St Peter’s Brewery by Jonathan D Blundell is different. In a good way.

Before I tell you why let me first say that Jonathan is my friend and co-host on the Something Beautiful Podcast and he gave me an advance copy of the book.

That could have made this review a little awkward.  At least it would have if the book wasn’t great!

I read it all in one sitting, unusual for me, and was drawn in to this story of Jimmy, a man who has withdrawn from life because engaging is just too painful.

Jimmy finds sanctuary in St Peter’s Brewery, the converted church where he now drinks alone.  His only friend is the barman, Pete, who lends an ear when he wants to talk and knows when to leave Jimmy alone when he doesn’t.

Jimmy’s life is one that so many can relate to.  Things haven’t gone well for him.  Relationships have been broken, work has become a place to escape life rather than live it, life is empty and that’s just fine with Jimmy.

One of the joys of working with Jonathan on the Something Beautiful Podcast is his passion for people and for their stories of life and faith.  He loves to let people talk, to share their own passions and to hear their experiences without rushing to comment or, as the church so often does, judge.  There is something very beautiful about a story, a lived experience.

Jonathan brings that beauty to his first novel.

It is a story of community, sanctuary, redemption and forgiveness.  Jimmy’s life is turned upside down by people, the very thing he’s tried to avoid for his whole adult life.  A motley crew of the most unlikely people including a trucker, a bar tender, a postal worker and a hippy, show Jimmy that he is not alone and that God isn’t anything like he thought.

I like this book.  A lot.  Sure I could be critical about a couple of small parts that seem a little wedged in to make a point that Jonanthan is passionate about, but that would be picky and they don’t detract from the plot in any way.

Jonathan has approached the issues that surround people’s experience and perceptions of the church in a creative and sensitive way.  People have been burned by religion.  Every day people walk away from the ‘church’ because they don’t find the kind of sanctuary Jimmy craves and finds in St Peter’s Brewery.  But every day people find hope and meaning and redemption and belonging in ‘church’.

Where’s your sanctuary?  St Peter’s Brewery could be just the place.  Mine’s a pint of St Peter’s Golden Revelation!

St Peter’s Brewery by Jonathan D Blundell is now available in print for $14.99 (24% off with code: 3YK4MGUP) and on Kindle for $12.64. (I don’t get any money from any sales, just in case you’re wondering!)

If you had the chance to start a church with a blank canvas, how would you go about it?

What would your priorities be?

What would you do first?

How would you involve others?

What would you want it to look like?

And feel like?

One of my favourite books is called Dangerous Wonder by Mike Yaconelli.  The tag line of the book is ‘the adventure of childlike faith’.  In it Mike argues that following Jesus should be an adventure.  That Jesus is dangerous and wonderful and that Christians should be known for the fire in their souls, the wild-eyed gratitude in our faces, the twinkle in our eye and the holy mischief in our demeanour.

There are quotes, poems and stories at the beginning of each chapter.  They set the scene and give a flavour of what’s coming.

There are two at the beginning of chapter 4, ‘daring playfulness’.  The first is this quote from a Rabbi’s sermon:

‘Life is tough.  It takes up much of your time, all of your weekends and what do you get at the end of it?  I think the lifecycle is all backward.  You should die first, get that out of the way.  Then you should live twenty years in an old age home.  You get kicked out when you’re too young.  You get a gold watch, you go to work.  You work for forty years until you’re young enough to enjoy your retirement.  You go to college, you party until you’re ready for high school.  You go to primary school, you become a little kid, you play, you have no responsibilities.  You become a little baby, you go back into the womb.  You spend your last nine months floating in the womb and end up as a glint in someone’s eye.’

I love that sentiment.  It makes me smile.

But perhaps the second short quote is one we should really pay attention to this week.

“I was never young because I never dared to be young.”

Is that where we are in our faith and in our church?  Are we scared to be young?  Are we trying to be great without knowing what greatness is?

What would it mean to be a childlike church?  Not just child-friendly, but childlike.  How can we become a place of imagination and daring and wonder and playfulness?

When Jesus points towards the least he picks a child.  He doesn’t pick someone who is rubbish at everything and he doesn’t pick the poorest and he doesn’t make fun or embarrass anyone.  He picks a child.  A child who needs looked after and nurtured and encouraged and played with… and loved.  Maybe that’s a clue about what church should be like…

Monday started early, but no-one was complaining.  We’re heading out onto the open, and as it turns out very bumpy, road in Luis’ bus heading for Varadero.

As usual it’s hot but as we start to wind our way along the coast the humidity seems to lessen a little and the trip becomes much more pleasant (less sweaty!) than most of our time on the bus has been.

The countryside is beautiful, apart from the oil wells that litter the coast and the occasional factory along the way which the Health And Safety Executive here would have a field day with.  It’s not so much the sight of the oil production that invades the journey, but the noxious smell.

No road trip would be complete without a soundtrack and it’s my turn to provide a musical education for the ‘young ones’.  The Beach Boys and The Beatles sit side by side with Foo Fighters and Bob Dylan.  To be honest I’m only really entertaining Rob and Avril.  Everyone else is asleep.  That’s a shame because the landscape is stunning.  The coast disappears as we climb a little and the mountains appear off to our left.

We pass through Matanzas, a town that sprawls across rivers and inlets of the bay.  It has a very different character to Havana.  It seems to be in a better state of repair and the buildings are less densely packed.

Eventually we arrive at Varadero.  It’s a beach town.  At least the part we see is.

The church at Varadero is the newest of all the Presbyterian churches in Cuba.  It is a beautiful triangular building with red and yellow light streaming through the stained glass into the sanctuary.

Joel, the minister we met here in Scotland last year, welcomes us and is very laid back about our time with them.  He tells us to go to the beach for a while before lunch before it gets too hot.  No-one is going to argue with that so we walk the two blocks to the perfect strip of coral sand and turquoise sea.

Just for the record, the sea is warmer than our shower at Luyano.  Much warmer.  We all lie around for a while as someone in one of the houses by the beach blasts out ‘Now That’s What I Call Music Stewart Hates Vol 1′.  We bake.  We swim.  We bake some more.  Then it’s lunch time.

We return to the church which has showers at the door and a foot-wash to get rid of the sand.  Lunch is served in the patio area next to the church under parasols and yes, you guessed it, we have rice and beans, but with battered fish and what looks like garlic banana.  It is plantain, a variety of banana, and it tastes bad!  The rest of the meal is beautiful.

After lunch Joel tells us some of the history of the church.  During a government crackdown there was only one member.  Now the church is thriving and serves the surrounding communities where there are no churches.

The church design is all very deliberate.  The triangular shape is the same as the witch-doctor’s.  Every detail was planned to remind people of their faith and their place in the world.  The church sides open up so the church literally has no walls.

We visit a small market to buy some souvenirs then Katie, Alison, Avril and I head back to the beach while Jen and Angela catch up with Marta, another of last year’s visitors to Scotland.  The rest of the gang have gone in search of liquid refreshment and some shade.

The journey back to Havana is much like the journey there.  Most people sleep.

Rob provides the music. Avril and I try to take photos of the gathering clouds.

The evening is quiet and reflective.

Apart from the occasional ‘ouch’ when another patch of sunburn is discovered.

We arrived in Havana, Cuba, after a short, uneventful journey.

How I wish that were true!

The Journey

A group of 7 half-asleep young people and 2 very asleep ‘guardians’ from around the United Reformed Church Synod of Scotland gathered in the middle of the night to set off on a week-long trip to Cuba to visit our partners in the Presbyterian Reformed Church of Cuba.  The journey is long.  An hour and 10 minutes with BA to London then a 9.5 hour Virgin Atlantic flight from Gatwick to Havana.  But before that we need to check in.

It should be simple, but then life never is!  Use the self-service check in.  It makes life easier.  Two of the group get checked in.  Seven don’t.  Simple.

We head for the desk to discover that changing Erik’s name to the correct spelling last week has caused some kind of problem in the system.  ‘Computer says ‘duh”.  It takes a while but the check-in lady fixes us up and checks our bags through to Havana.  I wonder if we will ever see them again!

In the departure lounge we decide the play it cool, waiting for the line to go down before boarding.  It turns out to be both a good and bad plan.  Whatever the check-in lady did has messed up our bag references so they all need to be re-entered.  It’s good we waited because we aren’t holding anyone up at the gate but bad… we’re holding up an entire plane full of people instead.  We board, eventually, and arrive in London Gatwick without further incident.

Negotiating ‘Flight Transfers’ is always fun, especially when you have to change terminal but we seem to end up in the right place, a Virgin desk where a lady re-enters all our details as a massive queue forms behind us.  Visas?  Em… not exactly.  We’re travelling on religious visas which were only issued a couple of days ago so we only have colour copies.  The visas are waiting for us in Havana.  Hmm…  A phone call later and we’re on our way, meeting Angela and Shona who flew from Inverness last night.

Our out bound flight is delayed by an hour or so (more about why that might have been later) but it’s a Jumbo with only 140 people on board so we have loads of room for the outbound flight.

Arriving in Havana

Anyone who has travelled somewhere hot will know the feeling of stepping off an air-conditioned plane through a wall of heat.

Welcome to Havana!

It’s 35C and a thunderstorm is crashing off towards the coast.  It’s unbelievably humid.  So much so that my glasses and camera lens steamed up when we stepped out of the airport.

There were familiar friendly faces to meet us and the usual problems with Scottish money (they don’t take it).

Outside our bus soon pulled up… with Luis, our driver, at the wheel.  And what a bus it was.  An old skool Toyota mini-bus with leather seats, sliding windows, fold-down centre seats, no air conditioning but a whole lot of character.

You could tell this week was going to be ‘different’ when the cases were loaded through the side window at the back and we climbed aboard for the trip to our home for the week, Luyano Presbyterian Reformed Church in Havana.

Cuba is like stepping back in time.  There are old cars, horses and carts, the roads are terrible.  But the thing that we all noticed first was the complete absence of adverts.  There are no billboards advertising Coke, McDonalds or whatever.  Instead the advertising hoardings proclaim the 50th Anniversary of the Revolution.  There are slogans everywhere.  Pictures of Che Guevara, Fidel and the other heroes of the Revolution.  The heat is overpowering.  The smell of petrol fumes wafts in the wide open windows.  Cars swerve to avoid the potholes and horns honk to encourage people to move over just a little bit more, people cling to the back of trucks and crowd onto buses.

As we start to drive past houses the scale of the delapidation becomes obvious.  The houses are falling apart.  Crumbling through time, weather and poverty on a scale that is hard to imagine.  The excited chatter on the bus dies away as we come face to face with real life in Cuba.

This is our street, our home for a week.  This is the view from our window.  It’s not hard to imagine the former glory of these once beautiful buildings.  The columns and cornices are crumbling reminders of what once was.

It would be easy to complain about our rooms.  The beds were boards with a thin mattress, the shower was a choice between cold and electrocution, the air-conditioning was noisier than a jet engine.  But looking out the window makes those kind of complaints seem petty and selfish.

Dinner was another reminder of how lucky we are.  Rice, beans, avocado and some kind of meat.  For the next week we had rice, beans, avocado and a little meat for lunch and dinner.  Every day.  The beans varied, the meat changed, but it was basically the same meal.  And this was a feast.

Our evening ended with a meeting to talk about our programme for the week.  But more about that as we go on…

Then it was off to bed for the most uncomfortable and noisy night’s sleep I’ve had in ages.  But then, this is Cuba.