Encounters / Saturday 10th May
We are unable to use the church this month due to an event, so we are meeting in the Rose & Crown pub next door at 8pm (although you can be there earlier if you like!). We'll be thinking about the appearances of Jesus after the resurrection over our drinks.
Flip the script / Saturday 12th April
Join us for the second Grace in Lent.
We all have scripts, stories we tell ourselves about the world and our place in it. Jesus has an uncanny knack of flipping the script of those around him, re-storying the world. We will be looking at one encounter where he seems to do just that and ponder what the invitation might be to us. A mix of reflection, conversation and imaginative prayer.
St. Paul's Cathedral Labyrinth 25th anniversary / Saturday 8th March
Grace in March falls exactly 25 years since the Labyrinth in St. Paul's Cathedral - which ran 6th-10th March 2000. So please join us for an anniversary walk.
We will be using our own labyrinth cloth, so the stations will be set up outside the labyrinth rather than on it. This is how it originally worked - the labyrinth itself was about our relationship with God, and the stations were about our relationship with ourselves, others, and the planet. When we ran it in St Pauls we had to put the stations onto the labyrinth in order to manage the whole thing - but we had the space to make the labyrinth itself much bigger.
For this labyrinth the music and meditations are listened to on individual music players with headphones, so please bring a phone or other music player, and your headphones. You can download the tracks on the Labyrinth website here, or just play them in the browser on your phone. We'll have some extra music players too. In 2000 we used CD Walkmans - if anyone has one they can bring it too, we will have a few CDs! iPods hadn't been invented yet - and we dreamed of being able to transmit the tracks wirelessly to people's headphones...
There will of course be a cafe afterwards. All contributions of food and drink welcome.
Dust / Ash Wednesday 5th March
Prayers for Ash Wednesday 8pm at St Mary’s Church, led by Jonny Baker. A reflective service to begin the season of Lent which will include the imposition of ashes. If you are not familiar with that come along anyway and find out about it. It will be accessible.
Ambient prayer / Saturday 8th February
Join us for the 5th edition of Ambient Prayer. Space to breathe, a candle, an image to consider, silence to rest in for a while, prayer.
There will be a café afterwards.
Look back - move forward / Saturday 11th January
Join us for the first Grace of 2025. Walking the labyrinth provides us with a quiet space with time to reflect on the past 12 months and look ahead into 2025.
There will be a café afterwards.
Smoke is rising / Saturday 14th December
Advent is a season in which we look forward in anticipation and longing for another possible world when all things are made new, when Christ returns, when there will be no more injustice. That longing in the run up to Christmas is also waiting in hope for Jesus Christ to come into the world as a sign of that incoming future.
Join us for an evening of longing which will be expressed through song, art, prayers, poems written and made by those who are there. If you would like to contribute then do let us know. There will be a cafe afterwards with mulled wine and mince pies.
Remember / Saturday 9th November
Chris Rose, Director of Amos Trust, will be speaking about the current situation in Gaza and the West Bank. The service will be an act of remembrance and a call to empathy and action.
Cafe afterwards, all welcome.
Ambient prayer / Saturday 12th October
A low-key service with space to think, ponder and pray. There will be images, music and occasional guiding thoughts. Join us for space to think.
Cafe afterwards, all welcome.
New year communion / Saturday 14th September
Do join us on Saturday for the first of a new season of Grace. Everyone is always welcome. It will be communion.
There will be a cafe afterwards. Do bring a contribution of food or drink for the cafe if you are able.
Barbecue / Saturday 13th July
The Grace barbecue this year is at Richard and Sue's house 23 Disraeli Road W5 5HS. There will also be a short liturgy and prayer.
Please bring some food to put on the barbecue and something to drink. All are welcome.
Prospect Wood / Saturday 8th June
The next Grace is in Prospect Wood (in Sussex). We will leave Ealing by car around 9am and get back around 5pm. There will not be an evening service at St. Mary's.
If you would like to come please email us a.s.a.p. so we can give you more info and organise lift shares and so on. All welcome but please don’t leave it until the last minute. The email is freshinfo@freshworship.org
Spirit / Saturday 11th May
The Holy Spirit is active in the world! Please bring something - some kind of object - that represents where you sense the Spirit in action - art, poetry, society, in the margins, in the garden... and share what you see with us.
Cafe afterwards, all welcome.
Resurrection / Saturday 13th April
Sometimes we think it must have been easier to accept the Resurrection closer to the event. That wasn't the case for Thomas - how can his doubt help us?
Cafe afterwards as usual, all welcome.
In the archive - a year of movies
The services archive has been updated with photos for 2007, 2008 and the first service of 2009. This period also includes movies of the services, starting with Nine in December 2007 and ending with Journeying in January 2009.
The first movies - Nine, Elijah - are low resolution, maybe shot on a phone. It was 2007-08, when some phones had just got to the point of shooting acceptable movies. Even so they struggled with the low light of Grace services. The quality improved considerably for Lunch not included, Wounded in all the right places, and Contamination - probably using a proper camera.
Biggest regret - no footage of Ed smashing the pinata in Clean. Not even a still photo from anybody!
Creativity / Saturday 9th March
When we revisited our ethos last autumn, 'creative' emerged as the most important word to describe Grace. The ethos says:
We value human creativity as a gift from God. We believe that everyone is creative, because they are made in the image of God who creates.
Creativity is about being able to put stuff together in new ways, which is something that all humans can do. Please join us for a service - and a cafe - where we put this idea into practice.
Our ethos also says:
Risk is a part of creativity.
We hope as many of you as possible can be there. It literally won't happen without you!
Ambient prayer / Saturday 10th February
February’s Grace will be the second ‘ambient prayer’.
The first one is already in the archive - this one will be similar in format but with different images, movie, playlist, prayers. The intention is develop a series with a repeating form but different flavours of prayer.
Followed by the café.
Updated archive with photos
The services and events pages of the archive are being updated with photos, in a section at the bottom of each page. At the moment the photos have been added up to the end of 2006, with more ongoing, and the services since last September also have photos.
The photos begin in May 1998 when Steve bought a camera and started to take them. There are many photos that haven't been published previously - maybe the minor services, or the photos that aren’t the striking images used for publicity but which are still a record of an event. Sometimes there are nice photos but no record of what was actually going on! Or no photos of what must surely have been a good-looking service.
The archive has also been expanded with additional material from the early years. Several missing services have been added, and things like Shed Obscura and the Grace ethos weekend in 2005 get their own pages. There are still gaps - we didn’t have an official archive until the new database website of 2006.
Before 2006 we didn't have flyers for each event, just the printed ones, annual or quarterly. They have been added to the service pages. Sometimes they're the only image or source of information!
Ambient prayer / Saturday 13th January
January and February’s Grace are ‘ambient prayer’.
Expect something minimal - ambient music, low light in the dark of winter, an image to ponder, space to breathe, a candle, silence, a few guiding thoughts for prayer.
Followed by a café.
Christmas labyrinth / Saturday 9th December
Join us for a meditative and prayerful Christmas labyrinth, a peaceful evening before the hectic part of the season gets going.
When we first did labyrinths in the 1990s, there was a four-part structure about our relationships with God, Self, Others and Planet, with the labyrinth itself being about God and the other three as stations. Given current situations this structure seems very relevant.
There will be mulled wine and mince pies in the cafe afterwards.
30 / Heaven Exists
For our 30th birthday Lynda commissioned an astonishing cake, called 'Heaven Exists', made by Nastassja at The Indulgent Sugar Plum. Here she is giving a short explanation of the cake (she did a longer one in the service). It was an apple cake (referencing Adam and Eve!) covered with dark and white chocolate, with edible 'angel feathers' and integrated lighting.
30 / Saturday 11th November
11th November is Grace's 30th birthday service - to mark the occasion we will be meeting around a table for a service of Communion by Numbers. Meeting around a table has been a large part of the Grace experience and sitting at a table with food and conversation we meet our companions, ourselves and sometimes God.
We'd love to see old friends and new around the table on 11th November - there will be food, drinks and music. It would be great to know if you plan to join us.
Grace2 / Saturday 14th October
In 2005 at a Grace weekend we came up with an ethos (long and short list) to sum up our values and to be a touchpoint for us in the years ahead - a reminder of what we hope to do and be as Grace.
In the run-up to our 30th anniversary in November, we thought it would be good to revisit the ethos - does it still work for us? We have changed, the times have changed, does our ethos need to change, in order to represent and guide us now and in the future?
This will be a cafe-format evening - please bring food and drink to share.
Grace / Saturday 9th September
Yes September's Grace is about grace! Strange to think we last did this theme in 2001...
What does grace (not Grace!) mean for you? Please bring something about your experiences of grace, to share with us - it could be a reflection, music, ritual, story, poem, image...
Cafe after as usual - please be gracious and bring some food and drink to share :)