Pass it on: God & Heritage

Pass it on: God & Heritage from Rob Bee on Vimeo.

So we come to the last blog I’m writing for Cafe Sundae. And it’s a good topic to end on. I am thinking about heritage and I have one word to say to you – floorboards. What do floorboards have to do with heritage? I’ll tell you shortly.
I think if you mentioned Christian Heritage or the heritage of the Church to most people they’d think about the fantastic buildings we have as cathedrals, or the many paintings or pieces of music that have been produced throughout 2000 years of Church History. And why not? They are a testament to how people’s faith has inspired and motivated them. They are arguably amongst the greatest and most beautiful things Humankind has produced and are quite rightly revered and preserved for future generations to enjoy. But that’s not the heritage I want to talk about, I want to talk about floorboards. And tattoos.

Let’s start with tattoos and hopefully you’ll begin to see what I want to put on the table for your consideration.
I don’t actually want to think about tattoos; just one particular one, and it’s one you can find on my left arm. Between my elbow and shoulder I have a large tattoo of a cross and around it are the words “I caught a fleeting glimpse out of the corner of my eye.” The words are actually taken from Pink Floyd’s ‘comfortably numb’, but coupled with the cross it provides a statement about my faith. It speaks to me of a God who is present and involved in our world and our lives, a God who reveals Himself to us in bite-sized pieces. So we catch our glimpse of God (spell it with a little g if you want to consider this from an agnostic/atheist standpoint) and we can choose to take our facet and talk with other people about their glimpses, and as we widen our conversation we put pieces together like a jigsaw and develop a picture of who God is (or what god is) and build a faith. My tattoo speaks to me of the importance of looking for God and sharing what we find with others.

Ok then, let’s think about floorboards and what they say to me about our heritage. Cafe Sundae has been held at Timperley Methodist Church. In 2004 the Church was refurbished. The pews that were previously in the Church were removed and replaced with the rows of chairs that we move every month to make way for Cafe Sundae. Before the new carpet could be laid the entire floor had new boards laid over the top of the old ones because of the state of the floorboards. The procession of people week after week shuffling into and out of the pews every Sunday, coming together to meet as believers, had worn grooves into the floor making a surface too undulating to lay a carpet on. 60 years of people shuffling down the pews to take their seats, 3 or 4 generations of believers who have come together to share time and their experiences, to build a bigger picture of God than they could do alone. Imagine how grooved the floorboards are in older churches. This is the heritage I want to consider; these 2000 years of feet shuffling through pews, generation meeting generation to build their jigsaw; discussing their fleeting glimpses, sharing their picture of God, creating a living moving, evolving faith.
And here we are at the end of the chain, the last links. It’s our job to make sure that we don’t remain that way, that the procession of feet continues to wear the floorboards. The heritage we have is an oral tradition - it’s true we have the Bible to look to, but without our chain-making the Bible simply becomes Aesop’s Fables. This then is what Cafe Sundae has been about. We’ve tried to pass on what we have seen of God, we’ve tried to find out who we are in God’s world. We’ve tried to share our fleeting glimpses and piece together what it means to be a Christian in the 21st century.

And as we 4 step back and go onto other things, we throw down the gauntlet to you. If you have gained anything from being a member of a Christian Community have you got anything you can pass on? Are you happy to be the last link in the chain, and if not how are you going to make sure that you aren’t?