Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Brandwood, children's centre, gbnfc children's centre, St Bede's, st bede's brandwood
From next Monday our friends at GBNFC Children’s Centre will be holding a Holiday Kitchen at St Bede’s (and at other local venues).
Holiday Kitchen is open to pre-school and primary school children and their parents and carers.
It is about having fun, making friends, and sharing food.
To book in call 0121 464 4189
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Brandwood, prayer walks, St Bede's, urban nature, urban walking, walking
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: birmingham, Brandwood, pilgrimage, prayer, prayer walks, St Bede's, st bede's brandwood, walking
Lovely prayer walk with St Bede’s this evening. Canal, urban streets, field. This is the best time of the year, but we saw Brandwood showing off its beauty.
A small group of us met at St Bede’s. We agreed our route and how to walk. The first part in silence, the second with prayerful talking. We were looking out for the places God is obviously very present, and the places where we wish God was more obvious. We intercessed for those we knew on the way round.
We savoured the beauty of creation, wild or planted by people. Girls shouting echoes into the canal tunnel – and laughing when they realised we had seen them. A woman singing as she cycled. A fat cat making a car stop as she sauntered across the road. Breath taken away as we took in the view across Birmingham to the Black Country.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: birmingham, Brandwood, easter journey, photography, st bede's brandwood, urban, urban nature, urban walking
I usually post shots from the top of hills from when I’m out walking. I climb this hill almost every day from St Bede’s and home at the bottom. This is a stunningly beautiful shot that Meenakshi took yesterday.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: autumn, birmingham, Brandwood, photography, spirituality, urban walking, walking
It’s been a demanding month or two. A day off today and I am tired, although I can feel creative energy beginning to bubble at a deep level.
Out for an hour or two in the late autumn sunshine to stock up on some good bread, fruit and salad. A circular route that, in the middle of the city, stays away from roads.
Time to ponder and reflect on the paths and roads of the past months and to look forward to those which are in view. Perhaps more on this in the next post.
The first winter wind is here. I zipped up my coat as I watched the canal.
This skip hire base, next to the council tip, reminds me of Our Mutual Friend with its steadily growing piles of bricks and dust.
yet next to it is the reservoir hemmed in by the beauty of derelict parts of factories and another canal
In this moment of the year we see the underlying structures and skeletons of things laid bare in the dropping of the leaves and the light of the low sun
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: baverstock, Brandwood, druids heath, estates, estates ministry, school
Tonight’s Panorama on BBC 1 is about Baverstock, a secondary school up the road from here. This looks worth watching. The school fights tooth and nail to keep all young people in education rather than excluding those who are particularly disruptive. All the pupils in the LEAP Unite got 5 GCSEs and 60% got A*-C grades.
Details of the programme are here
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Brandwood, jesus shaped people, jesus shaped people in birmingham, jesus shaped people in st bede's brandwood, jesus shaped people in st gabriel's weoley castle, outer estates, outer estates ministry, st bede's brandwood, st gabriel's weoley castle, urban ministry, weoley castle
St Gabriel’s, Weoley Castle and St Bede’s, Brandwood have just begun Jesus Shaped People, a season in which we work in a concentrated way to be the sort of people the Church could be if it followed the model that Jesus gave his disciples.
I will post some more detailed reflections on this later, but I have set up a new blog:
http://jspbirmingham.wordpress.com/
that will contain material from Jesus Shaped People. This will include notes from the sermons each week and the groups meeting during the week. This is as a resource for those taking part.
In the meantime, if you have any questions, please ask. And if you are a person who prays, please pray for the parishes.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: birmingham, Brandwood, doors, gardens, wine
While some of us choose to regard the world through the window, I went out into the garden
Again, there was a book and a glass of something good.
In the last of the summer sun, the first autumn cool in the air, I was reminded how important it is to sit and be
and I found myself regarding the various doors here and their possibilities
.
.