TS Eliot - Journey of the Magi

After the dramatic sermon on Sunday night based on Matthew 2:1-12, what better way to keep thinking about the passage than to reflect on TS Eliot's famous poem about the magi? Do you think his cool, emo ending is a good expression of the Christian experience?

The Journey of the Magi by TS Eliot

"A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter."
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires gong out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty, and charging high prices.:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.

But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.
All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we lead all that way forBirth or Death?
There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt.
I have seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

Yet more logos...

Here are the latest logos, hot off the press and desperate for your thoughts, opinions, reviews, etc.

This is number 9 (I've been told to note (obviously) the cross and also a hidden white arrow that shows where Fix is fixing it's eyes.........intriguing)

This is number 10 and 11, variations with or without Christian symbolism.....

Brilliant people, keep them coming !!!

another logo, a goodie !!!

logo no. 8

Latest Logos

Just to enable us to be able to comment on logos. I'm numbering them from now on so that we know which ones we're talking about without referring to the person who created them...(so Susie's above is no. 1, Toby's is no. 2 and the ones below are as follows)

3

4

5

6

7

Latest Logo Entries

Here are the latest and greatest entries for the future Fix logo from...

Susie Perini

and Toby Neal...

Hope these inspire you to future creative works of genuis.

(Just realised I spelt genius wrong. That's not a good word to spell wrongly, is it?)

Lego, Logo, Yogo

A logo is an iconic symbol designed to represent a company, organization, product, service, and sometimes certain places (e.g., Canada). A typical logo is designed to cause immediate recognition by the viewer. To the extent that a logo achieves this objective, it may function as a trademark, and may be used to uniquely identify businesses, organizations, events, products or services.

eg, check out the cool logo for the Bahamas !!!

Logos are good for business. But we're not a business! We're a church. A gathering of the people of the living God. Why do we care about brand recognition? Our brand recognition we want is the testimony of our lives, filled with love for God and for others. You can't squish that into a little symbol and print it on a business card.

So why do we have a logo and why do we want a new one? Because...
- we become all things to all people to reach some for Christ (1 Cor 9:22). If that means we live in a culture that loves logos or won't look at things that don't look good then we'll take away any bad-looking obstacles so only the gospel of Jesus is what turns people away and we'll get a pretty logo and whack it on anything that breathes...
- we need to give out invites to people to come along to church and we want to be able to signal to people what kind of church we are (ie. cool, faithful, funky, friendly etc.) It might be time for a new logo that better communicates this...
- God made a beautiful world that's just awesome to look at so why don't we make stuff that's beautiful and awesome to look at? Skills at designing stuff like this are gifts from God. God even grants his Spirit in the Old Testament (a special event) to craftsmen to gift them the talent to work on his temple. If God cares about how stuff looks (to a degree, he cares far more about our hearts) then so should we...

There are more reasons but these will have to do. Please send any ideas you have to joshappa@hotmail.com or just draw them up and throw them in the offertory bags at Fix !!!


If you want to know more about logo design, here's a quick summary, courtesy of Wikipedia...

Logo design is commonly believed to be one of the most important areas in graphic design, thus making it the most difficult to perfect. The logo, or brand, is not just an image, it is the embodiment of an organization. Because logos are meant to represent companies and foster recognition by consumers it is counterproductive to redesign logos often.

When designing (or commissioning) a logo, practices to encourage are to
- avoid being over-the-top in an attempt to be unique
- use few colors, or try to limit colors to spot colors (a term used in the printing industry)
- avoid gradients (smooth color transitions) as a distinguishing feature
- produce alternatives for different contexts
- design using vector graphics, so the logo can be resized without loss of fidelity
- be aware of design or trademark infringements
- include guidelines on the position on a page and white space around the logo for consistent
application across a variety of media (a.k.a. brand standard manual)
- not use a specific choice clip-art as a distinguishing feature
- not use the face of a (living) person
- not use photography or complex imagery as it reduces the instant recognition a logo demands
avoid culturally sensitive imagery, such as religious icons or national flags, unless the brand is committed to being associated with any and all connotations such imagery may evoke.

Money, Money, Money

Money was our hot topic at Fix last Sunday. So hot, let's talk about how we deal with giving money during our services. Currently, we pass around bags during the last song after the obligatory, "Fixers - give to support the ministry, visitors - don't". Another option we could go for is to have a Fix box up the back, chained to a pillar, where people can contribute anytime during the night. Pros and Cons of the box over the bag?

Here are mine...
Pros - avoids strange bags poking people in the eyes and backs during singing, avoids the pressure on visitors to chuck in $2, avoids those who do direct debit looking like cheapskates when they never throw anything in, avoids picking up any bad connotations that the church is after your money

Cons - people might more easily forget to give to a box up the back, people might not think money is that important a part of the Christian life

What do you think ???

Cathedral Conference

1 Merroo Christian Conference Centre, 300 people, 6 congregations, 4 speakers, 7 rounds of trivia, 2 hours of touch footy, 27 coffees, 4 degrees Celsius, 3 pancakes per person, 1 night of joint congregational prayer, praise and vision setting, 0 degrees of separation in dorm rooms and a whole lot of fellowship and challenging talks.

That was our Combined Cathedral Congregations Conference for 2007. We had meals and social activities with other congregations, while each congregation had their own separate talks. Fix had talks from Tim Bowden on Faith, Hope and Love and were challenged in lots of ways in our personal Christian lives. The Saturday night event, when we mixed up people from all congregations and interacted and talked and prayed together was one of my highlights, as was the meals with Fixers and with other people. If we have another weekend during the year then I'd be happy to have a Cathedral Weekend with all the other services. What do you think ??? Make sure you cast your vote and enter a comment if you like...

U2, coffee and dialogue meetings

During the week from Sunday 29th of April to Sunday 6th of May the Cathedral is getting a group from Moore College in to help us with a mission we will be running for the week. They will be helping us to think about our mission to the city and we will be helping them by giving them the opportunity to get some experience in our unique location. Can you give some thought to the following?

Coffee
There will be a coffee stall which will distribute free coffee and donuts and be a place where people can stop and chat about Christianity. This will run for most of the week during the day and may be something you might be interested in serving at, either in the coffee area, the chatting area, or in listening in on a college student having a conversation with a visitor (in a non-weird, non-stalking type of way).

U2
There has been some thought (mostly just in my head) of running a U2: fans, faith and food night on the Wednesday night. We could have a couple of people singing and playing covers at various points during the night, a big screen concert dvd playing on the data projector, banks of laptops on desks with ear phones playing interviews and other U2 gigs, a fans corner where people (like my friend Andy Nobbs who has a photo of him playing guitar with U2 at a concert) display their connection with U2, and a talk at some point during the night that covers some of their beliefs and why their interest in Jesus is something you might want to consider…We'd need to get some graphicy people to make a leaflet that was good enough to distribute on George St and really try to pull in a crowd.

What do you think? Is U2 a band that appeals to people or am I out of date in my love for them? Do they appeal to a broad enough group of people? Could we pull it off? Would we be keen enough to make it work?

Dialogue Meetings
These are meetings that bibles studies can hold where everyone brings a friend and one of the college students comes, talks about Christianity for 5 minutes and then answers questions for the rest of the time. Another option, that seems to work even better, is that one person from a Bible study invites their friends from a specific friendship group (eg. old school friends, work colleagues, etc.) and you get one college student in and then run the same deal. It works a little better than the other way because your friends are in the majority and there are only 2 Christians there so they feel they can ask all the questions they've wanted to but never been able to.

I've listed 3 different events/activities they'll be involved in and I'd love it if you could give some feedback on each of them...

Fixed Location

OK, so I'm not the most regular blogger in the world. Anyway, it's time to think about where Fix should meet. We've been meeting in the foyer of the school for the last 3 weeks and will have the chapter house available for next week, the question is: do we want to move back? Here are some thoughts about pros and cons for the Chapter House (hereafter CH) and the Foyer.

Pros for CH
More space, easier sound setup, closer to kitchen, no distractions from outside, carpet helps homely feel and helps people hang longer after church,

Cons for CH
Harder to find, feel dwarfed in a large space, singing gets lost in large space,

Pros for Foyer
Smaller space means it feels 'fuller', singing sounds better, it looks new and classy, it's visible for people walking by to drop in and easy for them to see what's happening, by standing outside beforehand we create a buzz in the square,

Cons for Foyer
Sound setup more complex, can be distracted by outside happenings, more setup work, less homely setting so people less likely to stay for longer (though last time 4/5 stayed more than an hour)

Not all these points carry equal weight, some are far more significant than others. Also, some of us love change, others of us hate change.

There are probably many more points that could be made, why don't you make them? Any thoughts? Click on the comments link below, leave a comment and let's think about this!!!