and read through the lectionary readings together. These are good signs that the venue works for us.

We're currently knocking down a wall and getting air-conditioning sorted, so the place will be even more comfortable and useful in the very short term. We've got some of our resources set up in our new library, so if you would like to innovate in your own community, why don't you come over and we'll share some lessons we've learnt?