Heavenly Party

Michele Guinness

Description

Drawing upon her rich Jewish heritage, Michele integrates sacred and secular using pilgrim festivals and symbol, ritual and liturgy. She explains what true celebration is, with ideas and resources for celebration at home or in the wider community. Christians should have the best parties! Part One: Explores what true celebration is and looks at how Jesus loved to party. Part Two: Festival parties, including anniversaries, a weekly Sabbath, events in the church calendar. Includes suggestions for rituals, prayers, liturgies. Part Three: General ideas for celebration. Includes suggestions on how to organise the celebration event. Part Four: 50 best celebration recipes. Adapted from author's monthly cookery column in Woman Alive.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Christianity

Informations

• Publié par: Lion Hudson
• Date de parution: 19 octobre 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780857219237
• Langue: English

Extrait

Text copyright 2018 Michele Guinness
This edition copyright 2018 Lion Hudson IP Limited
The right of Michele Guinness to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published by
Lion Hudson Limited
Wilkinson House, Jordan Hill Business Park
Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 8DR, England
www.lionhudson.com
ISBN 978 0 8572 1922 0
First edition 2007
Second edition 2018
Acknowledgments
Cover image Dani Vincek / Shutterstock
Unless otherwise stated, Scripture quotations are taken from trom the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1946, 1952, and 1971 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Contents
Acknowledgments
Glossary of Hebrew Terms
Part 1: The Appetizer
Part 2: The Hors D Oeuvres
God, the Great Party-Giver
Jesus, Man of the Party
A Partying People at Home
A Partying Community
Part 3: The Main Course
Celebrating in the Daily and Ordinary
Celebrating a Sabbath
Celebrating the Festivals
Autumn
Winter
Spring
Summer
Part 4: Celebration Recipes
Starters
Main Courses
Accompaniments
Celebration Salads
Hot Puddings
Cold Desserts
Cakes
Tray Bakes and Cookies
Sweet Endings and Presents
Appendix: An Abridged Passover Haggadah in English
Notes
For Livvy, Reuben, Noah, Gabriel and the bump ;
a new generation of heavenly partygoers
Acknowledgments
T he Oscars have turned giving thanks into something of a ritual, but on reflection it is true that no one ever accomplishes anything without the intervention of others - be it through circumstances, intention or necessity. And never is that more the case than with celebration - and writing about it. It isn t easy to celebrate alone. It would be impossible to describe it. I am therefore immensely grateful to the members of St Thomas Church, Lancaster, who, in the eighteen years my husband Peter was its minister, allowed us both to experiment, innovate, play with tradition, make mistakes, learn and develop our ideas accordingly. Few churches could have been so accommodating, open-minded, adventurous, forgiving, flexible and as much fun as you are. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for being such gracious, supportive, ecclesiastical guinea pigs.
Some from there have made a very special contribution to the celebratory life and culture of the community. In her own inimitable way, a previous St Thomas youth minister, Ruth Hassall (currently assistant director of mission for the Birmingham Diocese), took the Tabernacles service outline and developed it further, proving that it needed the eyes of someone who wasn t Jewish to see what I had missed, and that the rich symbolism was an object-lesson in what constituted effective all-age worship. With imagination and ingenuity, the late Debbie Peatman (then assistant vicar) along with the curate (now Canon) Sam Corley turned Holy Week into a spiritual banquet. Debbie s stories of the people who encountered Jesus (used as meditations throughout the year) have enriched beyond measure my comprehension of his love, and I was deeply touched by her generosity in allowing me to include two of them here, which now act as a tribute to a lost talent.
Every festival at St Tees, as it is affectionately known, used to leave the then church administrator Dave Cumming and his wife Meriel - not to mention countless unnamed helpers - with the unenviable job of stacking and sorting heavy church chairs, setting up and decorating tressel tables, building a large booth out of twigs and branches (Tabernacles), peeling dozens of hard-boiled eggs and chopping smelly horseradish (Passover), clearing away the slops and hoovering the sticky leftovers out of the carpet. Celebration doesn t happen without a great deal of hard work. They were the ones who were prepared to make that sacrifice.
Wendy Moore and Ceridwen Copping regularly transform the building into Bethlehem, Jerusalem, a garden, a beach, a town centre - wherever their or anyone else s imagination takes them - and I have learnt so much from them about the importance of visual stimulation in appreciating the presence of God.
I am indebted to all the others who have shared their own creative ideas for celebration with me: Kate Porteous, Christine Jenson and all the folk at the New Wine Newark seminar on parenting in 2006. They didn t know their ruminations would be so seminal, but for me they were the spice of life. My gratitude, too, to John and Anne Coles and Mark Melluish, who gave me the opportunity to speak on God, the Great Party-Giver at a New Wine evening celebration at Shepton Mallet, and coped wonderfully with the partying that then went on afterwards.
Without my children I would probably never have begun such an adventure in the first place. Engaging them spiritually and supporting them financially necessitated first the experience of celebration, and then the writing about it. There hasn t been a day since they were first lent to me that they haven t filled my life with joy, laughter and celebration. And now it s the turn of their children.
My minister, technical manager, accountant, theological advisor, plumber, electrician, cleaner, lover and husband have all been indispensable - particularly since they all reside in one man. Peter has always given me my head of steam. More than that, he piles on the fuel. Few men, especially church leaders, are as courageous as he, but without his constant inspiration, risk-taking, encouragement, patience, partnership and love, my celebration would have been very much the poorer.
Glossary of Hebrew Terms
Festivals

Hanukkah: the Festival of Lights (December) Rosh Hashanah: Jewish New Year (usually in September)
Pesach: the Passover
Purim: the Feast of Esther (March)
Shavuot: Pentecost (the Feast of Weeks, in May or June)
Sukkot: the Feast of Booths or Tabernacles (a week after Yom Kippur)
Yom Kippur: the Day of Atonement (a week after the New Year)
Other terms

afikomen: the middle piece of three matzos used by the leader in the Passover service and symbolic of the Passover lamb
bar mitzvah: literally blessing of the son , the coming of age of a Jewish boy at thirteen
bat mitzvah: literally blessing of the daughter , the coming of age of a Jewish girl at twelve
berakhot: blessings
charoset: a mixture of apples, wine and walnuts eaten at Passover as a symbol of the mud that held the bricks together in Egypt
gefilte fish: chopped fish balls
goy: a Gentile
Haggadah: literally the telling , the Passover service book
halachah: literally the progress or journey , the rules of Judaism passed down by word of mouth that describe the proper path through life
Kaddish: prayers in memory of the dead
kiddush: the traditional Friday evening Sabbath prayers
kishkas: Yiddish for guts
kosher: prepared according to the dietary rules
matzah: unleavened bread
mikvot : ritual temple baths
moedim: holidays, or rehearsals
Seder: literally service - the Passover service, usually in the home
Shabbat: Sabbath
shivah: seven days of official mourning after a bereavement
shofar: the ram s horn
siddur: the Jewish prayer book
simcha: literally joy , celebration or party
sukkah: a booth or tabernacle
taschlich: the tradition at Yom Kippur of using stones cast into running water as a symbol of throwing away our sins
Part 1
The Appetizer
Our Christian culture needs to cultivate an anarchic lightness, a lust for freedom, a celebratory spirit. It needs to learn from the boom in festival culture we yearn to join a crowd that is celebrating Christianity is meant to be a religion of celebration.
Theo Hobson, The Guardian , July 2005

C elebration must be one of the most devalued words in the currency of the English language. Everybody seems to be having one, in some disguise or another, but they are as different from each other as best rump steak from economy burgers. A celebration can, for example, be a full-blown banquet with ten courses and bottles of bollie, or tea and buns at the Women s Fellowship. It can be a lavish concert or ball with full orchestra and canap s in the interval, or a picnic in the rain on the school playing-field. It can be a rowdy, booze-soaked night out in the local bar, or a bring-and-share supper of cold pastry and Netto trifles. It can be a totally joyous, abandoned way of marking a special anniversary event, or, quite frankly, an awfully Anglo-Saxon, damp squib.
In the Christian West the church has made little real attempt to celebrate life s punctuation marks. Birth and death may be accompanied by certain restrained and modest rituals - on request. Everything in between, apart from a wedding, can seem a shapeless blur. We have a stab at Christmas, though success is varied, dependent on musical, technological, financial and imaginative ability - both professional and volunteer. Easter gives rise to little creative innovation and minimal real enthusiasm for a festival at the centre of our faith. Harvest, outside rural communities, is rather an embarrassment. Pentecost may receive a mention, in passing. All that is left is a token nod in the direction of something vaguely resembling a Christian calendar - if the minister happens to remember what day it is. And when a celebration is announced, it is often in reduced form - for Anglo-Catholics an extra-long procession, for conservative evangelicals an extra-long sermon, and for charismatics several extra songs, sung with even mo