small ritual

grace 'ten' discussion evening photos

one evening in late 2002 we met at the bakers' house to discuss grace's upcoming tenth birthday in 2003. we brought objects to illustrate various aspects of grace, scattered them on the floor, and explained them - a kind of picture of grace and its history thus far. i always liked the photos but never knew what to do with them.

a couple more old grace services on flickr

breakfast [may 2003] was based around my john 21 meditation, plus grilled fish for afters.

the spirituality of sport [october 2003]

my first alt worship photos

while cleaning under the bed last weekend i pulled out a box of old photos, and found some early shots of alt worship that didn't get onto smallfire.org back in the day. there were various reasons for this:

1. they weren't technically very good. i was learning about film speed so they are mostly dark or blurred.
2. smallfire.org started back in the days of dial-up, when large and numerous images on a webpage were not welcome. so the selection was severely edited and the published image size was small.
3. online storage capacity was limited and slow to access.
4. they were prints, so i had to spend time scanning and processing.

but these constraints have gone, and the not-very-good pictures are now interesting, as records of how things/people were. and the good shots deserve a better viewing, and i'm better at photoshopping them.

so:

my very first alt worship photos were taken at the 'reimagining worship' conference 8th-10th may 1998, at the round chapel in hackney: some conference shots, the beautiful labyrinth by 'live on planet earth' [now l8r], and the closing service at grace 'whose alternative?'. my flash went off during the labyrinth - that was the first lesson i learned...

there are a few shots of the 'spirit' service july 98, with the rotary clothes line. and 'the sin of holiness' with mike riddell. you can see how we used to keep the church dark, because it was dingy and full of pews - our lighting came from candles, tvs and projections [slides not video!], and spotlighting for stations.

'communion - what's it about?' was our first experiment with holy communion and our first cafe-format service. the eucharist was the third course of a meal. this idea and the cafe would run and run. the prevalence of red wine as the drink in the grace after-service cafe is the continuing trace.

more later. there are a couple of more recent grace services that never made the cut for smallfire.org at the time, but which look good to me now. there is some early vaux stuff that i think i can do a better job with.

portland aerial tram

in portland they call it the aerial tram instead of a cable car, and they call the trams trains. whatever, it makes a pleasant ride with the best views of the city and the mountains - mount st helens to the northeast, mount hood to the east.

portland aerial tram ride from steve collins on Vimeo.

tim tried to record the machinery sounds, but people were talking, so he went into the escape stair to make some noises with the handrails and pipes.

sound recording in the stairwell from steve collins on Vimeo.

at home that evening he began to play with the recordings, adding beats and changing the voices - maybe a new piece of music will result.