With candles and with great courage ...

Today at lunchtime we met at the pieces of the Berlin wall in the garden of the ecumenical centre for prayers. A visitor from outside the house asked "so which side was in the east and which in the west?" I explained that it would not have been possible to paint the eastern side with gaffitti. This led me to say during our prayers that we were lighting the candles on the wrong side - it was not Helmut Kohl who brought the wall down but people with candles and courage on the other side! Even though the sun had come out I also said that the weather reminded me of an Iona peace liturgy for a rainy day - choose a symbol that will work on a wet day - not a candle! The wind did manage to blow out alot of candles - and the rain managed to deal with the rest later in the day.
I shamelssly plagiarised what Stephen has been writing on Holy Disorder to put together the simple liturgy. Using also my own diary extracts from that extraordinary year in the GDR - that's where the idea for using Psalm 126 came from. I also remember Friedrich Schorlemmer at the end of a particularly difficult day simply saying to us in Wittenberg, let's close this session by singing the Luther peace hymn which is why I chose Verleih uns Frieden gnädiglich to end with. I can remember being very moved by its wonderful minor melodies and the fact that everyone apart from me knew the words.
I also love the footnote at the bottom of The love of God is broad like beach and meadow - saying that the GDR government was concerned that the words of the hymn were criticising the state using religious language! It was good to sing one of Fred Kaan's hymns in translation after listening to a tribute to him on the radio last night.
So for 20 minutes at lunchtime we celebrated the spirituality of civil society that changed the world. coming home this evening I have heard a story of women walking together today across the peace line in Northern Ireland and of people trying to remove the wall in Palestine ... it seems right to use this anniversary as a starting point to overcome the barriers and divisions of our own times.

Then our mouth was filled with laughter,
and our tongue with shouts of joy;
then it was said among the nations,
‘The Lord has done great things for them.’
The Lord has done great things for us,
and we rejoiced. (Ps. 126)

Breaking bread on the morning of the day the Berlin wall fell ...

On the morning of 9th November 1989 I was one of the twenty or so ministry students at the Predigerseminar in Wittenberg. We had 10 day modules allowing for a four day weekend beginning after lunch on the Thursday. The Thursday mornings were for our "Auswertungsrunde". Believe me you cannot really understand the groan that this even now inspires in me unless you have been through this kind of evaluation with German theologians who are all direct and critical of the methodologies and content of what and how they are learning ... it is quite indescribable. Of the 25 of us sitting around the evaluation table that morning four people were founding members of three of the different new political parties in the GDR, several had taken part in the big Berlin demonstration on October 7th, one of our lecturers had been a speaker at the huge demonstration in Berlin on November 4th. These were some of the biggish fish in the small GDR pond.
Everyone around the table knew someone who had been imprisoned, several had seen the violence first hand. Together we had begun the prayers for renewal in Wittenberg, experienced and led Reformation Day and Buss und Bettag, learned about liturgy and preaching.
We were young but adults, full of hope, getting ready to have that hope dashed, cynicism was there under the surface. During the previous week we had begun to receive reports of the police brutality towards thos imprisoned in Berlin and Halle at the beginning of October. We had read some of those reports out at our morning prayers and wept and raged. Our emotions were elemental, we were living through a revolution yet everyone was away from home and would rather have been at home with their own peace and church groups, going on the demonstrations with their friends and family - apart from me ...
I had suggested - ever the liturgist - that we should end each 10 day module with a communion service. So after two hours of telling each other what we thought of one another in no uncertain terms, we moved from the painful evaluation table not to the upper but to the lower room where a simple round table is set with bread and wine.
I clearly remember Friedrich Schorlemmer bringing flowers to the table at the last moment and my being deeply moved by that. In my memory they were pinkish snapdragons, but perhaps my memory fails me - surely they could not have survived so far into the season, that must have been on a previous occasion, one eucharist speaks of and reminds one of another. I remember the flowers though, from one of those eucharists and I remember Friedrich's face and body as he place this offering of beauty on the table. (Dr B has my diary and we will see whether my memory was wrong.)
I presided at our round table eucharist and I spoke of remembrance, of my Grandfather being arrested in the Kristallnacht raids and taken away to Sachsenhausen concentration camp 61 years earlier. And so with stories of brokenness, pain and hope all around us, having shared hard and gentler words with each other, we broke bread and drank wine in memory of the one who was broken and shed for us.
Next to me as we prayed and felt the bread and wine in our mouths, my friend U began to sob, tears rolling down his face. He is not ashamed of his grief and emotion. As I think back to that morning my hand remembers the feel of his jeans as I placed my hand on his leg in an attempt not to quiet him but simply to offer comfort and in some strange way to say yes this is what it has been like.
Twelve hours later U and many of the others were spending the night at the impromptu street party on both sides of the wall. The feast of memory became the party of liberation.

Don't treat the earth like a turkey!

Find out more here. Gilles Boucomont pastor of the Eglise Réformée du Marais in Paris has been developing quite a brilliant internet presence for the church for the past few years. He's keen to get the message of Christmas and of the gospel across and helped get the Noël Nohell video made last year and also Dieutecherche - God is looking for you. This year the project is encouraging us to sign up for a facebook advent calendar, promising the present of a daily status update, in French of course.
Meanwhile today this caught my eye on the noel autrement section of the site which has some of the French campaigning material on climate change.
Let's stop roasting the earth as if it were a Christmas turkey!

Happy birthday Axel Noack!

Axel Noack is 60 today, which means that 20 years ago, one month and a day after the GDR celebrated its 40th birthday and just a day before the Berlin wall came down he was celebrating his 40th birthday,
Axel and his wife Gisela were ministers in Wolfen until 1997 then he was elected bishop of Magedeburg. He very selflessly stood down from being bishop this summer so as to allow for just one bishop to be elected to the newly united Protestant Church in Central Germany - the bishop of Thuringen having already retired.
I arrived at the Noack's manse in Wolfen at the end of August 1989 after a conference in Erfurt and stayed there 10 days while waiting for my second GDR visa before beginning my studies in Wittenberg. The evening that I arrived the youth group came round for their home coming festivities following the recent cycling tour Axel had taken them on to Poland. Getting those visas had taken alot of negotiating in that difficult summer, as West German embassies throughout the Eastern Bloc were filling up with East Germans trying to leave for the West. It was not often that official foreign travel visas had the box for mode of transport filled with the word "bicycle". Years later when we visited Axel and Gisela in Magedeburg they came to fetch us at the railway station by bike.
They opened up their home to me during that extraordinary year that I was in the GDR. I often spent my free long weekends from Wittenberg with them and then I worked with them for six months and moved into the empty manse in Greppin, where Stephen later joined me. It would be difficult to say how much and what I learned from them. I saw the strains and stresses of daily life in the manse, saw how each of them integrated their spirituality into their ministry in very different ways, travelled with Axel to voter information evenings and sessions on East German Church history, cycled with Gisela to visit some of the Mozambicans living in the town and help with youth and children's work.
All the time during those 6 months where things were constantly changing Axel tried to make sure he took photos of some of the important images. He was also working tirelessly on building projects and church administration in the church district. A person of enormous integrity with a huge capacity for work. He is now teaching church history at the Halle-Wittenberg and working particularly on the history of the churches in the GDR, the university will be holding a special event for him on December 14th where he will give the guest lecture on "Obrigkeit". Stephen saw him at the Churches Candles Controversy event he was at I'm glad to hear he was looking and sounding well on the eve of his birthday.
Axel I am so glad that you became a theologian and not a mathematician, long may you raise your authentic East German voice in working on the history of the churches during the 40 years of the GDR. Alles Gute zum Geburtstag - Happy Birthday!

1989 and all that ...

So Dr B is travelling around Germany again on another installment of the 20th anniversary commemorations. Tomorrow he will be at the Gethsemane Kirche in Berlin and he's blogging about it all on Holy Disorder. He has take a copy of my GDR diary with him and is posting some of the entries from 20 years ago in real time. It's quite a shock for instance to discover that I wrote in my 1989 diary of a revolution on 7 November that Otto Lambsdorff's proposal to tear down the Berlin wall was a ridiculous idea (I have never much liked the FDP or any of its leaders past or present I should add in my defence - of course I see that as a sign of good taste, but it just shows you that good taste doesn't always lead to sound judgement!)
You'll have to wait two more days to read what I wrote on 9 November I hope he is going to post that bit - but it's quite wierd to discover one's earlier self in this way.
Meanwhile Stephen was also commissioned to write a more reflective piece on the fall of the wall, there is a further article by Konrad Raiser and comments by Samuel Kobia.

give yourself to time ...

If you would find eternity, give yourself to time. this seems like a tremendous paradox; if you desire the eternal, give yourself to the temporal. If you desire God hold faast to the world. If you want to find god be faithful to the world.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Surprised by advance grief ...

Today over coffee someone showed concern for a person I love and emotion welled in me. My watering eyes and suddenly uncontrolled emotions told me something about how deeply fragile and vulnerable life is. Perhaps I was also surprised by how much I love, how deeply I care. Despite living in France I am not all that easy about showing deep emotion - my buttoned up British upbringing is still part of me. Great at empathy except for those I care most for!
I avoid seeing how quickly life is flying by. Not having children in part encourages that - there are no people in our daily lives growing up and learning from us, challenging us, wanting and expecting us to go on living.
Perhaps awarenes of the fragility of life is also a way of countering the shallowness of much of my daily life. So tonight I celebrate the fragility of life and my brief understanding of it today, perhaps I will also begin to understand more fully that passion is also personal and not only political. And perhaps also see and be with my own vulnerability and not always try to overcome it.
In one of Janet Morley's eucharistic prayers the sanctus begins "holy, holy, holy vulnerable God ..." I like that. Allowing myself to experience my own emotional and physical vulnerability - and to care about the real vulnerability of those I love - may just mean I begin to glimpse deeper understanding of the God I proclaim, the God who did not disdain vulnerability in any way.

The answer is sleep ...

This morning on the bus I particularly enjoyed reading Bishop Stephen Cottrell's splendid little book Hit the ground kneeling. It is about debunking some management and leadership myths and looking at things differently. It's great.

"We're looking for someone who can hit the ground running."

Cottrell's comment is:
"But when someone hits the ground running, there is no guarantee that they are going in the right direction."

Cottrell is bishop of Reading and has written two similar books to this one but more about how we can do less and simply enjoy life - Do nothing Christmas and Do nothing to change your life.

You can read a sample chapter here. Here's an extract that made me laugh:

Remember the story of the bishop who went to see his spiritual director and told him all his troubles. The wise spiritual guide sat back in his chair and advised the bishop to sleep more.
"Why?" asked the bishop.
"It will limit your opportunity to do further damage" came the
answer.

I live with someone who is very committed to sleep, now at least I know why!

Did Naomi traffic Ruth? an evening at feminist theology with Fulata Mbano Moyo

I'm still reeling from the shock of a contextual Bible study at our feminist theology group. My brilliant colleague Fulata Mbano Moyo led us in reading chapter 3 of the book of Ruth. But before that she spoke movingly of her own background as a child of the third wife in a polygamous marriage, her experience as a widow and mother of three. "Why is it that when a husband dies that women are often consoled by pastors and congregation that now God will be their husband. Yet when a wife dies the same pastors and congregation will console the husband that he will be able to find a younger wife?"
Fulata encouraged us to think of the trafficked women in Geneva and not to forget that contextual Bible study is about transformation. We thought about how few choices trafficked women and men have.
Then we read chapter 3 of the book of Ruth. For the first time I read it with the idea that Ruth could be seen as a trafficked woman - that Naomi could be seen as a formerly trafficked woman who encourages another woman to follow the same path, because of course there is no other path. In some ways Ruth is even a surrogate mother, bearing Naomi a child - at the end of the book everyone says "Naomi has a son".
An extraordinary and very though-provoking evening, rich in exchanges.

Thin places from Sharlande Sledge

Sharlande Sledge on thin places:

‘Thin places’ the Celts call this space
Both seen and unseen,
Where the door between this world
And the next is cracked open for a moment
And the light is not all on the other side.
God shaped space. Holy

Of thin places, remembrance and discipleship

We had an Old Catholic Eucharist for all souls' day in the chapel this morning - presided by Jean Claude Mokry the priest of the Old Catholic congregation in Geneva and the liturgy was mainly in French. We lit candles around the icon of the resurrection in remembrance of loved ones, were treated to lots of incense and ended by singing A toi la gloire.
Colin Williams preached a shorter version of the sermon I've just posted to the docs sections. What I particularly liked was the way the sermon moved between the Celtic idea of a thin place and linked this to modern-day discipleship and the historic events we are currently marking from 20 years ago. Here's an extract but I really recommend you read all of it. A rich sermon for early in the morning.

All Saints Day is all about proclaiming that we are called to play our part in revealing the glory of heaven in the humdrum existence of our everyday world – the glory of heaven which admits of no division, the glory of heaven which admits no foes nor friends but one equal communion and identity, the glory of heaven where there is no sound of warfare but the harmony which comes from profound fellowship. In and through the Christian Gospel the boundary between earth and heaven is so thin that that glory bleeds into our world – and our calling as servants of the Gospel is to play our part in making that thinness even thinner.
The Christians of the city of Leipzig in the East of Germany knew that 20 years ago. 20 years ago Communist rule in the east of Germany was in its death throes. We know that now with the benefit of hindsight. The Christians of Leipzig don’t know that then. They had no reason to know that within a very few weeks the Berlin Wall would fall and oppression would be at an end.
...
Our calling is no less clear than it was for those followers of Jesus Christ twenty years ago in Leipzig. To make our community, our city, our world, the whole of the earth a thin place.

The first 25 trees are now growing in the Luther garden in Wittenberg

Here's a photo of the LWF general secretary Ishmael Noko planting one of the first 25 trees to grow in Wittenberg's Luthergarden in preparation for the 500th anniversary of the Reformation in 2017. You can read more here on evangelisch.de
Setri Nyomi general secretary of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches also planted one of the trees.

Commenting on the significance of planting trees, Nyomi said that the 16^th century Reformers Martin Luther and John Calvin were “bold agents of change such as a tree planted by water. The periods of heat and drought have come and gone, but the ‘trees’ they planted continue to bear fruit.”

“It is fitting that churches should plant trees as a symbol of commitment to God’s creation at this time when world attention turns towards the Climate Conference in Copenhagen in December with its focus on the impact of environmental destruction.”

Churches throughout the world have been invited to sponsor the planting of one of 500 trees in the garden on the Elbe River and to plant a tree in their home communities. The gesture is meant as a symbol of the influence of the Protestant Reformation throughout the world and as a sign of reconciliation and interconnectedness among the many branches of Christianity.

I've written before about this idea when it was launched last year and you can also find out more here. I think it's really great.

Twenty years ago today - experiences of a spirituality of civil society

On October 31 1989 I was in Wittenberg.
Dr B is busy this evening typing up part of my diary from that day for Holy Disorder. (see below)
At morning prayers yesterday I mentioned where I had been 20 years earlier. We sang Ein Feste Burg ist unser Gott and I told the usual Wittenberg joke of how during the 1983 Luther jubliee the local communist party leader had commented on how nice the restored mosaic round the top of the church tower looked - it says "Ein Feste Burg". Apparently he said to the church leaders "We want to put something similar over the top of the local party headquarters, maybe you could suggest something." One of the pastors apparently quickly replied "oh why don't you take the first line of verse two of Luther's great hymn" - it starts "Mit unsre Macht ist nichts getan" - rendered less forcefully in many English versions but basically meaning "Our power is as nothing". Six years later when I was in Wittenberg there was still no mosaic over the communist party headquarters!

Last night as a sort of bedtime story Stephen read me part of a practical theology dissertation based on deep analysis of the structure and content of the Wittenberg Gebet um Erneuerung. It was amazing to hear and read that and to realise quite why it was when I returned to the UK everything seemed a bit boring and much less meaningful. German had become the language in which God moved me. I had seen what seemed like a whole population pile into churches, sing Taizé chants, be moved by the Psalms and awakened by the words of the prophets and gospels. It explains to me also why even today I'm a hopeless believer in the transformative power of the liturgy.
When we left the church in Wittenberg in a candlelit procession on October 31 1989 we hoped things would proceed peacefully, but we didn't know for sure. The researcher rightly points out that the songs which were sung actually gave people courage to walk out of the church on that candlelit procession, our closing hymn that night was Bewahre uns Gott behüte uns Gott, sei mit uns auf unseren Wegen - Keep and protect us God, be with us on our way...
In the morning of October 31 it was usual for visitors from around the world to make their way to Wittenberg's Schlosskirche even under communism. Wittenberg became quite international that day and it was no coincidence that the evening Prayers for Renewal service was planned to be followed by a demonstration from the town's churches to the main square.
Re-reading my diary you can really understand why the five new Bundesländer have Reformation Day as a public holiday.

From my East German Diary dateline 1 Nov 1989
The Gebet um Erneuerung in the evening was preceded by a certain amount of tension - what if there was violence, how would we cope? ... It went well. Over an hour before the start, the church was full and the courtyard outside was packed. Hans Treu, the dean of Wittenberg, had written a very good meditation and had led the intercessions so there was no clapping or speechifying. As we sang the Kyrie, suddenly the atmosphere changed and in the gallery, people started lighting their candles. It was very moving. The demonstration was terribly orderly. I was one of two people carrying a banner reading, "You can't fill a hungry soul with prosperity". We were very near the back. I felt rather uncomfortable that I and not a GDR person was carrying something. Our candles dribbled wax everywhere, of course, making weird and wonderful sculptures on our hands.
In the distance it looked as if a small group of police were watching the demonstration from the corner, but as we got closer it turned out to be a group of Soviet soldiers who had turned up to watch us. Someone had even handed one of them a candle. One of the students greeted them in Russian and they returned the greeting with a smile. It was a small sign of the kingdom of God.
The market place was full, the local council had supplied (spontaneously) a proper P.A. system. It was all a bit calm, still a church service really. People no doubt expected a bit more. Some shouting at the town hall, "Come out". We sang a bit more, things were read about Luther and Melanchthon. Demokratischer Aufbruch and Demokratie Jetzt read their programmes out. DA sees socialism as the dominant force in the GDR. DJ sees no role for socialism except with a (modern) democratic set-up. DA is like a left wing Social Democratic Party and DJ like a left wing Free Democratic Party. It's all really weird. No doubt they will all start splitting rather than merging in the coming years. There's supposedly a meeting of the United Left coming off soon, which really of course means a meeting of the Un-United Left. Once everyone had finished talking and it was agreed that we'd meet again next week and invite the Burgermeister as well. The market place was covered in candles, really very pretty. Many were on the steps of the Rathaus where the 7 Theses (thank goodness not 95!) had been attached to the door as a reminder of Luther.
It was stressed throughout the evening that this was not a church/state conflict but a people/state conflict. Quite an important difference but for how much longer can the church speak for the people, will it be able to give up that role? ...
Discussion over supper indicates that the local newspaper carried pictures and a full article about yesterday's demonstration, over 8000 people they reckon. In Prague many arrests have been made in the past fortnight. Havel is in jail again. If the world markets are about to go through a sticky patch then it's really worrying to think what the effect on Glasnost and Perestroika might be.

Information is not communication

I am not quite sure how this happened but today, after a quick flit around the Ferney market, post office and pharmacy, we headed off to spend a bit of time in Geneva, particularly Plainpalais and Carouge. I needed to buy tights and succeeded in doing this, but somehow after a lovely time at the Carouge market and the café du marché, we seem to have arrived home with about 8 more books. Fortunately they are for the most part not too long so I hope they won't distract me from the writing I am going to do this weekend.
Dr B bought me Dominique Wolton's Informer n'est pas communiquer from the Librairie du Boulevard. Wolton has his own site here filled with lots of great quotes.
The essay contained in the book points to today's challenge of "information having become abundant and communication rare". Although I have not yet read the whole essay, each page I turn to has thought-provoking aphorisms which help me think about my work as part of a communications department:
"Emphasising that communication and the funcitoning of the public space are about living together, is also to reflect on the need to manage both the inherent differences in our societies and the upholding of a principle of unity, with the perspective of renewing contemporary characteristics of the society" p. 33
At the end of the book (yes ok I admit it I am one of theose dreadful people who often looks at the end of books before having read the middle) Wolton looks at the issue of the environment in particular and says that "this is why information and communication are such important questions at the beginning of this century. Questions of war and peace."
On his website Wolton has this quote which I think sums up his approach brilliantly
"L'information va de plus en plus vite, la communication toujours aussi lentement."
(Information is going faster and faster, communication still goes just as slowly as ever)

A week for pure Schadenfreude - mainly à la française

Sometimes I do worry that my spirituality is not quite up to scratch where compassion is concerned. This morning I kept shouting "good, good, good"in a somewhat over-excited fashion as the radio news led with headlines that Tony Blair is almost certainly not going to be the new European president. I do not want the man who rode sidecar to George W. Bush when invading Iraq to have any further role in politics. Now it seems he may have been thwarted I dare say he'll try to get a role as a "goodwill ambassador" somewhere. Tony, those of us who voted for you as PM wish you had listened to the voice of conscience rather more carefully than you seemed able to. People are getting killed today because of your lack of moral fibre. I am rather pleased that he has been outmanoeuvred by Angela Merkel.
Earlier this week there was a moment of joy when I heard that deeply unpleasant French politician Charles Pasqua had been sentenced to a year in prison for his role in illegal arms trading deals in Angola. You have no idea how rare it is for anyone in French politics to actually see the inside of a prison when found guilty.
Now today more Schadenfreude inhabits my doubtless deeply flawed soul as I learn that former French president Jacques Chirac is to stand trial for corruption. Yippee! He was lucky to get elected in 1995 and so escaped a trial at that point - presidents are exempt from legal proceedings while in office in France.
So is what I'm feeling Schadenfreude or is it just a reflection of that exaltation we see in the Magnificat?
He hath put down the mighty from their seat : and hath exalted the humble and meek.
Now I suppose my Freude would be complete if we could see the humble lifted high as well as the mighty cast down.

Longing for the endless immensity of the sea ...

If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

I had not come across this quote before this week and then as often happens I heard it twice in the space of 24 hours. Margot Kässmann used it in her hustings speech to the EKD and after listening to that online, I then came across it again as one of the quotes for a Bible study during our week of meetings. It's a concept that sums up leadership.

Working below the surface ...

My copy of this book has just arrived.Working Below the Surface: The Emotional Life of Contemporary Organisations (Tavistock Clinic) by Clare Huffington (Editor), David Armstrong (Editor).
At the end of an intensive and quite emotional week of meetings at work it's going to make for some stimulating reading over the weekend as I return to writing my diploma in leadership. there are fascinating looking chapters: from sycophant to saboteur, what women leaders can tell us, the vanishing organization and a whole section on working with the experience of vulnerability.
Posting the book here is in part a way of getting teh creative juices flowing again for the weekend, it's also my way of saying that posting here may be rather intermittant in the weeks ahead. Even if I'm not blogging here, I am still writing, working below the surface you might say. The most irritating about having to write is that I don't have time to read my favourite blogs as much as I would like. Ah well there's always the Christmas holidays.
Anyway I can't tell you how excited I am about what I am reading and what I am trying to write

So who are the women church leaders?

Yesterday, I started trying to put together a list of women church leaders currently serving in the world ... so far I have got to a rather exclusive group of five, but maybe tehre are more - let me know:

1) I was very proud when my own church, the United Reformed Church was the first in the UK to appoint a woman as head of the denomination. Roberta Rominger comes originally from the USA and she's been doing a really great and challenging job since she took over in 2008.

2) Sharon Watkins is the General Minister and President, and thus the leader of her denomination, the Disciples in the USA. She preached the sermon at the national prayer service following Barack Obama's inauguration.

3) Katharine Jefferts Schori has been presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church in the USA
since 2006 and has been involved in difficult church political issues.

4) Margot Kässmann was elected yesterday as the chairperson of the EKD Council in Germany.

5) Jana Jeruma-Grinberga was appointed as the presiding bishop of the Lutheran Church in great Britain.

Edit: Following the comments below I feel I should say that I am trying to list women in national positions of leadership. There are fortunately already quite a number women at regional levels of leadership around the world - bishops, moderators, regional presidents etc. - but very, very few at national levels of leadership. It is just starting to break through now and this does represent a huge change.