Community Cohesion

Today for work i went to a conference at the council house - was not overly enthused it has to be said but this one was about 'Faith in the Community - Building a cohesive community'. I spend so much of my work life talking about community cohesion - what it means, why it can't work, why it needs to address racism, why different groups need to be funded etc etc - so i was not thinking that anything new would come out of today.

I was actually pleasantly surprised! Firstly on a personal level I found some of the discussion quite interesting - interfaith conversations I feel are going to become a more necessary and frequent part to our faith communities. I think there is a lot to learn from other faiths without having to feel threatened by others faith.

Secondly and perhaps most surprisingly, was a presentation about Radio Salaam Shalom. A radio station truly run by Jews and Muslims, discussing real issues that divide and unite them. Peter Brill spoke very passionately about the project but i think the thing that inspired me most, is that when all the time in my work it is about why people don't get on and why people shouldn't be here, it showed that when people genuinely want to have dialogue and find out about others - it works.

Radio Salaam Shalom is an internet radio station click here to read more about it! I would recommend it!

Super heros

Last week we went to visit my nephew for his 4th birthday - he had a superhero's party - and Frank (yes our dog) was invited!
as a bit of fun I decided frank needed a costume and decided to make a cape (I had 1/2hr and some tartan material i think i did pretty well!)
Steve thought really i had turned the corner and lost the plot until a friend suggested i looked on the internet for inspiration - i had no idea that superhero dog costumes were such big business 'Costume dogs' was my favourite website

Frank's doesn't really live up to these does it, but he does look very smart doesn't he!!

New Religion

On Saturday I had a GB meeting and for our devotions to start the meeting we went upstairs (GB is under All Hallows Church/Wallspace) to look at the new Damien Hirst exhibition New Religion.
I am not usually a big fan of Damien Hirst - but i really liked this collection and i think one of the things that made it, was that it was in a working Anglican Church, so the exhibition has to be looked at in the context of its surroundings - you have to make a connection between God and Art. New Religion uses Christian iconography to explore the areas of belief, life and death. Damien Hirsts use of pharmaceutical images in place of the usual images suggests medicines/medical science is our new god.

New Religion highlights the conflict between science and religion. Damien Hirst said "People tend to think of them as two very separate things, one cold and clinical, the other emotional and warm and loving. I wanted to leap over those boundaries and give you something that looks clinical and cold but has all the religious, metaphysical connotations too."

if you get a chance to see it i would highly recommend it