This Thursday at COTC we are pleased to be hosting one of Rob Peppers excellent ‘Drawing Room’ workships (as seen in Time Out). It is more than a drawing class, using drawing as a meditation. It is open to all - no experience necessary, and is a lovely non-threatening environment to kick start your creativity, or develop existing skills.

Rob is a major artist with exhibitions around the world, and is currently showing in Liberty’s on Regent Street.

The Drawing Room. COTC 17th April 8pm-10pm. Suggested donation £5.

If felt to me that Easter brought together all the themes we have been exploring over the last few months, themes like Kingdom, justice, restoration & creation. On Sunday morning we reflected on the ressurection account in Luke, and also this wonderful image by Stanley Spencer (click for a very large version). He imagines the resurrection in his own village church yard at Cookham in Berkshire, a new easter morning with creation and humanity restored together.

Easter is our declaration of hope in the midst of a bleak and suffering world. This is what we proclaim.

We talked yesterday about preparing to enter into the wilderness at Lent to create some space and to seek repentance and humility. You can find the talk on the resources page. And whether you are planning to give something up, or take up some practical discipline our hope is that this is restorative for us as individuals and community.

The book that I recommended is by Henri Nouwen, called reaching out. Amazon are suddenly out of stock (it must be a Lent favourite) but you can get it from their new and used section for as little as £2.77

So Lent starts on Wednesday, we are going to begin with and Ash Wednesday Service at 7.45pm at Church.

A few people are talking about blogging their Lent experiences.
Matt Wall for one:

“I was struck by how Lent should be a positive time; a time of ‘realignment’ if you like; a time of choosing freedom over slavery. I’m not quite clear on what that means yet but I feel invigorated by the idea of leaving my self behind and focusing on God…The whole idea is to cease trying to be God and start deferring to the real one, so honesty not false holiness is the name of the game - so this may not amount to a hill of beans. We’ll see.

How are you planning to mark these 40 days?

We had a fantastic Christmas. Thank you to everyone who worked so hard to make it special. Last Sunday we had a service looking back at the year that was, and as part of the evening there was a slide show of some of the highlights of the year. Here it is so can hold onto those memories. Thanks to Pete for the soundtrack - not just of the year in review but of  the year as a whole.

This sunday we were looking at a barnstorming passage; Jesus’ woes to the Pharisees and Teachers of Law in Luke 11. You can find the sermon on the resources page.
I resisted the temptation to have a field day and instead tried to put our own house in order. This critique of the religious institutions of Jesus day seemed painfully relevant, and so I suggested six commitments based on the six woes that would form the basis for a manifesto for church on the corner.

I just got back from a retreat at L’abri in Hampshire. L’Abri (French for “the Shelter”) is a beautiful sprawling manor house in the countryside and home to a christian community, about 10 permenent ‘workers’ and 30 to 40 visitors or students. They have a nice rhythm of work, study and relaxation, and mealtimes are given over to discussions on all sorts of topics. It is very welcoming and I felt immediately at home there and met a fantastic bunch of people. It turns out that they know COTC quite well, and have had lots of people from here visit them in the past. I have been meaning to go for years since I read Schaeffer’s writings, but am very glad that I finally got round to it.

Mark Stoney borrowed the Cloudsley room upstairs at church a few weeks ago, to record the video for ‘Jailbird’. They put up some very cool wallpaper that I really should have got them to leave, and the video includes a comedy selection of random objects from around church (see what you can spot - I have seen 5 objects so far) and that fireplace I never really liked.

Lots of you will know Fiona Fouhy who is a graduate from central St Martins. She uses the hidden stories lurking within the urban landscape surrounding Kings Cross and St Pancras in her triple exposure photographic images.
Fiona is showing new work (an installation with historian Alan Dein) for the Arrivals2007 festival celebrating the opening of the channel tunnel rail link at St Pancras.
There is a private view on the 17th November and a few other events happening in the area - see www.arrivals2007.org.uk for more information

With all our talk about Justice and the kingdom of God over the last few months, I have had a number of conversations with you guys about what we do about it. We talked at church about the impact of Uzbekistani Cotton - which is just the sort of things which seems too obscure to care about - however its buying it supports massive environmental damage, devastated communities and slave labour. Hard to imagine that your choice of T-Shirt could involve you in that level of wrongdoing.

So while we will think more about what we should be doing as individuals and as a community let us not understimate the significance of how we spend our money, and where we encourage others to spend theirs.

Often the problem is that shops just don’t know where their cotton comes from, so refusing to buy stuff because it may come from somewhere like Uzbekistan (which 14% does) seems appropriate.

So where do you suggest we choose to spend our money? My top tip is Howies - who have a new shop on Carnaby Street. I love this company - thoughful, organic, ethically sourced or recycled cotton products - even the buttons are natural, and they are funky with it - check out the ethics page on the website - a real feel good brand.

What other organisations would you recommend?