Beach Hut 5

Our journey towards Christmas really got moving today as the theme at hut 357a was travelling. Cathy Watts has been a regular beach hut advent calendar participant over the last three years and for tonight she created a little scene with Mary and Joseph setting out for Bethlehem being pulled along by a cute little donkey.

The overall colour theme reminded us of Mary as everything was lit with gentle blue light and the hut was dressed with little homely touches. We were reminded that Mary and Joseph left the comfort of their home to make this journey despite the imminent birth.

As well as the usual mince pies and mulled wine there were also biscuits and chocolates and room for people to sit and enjoy the view.

Tomorrow we move down near The View to hut number 227.

Beach Hut 4

Tonight we were treated to the beauty of starlight both real in the sky and imagined by artist Nick Sayers in hut 79a. Nick makes everyday objects such as cable ties, coathangers, plastic bottles and bicycle reflectors, beautiful by turning them into spherical sculptures which glow with internal light.

The simplicity of these objects spoke powerfully of the simple trust shown by those who followed the star at that first Christmas and the way God can transform the ordinary into the extraordinary.

The interplay of light and shadow in and around the hut created a wonderful atmosphere as the children ran around, carols played and the crowd gathered to wonder at the star and the miracle of light shining through the darkness.

There was a calmness and serenity about the event tonight as we watched the waves roll under a glistening moon and fall onto the beach. This was emphasised by the wide promenade and the broad expanse of Hove Lawns behind Fiona MacFarlane's hut which was the perfect setting for these sculptures which seemed very at home.

Our next hut is back towards the lagoon and is number 332.

Beach Hut 3

The third hut in this year's calendar took Mary's preparation as the theme and particularly focussed on the Annunciation. Mary sat in the hut very serene and peaceful, absorbing the knowledge that she had received from the angel and contemplating what this meant for her future. She wore a halo of stars which reminded us of the crown of thorns and underneath her blue rob was a little sash of red as a foretaste of the pain that was to come.

The walls of the hut were lined in white and some of the words of the Magnificat, Mary's song after receiving the news from the angel, were written up and people were invited to step into the hut and add their own words.

The doors were not fully open and the outside of the hut was dressed with colourful flowers and other decorations symbolising the contrast between the external understanding of Christmas with all it's fun and festivity and our own internal preparation to meet the Christ child.
Alongside this we had the second of our specially commissioned nativity characters. We will bring out one of these every night and assemble them all together for the first time on Christmas Eve to make a unique nativity scene.

Our next hut is number 79a and will be on a Star theme with light sculptures from local artist Nick Sayers.

Beach Hut 2

Tonight we began our journey to Christmas in earnest by focussing on Joseph. Tradition has it that Joseph was quite an old man when the events of the first Christmas took place and it must have been quite an inconvenience for him to have to leave his work and home to go to Bethelehem for the census.

At hut 268 we got some sense of that as we saw his workshop abandoned while he went for lunch but still showing us something of the things that he might have been interested in.

A beautiful, clean wooden star carved out of a single block of wood, tools all neatly arranged on shelves, angels watching over the work with a backdrop of stars and a little basket full of offcuts of wood with the words love, light and peace carved into them.

There was a sense of peace and calm about the hut tonight, helped by the better weather and a cold and crisp night. A feeling that Joseph could take anything in his stride and in a workmanlike, measured way would be able to work out what to do with a mysteriously pregnant fiance a journey to Bethlehem without quite knowing what was going to happen at the end.

Tomorrow we'll be looking at Mary getting ready at hut 357a.

Beach Hut 1

Launch night for the 2011 Beach Hut Advent Calendar and there was lots going on and lots to talk about. The hut was decorated by St. Christopher's School in Hove who did a fantastic job and supported the whole evening with the school choir singing carols and the youngest children singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star in Spanish (more explanation about that later).

The hut was a riot of colour as it was filled with papier mache cacti, chillis, paper poinsettias and a baby Jesus in a manger in the middle. This was because the inspiration for our huts this year begins with a Mexican tradition called Las Posadas - a 9 day representation of the journey made by the Holy Family which you can read about here. The children have been learning about the miracle of the poinsettia when a poor girl went to visit church to see the manger and her meagre present of weeds she'd gathered on the way turned into beautiful red flowers.

Our version of this after tonights introduction is to focus on one character every evening, adding to the story each night through December so that we follow the same journey taken by Mary and Joseph until we reach the birth of Jesus on Christmas Day. We will have one character on display each night and will bring all these together on Christmas Eve for the first time to make our own nativity scene.

The talk of the evening unfortunately was the rain which persisted all afternoon and all evening and deterred the BBC from covering the event. ITV did brave the weather and were all set up to broadcast live at 6.15pm but there was a problem with the transmission and so the report has been saved over until tomorrow.


Despite the terrible weather, hundreds of people turned out to support their children and to support the launch of this fourth annual beach hut event.


Our next hut will focus on Joseph as one of the key travellers in our journey towards Christmas and is number 268.

Beach Hut Christmas Cards

Beyond has just launched a series of 14 Christmas postcards featuring a selection of images from previous year's Beach Hut Advent Calendars. You can see all the designs here and order a complete pack for £5 by going to our online shop beyondchurch.co.uk/shop

GREY NIGHT

Last weekend, we gathered to explore and discuss the complex space between saints and sinners. Nestled between White Night and the darkness of Halloween was All Saints Sunday, which we renamed Grey Night. It seemed appropriate to use the cathedral like space of All Saints Church in Hove for our first ever event inside a church.

Large pictures of unfamiliar Saints with their surprising and eccentric stories adorned the pillars around the church. Visitors would consider each bizarre tale, then mark with coloured paper whether they believed it to be true or false. Of course, these mythical legends are all too fantastical to be factual; take for example, St Margaret who was supposedly swallowed by a dragon, but miraculously escaped through his stomach unscathed. Regardless of content, the stories are still upheld to be true - so this set the scene for our consideration of what constitutes a Saint. Floating somewhere between the black and white templates of Good and Evil, True and False.

To mirror the clean-cut distinction of these binary terms, our space was also divided in two. A large black circle lay on the floor at the back, with a white one at the front. Scattered upon these lay newspaper cuttings bearing unexpected stories of every day saints and sinners; the clergy arrested for genocide, along with the local community do-gooders. Sitting at the centre of the black circle on a plinth was a skull. The skull spoke to us for a full seven minutes, with the uncanny resemblance of Pastor Mark Driscoll's voice. The controversial leader of an American Mega-Church is known for his angry delivery whilst incessantly pointing his finger at his congregation. His shouts of 'God hates some of you, personally hates you', rang round the walls of All Saints, past the gentle Jesus crucified above the altar and into the concentrated silence that followed. Visitors stood in a mute circle contemplating the God of Love and Wrath, perhaps experiencing or wondering at this proclaimed hatred, like Jesus in his last hour of abandonment.

Small card figures on the black circle waited with the writing 'God Hates...' and visitors took one and filled in their own name. The aisle was strewn with written quotes from the Bible about Saints. People pondered these on their journey to the white circle, then filled out their name on another card figure after 'God loves...' before slotting the two pieces together to make one. A glittering silver pair of angel wings hung reverently in the space before the altar. Visitors were invited to stand before them to have their photograph taken as a Saint.

In one final act together, the large white circle from the front was hoisted up and carried to the back to be laid over the black circle. Laid out on a table were a number of cups, reminiscent of communion. Each person was invited to take one of the cups, which instead of holding wine, were filled with paint; black and white. Written on the cups were both negative and positive things that perhaps we all tell ourselves at one time or another, things that can greatly affect how we treat others as well as ourselves. One by one, we poured out the contents of every cup into the centre of the plinth which was sitting under the sheet. As the black submerged the white and the white overtook the black, we saw all of our pristine categories of saints, sinners and everything else, beautifully merge into one. We saw our boundaries, our classifications and definitions rolling, blending into one large grey mass. When this was later retrieved from the plinth, the significance of the grey puddle could not have been clearer as it had retained the form of the cross.