BEACH HUT 116

The bells were ringing at hut 116 tonight as we listened to Ding, Dong, Merrily on High.

Jim and Janice put a lot of work into the decoration of their hut including a custom made light up bell which hung above the hut on a specially fabricated rig.  The great advantage of this was that the bell was visible from all around, including behind the hut, making it easy for people approaching from the Kingsway to find us.

Inside the hut were more bells, including some handbells that the children really enjoyed playing with and in the centre of everything was a perpetually snowing Christmas tree!

It was a beautifully clear, cold, still night which gave us a wonderful opportunity to watch the full moon rise over Brighton and join the street lights and Christmas lights of Brighton and Hove.

For once the moon appeared so large that you can even see it in the photograph below.


The next hut is back on the Westward side of the King Alfred leisure centre at hut number 253

BEACH HUT 376

The carol chosen for tonight was Silent Night but the proceedings were far from silent as there were so many children running around hut number 376.

Deepdene school on New Church road in Hove decorated the hut with work by the children showing a variety of Christmas scenes and characters.

The school also brought their choir who sang a medley of carols and other Christmas songs for fifteen minutes immediately after the event began.

A good  number of family and friends crowded round the choir as they sang and almost swamped them as they tried to get close enough to hear.


The school also brought their choir who sang a medley of carols and other Christmas songs for fifteen minutes immediately after the event began.

All the artwork was beautifully lit by a variety of candles and Christmas lights.



This was the first completely clear night we've had on the seafront as there wasn't a cloud in the sky and we were treated to the sight of the light of an almost full moon hanging above the huts.

The next hut is number 116 beside Hove Lawns, much further to the East than we were tonight.

BEACH HUT 247a

The focus tonight was not exclusively on hut 247a as David and Charlotte had decided to treat us all to a variety of performances.

The hut itself was very simply decorated with a flame motif - candles in jars, paper cutout flames on the walls, candles on the floor and twinkly stars surrounding an old mirror.

The focus on light was to remind ourselves that Advent is a season of light in the darkness and that this theme is also true of a lot of religions who have light festivals around this time of year.

It was also to highlight the skills of David and Charlotte who are both circus performers with particular skills in juggling and performing with fire.







The natural light of flames was in direct contrast with the LED light incorporated into some of the other equipment that the two performers demonstrated.  These included LED lit hula hoops and poys.






Taking photographs produced some really lovely images which brought out the divine in the performers and made them look like angels.












Our next hut is number 376 which is very close to Hove Lagoon and the evening is being masterminded by Deepdene school using 'Silent Night' as their theme carol.

Trying

BEACH HUT 11

The whole Beach Hut Advent Calendar event aims to bring joy to the good folk of Brighton and Hove but Helen was bringing Joy to the World tonight in hut 11.


The most Easterly of the huts this year somehow contained the whole world, beautifully photographed from space in all it's blue and green splendour.






The world was encircled with chains of happy paper people all holding hands in perfect harmony.

This carol talks abut the whole of creation being made whole by the birth of the Saviour.  Christmas is an earth shattering event because it changes the world, not because it turns into chaos at black Friday sales and rip off Santa experiences.

Joy is about much more than happiness and goes beyond the tinsel and glitter of commercial Christmas.



Each of the paper people surrounding the globe had a broad smile on their face and were so in love with those around them that their hearts were on show.

This is the kind of joy we seek to promote through this event but is not very often associated with church or religion which is odd, because that's what faith should be about. 

We were visited by Latest TV tonight who will put together a report for their news show tomorrow at 6pm.

Latest TV is the Brighton TV station which launched on Freeview earlier this year.  You can find them on channel 8 on Freeview or 159 on Virgin Media or you can watch online here.

The next hut is number 247a and will feature fire jugglers and circus performers!

BEACH HUT 227

The photographs on this blog can't do justice to the beauty of hut 227 this evening.  This is mainly because it is difficult to photograph an installation which is made almost exclusively of light, especially when that light is subtly moving and re-forming in endless random patterns and designs.








The installation was created by Lucy Lauener who is a member of the congregation at St. Luke's Prestonville, close to Seven Dials.


This is a variation of a piece that she has created for the church entitled 'Advent Light' which was premiered on Advent Sunday and will be on show in the church through to the end of the Christmas season.

The inspiration for the art came from the carol 'Brightest and Best of the Sons of the Morning' with it's description of the light dawning on the darkness and the star guiding the Magi to Bethlehem.

Brightest and best of the sons of the morning;
Dawn on our darkness and lend us thine aid;
Star of the East, the horizon adorning,
Guide where our infant Redeemer is laid.

The second verse introduces us to Jesus in the manger and a vision of the stable:

Cold on His cradle the dewdrops are shining;
Low lies His head with the beasts of the stall;
Angels adore Him in slumber reclining,
Maker and Monarch and Savior of all!

The artwork consists of a giant mirrored cylinder which is backed with opaque polythene which forms a translucent screen for all manner of projections and light effects.  In the hut tonight the light was provided by an invention of the artist Chris Levene - the Laserpod.




At the base of the circle shape created by the mirrors, was a tiny glass nativity scene, so small that it was hardly noticeable unless you got really close to the hut.  The whole effect was very moving as the sky was filled with the glorious light, beaming down on the tiny frail representation of God become man.










The next hut is number 11, right down by Hove Lawns and the most Easterly of all the huts in the calendar this year.

BEACH HUT 311

The seventh annual Brighton and Hove Beach Hut Advent Calendar launched in style tonight thanks to St. Christopher's School in Hove who pulled out all the stops to create a fantastic opening night hut.

Their theme was Angels from the Realms of Glory and we were treated to angels of all sorts and shapes and sizes in all their glory both inside and outside the hut.

 
The hut itself became a massive angel with a guard of honour made up of milk bottle angels lining the silver pathway up to the hut.



Even the Archangel covering the entrance to the hut had angel decorations behind her/him which could just be glimpsed behind the angel wings.


There were angels hanging between the huts, angels in great crowds either side of the doorway and angels hanging in lines on the St. Christopher's gazebo which was set up to give a home to the choir who sang for almost the whole hour.




The mulled wine and mince pies disappeared very quickly even though we supplied double the amount that we normally provide.


This was largely because so many people chose to visit the hut tonight, it was absolutely packed.  The crowd was so large that a group of runners heading towards us on the seafront decided to turn round and go the other way when they realised how impossible it would be to wend their way through so many people.

Among the visitors was the Bishop of Lewes, the Right Reverend Richard Jackson along with this family to celebrate the start of the Advent season.








This was a fantastic start to this years calendar.  Hut 311 really showed what it means to be a light in the darkness, which is one of the key messages of Advent.

The next hut is number 227 which is a little closer to The View than we were tonight.

Kingdom Come?

The second in our series on phrases from the Lord's Prayer and Jesus' 'I Am' sayings involved us in looking at the kind of Kingdom we think will come.  What do we understand by the Kingdom of Heaven and how do we get into it? Are there barriers to entry and special ways to get in and if so then who is the gatekeeper?




To get into St. Luke's church you had to get past the friendly gatekeeper who very generously gave everyone a key.
 




We watched a clip from Ghostbusters when Sigourney Weaver is possessed and will only let Bill Murray in when he gives the right answer.  Here is the clip.
This led us to thinking and writing down the kinds of phrases that include and exclude people from church.

The key shape was very much on our minds and so we entered into a mandala making exercise using the keys as wax rubbings or by drawing round them.  Mandalas are meditative tools which are meant to help to unlock us spiritually and which find a common form in churches in the form of rose windows.

The mandala is also closely linked to the mandorla or almond shape which is often used as the frame around an icon of Jesus or a saint.  The mandorla is space created by two interlocking circles, the space where heaven and earth are joined.

You can read more about mandorlas here.

We read Jesus words from John 10 about being the gate and then played a separation game where we had to divide ourselves into those with or without shoelaces, or being right handed or male or female.  This gave us a sense of what it feels like to be excluded or included in a group.







We watched Rob Bell talk about Love Wins and listened to a few words from Kent Dobson about what it might be like to put aside any thoughts of an afterlife.

Finally we got to try our key in the lock and amazingly the first person who tried it was successful! Inside it was a chocolate coin but then it was revealed that the envelope attached to every key also had a coin in it so that heaven had already come to us all.

We finished with the Blessing of St. Clare.

Blessing of Saint Clare

What you hold, may you always hold.

What you do, may you always do and never abandon.

But with swift pace, light step, unswerving feet,

so that even your steps stir up no dust,

may you go forward securely, joyfully and swiftly,

on the path of prudent happiness,

not believing anything,

not agreeing with anything,

that would dissuade you from this resolution

or that would place a stumbling block for you

on the way,

so that you may offer your vows to the Most High

in the pursuit of that perfection

to which the Spirit of God has called you.

Hallowed Light

The new season of BEYOND happenings began on 2nd November with Hallowed Light, following closely on the back of Halloween and being on All Saints Sunday.
For this series of seven events we are taking a phrase from the Lord's Prayer and associating it with one of Jesus 'I Am' sayings from the gospel of John.  This first event paired up 'hallowed by your name' with 'I am the Light of the World' to help us understand something of the identity of God.

We thought about our own identity and it's relationship to our names, we looked at some of the names of God in the Old Testament before focussing on Jahweh as the sacred name of God given to Moses when he encountered the burning bush.

Richard Rohr has written about this name and its meaning for us throughout out lives:

Breathing Yahweh
I cannot emphasize enough the importance of the Jewish revelation of the name of God. As we Christians spell and pronounce it, the word is Yahweh. In Hebrew, it is the sacred Tetragrammaton YHVH (yod, he, vay, and he). These letters are breathed, with the tongue relaxed and lips apart. YHVH was considered a literally unspeakable word for Jews, and any attempt to know what they were talking about was “in vain.” As the commandment said: “Do not utter the name of God in vain” (Exodus 20:7). For all attempts to fully think God are in vain. From God’s side, the divine identity was kept mysterious and unavailable to the mind. When Moses asked for the divinity’s name, he received only the phrase that translates “I AM WHO I AM” (Exodus 3:14).

This unspeakability has long been recognized, but now we know it goes even deeper: formally the name of God was not, could not be spoken at all—only breathed. Many are convinced that its correct pronunciation is an attempt to replicate and imitate the very sound of inhalation and exhalation. Therefore, the one thing we do every moment of our lives is to speak the name of God. 

This makes the name of God our first and last word as we enter and leave the world.
There is no Islamic, Christian, or Jewish way of breathing. There is no American, African, or Asian way of breathing. There is no rich or poor, gay or straight way of breathing. The playing field is utterly leveled. It is all one and the same air, and this divine wind “blows where it will” (John 3:8). No one can control this Spirit.

When considered in this way, God is suddenly as available and accessible as the very thing we all do constantly—breathe, the same breath that was breathed into Adam’s nostrils by this Yahweh (Genesis 2:7); the very breath “spirit” that Jesus handed over with trust on the cross (John 19:30) and then breathed on us as shalom, forgiveness, and the Holy Spirit all at once (John 20:21-23). And it is wonderful that breath, wind, spirit, and air are precisely nothing—and yet everything.

We then took some time to meditate on this while creating or own burning bush and listening to a piece of music by John Reynolds entitled Sunshine which you can hear here.


Being reminded of God's pronouncement to Moses that his name is 'I Am' took us to Jesus declaration of himself as the light of the world.

John 8:12 Then Jesus spoke out, “I am the light of the world. The one who follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

1 John 5: This is the message we heard from Jesus and now declare to you: God is light, and there is no darkness in him at all. 

1 Thess 5:5 For you are all children of the light and of the day; we don’t belong to darkness and night.

Julian of Norwich reflected on this theme:

"Thus I saw and understood that our faith is our light in the night; which light is God, our endless day." 

We closed with an opportunity for everyone to make a pledge to bring light into the world.

The next happening is entitled Kingdom Come and is at St. Luke's church at 8pm on Sunday 30th November, details are here.

Lent Reflection

For Lent this year we are running a series of discussions in The Good Companions Pub near Seven Dials using talks recorded at the Christianity 21 conference in Denver in January.  You can find details of the next talk, location of the pub etc. here.

We also wanted to do something artistic for Lent that would reach a wide audience in the spirit of previous Lent installations such as the Lent Cross, Silent Meditation and Easter Path.

As Lent is meant to be a time of reflection and self-examination we thought it would be nice to create a mirror to go into a public space which would encourage people to stop for a few moments and consider themselves and their lives during this season of the year.






So Kirsty Tyler has created a wonderful mirror which we've been able to install in the office window of 1 Jubilee Street in the heart of Brighton just across from the central library.  This is right next to the busiest cash machine in the city where there is often a queue of people who will have ample opportunity to contemplate themselves as they pass the time waiting in line.








The mirror informs people that we are in the season of Lent, which is a time for examination and self-reflection.  Take a moment to look at yourself and think about your life.  What is important to you?  Who is important to you?  What could you do better?  How could you be better?  Make a resolution for good this Lent.

We're also encouraging people to tweet their thoughts on this to @beyondchurch

Our thanks go to Steve Kirkham of Spofforths accountants for persuading the other tenants and the landlord to allow us to put this in the building.  If you're in central Brighton between now and Easter drop by and spend a few moments in contemplation in the city. 

This is also now featured on the Huffington Post religion section under the title "Giving up God for Lent" Clearly some people think that's a good idea if you look at the comments on that article. 

We also found the following quote tacked to the window beside the mirror: "'There is not enough love and goodness in the world to permit giving any of it away to imaginary beings' Friedrich Nietzsche".