Tag Archives: Christianity

Jun 17 2010

Multifaith room in Heathrow Terminal 5

Just reading a friend Jon B’s visit to Turkey on Islamic culture, reminds me of something.  At Heathrow airport I had a long wait for my flight, and I saw a sign about a multifaith room, a kind of politically correct euphemism for a one size fits all church for any faith.

There is a church in at least one of the hospitals in Portsmouth, there is also a multi faith centre in the recently built £40m Lymington hospital in the New Forest I worked at sometimes about 18 months ago, when I visited this, I was pleased to see judging by the literature put out it was mostly had Christian books and bibles there.

Here is this one in the shiny new and hopefully post-problematic Heathrow Terminal 5, is one of these places, so I decided to take a look, as there’s only so long you can spend reading books and magazines you aren’t going to buy in WH Smiths. 🙂

Firstly apologies to the chap bending over, it was hard to get a quickie shot of this place without appearing to be disrespectful. 🙂  When I went in there and first of all unlike any religious establishment there is no symbol on the wall of any deity, or any centre point to make the room significant apart from the screen reminding passengers of upcoming departures.  There is a wooden cabinets with labels for Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh and other holy books.  There are signs asking people to be respectful and not use it as a place to sleep or do baby changing.  The place also smells like a gym changing room as people take their shoes off at the door.   I didn’t bother at first, but there were five Islamic worshippers here at one point and one of the pointed out I should do the same to be respectful so I likewise decided to comply.

Out of the ten people I saw that went in and out of this place nine of them were Muslim, each borrowing a prayer mat from the cupboard, at least two of them were employees of the airport, one was an Indian gent (I think Hindu) with a piece of rope being held in both hands.   With some praying aloud in Arabic, it was a little hard to concentrate when I was reading a bible at one point, but it got me thinking.  There was a message from a Chaplin about that people should ask permission before leaving any literature in the cabinet to avoid causing offence.  I am not sure if the Chaplin has a sit-on-the-fence attitude to the Christian God to try and ‘not offend’,  just a general admin bod employed to keep the places clean and tidy, or someone with a real zeal and love for Christ but wants to be a servant to people not following the Lord.

Where as we could get alarmed at the number of worshippers of faiths other than Christianity being practised in the UK changes our culture, (and oh how the BNP and similar fascist groups and their ilk love to rub this in) but how many of us Christians actually make the effort to go to one of these places and maybe spend time in prayer before a journey or silently pray for the other users of the room for them to find the loving acceptance of Jesus?  Maybe if we did we would have very different faith landscape in the UK.

If anyone in church leadership is reading this, I would like to know what you think.  Is it a spiritually difficult to pray in a room with people with other beliefs or is worshipping Jesus here could be a good way to pray for others, or are these rooms pointless.  Those of you who are Christians travelling to other lands blogging on airport things too.  Please let me know your comments.

Feb 9 2010

Church in a pub

On Sunday morning went to my usual church then went out for lunch, usual quite relaxing day.  The talk in the morning was part of a series on distractions which is something that causes more problems with things for me than I can think of.

In the evening I went to the Isambard Kingdom Brunel pub (a Wetherspoons pub named after the famous industrial engineer who lived in my city of Portsmouth, UK) and met up with Mark Rodel reverend of another church in Portsmouth who has a blog and in addition to running his own church likes to meet up with anyone in this pub most Sunday evenings for a chance to relax and have a beer and chat to another small crowd.   Something different from regular church or cell group, (which is a mid-week church meeting someone’s house in a informal closer knit group for regular church people) but this is different as provides a chance for people with casual questions about Christianity and church in a familiar public environment.

For me I think many Christians don’t always visualise the fact church can seem very scary place for many people that have never been before to church, have fallen away, or are just plain shy, and this is a good place to get to know people and get questions answered on many things on church life.  Jesus spent a lot of time in public places speaking, so its only natural that fellow believers could sometimes get together in a place most people are familiar with and invite people to come and chat about whatever they wish.  Mark uses a few unusual visual cues to illustrate things from the bible and this week he got us to make some paper boats to float on a washing up bowl of water he borrowed from the bar.

Anyway there was just about 7 of us from different churches around the city, it was nice getting to know different people from quite a few backgrounds.   Will try come along semi regularly while I am still here in the UK.

Jan 30 2010

Bethlehem – journey to birthplace of Christ part II – nuts on Christmas

Parts 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5

Ok, which food reminds you of Christmas?   Turkey? mince pies? Christmas pudding?  Ok, some of these will depend of regional customs that different Christians celebrate Christmas, ie: Christmas pudding is largely a British thing I think.

Now think which food really actually could be found in the Holyland during Christmas?   I have blogged before about Pomegranates before, but how about nuts?

More specifically almonds.

One of the group pointed out this tree, its got ripe nuts on it!   So after shaking it quite a bit, most of the nuts fell onto one of the metal shelters next door (duh)   after a few times, I got a few on the ground, and after breaking them open with a big most of them were quite nice.

Before leaving the grotto park, the garden also had strangely lots of small holes and tunnels in the ground.  Didn’t see if these were natural quirky bits of geology or if they made by someone.

Below Christmas is in full swing here, decorations were mostly quite discrete and tasteful.  Tourism from Christians of course is the life blood of the economy of Bethlehem.

more soon….

Parts 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5

Jan 29 2010

Bethlehem – journey to birthplace of Christ part I – The Grotto

Parts 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5

Today (27th December)   I went to Bethlehem, I was planning on going Christmas day, but as I had no else to go with (travelling to the Palestinian territories on your own is not advised)  and that it would be hugely crowded I went with a family who are parents of one of the other volunteers here.   This family was partly here with a tour of some Filipino Christians who were here for a couple of weeks.   I got to Hillel Street at 8.30am and we all packed onto a coach.

The trip out of Jerusalem into Bethlehem is pretty short, getting through borders to the Palestinian territories is nothing that complex either.   Once through the gate in the concrete walls, this hotly contested area of the middle east isn’t at all that different from a regular part of Israel.   I can see olive, orange and lemon trees with fruit on, houses in the familiar style stone, none of the land is particular flat, you are forever going up and down and around curves, there are children playing, of course this is an Arab district and I see mosques and minarets more or less the same as Jerusalem.

Bits of Bethlehem do look quite untidy just like outer parts of Jerusalem, half finished houses (or should that be houses with extensions unfinished?)  broken cars rusting away, rubbish strewn around rocks, but at least where I could see, it doesn’t seem to be all full of poverty, there are large modern houses with swimming pools as well, and just like Jewish culture, the Arabs have plenty of small businesses of all kinds.   The cars look noticeably older (despite most cars in Jerusalem are old and knackered looking) mostly 1980s Peugeots, Renaults and Toyotas, and they have green licence plates and sign posts are in Arabic with no Hebrew to be seen.
The first stop on the coach was at this place called the The Shepherd’s place, which had a park which had an entrance with the words “Gloria in Excelcius Deo” (sounds like some words from a hymn?)  Here is a very pretty chapel and some really beautiful views of the Judean hills.


Here is the inside of this chapel, the pictures here tell some of the story in the Christmas carols…

Spent a good while here, this picture below shows me with the hills in the background, this location is where the Shepherds watched their flocks that came to visit Jesus.


aha, now I know where Santa got the idea of calling his workplace a ‘grotto’ 🙂

Parts 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5