This week sees the last of the Bloomsbury summer outings. During the summer instead of the lunch and speaker that form the centre of Tuesdays at Bloom, we have a series of outings to various places. This year these have included going to Walmer to see Seyan, going to Kenwood Park, a tour of St Paul's, and today's visit to Amersham. Different people come on different trips, though there is a core group who come on most of them, drawn from those who are regular at Tuesdays. Some of these destinations are on our schedule each year, others are new. The trips give us the chance to see different parts of the country, to travel in a group when travelling somewhere alone would be less appealing, and to have time together and get to know each other a bit better.
As we come to the end of them, I have been wondering about the whole idea, and how it fits into the life of a church. After all, at the heart of being a church is the intention to come togeher for worship, and to work together in service (at least, that is one definition). Nowhere is the idea of being travel agent included in that kind of description.
But the central identity of church is fellowship. We are none of us church alone. Church is community; all the theology and practice of church, whatever flavour it is involves more than one person. So, something about our trips together connects to this sense of being in relationship with each other, and having the chance to give those relationships more depth.
There is also, in being church, something about destabilising or challenging our set ways of thinking and experiencing the world. The account of the world we give in worship, the practice of turning our commitment away from ourselves and towards the other all, when we open ourselves to their full impact, challenge our presupposition of how things are, and who we are. And to travel - to spend time in a different place, to meet different people, experience a different environment and discover new things - all of these experiences also open us up to a world that is bigger than our normal, and offer us possibilities that we are not all there is, and our immediate experience does not defin the full truth. Many of us are not able to undertake long or demanding journeys to be shaken from our small world view - but short trips with people we do not deliberately choose but who are there because they too have chosen to go, to places others have chosen for us, and on days that may not suit our schedule; these trips may at least offer a glimpse, for those who choose to see, of the deeper possibilities that the life of faith calls us to.
And lest all this seems too "deep and meaningful", such trips ar fun - they are a celebration of being alive in a wonderful world. And that surely is involved in church!
I will miss our Tuesday trips, as we move into autumn. Thank you to all who have organised them, who have hosted us, who have made suggestions, who have come along. If you have not taken part before, perhaps you might join us next year?