Of life, laughter and liturgy . . .

Shush! I have become an ecumenical bureaucrat

2011-12-12T22:33:00.004+01:00

So it has happened. I have become an ecumenical bureaucrat. I suppose I'd like to think I'm a rather unlikely bureaucrat, (though I am a good administrator, that's not the same thing). I suspect my ecumenical skills lie more in ecumenical enthusiasm and ecumenical activism. Maybe I'm a bit of an agitprop ecumenist - both in the sense of agitation and propaganda and in the sense of theatre - wanting to tell the story.
Today in my newly acquired role as bureaucrat I took part for the first time in a national bilateral dialogue meeting between the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran and Reformed churches in France. Together with Franck Lemaître o.p. I am "co-secrétaire" to the group. Today I learnt the ropes by looking over his shoulder as he typed over the minutes of the last meeting to begin to create today's minutes! He's obviously an old hand at being a bureaucrat, he also has perfect handwriting and seems to know instinctively when to take notes and when to let the discussion just flow on. Very interesting - and of course writing the notes does give you power to some extent. One of the problems I have at the moment is that years of consecutive interpreting between French and English means that I naturally tend to take notes in the language other than the one being spoken. So I had to make a conscious effort to just take notes today - there isn't too much in English in my jottings, though I did have to shake myself back to the task in hand once or twice: "stop thinking about how to translate that and concentrate on the content".
The group meeting today was newly constituted and set to begin a fresh round of dialogue based on looking at previous ecumenical accords in France relating to marriage and baptism, with a view to providing more up to date guidance - given how much society and the churches have changed over the past 40 years there is real need for this. So there was quite a bit of brainstorming going on, it was a lively and good natured meeting and a privilege to listen in and even contribute to such a group.
One thing that the group also wanted to think about from the outset had to do with "reception" - how will we get the fruits of our reflections and writing to those people who will find it useful. So we are trying to build some thinking about communication into the dialogue from the outset which can't be a bad thing, and may also have some impact on the shape and content of the dialogue. The hope is that the group will be able to work fairly quickly on the tasks it has set itself.
One of the main reasons for this is that the previous "comité mixte" ended up meeting for around ten years and produced the report pictured here "Discerner le Corps du Christ". This time the comité really hope to meet for less time and to write a shorter report. Seems like a perfect project for an ecumenical activist turned bureaucrat to act as secretary in such circumstances. I started the day rather worried that I wouldn't be up to the task and ended thinking what a real pleasure it had been.

Ouff! So, perhaps now back to the blog ... of ecumenical springtime ...

2011-12-11T20:23:00.006+01:00

Well, this evening it seems to be happening. I seem to feel that I have at last properly arrived in my new "home" in Paris. Finally the internet is working (getting a phone line installed took two months!) and I am actually at home and well enough to contemplate blogging (I've had a nasty bout of bronchitus the past 10 days). Tonight will be the first time in two and a half months that I have slept eight straight nights in my own bed in the flat here and I'm also looking forward to spending every night between now and December 24 in the same place too. Some of the time I've been away from Paris I've of course been in that other bed which is mine (or at least partly mine!) in Ferney Voltaire, but much of the time away has been been visiting local ecumenical groups in different parts of France, on speaking engagements or representing the Fédération Protestante de France (FPF) . Perhaps I should start a special guide to overnight stays and food in some of France's religious houses. So far I would have to say that the delicious mixed vegetable and parsnip soup eaten on a stormy evening in "Douvres la Délivrande" would top my list of delicacies. (The photo of the sky is from there.)
I am also getting the opportunity to pray with other Christians in many different places and this is a particular joy. I must start taking photos of the chapels where we share in these times of silence, song, word and prayer ... sometimes of course the prayers take place just in meeting rooms too. So far my two favourite chapels have been at the Frères de la Campagne in Meaux and at the Domaine St Joseph in Lyon.
To say that my learning curve has been steep would be an understatement. Doing everything in French, especially almost everything I write, has made me hyper aware of my failings with the language and more hesitant than I might usually be. Things take longer too ... though I find writing pretty hard work in English too truth be told. The French have an amazing capacity for frontal learning in "colloques" etc and I think I am used to having more tea and coffee breaks in my life! I had also forgotten just how bad I am at learning names and how tiring starting in a new place is ... I didn't expect to miss Stephen as much as I do, but conversely I am also really enjoying time on my own in my still rather empty but getting more comfortable by the moment flat.
Part of me had hoped and expected that in starting this new job I would somehow just press a switch and the past would be forgotten or transformed. Ah well. I suppose you can guess it wasn't quite like that ... Another reason I have not been blogging. When you wake at six in the morning in tears it is sometimes better not to bore the world with all that. That intensity of grieving, welling up from the unconscious and taking me unawares seems at last to be passing. Much as I have learned about myself through it, I am deeply, deeply grateful that it seems to be ebbing. More about this time as I move forwards. But it has been good for me to be silent on the blog front for a while, though perhaps the healing would have been faster had I been writing.
Anyway as for my new job, it is extraordinary and terrifying and brilliant and hard work. I hover between feeling like a complete fraud (whatever made me think I was an ecumenist?) and thinking, yes I think I may have a real contribution to make here. Honestly though, I have been having quite a bit of fun, you could look at some of the videos my colleagues made of me here - folk seem to particularly like the bonus one. I am working with a group of extremely hard working and talented colleagues, there is a mass of great creative work going on based from the FPF. It has been balm to my soul in this new environment simply to be trusted. I had forgotten what that was like and how very beautiful it is. On this Sunday evening the thing I give thanks for most is "la confiance", it a very lovely French word and a great feeling.

So here are a few glimpses of things I would have blogged about had I been blogging ...

A great photo of myself and an Orthodox priest in full liturgical regalia sitting on the front row of Les Etats généraux du Christianisme both of us taking notes on our Ipads - the photographer just couldn't resist. Now we just need to see if Apple do religious sponsorship!
Explaining my job to a young Tunisian woman while waiting for the RER to (not) arrive. "Oh but you should become Muslim" she said. An interesting conversation on day one of my new job and her fourth day in France!
The shock as an Orthodox priest drove myself and my Roman Catholic colleague to the railway station in Caen on a short cut through the red light district made up of old camper vans each with a candle lit on the dashboard. Most of the women came from Africa.
The deeply beautiful and moving sound of over 150 bishops singing in Gregorian plain chant in front of the Grotte de Lourdes and the Roman Catholic bishops conference. I was one of only four women present.
Having lunch with my church president and him deciding we'll go back to work to have a coffee as the price for an espresso in the local restaurants is to say the least prohibitive and would be a sizeable percentage of our salaries!
Still, but still getting lost in the Gare St Lazare ... ugh.
Enjoying the beauty of Paris even if I have so far done nothing cultural whatsoever.
Must try and say something at some point about L'histoire de la virilité and all the stuff about la théorie du genre.
A wonderful conversation about the Ecumenical Prayer Cycle with a woman who has for over ten years been updating the country information and writing new prayers in French for this wonderful ecumenical resource. A great link between my former and new jobs and i get to join the group this week!
And finally lunchtime today. We ate with the brothers at the Couvent St Jacques and I felt very privileged to be at table with four very eminent ecumenists: Hervé Legrand, Michel Mallèvre, Franck Lemaître and Stephen Brown. I'd like to say that I held my own, but really I have no illusions, but strangely I didn't feel too much like a fraud, just like I might need to have a different kind of conversation to be able to make my contribution. Ok I admit it, I was completely out of my depth. I think it was at this point that I realised that living with Dr B is a bit like living with a Protestant Dominican!

Enough I'm back on the blog, still alive and beginning to find my way around my new life. I am enjoying it. And one day I will blog about the infamous line "Bar à whisky, 500 mètres dans cette direction!" For now perhaps all you need to know is that I wander around talking to folk about ecumenical springtime. It's not a bad life.

Evening prayers for justice and peace

2011-10-03T23:45:00.003+02:00

I wandered around the house in a rather desultory attempt to think about things I might need in Paris and ended up putting a mainly rather pretentious choice of books into my case - and also managed to leave behind the detective fiction book which might at least have had a chance of actually getting read!
Almost at the last minute I took this small book down from the shelves in my office in Ferney and this evening I have prayed in my hotel room according to the Monday evening order of prayer.
Each Day and Each Night by J. Philip Newell offers simple orders of prayer for the morning and evening of each day of the week. Each day has a theme and Monday's is justice and peace - you can get a taster here. It also has a lectionary of Bible readings for each day. Each day's morning and evening prayer begins with verses from the wonderful Psalm 139.
I know that in moving to Paris the one thing I shall miss most from my previous job is praying with others in the chapel on an almost daily basis. So I know that I need to find simple ways of encouraging myself in the discipline of prayer. I'm glad at the intuition that simply made me slip this into my bag, it spoke to me in all sorts of ways tonight to be praying for justice and peace, two of the key areas of work underpinning much of what the WCC does. It helped me look back to the Peace convocation this year and forwards to the WCC's assembly "God of life, lead us to justice and peace". It has been such a blessing to be able to pray with others so often in a very beautiful place, now I shall have to try and find different ways to frame my days with prayer. Much of what I feel at the moment has to do with a sense of very deep loss but also of profound thankfulness. The reflective Celtic but also quite Ignatian path through a simple office of prayer that Philip Newell sets out certainly helped me tonight to name that and stay with it a while. I'm sure the morning and evenign prayers will help me through these first few weeks of a very new existence.
It is going to be fun but it is also going to be chaotic and hard work at times. I will need discipline to make up in part for being less involved in preparing and leading public worship.

The opening prayer begins:
...O Christ of the lost
and betrayed
come close to me this night
that I maycome close to you

The closing prayer ends:
Who keeps watch
over us this night?
Who but the Christ of love.

This is what happens when you spend your life taking tomatoes out of sandwiches - you get asked to join a blog called BLT!

2011-10-03T22:39:00.003+02:00

For a long time I never ate raw tomatoes, then in my late 20s I got quite partial to the little cherry tomatoes and nice ripe vine tomatoes in salads. I Rome I got slightly obessesd with the very sweet mini plum tomatoes. Even now I suually offer the tomato bits in restaurant salads to Dr B. What I really take exception to though is tomatoes in sandwiches. On planes and trains, in cafés and bars I order a sandwich and then spend time opening it up and removing the (what I consider to be) utterly horrible slices of tomato, the sliced version of the fruit just gives the bread and everything in the sarnie a sort of yucky texture and flavour. Out vile slice!
Given this, it was quite funny that I should be invited to post occasionally on a blog called BLT. In this case though it's not bacon lettuce and tomato but Bible Literature and Translation and it's certainly not just a sandwich.
Two folk whose blogs I admire and have been following for several years - J.K. Gayle and Suzanne McCarthy - blog there alongside Theophrastus and Craig R. Smith. These folk are all seriously knowledgeable about biblical translation, which I am not. One of the reasons I read Suzanne and Kurk is because I learn so much. Anyway the blog is about community building as well as exchange of ideas and information about the Bible, translating and literature. They would like me to add my voice which I am happy to do, though it won't be often unfortunately as I shall have to start blogging or doing some web based work in French in coming months, improve my typo 3 skills and more besides.
Anyway I have two initial posts in gestation for BLT and neither of them is about tomatoes you'll be pleased to hear. Writing this is my way of saying, please be a bit patient guys your Paris correspondent will be joining you soon! I was just not in any fit state over the past few days to do blogging of any kind, let alone try to learn Wordpress. So the best I can do is dedicate my first post from Paris to BLT.
I have however arrived in Paris, despite antibiotics and general sinusitus induced lethargy I managed to pack a suitcase and get myself here. Work begins tomorrow, wonder if there will be sandwiches for lunch?

Beauty, surprises and the generous liturgy of friendship and prayer ...

2011-09-27T22:38:00.005+02:00

It had not been easy to find a date to go out for a drink together, and I was quite surprised that I was expected at the ecumenical centre reception for 17.00, I even got an sms reminder. Wow we must be having some serious fun ahead of us starting this early. In honour of a night on the town I even put on some mascara - with hindsight this was perhaps not a good idea!
I met with Maike and she took me not out to the bar but into the chapel - that place of course for the real gluttons and wine bibbers! In the side chapel were quite a number of my colleagues gathered very quietly and Maike explained that they simply wanted to say thank you by organising Holden Evening Prayer in such a way that all I had to do was to be there.
I was very moved - hence the problems with the recently applied mascara and the depserate search for a hankie in my bag (I've learnt from facebook they had even discussed this eventuality before my arriving - this of course is what friends are for).
A group of my friends had been preparing for a long time, rehearsing the piano and flute and solo parts since August, tonight was the first time they sang and played together. It was a very beautiful moment, and the liturgy should be beautiful but not perfect. I thought back to Stephen and Sara Padre, Itonde Kakoma, Luke Smetters, Colin Williams, Annie Osbourne, Michael Wallace and many others who have introduced and sung Holden with us since 2004. It is so good to know that the singing will go on, especially as more musicians know the parts. It reminded me of all of those times when I have come to the end of very busy days in the office and felt that perhaps the most important thing I had done was pray with others.
Tonight was truly "leitourgia" - the work and praise of the people, many were involved in reading the wonderful selection of Bible verses chosen by Ruthann, in the music, in the preparation. I know how much coordination that takes so I felt very blessed.
The liturgy is the space that frames our grief, joy, distress and doubt. This was the space where I could finally allow some tears to fall in public as I grieve at leaving a job I love, recognising my failures, seeing too some achievements and simply accepting that moving on is painful at this time. Tonight my tears were for the first time about leaving these wonderful people and this wonderful space, rather than tears about that which is broken in the present and the past. No more struggling is needed. Singing and praying to God held all of us in that moment together in love.
This was the second time this year I have received a sign of pure grace. It is quite hard to receive such creative, simple generosity. But I realised that grace has that capacity to transform and heal. The thirty minutes of tonight's service was a special gift to me, nourishing me with joy despite the tears.
Thank you all very, very much.
And so to Paris where I hope to occasionally say the Beatitudes with others at midday according to the tradition of les veilleurs.
But for now simply gratitude.

Putting part of the puzzling ecumenical picture together

2011-09-26T18:16:00.007+02:00

My great WCC colleagues Marc-Henri Heiniger and Muriel Bataclan invited me to talk about the history of the ecumenical movement to group of people from specialised ministries who are at Bossey for some days of quite intense ecumenical formation. I haven't time now to say much about what I said - tho' I did manage to record it on my new Ipad. But our session ended in the sunshine trying to put together the ecumenical river - it's such a good metaphor - the puzzle of ecumenism.
Anyway I also have a video of the group doing this but I think I need a bit of advanced technical assistance before posting that - maybe tomorrow, it's too long as it stands now.
Anyway it was a good experience for me to speak with the group on this topic just a few days before ending my time working at the WCC. As ever it was a real privilege to speak with them and I did promise them I would try to post at least some photos before the end of the day. I also ended what I shared with quite a big plug for social media in building ecumenical capital: be authentic, be active, be nice.

So I should be ... but instead I am involved in many forms of perfect procrastination

2011-09-26T17:27:00.006+02:00

Well I should be packing, getting organised, doing all sorts of things to clear my desk, finish writing projects and get ready to move to Paris. So of course instead of doing any of that I am actually returning to the blog at long last - and yes there is a great deal of tidying up to do here too of course, because almost all of the information about me and about Dr B needs to now change. You have been warned, you may turn up and discover the builders have been in and painted everything white! though rest assured minimalism is not really my style.
Yes I am moving on Friday this week! And on Thursday this week I go to Lyon for my first day conference in the new job. Pictured here is what the appartment in Paris I shall be living in looked like when I visited 2 weeks ago. The Chef de chantier looked a little worried when I said I was hoping to move in on September 30, he looked a little better when I said but it's ok if it's only at midnight!
Anyway you can see that my future colleagues can see straight into my place so you will understand why the only thing packed so far are 6 sets of Ikea curtains bought on special offer last week. I shall have to remember not to wander around this dwelling naked, unless all the curtains are drawn!
Then of course I had a little jaunt to and from Prague on the train - I was interpreting for the Conference of European Churches, I think for now we'll just say it was another one of those ecuemnical meetings, after all I do want them to invite me back.
Then this morning I said yes to talking to a group of specialised ministries folk at the Château de Bossey and that was great fun (for me if not for them!), but really I should have been packing ...
anyway Dr B drove me to the SNCF (even regular readers of this blog may not know that I do not have a driving licence) and I am now the proud owner of an Abonnement Fréquence for the whole of France, in Germany this would cost 150 euros, in Switzerland about 150 CHF, in France 650 euros ...
So I really should stop blathering on here and pack, but you know what? My wonderful colleagues gave me an Ipad as a leaving gift and I'm trying to learn that and then I took some really cool photos at the Ecumenical formation session this morning and I think today is the perfect time to learn how toedit the video I took and then I'd really like to write something about Prague ... and of course before I pack a second suitcase I really should empy the dishwasher. Yes, perfect procrastination when you cannot focus! More soon folks, who knows I might even tidy the house!

Our favourite coffee cups

2011-09-25T22:52:00.000+02:00

Sadly all but one of our favourite coffee cups have now lost their handles. I was given them by Tante Lotte nearly thirty years ago so I suppose they have seen sterling service, and even then they were at least second hand, she always shopped at the local flea market. We're sad to see them go though, they are the perfect size, shape, coulour, feel, weight ... and those rogue handles that keep breaking are just a wonderful shape, perfect for holding. Anyway the saucers have fared better than the cups so we shall still have the memory of the cups when eating desert off the saucers.

The outward journey to Prague ...

2011-09-24T18:44:00.000+02:00

An attempt at some kennings "en français"

2011-09-14T06:03:00.001+02:00

What follows is a list of some my attempts at kennings in French. It's not a form that should work in a romance language but it was helpful for our feminist theology group last night and made us think about language for God and faith in different ways. I'm not sure the resutls are really French - what would the Académie française say about such neologising! Of course because of the way French works the kennings are the other way around to in English or German. These are all loosely inspired by Jesus in the gospels.

Pêcheur d'homme et de femmes
fouetteur d'injustice
Raconteur de paraboles
Quitteur de tombeau
Chemineur de route
parleur de vérité
ballayeur de poussière
metteur de lumière
prometteur de l'Esprit
assureur de paix
maudisseur de figuiers stériles
pasteur de brébis perdu
aube pascal
levure de farine
ensemenceur de champs
lecteur de la synagogûe
chasseur de vendeurs
prieur de Gethsemané
rompeur de pain
verseur de vin

You can find some kennings in English here and here on my blog.

Playful wisdom - transgression and mysticism at feminist theology

2011-09-13T23:13:00.006+02:00

I have come home from tonight's feminist theology group richly blessed as ever and laden with gifts, including a copy of Grace Jantzen's A Place of Springs. I am so delighted! I also got some very special Faverger chocolate and a splendid bottle of Ecrivain Poète Genevan wine.
Tonight was the last time I shall be with the group for quite some time as it really will not be possible for me to get back from Paris on a regular basis to be with them. This is a shame because the programme for the year ahead is really interesting: "Obéissance et transgression: Créatrices et créateurs à la suite de Dieu".
So we began tonight with an apple on the table as a symbol of trangression and its desirability. I spoke about mysticism and integrating spirituality and faith for this first session and we did various exercises - writing down the name of a woman and man who had been important for our spiritual formation, either folk known to us or historical figures or even ficitonal ones. Each of us spent some time, in the silence of our hearts comparing these two figures - had their influence been different because of their gender, is their a male or female spirituality or mysticism? We held on to and "contained" these thoughts as I went on to lay out some thoughts from Sarah Coakley's book Powers and Submissions about how "kenosis" the notions which have grown up around self-emptying have been seen in extremely different ways in by feminist theologians such as Rosemary Ruether and Daphne Hampson. In her book Coakley works carefully and persuasively through the text in Philippians 2 to offer a non destructive basis for kenosis as a foundation for spirituality. Tonight I was trying to pick up the different ideas around kenosis as a way of trying to move us towards thinking about who the God we pray is - I admitted taht despite decades of feminist theology I have deeply internalised a judgemental God - fortunately not the only God I have internalised but part of teh God I pray to. As we were workign through some of this I asked everyone in the group fot try to write some kennings and encouraged them by offering some that I had written earlier. I wasn't at all sure about using this form in a raomance language but it actually worked quite well. As we had some anglophone folk at the group tonight and I was interpreting myself into English most of the time it worked well as I tried to kenning what people said in French back into English. Two of my favourite ideas about God that came out of this exercise ( and I wish I'd had the presence of mind to write them all down but hey...) were "joueuse sagesse - playful wisdom and berceur d'enfant which I suppose I would translate as lullaby singer - what a glorious image of God.
I am so grateful to this group which has been my lifeline to sanity, theology and laughter over these past 7 or 8 years. I shall miss our time together but hope to drop in from time to time so as to transgress together.
We ended by reading Chouraqui's wonderful translation of the Beatitudes - en marche les matriciels - Get up and go may mercy be born from you...
A wonderful evening. And my kenning for God was "love maker". Maybe all these years of fem theol are finally having a bit of impact!

Versailles les Diaconesses de Reuilly

2011-09-11T21:06:00.000+02:00

Some images for my time of transition ...

The beautiful chapel chez les Diaconnesses de Reuilly - starlight, perfect sound and Geborgenheit

2011-09-11T21:04:00.001+02:00

I am about to move to Paris and take up a new job with the Federation of French Protestant Churches, more about that soon! I shall move in just over two weeks, tomorrow I get to see the appartment I shall be moving into for the first time -though it is likely to still be a bit of a building site! From Thursday to Saturday I met with my new colleagues from the Federation on retreat at the Versailles mother house of the Diaconesses de Reuilly. I stayed on for two extra nights. So I have had four days of being able to go to prayers with the sisters here in their extraordinary new chapel. It is like an architectural meditation on the word "matriciel". It gives a wonderful sense of shelter of being known yet also of worlds and universes beyond our own as the light coming through resembles starlight. I'll write more about it over coming days.
It has been restful and restorative to attend worship and not have to do anything other than be there and try to pray, or give in to tears, or try to be silent. I was also moved that the Protestant sisters here take their ecumenical commitment so seriously and joyously - the major focus in the chapel at the moment is "time for creation" prayers are regularly said for ecumenical and church leaders.
Singing the Beatitudes at midday each day has been particularly moving for me for all sorts of reasons. It has been an emotional week, I had my leaving party from my job at the WCC on Wednesday, having preached a final time on Monday in the chapel ... yes I am sad and I am of course also terrified about the task ahead, but as in all times of transition I have to trust that things will "become", somehow.
First task after seeing the flat on Monday will be to order a bed. I think I should be able to cope with the rest if I'm able to sleep! Knowing that the sisters here will also be praying for me as they did and do for my predecessor also adds a further dimension to being supported. Knowing that this beautiful place is just an hour away by metro also gives me the idea that there is somewhere I can run away to and it wouldn't even be running away ...

Transgressive fragments: crusts of exile, hope and unity ... a sermon

2011-09-05T11:31:00.002+02:00

Transgressive fragments: crusts of exile, hope and unity

Sermon preached on 5 September 2011 at the Ecumenical Centre, Geneva

Texts:

Exodus 12:39; Matthew 13:33

(This text is unabridged and rather longer than the preached version!)

Two philosophical introductions

Three fragments

and something that may be a sermon ...

“I chose to work on the writing of Paul Ricoeur because of his insistence on rediscovering a joyful ecumenism” said Beate Bengard at a lunchtime conversation hosted by the LWF’s department of Theology and Studies just two weeks ago. I was moved by her passion at Ricoeur’s thought, perhaps all the more so since I had just bought a book of the final fragments of his writings called “Lebendig bis in den Tod” - to live right up to and right in to death, would be possible translations, but perhaps a freer and better translation would take up Christian Aid’s slogan of “we believe in life before death”.

While listening to Beate I thought of the work of another philosopher and theologian, the Canadian, Grace Jantzen, who was a Quaker. In her work she pushed for a thorough-going non-violent philosophy of religion, based on natality rather than on mortality. Unlike Ricoeur she did not have the privilege of living into old age. Her series on Death and the Displacement of Beauty in Western Philosophy remained unfinished following her untimely, early death. Yet her work and witness remain natal.

So these ideas of joy and giving birth to a new creative future frame some of the background to what I try to share this morning, perhaps particularly as we move this week towards the 10^th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

Three fragments

In a concentration camp a father stands wailing next to the body of his dead son. He came quickly when they told him, now he screams in frustration because someone else managed to take his dead son's bread ration before he could. Dehumanized by a desperate system he grieves not for his son but for missing an extra ration of bread. Kyrie eleieson

The 14th century was a time of famine in southern England. Historical documents show that when the famine was at its worst the landlords made more profit. It's a story that may sound all too familiar given speculation on food prices in our own time.

During that famine the abbot of St Alban's Abbey - no doubt worried because he was losing his part of the tythe - ordered that the small milling stones, the quirn stones, be removed from everyone's house. He then built a patio with them. While the peasants could no longer mill small amounts of grain for personal consumption at least the Abbot had a patio.

The church's preferential option for the poor came along only a few centuries later.

More recently Globethics published a book entitled "Corruption free churches are possible"… kyrie eleison

An overweight middle aged woman refugee sits in the office of a British MP, she comes back day after day until he agrees to sign the papers allowing her brother right of entry to the UK. She knows her English isn't very good, she even understands that this is "not quite the done thing", she also knows she has nothing to lose. Her only child, a daughter, had died suddenly at the age of 13 just a year earlier. Helene Hurwitz-Stranz was a determined and tenacious woman. Her brother, his wife and their two teenage children arrived in Britain in April 1939, today would have been her brother's, my grandfather's, 121st birthday. Even with feisty defenders millions like him then were not so fortunate, neither are millions today. He was a fragment. Justice and dignity just a matter of arbitrary luck. Today the UK government claims as a virtue the need to balance net immigration. Kyrie eleison.

So now perhaps for an attempt at a sermon.

Just occasionally on hot summer nights when we sleep with the windows open I am woken by an exquisite and enticing fragrance. It's not often that a smell wakes you and makes you want to get out of bed in the morning but this does. It is the smell of the baguettes baking and the croissants crisping up from our local boulangerie. And it is glorious! (Though rather dangerous for the hips!)

This morning the fragment from the gospels that we reflect on is about the stage in breadmaking that precedes the wondrous smell of baking. It's a beautiful, if for us perhaps rather old-fashioned image, not of freeze dried or industrial yeast but of natural leaven raising large quantities of flour. Leaven works more slowly than yeast or baking powder but it transforms the flavour of the loaf more thoroughly, some say it even makes the flour more digestible. The best French bakers use "levain" - leaven or sourdough for their bread and not yeast or "levure", real baguette à l’ancienne should be crisp but slightly sour on the inside.

The parable gives us an image where the kingdom of God is growing in hidden yet glorious ways, we are offered a vision of God's promise where gentleness, joy, reconciliation and respect, justice and stewardship, care and peace are the sourdough kingdom values, raising the dough with authenticity and integrity.

For those of us working in ecumenical affairs this gospel fragment offers perhaps also a glimpse of oneness in the future potential loaf, we could all share in together. A wonderful vision of the oikoumene.

And well I could end there, but I'm sorry to disappoint you, we have a little way to go yet ...

As is so often the case with the parables of Jesus the riddler there is something more complex, cryptic, playful and challenging going on than might at first seem to be the case.

The word krypto is even there in the Greek – even if modern English translations lose that sense – the woman hides the leaven in the flour. Is God’s kingdom about subterfuge, about transgression and by a woman? Is that the only way the kingdom will grow? Is Jesus simply saying: open your eyes to signs of the kingdom taking place in the everyday life of the homes around you. The kingdom is just like bread rising and that happens every day…

The bread of the Exodus, the bread of liberation, had no leaven in it. Today a Jewish household once a year will clear out all traces of old yeast and leaven, a ritual and practical break with the past.

Setting out into the desert and dependence on God's grace meant leaving the leaven of servitude and slavery behind and living with the unleavened, tooth-breaking bread of exile and with the manna which the early morning dew provided.

Perhaps it’s no surprise then that amongst those desert wanderers and their descendents there were so many murmurings and yearnings about returning to the real food, the fleshpots of Egypt.

Over the centuries the spiritual unleavened bread representing liberation came to be prized above the everyday leavened bread, leaven is even judged as corrupt in parts of the biblical literature. There are warnings in the gospels and in Paul’s letters about the false or corrupt leaven of some teachers.

Yet as I return to Jesus’ clever and ambiguous parable I am struck by how it is the leavening, rising dough which symbolises God’s commonwealth. The dough rising speaks so much of hope, of the voiceless being heard, of the integration of the marginalised of the overcoming of oppression and the end of violence. The dough rising speaks of something hidden, marvellous and yet uncontrollable. This is what the kingdom is likened to - not to the baked bread.

As soon as the dough is baked – and those delicious smells come from the bakery - it becomes more fragmentary, less complete. Of course the bread actually feeds and nourishes but the rising dough is the subversive promise of all that potential feeding and sharing … all that might be possible.

Sometimes, very often even, I feel caught between promise and practicalities between the demands of the gospel and what I am able to do.

The French will vote with their feet, or tastebuds when it comes to buying baguette, preferring the bread of one boulangerie over that of another, though globalisation and the supermarkets are even eating away at this traditional discernment! I know I need to discern between the leaven of integrity and the leaven of corruption in my own life, in the life of the world. I know too that, however promising and full of possibility the rising dough may seem, the eschatological sourdough needs to be baked, the flavour of it needs to become real on peoples tongues.

And of course as soon as the hope filled dough is baked it becomes a fragment, bread that needs not to be hidden but to be shared, bringing straightforward nourishment, satisfaction and perhaps fellowship, justice or even life. Fragments of the flat liberating bread of exile, of mouldy prison rations or of fine brioche from the tables of the rich all have the potential to carry such hope.

Christ the leaven of our life offers the promise of liberation from cruelty and slavery of all kinds – the cruelty of famine, the slavery of materialism, or of abuse of power. That liberation is offered for both the oppressor and the oppressed.

The wholeness, vitality and natality of the rising dough, calls us to hold on to hope for all that is natal and joyful and hopeful as we try to bear witness and to live in such a way as to reconcile the fragments.

Perhaps the hidden leaven of God's kingdom will help us to develop an ecumenism of fragments which overcomes fragmentation; an ecumenism which believes in the sourdough values of the commonwealth, a bread which takes longer to rise, lasts longer and tastes better. A bread of true joy and not of manufactured bland niceness. The bread of tomorrow which feeds us today; its taste and texture speak to our hearts of life before death and of being one, if not at our divided earthly altars then surely at heavenly ones.

Jesus will not always put the fragments back together for us but he will say:

This is my body, broken, for you

This is my body, in fragments, for you

May the scales fall from our eyes and may all that is hidden and authentic within us bear the fruit of peace, joy and love which the Spirit wills for humankind and for the whole inhabited earth. Let us concentrate on that which creates and engenders.

Amen

Copyright (c) Jane Stranz/WCC

Norwich, a wedding, sunshine, and reception in the cathedral cloisters

2011-08-04T23:02:00.000+02:00

Daniel and Annie said yes to one another on Saturday. It was a glorious day in Norwich and an enjoyable day of liturgy followed by cream tea in the Cathedral cloisters.

Mao's Great Famine - the redundancy of courage or the arbitrary banality of evil?

2011-08-04T21:43:00.007+02:00

On the last day of our holiday I read in almost a single sitting Frank Dikötter's brilliant account of Mao's so-called "great leap forward" between 1958-1961. Mao's Great Famine makes for fairly desperate reading and I am still shell-shocked from what I have learned from Dikötter's scholarship. The scale of the sheer wanton destruction of human beings and of the natural environment is beyond comprehension. Scholars disagree how many "additional" deaths occurred because of the famine and the violent terror that accompanied it, but it seems to be between 30 and 45 million people.
Part of me was fascinated to read Dikötter's disection of how power, politics and decision-making took place as the great leap forwards was implemented across the party. Part of me simply felt deeply, deeply sick.
Very occasionally individuals try to act against the system, to hide grain for their villages or their family, to question the irrationality of planting in a way that will kill the seed, to say no. Nearly always they encounter a brutal end. Towards the end of the book we hear about the speech of the one highly placed party official, Liu Shaoqui who actually questions and condemns the leadership - having seen the impact of famine on his home province. "History will judge you and me, even cannibalism will go into the books." We are told that Mao is present for the speech. We are made to understand that the leader will bide his time to have his revenge and this comrade will be purged in the cultural revolution. The famine proved to Mao that the party, and he as its leader, exercised almost total control over the most populous nation on earth. His detached political pleasure at the destruction is frightening.
Reading it I was reminded of the title of Timothy Mo's novel about East Timor "the Redundancy of Courage". The hopelessness of resistance in such a system - the hopelessness of even being able to find out what forms resistance might have taken when destruction is so massive and access to information is managed - the only photos of the time of the great famine are propaganda photos. Sometimes even the story cannot survive yet Dikötter uses the detailed information he finds in the archives he has been allowed access to, to try and tell the story of individuals and communities. He gives people, and the tiny shards of information he finds out about them, a story and a name. It is very moving.
However, you cannot read history like this as a theologian without feeling deeply challenged. There is a passing reference to hope about two-thirds into the book. How destructive hope was for people, giving them energy to struggle on. People hoped that "if only the great leader knew" then things could change for the better, for a more rational future. In the face of this level of destruction of human beings and of humanity how do you preach about God's care for each individual, counting the hairs on each of our heads?
After reading a book like this - I have no answers just questions.

Your turn to spot the Dalek!

2011-08-02T22:20:00.002+02:00

Sorry that is very unfare, we all know the Dalek is the stylish one in black and silver. Dr B is the intelligent one with unknown powers of conjuring up trains from the Thomas Cook railway timetable even without an electronic screwdriver (this is partly because noone else is allowed access!) - and sorry that was a very British cultural reference!

Exterminate him?

2011-08-02T22:17:00.001+02:00

No of course not. However, I do live with a man who thinks Daleks are cuddly toys just look at how this one makes him smile. I think this is probably the reason that he keeps on saying that we've had a really great holiday, well one of the reasons anyway.
I am going to get him to do some guest blogs about our brilliant and crazy journey. We have both returned home to work and life with smiles on our faces and looking relaxed despite carrying ridiculously large suitcases around Europe for over two weeks. Now if Daleks ever did decide to become benevolent perhaps they could reinvent the sent on ahead luggage system that almost all European railways now seem to think should be confined to the dustbin of history.
Anyway this Dalek was spotted in Waterstones in Norwich and I was instructed to take these photos. Dr B was overjoyed to uncover this as part of our holiday! (Yes he is a very big Dr Who fan ...)

A shards of glass angel

2011-07-26T23:50:00.000+02:00

Well I suppose it's not surprising given that most of it is made from transparent glass that this little angel I bought at the Nidaros Cathedral today is almost invisible. As is the way with cathedral bookshops the one here had more than its fair share of kitsch - I admit to being rather intrigued with the real feather angel wings in various sizes - just where would one use them? Hmmm ...
Then I saw these and read that they are made from shards of glass by people recovering from or living with substance abuse. People living with a great deal of inner and real pain make these from broken glass, something that speaks of pain and of shattered lives.
The angels are marketed through the Kirkens Bymission - whose slogan is: respect, justice, care (well I'm just making that translation up from the box in front of me) - you can visit the City Mission website in English here. They do very good work with some of the loneliest and least well off even in this well-balanced and caring society.
Of course the shattered glass angel spoke to me particularly because of the many shattered lives here in Norway following the tragic events of last Friday. Inside the cathedral a whole set of steps in front of one of the altars was full of candles - so much so one attendant was almost full time just dealing with the nightlights. In the centre of Trondheim flowers and more candles have been placed alongside photos of some of those killed. Almost every public statue has flowers laid on it and the bridges have roses woven into the railings.
As we received the news I stopped writing up our holiday, sometimes silence is the only form of words we can find. Though there are various posts in gestation, but they will come later. Today I bought a shards of glass angel, something made from broken bits. And somehow from all that I have seen I can sense that Norway will build from these shards. One of the young women survivors said "If one man can hate so much, imagine what we can do together with love". Perhaps one day, although I am already three times her age I shall know how to show such wise maturity.

Discovery of tapestry as art

2011-07-26T22:52:00.000+02:00

By chance today we eneded up at the museum for the decorative arts here in Trondheim. It's a very small place and not a very up to date museum but on the top floor are some brilliant works of art in textile format beautifully displayed. One whole room is given over to teh work of Hannah Ryggen who was oringinally a painter but on moving to Trondheim took up weaving and used this art form. I have never seen the wone form depct things in such a painterly way. Because they are fabric and already quite old they have to be displayed in reduced light but the colours are extraordianrily vibrant and the subject matter very engaged with the political. The fight against fascism and the horrors of war, the Abyssininian war and much more besides, including a work inspired by T.S. Eliott's words "Love is like a burning cloak woven by unknown hands. It envelops us like a fire. We cannot free ourselves. It is life - no life without it."
Most of the other works were by Synnove Anker Aurdal whose work simply made me smile with pleasure at her humour and use of colour. There are two lovely friezes one called "more bureaucrats" and another called "international conference" which spoke to my current life!
It was a delight and a surprise to discover new artists and almost new art forms as we were coming away from visiting the cathedral. Very energising. There was also some very beautiful artisitic glass at the museum so although we were not there long it really added something to our day.

Doubting Thomas and the others - the statues in Copenhagen Cathedral

2011-07-25T12:26:00.002+02:00

Dr B was as always most taken with the statue of doubting Thomas in Copenhagen's cathedral - see if you can work out which one that is. The thing I liked about the cathedral was that in the pews forwards of the pulpit you had extra seats so you could change sides to face the preacher- Not sure I've ever seen that before.

Just 12 hours in Stockholm ...

2011-07-24T23:21:00.000+02:00

Sadly we were only overnight in Stockholm but we got enough of a taste of the city to know we want to go back. We ate in the old city and slept on the 12 floor of a brand new hotel with amazing views of the water and city. If you look carefully at the collage you will see that the naked blogger did not really want to get out of bed to catch the morning boat ... but she did want to look at her email!

A beautiful day in a beautiful place ...

2011-07-24T17:55:00.000+02:00

We are in Mariefred and it is utterly wonderful. I glimpsed this peaceful site as we were about to get on our steamship back to the port this afternoon. The three days of our idyll here have also been the first time we have looked at the tv since being on holiday ... the news from Norway broke just after we arrived. That also rather explains the blogging silence.

Tomorrow we are due to take a train to Trondheim, crossing over the mountains from Sweden and into Norway.

Language and Tucholsky

2011-07-21T22:21:00.005+02:00

Departure
"What about the language problem?" asked the princess when we were sitting in the train to Helsingör. "You've been there before. Is your Swedish good?"
"I get by like this," I said, "First I speak German, and if they don't understand that, English, and if they don't understand that, Platt, and if that doesn't work either, then I stick an "as" ending onto German words, and I find they understand that quite well." This was all we needed. She thought it absolutely wonderful, and immediately incorporated it into her lingusitic paraphenalia.
"So it's Sweden next. What do you think will happenas to us now in Sweden?"
Whatever happens on a holiday ... You, I hope."
...
"What shall we do now?" I asked, when we'd washed. All we could see of Stockholm from our hotel window was four chimneys agaisnt a blue sky.
"I think," the Princess said "we should first get an interpreter - your Swedish is excellent, quite excellent ... but it must be ancient Swedish, and the people here are so uneducated. So we should take an itnerpreter out into the countryside and find a very cheap little cottage, and we'll stay there very quietly."
From Michael Hofmann's translation of Schloss Gripsholm by Kurt Tucholsky

Any book, any writing, is always about language to some extent, and Gripsholm is full of linguistic play - Tucholsky was after all a satirist. There are some wonderful bits where Lydia, the princess, speaks in her native Platt as they set off on holiday from Berlin. Friends who speak this northern German dialect assure me that they can get by with it quite well in Denmark. Well these days in Scandanavia things are rather different to in the early 1930s and people take one look at us and start speaking English. I have to admit to struggling rather - it seems wrong to rely on English and I find myself suddenly quite fluently speaking the 5 and a half phrases of Dutch I have internalised over the years.
What I am enjoying though is the sliding spelling and pronunciation of words on street signs, in written form I understand more than I expected to. Of course it's also quite fun making up completely wrong translations, just to pass the time of day. Swedes, Danes and Norwegians seem to be able to speak to one another and understand each other fine - perhaps it's just like different dialects of English.

Money, money, money ... a common currency, well maybe not

2011-07-21T18:09:00.004+02:00

So as discussions today seem to be moving towards a (let's hope) more stable future for the Euro we are actually on a crazy tour around four European countries that don't have the Euro. Quaint as all of these currencies are it is certainly not all that much fun for the traveller. To make it even more confusing Denmark, Sweden and Norway all call their currency the Krone (the crown) but there are different monarchs on each of these currencies. And of course a different monarch again on the British pound which is the fourth non eurozone country we'll be getting to.
This morning we got on a bus to go to the railway station, we had a 50 Danish Kroner note. The bus driver would not take us because we didn't have the change for the machine ... so we then get change and the next bus comes and eats the first 10 kroner piece. This much more laid back bus driver says "free trip". This is even more exasperating when you know that the Danish Krone is actually tied to the euro and we had plenty of those coins in my purse! However, the Danish Krone with holes through some of the smaller coins is very pretty, so I suppose I must simply celebrate this currency diversity and cope with the fact that we shall just have even more change in the little pots in the kitchen. Anyway, despite being thrown off the first bus we still made it for our train in plenty of time.
Now we're in Stockholm, beautiful city, amazing journey across stunning countryside and a fabulous bridge to get to Malmo from Copenhagen. Train journeys are wonderful, except I kept on wanting to get out and look at the waterlilies.
Meanwhile I wonder about these so called rating agencies valuing currencies - who are they? are they fit for purpose? how much money are they making in the dramatic fluctuations their "ratings" cause on the currency markets? Enough, rant over, off to find some supper!

A collage from our final 24 hours in Copenhagen

2011-07-21T18:02:00.002+02:00

We discovered Copenhagen by boat and on foot yesterday. Lots of impressions and fun realising that in its written form I understand the language better than I had thought. It's been brilliant staying in the harbour area rather than in the centre, the short boat trip into town is great fun.

Aufwiedersehen Copenhagen or should that be bonvenon?

2011-07-21T17:05:00.004+02:00

We have a glorious final evening in Copenhagen for our wedding anniversary - it was perfect sitting next to the water, eating a delicious meal, listening to a free concert outside the opera opposite. It was great.
Now though we have moved on from Denmark but we hope very much to return for a longer visit than just this taster visit. However, as we leave the Universal Congress of the Esperanto Society will be holding its meeting in the city. No work for me at a meeting like that, I imagine they don't need interpreters.

Giving thanks ...

2011-07-20T22:15:00.002+02:00

Un mariage heureux est un plus grand miracle de Dieu que le partage de la mer rouge.
A happy marriage is a greater mircale by God than the separation of the Red Sea.
Jüdisches Sprcichwort
Phrase de la Sagesse Juive

Aimer quelqu'un s'appel porter sur lui le même regard de Dieu quand il l'a créé.
To love someone is to look at them in the same way God did when creating them.
Dostoïevski

I offer these little quotes not at all from any sense of self satisfaction but from a very deep sense of gratitude to God. And of course also to Stephen. We have had a lovely day and were even blessed with a rainbow over the opera house as we ate our supper. Twenty years is of course nothing ... but it has been great fun for the most part and interesting craziness for the rest.
I shall not apologise for feeling happy and blessed, as I give thanks I realise how fragile all things are and therefore also how precious.

Greetings also to Janet and Bob who are also celebrating 20 years today

A passing thought on the 20th July

2011-07-20T10:01:00.003+02:00

Today is 20 July, an important day for us personally, but a more important day in history. This was the day in 1944 when a group of army officers decided it was time to act against Hitler ... because of a table leg the bomb against Hitler did not work ...
Yesterday in Rostock I too this photo outside the railway station as we waited for our tranfer to the ferry port. We smiled at the not quite right translation set here in stone. But I smile too in my heart at the sentiment. How lovely that the local railway flower shop has set things up so that olive trees are in front of this sign.
And yet when I turned around and looked out onto the high rise "socialist" housing opposite the railway station I realised that combatting racism and hatred means having good, decent and respectful housing and social systems; transforming attitudes means being willing to transform lives and communities and not hatred take hold in systems.
That kind of transformation take decades and is not only about words but about real deeds that treat everyone with everyone with respect. Rostock is trying to do that, one word, one school, one train, one housing estate at a time ... it's hard work.

The beginnings of our Tucholsky journey

2011-07-19T23:07:00.001+02:00

We began our Tucholsky journey some time ago. Perhaps even over a decade ago when our friend Karin gave Stephen a wonderful audio book of Schloss Gripsholm. To our shame, although both of us knew of Tucholsky's political satire, neither of us had read his fiction. On a subsequent visit to Berlin we travelled to Rheinsberg - delightful, well worth a visit and of course with a strong Voltaire connection too, I think we had coffee in the café Voltaire. We also visited the Tucholsky museum which is moving but also amusing. He knew how to make people laugh. Rheinsberg is the name and setting for another and much earlier love story by Tucholsky.
Last night in Berlin we sat and ate in Tucholsky's the Kneipe at the end of the Tucholsky strasse. we sat outside and I looked down the street to the now gleaming dome of the Synagogue in Oranienburgerstrasse. According to the papers I've seen at the Jewish cemetry in Weissensee this is the place where at least one set of my great grandparents celebrated their wedding, despite already being fairly secular Jews.
Kurt Tucholsky was born in the same year as my grandfather, 1890. Four days before Christmas in 1935 he took his life. Three years younger than I am now, he had achieved a great deal, yet he was facing middle age, finitude and also the terrible scourge of national socialism in his home country. He also suffered from chronic and desperately painful sinus problems. I can understand the desperation. In Berlin I picked up the writings on childhood of another brilliant Jewish author of the same generation, Walter Benjamin, who in 1940 also took his own life rather than fall into the hands of the German authorities. These fragments didn't even come to light until they were unearthed in the French national library in 1981 ... If I have the husband I have it is in some way thanks to Walter Benjamin, so this too seems like the right thing to be reading on our 20th Wedding anniversary journey.
Perhaps it seems a little strange to be going to Mariefred to visit Tucholsky's grave but I suppsoe what we are doing is viisting the place of the story and giving gentle thanks for all the joy and pleasure it has given to us over the years. Even tonight we read bits out to one another over supper - just a few lines about Copenhagen and they made us smile. It is beautifully paced and observed.
We only decided a few weeks ago that this was what we were going to do for this anniversary journey. I could sense we were heading rather helplessly to a proposal neither of us wanted but neither of us could say no to either, then one evening Stephen said but what if we took the train to Gripsholm ... and everything fell into place and into smiles.
Quite funny really, Tucholsky's novella is certainly not bourgeois, yet it will help us over the bourgeois hurdle of "what to do for our 20th".
So here we are simply enjoying the journey those two in the book made and adding on some bits of our own as well. It's been a really fun thing to do. The trains, the ferry, the light in the wide open northern landscapes and the beauty tonight of Copenhagen. Wonderful.

Today

2011-07-19T14:35:00.003+02:00

"Expect nothing. Today: that is your life."

Rather unexpectedly we came across this postcard yesterday morning in the theological bookshop. This morning on the train to Rostock Dr B has been reading other choice bits of Tucholsky out loud to me. Food for the mind is also food for the soul.. More as we move towards one of the goals of our interrail journey.
For now we enjoy today, the glorious northern sky, the flat pond of the water, the wonderful black pepper in the gratin and the fast approaching horizon. Very soon I shall be in Denmark for the first time in my life.

Images from our last full day in Berlin

2011-07-19T13:09:00.003+02:00

So we visited four bookshops and four cafes, the Spree, Friedrischstrasse and much else besides ... and yes particularly as a result of the book shops the suitcases are heavier this morning!

Memories of Berlin - 2 - the underbelly of a city

2011-07-18T23:09:00.003+02:00

In September this year it will be 30 years since I came to live and work in Berlin - just for a year. I came to work at the Evangelisches Johannsstift which is a large Protestant diaconal institution based in Spandau. I worked in a children's home as a volunteer worker. I was just 18 years old. The five "children" I was working with were aged 12-17. Until half way through the year when we started to talk about birthdays they all assumed I was about 30 ...
The children were a family, they had the same mother but different fathers. Being in care saved all of their lives. The two youngest who had been in care and a stable home the longest were coping well with their education. The others were struggling.
Being a tourist in a city there is lots that we choose to turn a blind eye to, hidden and obvious poverty, clear sexual and other forms of exploitation, old people pushed to the margins, people begging ... homeless people.
Thinking about the five young people I shared a year with, about the couple who lived with them day in day out and their three year old daughter, I feel a bit guilty. I know nothing of their current lives. I was just another carer moving through. Was I part of the continuity of care or the discontinuity of care? Did I show them they were loved and important and worthy of better lives, or were they just part of the well-meaning CV of a privileged young woman. Quite probably I got more out of my year than I was really able to put in. Thirty years on I recognise much more clearly how much they needed continuity of love, relationship and care. But they were in a system and systems only rarely offer any of that. Caring for and living with disturbed youngsters takes its toll on the adults, the professionals being paid to do the job. Often the system ends up dealing with their needs as much as with the needs of the youngsters.
Big cities are wonderful vibrant cultural places. They are also places with many cracks for people to fall between. All of our societies need to be measured on how well we are looking after and tranforming the lives of the most disadvantaged.
Being a tourist today I still remember that one of the first sides to this city which I discovered was a side not in many guide books.

Bits and pieces of a Sunday in Berlin

2011-07-18T11:16:00.001+02:00

No photos of the rain that poured yesterday evening. Neither can I really take a photo of how happy and relaxed being in our favourite city makes us feel. We went to church at the French-speaking congregation on the Platz der Akademie and then pottered on to the Hakesche Höfe. Tomorrow we leave for Denmark, today bookshops and more pottering . The rain has for now gone. You know what we're on holliday and it's great!

Memories of Berlin -1

2011-07-18T09:32:00.004+02:00

Both Dr B and I used to live in Berlin, at different times and when the city was still divided. Technically I was in Spandau rather than Berlin proper, but in the West. Dr B lived in Friedrichshain in the East, a stone's throw from the great budget hotel we're staying in.
Every time we come back to the city it has all sorts of layers of meaning and memory for both of us together and for each of us.
Since we've been coming here together we tend to stay almost exclusively in the East, making occasional excursions to the West. This means that we are rarely walking around the streets of my former haunts, tho' I do sometimes take myself back to shop in Spandau - these days it's no distance at all.
For me this city is the place I grew up. I came here when I was 18, I worked, earned money, learnt German and how to party. Without that year I would have remained much more provincial and prissy for far longer.
But this is also my father and aunt's city. Sometimes sitting on the older trams I think about them and their cousin Elsa - who died when she was 13. The three of them would go around on public transport speaking German backwards and getting strange looks and incomprehending smiles form fellow passengers. Part of me likes to think I can hear them chatting still somewhere on the city's trams. That makes me think of the many other smiling Jewish children who must once have also travelled the trams, U and S Bahn and of whom there is no trace other than ash.
Yet here in Berlin, alongside the brash and crass adverts and commercialism there are countless memorials to many kinds of pasts - the national socialist past, the communist past, the Wilhelmine past, the "greatness" of Prussia and much more besides.
Recent very happy visits with our mothers and families are also part of our memories of Berlin, their pleasure and discovery of the city we love. Another layer of what being here means, as are the friends we have who live here - and whom we have hardly told we are here this time. Now we are here to do very little indeed. Just potter from coffee place to bookshop to then find a beer to drink.
Tomorrow we leave again, but we will be back and there will be more memories of Berlin as we travel forwards. Being next to the Spree has even inspired the beginnings of an idea for the sermon for my mother's wedding. It seems fitting that the city her first husband was born in should offer me the gift of time to think and creatively work around images for her second marriage.
Berlin destroyed and so much rebuilt, holds all the layers of memory and allows much creativity to bubble up.

An aphorism that made Dr B laugh as we left Geneva in the train

2011-07-17T19:53:00.003+02:00

As we were waiting for the train yesterday morning in Geneva I turned to Stephen and said:

They say behind every successful man is a woman. Perhaps they should also say, behind every unsuccessful woman is a man.

I think this had been triggered to listening toa Radio 4 programme about Churchill the previous evening as we were packing and learning just how reliant he was on his wife and on a huge host of secretaries to take dictation - even sometimes from the bath! Not sure that would be seen as appropriate today!

Thoughts about "Finitude" at the beginning of a journey

2011-07-17T17:19:00.008+02:00

In various moments today we have been looking at the wonderful European Interrail map - should we go here, might we have time to get to there ... dreams of a vacation spreading before us and of discoveries yet to be made. Yet our time is finite, we can think that we might try and do some of the other things another time, perhaps but maybe we will never do anything like this again and will just have to live with the remembrance of the dream of what we had hoped and planned to do.
Sitting in the corner of a Berlin Kneipe this afternoon drinking a delicious cup of tea I read Fulbert Steffensky's short essay "Mut zur Endlichkeit. Sterben in einer Gesellschaft der Sieger."
"The Courage to embrace finiteness. Dying in a society of winners." This little pamphlet has been sitting in my "to read" pile for over 18 months and I'm glad it made its way into my suitcase for this journey.
In 44 short pages he covers alot of ground. He speaks about how little the skills and virtues of paliative care are valued in a world obsessed with doing, making, effectiveness, winning, making money, impact ... all those things which Steffensky refers to as Machbarkeitswahn - obsession with producibility, or perhaps a better translation would be our obsession with reducing everything to a commodity. Against this he tries to clearly set the Protestant value of grace - when Steffensky does this it is not at all in an anti-ecumenical spirit. He converted to Protestantism in the late sixties and has tried to prophetically "evangelise" both Protestant and Catholic spirituality - encouraging more interplay between tradition, discipline and engagement. I smiled in acknowledgement of some of the words he uses to describe our societies "There is a stupidity at the highest level, it is the weak thinking of a highly informed society whose knowledge is highly detailed yet holds absolutely no ethical power." Later on he cites Christa Wolf's Kassandra (a figure from mythology I hAve been thinking about a great deal in recent months) who at the gates of Troy says, only if you give up wanting to always win will you be able to build and keep the city. Steffensky goes on to say that in the world of winners there is no room for successful losing. I love that idea - successful losing. Brilliant!
Of course I am reading this essay on finitiude at a very particular point in my life, one when I sometimes feel I have lost almost everything (And it's all right I do know very clearly that i haven't but feelings will not always be reasoned with!). Turning the pages in the Kneipe today was like receiving a gift. One subheading reads "Ganzheit im Fragment" - wholeness, oneness in a fragment, later he says that "thinking about grace means having the courage to act in a fragmentary way." This sounds rather more meaningful and clear in German, but given all my own pondering on fragments and bits and pieces in recent months I found it very helpful.
I also found it challenging to the way we so easily as ecumenists trot out things about unity and wholeness. Often the only wholeness we will see, even that which we work towards, is but a fragment. Yet Steffensky would say there is enormous grace simply in that.
I suspect that this essay was written originally for people working in Church run hospices, to encourage those working with the ill and dying that their work is truly valued and meaningful.
He speaks movingly towards the end about the final 10 years of his wife's life, (he was married to Dorothee Sölle), speaking about how her brush with death, her discovery of the finitude of her life, meant that both of them were able to savour very simple pleasures as the true gift these things were in her final years.
I first read Steffensky over 20 years ago in East Germany, my copy of Feier des Lebens is still covered with pencil jottings and underlined quotes. I then read Die Hinreise by Sölle not knowing at all that they were married. I think I should perhaps tomorrow treat myself to Steffensky's recent book which is called "Black bread spirituality". Such a shame we are staying two minutes walk from a theological bookshop!
Anyway Fulbert thank you so much for writing and thanks for the fragments of grace. A splendid idea. I think I now know that I have to continue to find the courage to be a successful failure. Perhaps we will make it to the arctic circle, perhaps not, in any case we will travel onwards in discovery. I just hope we don't lose the timetable!

Read more by Steffensky here.

All the way on public transport

2011-07-17T00:00:00.000+02:00

From the Y bus past the Ferney field of sunflowers to the Tram from Alexanderplatz to Friedrichshain. From Bern to Berlin, one capital to the other. An easy lovely relaxed journey, 12 hours door to door. As always arriving in Berlin feels like coming home. Ah well maybe one day we'll get to live here, for now holiday and our evening drink of Radeberger Pilsner will have to do. Our crazy interrail holiday begins!

A week of surprising news ... and a promise

2011-07-15T23:11:00.006+02:00

Once upon a time I used to blog, I would write often and sometimes even much. These days things are rather quieter. When I blogged more I also read other peoples blogs, not writing so much myself also meant I wasn't reading so much. Three bloggers in particular inspired me as I was starting out, their work intrigued me, David Ker, who blogs all over the place but particularly at Lingamish and Better Bibles Blog; Kurk Gayle, who has had several blogging incarnations but despite a bit of time offline is still very much on form these days at Aristotles Feminist Subject; and Suzanne McCarthy whose blog Suzanne's Bookshelf is a blog that is just balm to my soul. If I had that level of learning and knowledge I would like to write like this too, but I'm so glad she writes, so glad all of them - and many others too - write in their own erudite, empassioned and personal way.
Sometimes I lurk, sometimes I comment. I've always known that although I'm interested in having opinions I don't have time to write a blog, read and get involved in long online arguments. In recent times I've hardly made time to read much of anything, let alone comment.
Anyway this week I learned that Suzanne McCarthy has made it to the number 1 spot on the bibliobloggers top 10. It's very well deserved and you can read her reaction here. You can also read an article by Suzanne "Champion and Defender: the other side of the word." It was written at my request for the The Ecumenical Review, I really hope she will publish more in the future. But I suppose I need to realise that blogging is publishing - certainly the qualitiy of Suzanne's blogging is publishing. She's excellent.
For years the biblioblog top 100 and particularly the top 10 has been seen as quite a male preserve - in places it's also a pretty shall we say muscular world. There has been an ongoing on-off conversation about the need for more women. The fabulous and irrepressible Rachel Marszalek, who blogs at Revising Reform, has joined the team that works on a volunteer basis to provide the Complete List of Biblioblogs, Biblioblog Top 50, and Biblibloggers’ Top 10, and other things biblioblogical. Her blog is packed full of energy and joy: at discovering ideas, reading, studying and the joy of the Bible's stories and message in the context of ministry. Rachel was ordained a few weeks ago, congratulations Rachel and every blessing for your future ministry, of which blogging will be part we hope and pray.
All of this is rather a long introduction to saying that for reasons that are still slightly beyond me but which surprised, delighted and humbled me, I seem to have made the top ten this month myself - from nowhere to place 5. Considering that my output has been very low this year this was to say the least a surprise. Thanks to all who voted for me, I appreciate it very much. And thanks to the folks at Biblioblogs who are also doing sterling work voluntarily on twitter getting news of posts on the biblioblog network out there.
So now for the promise, in the face of this generosity by voters,( perhaps there were only 7 of you this month?) I do promise to tidy up my blog and bring the information on it up to date and to get back into the blogging grove. Thanks to you all pour ce "signe de confiance". Now I need to find out how the voting works. After all generosity is to be shared.
Holiday seems to be the perfect time to start with some of that. Have surfstick, will blog and read. Promise!

Bal populaire, 14 July and la pyrosymphonie

2011-07-15T00:22:00.001+02:00

We're back from watching our local taxes go up in the most wonderful array of exploding lights and music. Today was only the second time since the French revolution that the citizens of Ferney gathered to celebrate Bastille Day at the château. At the end of the splendid fireworks - which were accompanied this year by a recording of Joan Sutherland singing some fabulous arias - we were thanked for attending the evening's "Pyrosymphonie". There was no sense of irony in this wonderful neologism - of course in English we call it "son et lumère"!
Anyway it was a great evening, hundreds of people, great food, wonderful jazz music before the sun set, great scenes of adults and children dancing and a full moon.
And who cares how much all those fireworks cost, they made all of us ooh and aah and clap and smile and simply enjoy our national day, even if we are not actually citizens. And it definitely has a lot more class to have the celebration of the revolution up at the château.

"Ze Bible" - a great new French Bible for young people

2011-07-14T02:12:00.000+02:00

Today is Bastille Day and a public holiday in France, though not in Switzerland where I work. At morning prayer I gave away a copy of the Bible in French, and not just any copy but the latest and hippest version of the Bible "ZeBible". This of course needs to be pronounced with a certain Gallic argotic shrug "sebeeble". This Bible has its own Website and Facebook page. (please click on "j'aime").

ZeBible has a great layout, lots of room for notes and questions and is generally a really good thing. It tries to speak to young people, and even not so young people, in their own language and make reading the age old stories fun, interesting and thought provoking. A way of linking their story, our story, with the story of stories.

The Facebook and website have daily readings and lots of other spaces for discussion and exchange of ideas and information. There's great energy behind the project which is built for the long term, so get involved if you can read French.

As with any annotated Bible it's taken a lot of people a number of years to get it done but the result is really great. If anyone is coming through Ferney Voltaire this Summer I still have two copies to give away but you may have to visit us as penance.

The triumph of life - a poem by Marjorie Pizer

2011-07-13T19:18:00.003+02:00

The Triumph of Life
I am emerging from an ocean of grief,
From the sorrow of many deaths,
From the inevitability of tragedy,
From the losing of love,
From the terrible triumph of destruction.
I am seeing the living that is to be lived,
The laughter that is to be laughed,
The joy that is to be enjoyed,
The loving that is to be accomplished.
I am learning at last
The tremendous triumph of life.

Marjorie Pizer

This is one of the poems in a book called Ths too will pass which I bought in Jamaica. It's the sort of book I rather depise normally, beige tinted photos, meaningful quotes, Hallmark style homilies, a feminine rather than a feminist kind of book. Yet it has been good for me to be tempted out of my inherent snobbishness into buying this. I knew nothing of Marjorie Pizer from Australia and her poetry, or political engagement. She sounds like my kind of person.
Sometimes it's good to listen to voice of intuition and just buy what the heart says you should go with, in the end this was not a tawdry book, quite the reverse for someone wrestling with the real perils of depression like I have been. Even if I felt pathetic crying over some of the more home-spun quotes.

Reading this made me realise that yes I have been dealing with this kind of grief ... and of course what I have been confronting has been nothing like grief at all - apart from to me. As my dear friend Nyambura said to me "Nobody died ... and even if they had we believe that is not the end." It has been terribly hard for me to piece my way back to resurrection again. Perhaps I am getting there, slowly but I hope surely ...

The Triumph of life is the title of a much longer and earlier poem written by Shelley shortly before his death. It remains unfinished. Just that fact speaks to me, but also the wonderous idea that the triumph of life comes back to inspire poets across the generations. May it also finally call me away from my tears, for no one has died and even had they, then I believe that is not the end.
This too will pass ...

The garden at home ...

2011-07-12T22:22:00.004+02:00

Over the past weekend I have been in Redditch, actually even in Astwood Bank, to spend a bit of quality time with my Mum and Martin to talk through wedding preparations. This is not really something they train you for at theological college - taking your mother's wedding. The event will take place at Emmanuel Church in Redditch - my home congregation and will be followed by a cream tea in the church hall and then fish and chips or curry for over 50 folk back at the house.
It is going to be fun and we all hope that this view will be part of it, however even if it rains we will have glorious day.
This view from the back step at my childhood home is one I can simply drink in for hours, these photos don't give you the full extent - this was a cloudy day. Often you can see all the way to the Malvern hills and on clear days even as far as the Black Mountains in Wales. I love the sense of space and the amazing sunsets.
Martin has been living in the house for just over 2 and half years. (When my mum announced his arrival in her life by telephone she said: "I have an added complication in my life" "ah" I replied you mean a man" .... in the ensuing conversation I said something daughterly like "Well just take things slowly" and Mum replied "it's a bit late for that!" hmmm ...) He is tenaciously transforming the garden - which is no easy task. Throughout my childhood the right hand border of the garden was lined with ancient rotting willow trees, all now coppiced or removed - as a result whole new horizons and views have been opened up.
My brother's bedroom at home overlooks this view - it was the room he was born in. My bedroom overlooked the main road and that is still the one I choose when I go home on my own. But the view out the back is part of me. I realised this last year when thinking about the view inspired me to write this sermon on the Mother tongue of ecumenism - a sermon that came almost fully formed in one of those rare moments of inspiration.
The view is perfect but changing, ancient but part of a very human landscape. Twenty years ago we put a big blue and white tent up at the bottom of the garden for our marriage. At the end of the day I was wandering barefoot around the garden hand in hand with Stephen. Very, very happy.
When I was a child the garden was much wilder than it is now, a place of great adventure, stinging nettles, ancient pigsties, treehouses and gooseberries, balckberries and apples to be picked.
Anyway for those who are interested here's the beginning to the sermon - quite fun to re-read it 18 months on ...

A room with a view
There is a wonderful view from the back bedroom of my parents' house. It was the room where my mother gave birth to my brother, less than a mile from where her own mother had given birth to her.
The view is of rolling fields and greenery, trees and hedges; in the distance 40 miles away are the Malvern Hills (not quite Mont Blanc or the Alps but beautiful nevertheless). Further away still and only to be seen on a clear day is a glimpse of another country the outline of the black mountains in Wales, and a reminder of a different and more ancient Celtic language, which the English language has pushed to the margins – just as the English language is pushing so many other languages to the margins these days.
This is the view my brother and I still sit on the back step to drink in on our rare visits home.
That view has hardly changed in our lifetime. It speaks to us of childhood and beauty. It is also a landscape we have simply always known, a landscape that seems to know and welcome us back into its beauty and our memories.
The view I love so much would probably still be recognisable to William Shakespeare who was born just 10 miles away. When I think of where I come from that greenery and stretching view come to mind straight away. I understand that landscape like I understand my mother tongue.
And yet …
These days when I think about "home" it's often an exercise in cognitive dissonance
Home is not just a long way away, though not as far as for many of you, but “home” is also to some extent a long time ago.
These days when I go back I often feel as if I'm in a foreign land - even though people all around speak the same language as me. I feel caught between Babel and Pentecost, which is why I've chosen those texts this morning.

What greatness have you come to earth to accomplish? Reflections on Hebron, the pain of dialogue and how we live ...

2011-07-08T09:20:00.002+02:00

Gradually what I interpreted yesterday morning is shaking down, getting decanted and I can begin to remember a bit more of it.One of the ideas that Rabbi Marc Raphael Guedj ended up talking about yesterday morning was weakness and strength, what is the greatness that we are called to. He got on to this subject following a question from a Palestinian participant about the spiritual importance in Judaism of Hebron. It was a genuine question in the respectful setting of dialogue, but the background was of course the present day situation in Hebron.
Guedj explained that Hebron is the place where according to tradition Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are buried. It is seen as the cave that Abraham chose to bury Sara. At one point as Guedj was saying this he said "you know myths are facts - just because they are myths doesn't mean they are not facts. We live with the reality of the resonance of old myths right up into our present time." So Hebron has this particular resonance and mythic religious quality in Judaism. And of course in Islam it has a different mythic resonance.
Guedj went on to explain that there is even a tradition in Hassidic Judaism that Adam and Eve themselves are buried in the same Hebron cave. It's therefore symbolic almost as the birthplace, the cradle of humanity.
Yet today this deeply symbolic place is fought and struggled over. A place of mystical meaning is a place of violence and contestation.
This then led to quite a spiritual reflection from two Jewish Hassidic masters, the first from Rav Ahkenazi who said "Show me what you celebrate and I will show you your weakness". The second came from Rav Zadok of Lublin who encouraged his followers to think about the greatness each of us is called to, and to consider that the greatness we are called to accomplish is in some way to repair our weakness, the weakness within us ...
Guedj then brought these two ideas together - more carefully than I am able to in my half remembered interpreters brain - in thinking about Hebron. He said, perhaps the greatness I am called to is to be present in that situation in Hebron, to repair that weakness which Judaism celebrates, to be present in the present day reality and facts of the celerbated myth. Seeing Hebron not only as the tomb of the Patriarchs but also as the cradle of humanity helps to enter into the dialectical counterpoint of weakness, greatness and celebration.
So what do I celebrate? What is my weakness? And you?

Are we pregnant with God or is God pregnant with us?

2011-07-07T17:38:00.004+02:00

It is always interesting to interpret, especially philosophical and religious French as I did this morning for Rabbi Marc Raphael Guedj who was once more sharing his insights at the Bossey inter-faith summer school. Guedj always insists on the way values inform one another: not justice or charity but charity and justice, not just the letter but also the spirit, not just the spirit but also the letter - he often quotes Emmanuel Levinas' idea that "the letter is the folded wing of the spirit". Not just the written tradition but also the oral tradition. Not just one single and fundamentalist interpretation, but many in discussion and even in disagreement with one another.
Today he took us into rather different territory as he tried to get across the idea of immanence and transendence. At several points he said things along the lines of God being pregnant with humanity, wanting to offer some trace, some outline of Godlikeness to humanity. He spoke movingly of the feminine qualities of God, in the same terms as of the Western (wailing) wall of the Temple in Jerusalem - a totally dependable support. Interesting to think of a feminine quality in those terms. He went on to say that humanity, made in the image of God, is also in some way pregnant with a trace of God, wanting to give birth to that search for the Divine.
The word for pregnant in French in "enceinte" - it has the same root as the French for belt, ceinture, also "une enceinte" is a girded place, within the castle walls for instance. If you want to say in French that a man, or a male gendered object like "un pont", is pregnant it is almost impossible to do this grammatcally - you should say "le pont était enceint" but today of course Rabbi Guedj said "c'est comme si Dieu était enceinte de l'humanité". I really wish I had been able to take notes and so offer more than these fragments of remembered words which went into my ears and sort of came out of my mouth, I do know that I smiled as I heard him say that - knowing that the word "pregnant" in English would not entirely get across the shock of what he had just said.
Thinking about it now it reminded me of Ursula Le Guin's wonderful line "the King was pregnant" in the Left Hand of Darkness. And so I googled and got to this re-reading of Le Guin and now I know one of the books I shall be taking on holiday with me.
So I wonder, what trace of God might I be able to be pregnant with, to give birth to?

Fragments, mosaics, patterns ...

2011-07-04T23:13:00.004+02:00

For quite some time I seem to have been dwelling on fragments, fragments of lent and Advent. Bits and pieces, scraps of cloths, small quotes, kennings, beginnings of ideas, theology of fragments, an ecumenism of fragments ...
This evening I went out to supper with a friend and was given a very special box covered in tiny fragments of beautiful wood and precious mother of pearl. I couldn't stop running my hand over it, so pretty, so lovely, Not perfect but simply beautiful.
I talked about the fragments and my friend began to speak about the importance of mosaic in her culture, how it offers a different approach to melting pot multiculturalism. In the culture of the mosaic each shapely fragment is valued because it is used to make up part of the pattern. The fragments are part of a pattern.
In a way I cannot even really put into words I found this deeply meaningful today. It was both reassuring and grace filled as an idea for me. As I try somehow to gather up what I feel is shattered and put it together it is purposeful to feel that these shards of precious life-giving colour may actual produce pattern, pattern that may even be aesthetically pleasing or spiritually meaningful.
The fragments may yet come together in a new whole, that too may of course be shattered. Yet the patterning and the yearning for meaning and beauty will remain.
I realise I have been blessed.
Meanwhile I must try to find more of Henning Luther's writing in the theology of fragments.

Listen, Build, Engage, Share … an article written for a Danish web portal

2011-07-03T14:51:00.003+02:00

Sometimes we only write because other people ask us to write. So thanks to Christian Cohr Arffmann for asking me to write. Now my jottings have been translated into Danish. Perhaps I will get around to writing the four other particles I thought about as I was writing this. It's not very edgy, but perhaps that's what you get when you ask a church bureaucrat to write. Oh dear is that really what I am? aie!
Anyway here it is ... and you can read the Danish here.

The future of the church is not behind us. That may sound obvious, but often in western Europe our vision for how the church should be is modelled on how things were in the past. Yet globally today’s church is youthful, it’s growing and it's engaged with people in their daily struggles for life, existence and meaning. Millions of people in today’s world continue to be inspired and transformed by the words and story of Jesus of Nazareth. It’s difficult to know how many Bibles are being printed in China today; nearly impossible to count how many meals Christians serve to the world's hungry each day. That should be reason to hope and give real energy for the future. We need to listen to stories of hope and change and allow ourselves to be fed by them.
In rural Tanzania a young Anglican community worker, employed by a Lutheran agency, encourages people in civil society to take action to safeguard their right to water. Working with local mosques and churches is an important part of that advocacy and education. To make a change in people's daily lives in a meaningful way, building bridges across denominations, across religions and engaging with civil society is essential.
Across the world working for transformation, development or education means tapping into the extraordinary network of professionalism, creativity and community that is the church. Not many other organisations have the inbuilt capacity for national and international advocacy while maintaining strong local involvement.
Sometimes in western Europe the picture looks different. Of course some parts of the church will not continue in their present form. There are institutions that will not survive, buildings that will be closed. There is pain and grief when things die. There are also real worries: will there be churches committed and able to take the agenda of social justice and peace into the future? It can be a frustrating and very challenging time for institutions, desperate to hold on to and assert their identity.
Nevertheless, I believe that what is emerging is a complex picture of new ways of belonging to church and practising faith. People will shop around for a community which "fits" their needs at a particular time in their faith journey. At the same time there is enormous gospel creativity, new forms of church - not so based on denominations - are emerging. People want to bear witness to the gospel that inspires them, be involved in practical service with the suffering and dispossessed, using church buildings in new ways, discovering both a new monasticism and a new ecumenism - look at the exciting development in the harbour of Hamburg, where 18 churches decided that instead of building their own places of worship, they would pool their resources in one ecumenical centre. Others like the Moot project in Britain live out their faith in small groups in the heart of vulnerable communities - daring to live alongside and share with those whom society would rather forget about or scapegoat.
So are we dreaming the right dream for the future? Do we want something big and powerful when the future of the church - at least here in western Europe - may lie in something smaller but much more transformational. Worldwide most Christian churches exist in the context of being minorities. This needs to inform how we dream and hope. We need to let those biblical kingdom visions of yeast, seeds and hidden treasure inform our theology of hope more clearly.
One thing I believe I discern in the current situation of the church globally is that many Christians are learning that there are people working for peace, justice, health and service from all parts of the church.
The World Council of Churches recently held an International Ecumenical Peace Convocation in Jamaica. At the gathering in Kingston extraordinary stories were told, a common spirit for peace with justice was discovered and celebrated as we read the Ecumenical Call to Just Peace. The stories of the encounters and experiences of Christians and churches working for social justice and to overcome violence will go on being told.
The Quaker theologian Grace Jantzen repeatedly points to how Christian theology needs to focus more on that which is "natal" rather than that which is "mortal". Human beings are made for life. Are our churches able to do that?
We need to be challenged by social media and networking in the way we build the future. We need to find ways for our stories of life, hope and inspiration to go "viral". But we can be encouraged by social media, which focus on four key words: Listen, Build, Engage, Share. That’s not a bad starting point in charting a path for the future of the church.

The Ecumenical Call to Just Peace: http://www.overcomingviolence.org/fileadmin/dov/files/iepc/resources/ECJustPeace_English.pdf

It's all about a Code of ConductConversion

2011-06-28T00:46:00.005+02:00

Four years ago I started blogging. I began to write online at the second meeting of the group working on a code to conversion, you can read what I wrote over those days as I was discovering the medium of blogging here. Rather frightening that I wrote 62 posts in less than a month. I must try and get back some of that dedication. I realised taht "conversion is part of the sotry of my family and not something I had thought about a great deal before attending that meeting.
It was a fascinating and stimulating encounter in the glorious city of Toulouse. So I'm am really delighted that tomorrow Geoff Tunnicliffe of the World Evangelical Alliance and Cardinal Tauran the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Intereligious Dialogue will join with the WCC's Olav Fykse Tveit to launch the code of conduct on conversion, at the World Council's offices in Geneva.

Like back in Toulouse I shall be trying to interpret proceedings into French tomorrow. I may also try to tweet a bit on the oikoumene twitter feed. You'll be able to read the Code of Conduct in full tomorrow afternoon.

If you bomb a place, think about how you clear up the armaments afterwards - Photos from Libya

2011-06-20T21:54:00.007+02:00

There was a report today on the radio about how some of the construction work in Germany is being held up because of old bombs and munitions from the second world war. Part of the pornographic lie of war is that it is a quick, "surgical" solution - bomb them, get in, get out, mission over. It's such a lie. Not far from where we used to live in Dunkerque are the battlefields of the First World War. Still today farmers turn up spent and unspent cartridges and munitions as they plough the fields. The harvest of war can continue for many generations.
The picture here is from Misrata, Libya, taken just a couple of days ago by Paul Jeffrey for the ACTalliance. ACT have put together a powerful and moving photo gallery of the photos from Libya. Sandra Cox writes:
Macabre museums of unexploded shells, warheads and mines have ready sprung up around the city, and a deadly new hobby of arms tourism is in vogue. Children are using the battle zones as life-size playgrounds, where they risk losing limbs or their lives ...
The next job of ACT’s de-mining team is clearing Misrata's so-called museums of mass-destruction – ad hoc collections of live and dead munitions that have appeared in homes and businesses throughout the city in the last couple of weeks.
I've spent lots of time thinking about, reflecting on, writing about and celebrating "justpeace" in recent weeks and months. Pictures like these really bring the destruction of war home. How many millions went into buying these weapons? Is a similar amount being put into demining and reconstruction? More and more I understand Paul Oestreicher's call for an abolition of war.
In the meantime I wish my colleagues at ACT and all working with them the utmost safety as they carry out this risky and painstaking task, no surgical quick fix talk at this end of the story. The aftermath of war takes many lifetimes to clear up. We forget so easily.

You can also view the photos in the Independent.

Does the Church have a future? More to the point does my blogging or writing have a future?

2011-06-19T23:49:00.002+02:00

The poetics of ecumenism
Fragments of ecumenism
Is it all over?
The still small voice of the world church
Diversity dialogue daring

All of those are titles for articles I didn't or haven't yet written. The theme I was given to write on was "The Future of the Church"- In the end I submitted something that was a bit less "edgey" and rather less philosophical than some of my original thoughts. I suppose I am a reformer rather than a revolutionary so perhaps I shouldn't expect too much in the way of radical thinking from myself. Anyway in the weeks ahead I am going to try and set myself the task of writing something on each of the titles I had as working ideas as I wrote the rather more staid article I finally submitted tonight. If and when that gets published online I'll also be sure to link to it.
In the meantime I thought it was time I tried to get back to the blog. Life has been rather more than busy in recent weeks, we also have a house guest which means that I spend more time talking and less time with the real life of the virtual world - it is terrible when real life takes you away from blogging!

Fragments of a translated Pentecost sermon and the mother tongue of resurrection values

2011-06-12T20:46:00.009+02:00

This morning in Ferney three young people finished their catechism, two asked for confirmation, one has decided to wait for a while before asking for baptism in a few years time. Each of them chose Bible passages and confessed their faith. It was a good service and the sun shone for drinks in the garden afterwards. Over 14 years ago I baptised the two young women who confirmed, both come from mixed confessional and national backgrounds. Together with Bernard Millet the pastor, we led the service and presided at communion. I preached, as this is probably my last year helping with KT. The sermon was in French of course, what follows is a rather imperfect version in English. Dr B's comment was - you have become very French using your hands alot! He was also gracious enough to say that he thought it was a good sermon. Perhaps I was using my hands more because today I preached from notes rather than from a text, so I was rather freer. Strange, although I've advised at least two people to do this themselves in recent months, I don't always feel at home with it myself - but perhaps I feel more at home with it in French than in English.

Texts
Joel2:28-29 (interestingly this is chapter 3 in the French Bibles!)²⁸ Then afterwards
I will pour out my spirit on all flesh;
your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
your old men shall dream dreams,
and your young men shall see visions.²⁹ Even on the male and female slaves,
in those days, I will pour out my spirit.

Galations 5:22-26
22 By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, ²³gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. ²⁴And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. ²⁵If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit. ²⁶Let us not become conceited, competing against one another, envying one another.

Today its my feast day - and I know you all thought it was your party - Pentecost after all is the feast of translators and interpreters! Or perhaps it's actually the day the Holy Spirit makes all of us translators unemployed, after all that first Pentecost sermon was heard by everyone in their own language without any need for booths and headphones. So perhaps I should preach this morning en anglais, oder auf deutsch or maybe in a language like Arabic or Spanish that I don't speak at all and trust that everyone including me would be able to understand.
But I suspect we'd all be saying, along with our opening reading "what is the meaning of all this?"

Hmm what is the meaning of all this? What is Pentecost? It's a moving and turbulent story of hearts being touched with energy and understanding in the same way that those present were also touched by flames of fire. Pentecost is the grand finale of Easter and marks the end of the 50 days of Easter, the Spirit comes to breathe and embed the values of the resurrection into the lives of the first disciples, to breathe renewal and warmth and also to comfort and remind them of the true values of the resurrection.

One way of putting it is that the Spirit teaches them - and us - the mother tongue of gospel resurrection values. We read about those values in Paul's letter to the Galations : the gifts of the Spirit are love, peace, faithfulness, goodness, self control ...
When Christ rises from the dead he brings those values of the resurrection back with him from the grave - he doesn't come back saying to those who have tortured and crucified him "I'm going to get you". He doesn't seek to find those who did him such evil and nail them to a cross, nor does he ask his friends to do that for him. He comes across locked doors and says"peace be with you" he also says "receive the Holy Spirit".
These are the resurrection values the Spirit breathes into our lives, hoping that they will take root in us and guide our witness to the Risen One.
Two weeks ago I had just come back from Jamaica, despite rumours to the contrary I wasn't there on holiday, my employer the World Council of Churches organised an international meeting about peace, there were over a 1000 people from more than 100 countries for the meeting which had teh rather long name of International Ecumenical Peace Convocation - and you can imagine we certainly needed the interpretation booths there! People came together to discuss "just peace" - that might seem a strange sort of idea but even this week I've heard the idea of "just violence" being used by Hilary Clinton, saying violence against a "guilty" member of Al Quaida was justified. So much in our world justifies violence, makes it acceptable to us, yet Jesus' resurrection values are different - peace be with you he says.

If there was just one story to bring back from the Peace convocation it would be the story of the ordinary women in Liberia which we learned about through a film. These women helped through their concerted and long term prayer and action for peace to completely transform their country in Africa which had been suffering from a desperate and totally devastating civil war and dictatorship - men and boys caught up in war, forced to fight, women and children brutalised and raped. Their song was "We want peace now. Liberia is our home", their only arms white tshirts, creativity and tenacity. Praying across the Christian confessions, taking the prayer for peace to the Mosques and out onto the streets. Demonstrating next to the road where they knew the dictator would pass by, and not giving up.
The resurrection values of peace are not gained quickly or easily, but in place of a culture of totally acceptable violence these women, sang out and prayed out and went onto the streets for different values. We want peace now. Things are far from perfect in Liberia today, it remains a desperately poor country, but the absence of war has completely transformed the lives of all and left space for democracy and a different future. The women in Liberia dreamt and they acted upon their dream, the values of peace can become our mother tongue even in a war torn country.

The prophet Joel promises that young and old together will have dreams and visions, the servants and not just the ruling class. The Spirit is promised and shared out upon all. The resurrection values of peace, joy, faithfulness and love are not just for one generation but to be shared down the ages and across the ages. The Spirit of Pentecost pours into our hearts the mother tongue of understanding those values of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. It tries to put those other words on our lips, encourage our hands to other actions.
After Pentecost the church year moves into what it calls "ordinary" time - the Sundays often just have the word Pentecost and then a number after them. Today we can celebrate with the three of you who end your catechism this year, who confess your faith and ask for confirmation. You too will move into "ordinary" time - even though we will not see you at KT any longer we certainly hope to go on seeing you at church.
Somehow although it's not always easy to get out of bed on a Saturday morning we have managed to learn from one another and transmit some of these values of the resurrection to one another. It's not always easy across the generations to feel we speak the same language yet somehow across time Jesus' Holy Spirit has been whispering resurrection values in our hearts, teaching us to speak the language of peace and faithfulness, of joy and self control, of compassion and generosity.
On this last day of Easter let us celebrate our commitment to being transformed by the Spirit-given mother tongue of the values of the resurrection, and let's do that by saying together Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed! but in another language, in Greek - as this is a tradtion which has come to us ecumenically from the Orthodox churches:
Christos Anesti
Alithos Anesti
Christos Anesti
Alithos Anesti
Christos Anesti
Alithos Anesti
May we all learn to speak the Gospel mother tongue of resurrection values - peace joy faithfulness compassion self control
Amen

Ecumenism is moribund - oh no it isn't!

2011-06-02T14:12:00.004+02:00

The WCC stand at the Kirchentag is underneath a large sign that says "Gelebte Ökumene" which means "lived out ecumenism" or perhaps even "living ecumenism". This leads to some rather "spöttisch" remarks by a few of the visitors to the stand "huh, ecumenism these days is all abaout an atmosphere of resignation" one person just said, pointing up to the sign, and this was even before I had a chance to say "hello". Just as well that with my Prussian ancestry I am used to such muscular discussion!
We ended up having a really good discussion about how blaming those at the top for a perceived current lack of progress in ecumenism is actually very unproductive, it means we don't take responsibility for trying to move things forwards ecumenically in our own contexts, sometimes it even means that we use the supposed lack of progress at the top as an excuse to stop thinking in ecumenical ways in local and national settings. Of course this doesn't mean we should be satisfied with lack of progress, and we do need to continue to put pressure on the international levels through bilateral and multilateral dialogue.
We got to have this conversation because we started doing something practical together, drawing hands on the cloth petition against small arms. And doing this simple and rather childish thing helped take the conversation onto a different level and perhaps calmed things down after the rather feisty beginning. As we drew and were joined by others the tenor of the conversation changed and so did it's content. We talked about lively local ecumenical projects and were even able to speak about how there is real hope that change may just be around the corner. So much is happening, saying that things are moribund may actually be cover for saying that we're finding it difficult to rediscover our enthusiasm and get motivated, and so we look for someone else to blame.
So it was good to have a muscular beginning to a conversation about ecumenism. We ended feeling more energised and hopeful about the future, perhaps also more able to see what is already going on and being planted ecumenically all around us.

Hands together to drop small arms and for a strong international treaty

2011-06-02T12:55:00.004+02:00

Today is the first full day of the Kirchentag and we're working hard at the WCC and Bossey stand in the marketplace. This is almost a live blogpost from the stand. We've already had lots of fascinating conversations with people from all over Germany but also from around the world - visitors in the first two hours from Congo and Ethiopia, the Netherlands, Finland, Denmark and Britain - and those are just the ones I spoke with.
The activity that's working really well is collecting signatures in favour of a strong treaty for small weapons reduction. People are taking photos of the different ways they draw around their hands and sign the cloth petition, some of the hand outlines have been really well decorated. It's really good to have brought this to the Kirchentag from the International Ecumenical Peace convocation.
The Norwegian Churches have started the initiative, now we have to hope that some folk here at the Kirchentag will take the initiative up here in Germany and in the other countries people are from. Let's get things going from below so that pressure is put on those at the negotiating table in 2012 to make a strong treaty and reduce small arms use throughout the world.
Meanwhile I shall be faced with a technical challenge this evening, how to get thephotos off my new mobile phone and onto the facebook page. hmm...
and this is my first blog post with my new netbook and I can't find where teh phots are stored here either. Ah well by the end of the Kirchentag perhaps I'll have it all sorted out!

Beginning with remembrance at the Kirchentag

2011-06-01T20:51:00.004+02:00

Here is Dresden the rebuilt Frauenkirche, the church of our lady, stands as a positive symbol for the energy of people coming together to rebuild from the rubble of war even 60 years later.
I hadn´t realised until reading the Kirchentag general secretary´s contribution to today´s opening press conference that the Frauenkirche also has a less positive history. It is where the Arian paragraphs were voted through by the church of Saxony without any hesitation during the Third Reich. A shameful bit of Christian history.

Every Kirchentag always begins with a time of remembrance before the official opening events. Today this took place as a pilgrimage between Dresden´s Synagogue and the Frauenkirche. To inscribe real rather than false hope in society we have to remember the past with its terrors and all its betrayals, then we can celebrate the joy and success of the present with something approaching integrity and work for better futures.

When I next visit the Frauenkirche I shall also try to go on an inner pilgrimmage of remembrance, I am thankful for those who do not forget, even more thankful for those who forgive and grateful for all who carry hope forwards. I given thanks for places of reconciliation that do not have perfect histories but which do give us stories which challenge and make us think.

A heart for the Kirchentag in the East

2011-06-01T19:04:00.004+02:00

Over the next three days here in Dresden people are hanging the bright green Kirchentag scarves around their necks and setting off to huge and much smaller events throguhout the city. It seems busier than ever at this Kirchentag and it's not just an impression. Today's press conference confirmed that there are more participants at this Kirchentag than at Bremen, Cologne or Hannover. Over 117,000 people have bought three day tickets and there are over 6,800 foreign visitors.Some are even saying that this is truly the first Kirchentag for the whole of Germany, for a united Germany.
Tonight Dresden has more than 250, 000 people in the streets for the evening of encounters. The atmosphere is great even if the weather is a little cool, at least it isn't raining though. I wonder whether it is the city itself which also attracts people, many have come on a cycling pilgrimage to get here. Set on the Elbe and as a symbol of post war reconciliation, it's a beautiful but also a very meaningful place.
Dreasden also refers to itself as being in heart of Europe. The Czech and Polish borders are not far away at all. So this Kirchentag is trying to particularly open up contacts with the churches and academies in central and eastern Europe. There's a great programme at the Three Kings Church organised jointly by the Prague ecumenical academy and Dresden's church house. It's wonderful to walk the streets and be in the hotel lobby and hear Czech, Hungarian and Polish being spoken. and tonight the city centre is pulsing first to the sound of the different opening services and now to concerts. Later tonight there will be an open air performance of a specially commissioned piece of music based on the Kirchentag theme and thousands of candles will be lit.
One of the other moving things about being in Dresden is seeing the memorials in the streets to the peaceful revolution in 1989.
The WCC general secretary has also spoken today of how churches in Dresden promoted reconciliation between former enemies after the Second World War. They also supported peace and justice groups during the time of communist rule and in doing so had helped advance the peaceful revolution of 1989 which brought down the Berlin Wall and eventually united East and West Germany.

Being here also reminds me that the East of Europe is important to me. It's good to be back. This may be my last Kirchentag for a while so it's good to be in what I like to think of as "my" part of Germany. Really pleased too that it is already such a success.

Word of the day - métier à tisser - the loom of peace could also be the ministry of peace

2011-05-30T07:47:00.003+02:00

It's difficult with a rather flaky mobile internet connection on my way through Eastern Germany to do the etymological research I need for some passing thoughts about the word "métier à tisser" which is French for a loom. In German it's a Webstuhl - literally a weaving chair. Given how at the Peace Convocation we have thought a great deal about weaving, weaving stories, weaving history, weaving the future ... it is not surprising that I should begin to think about the French word for loom. The French word métier is used today to mean profession. But looking at these etymological defintions I was surprised to see that the word has its origins in the sense of service or ministry. I suppose for the loom this means that that the métier ministers to the tissage, it "serves" the weaving, making it possible for cloth and textile to be woven.
So this set me thinking about how we have been talking about the Convocation, perhaps one of its roles was to be of service to the weaving together of just peace from many diverse contexts. It was a loom, being that loom was part of the WCC's ministry of peace with justice.

Swiss trains - one step up from poems on the underground

2011-05-30T06:42:00.003+02:00

One of the great thing about travelling on Swiss trains is that an ignoramous like me gets to learn a little more about Swiss culture each time. Yesterday I was in the Denis de Rougemont train from Geneva to Basel. You can find the full list of the political, philosophical and literary folk who are celebrated on Swiss trains here, spot how few women are on the list.
The carriages have different quotations from the person the train is named for and these serve to provoke thoughts, perhaps calm folk down or irritate them as they let the train take the strain.
Anyway I hope that on the way back I'll be on the Albert Einstein. I've promised myself that I shall walk through the carriages and note down the different quotations.
Next I think I want Geneva's buses to start carrying quotes or poems. These are simple things but they add to the travelling experience, for someone who knows almost nothing about Switzerland they also help widen my rather narrow cultural horizons.

Resurrection chaos with the peaceful Ichthys

2011-05-29T22:18:00.003+02:00

I realise that I have said very little about the worship at the IEPC and wanted to try and correct that at least a bit. It was deeply satisfying, deceptively simple and uplifting in a sort of slow burn way. I really like worship like this, meaningful yet very joyful. Messages both implicit and explicit.
I shared an appartment at the halls of residence with the female members of the worship committee and I know how hard they worked, putting together at least three services every day, often re-writing at the last minute and dealing with lots of last minute hiccoughs. We had very early morning starts for the musical and practical rehearsals. They were putting in 12-14 hour days in very difficult circumstances.
At the final sending service they had really wanted us to gather at the beach but for all kinds of practical reasons this wasn't possible, too far, too late in the day. Yet in many ways we were at the beach.
Each of us received a large paper fish. As part of the reflection we were invited to write on the fish. This followed on from a wonderful multilingual reading of John 21, the miraculous fish catch and Christ's resurrection breakfast with his friends on the beach. The fish were then gathered into a wodnerful net which was hauled forward to the altar. In the choir we had to keep on singing and singing as people kept on wanting to write more and more, or make sure that their fish had an eye on it, of proper scales or a smiley face.
Then instead of sharing the peace in a traditional way we drew the shape of the fish, the ichthys, on the palm of our neighbours' hands. It tickled a bit and made us smile but it was a great idea and just really worked well.
I was moved by the idea of the fish being the love banquet, the true eucharist and reason to give thanks. So closing prayers did take us symbolically to the beach, to that liminal place of resurrection where the fishy fruit of the chaotic ocean meets the bread of the civilised land. It made me think about embracing the chaos being part of the resurrection message, only if we dare to do that will the miraculous catch of just peace be possible.

And of course we've also been singing all through the convocation, mostly things not know to me beforehand, including this ... not quite about the beach but still about bread and fish.

“On the green, green grass they gathered long ago.
To hear what the Master said.
What they had they shared some fishes and some loaves.
And they served until all were fed.
Until all are fed we cry out.
Until all on earth have bread.
Like the One who loves us each & every one...
We serve until all are fed."

Reading the Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse - the Duties of Womanhood by Mirta Yañez

2011-05-27T17:33:00.004+02:00

I treated myself to The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse from the University bookshop on my first day in Jamaica, now I finally have a moment to read some of it. Actually poetry is the perfect reading companion for a conference like the IEPC, it transports to other realities and requires short bursts of concentration but not too much sustained attention.
It has some wonderful poems in translation and I'm looking forward to reading more on the plane this evening. For now though this has really touched me and made me smile, perhaps a little sadly. Several of our colleagues have now travelled to Cuba for the 70th anniversary of the Cuban Council of Churches, maybe one of the reasons I started reading the Cuban verse in the collection first. I've just noticed a poem called Liberation theology - better read that next! I give thanks for those who labour to write poetry, offereing us all fragments of deep understanding of our lives.

The Duties of Womanhood - Mirty Yañez

We learned the duties of love and silence,
of obdurate loneliness and anguish,
our duty to witness fear and death
and the arduous task od structuring dreams

We learnt the duties of twilight and desolation
the labour of poetry
of gregorian chants
the mysterious firmament of the stars
the inexorable rituals of waiting
the ceremonies of terror and valour
the secrets of the bow and its invisible arrow
of the night and the fires illuminating it.

We learned of joy
of smiles
light and shadows
magic and science
a tree, an apple, a paradise,
the serpent, a flight of birds,
Mythology and enigma.

We learnt men's ways
an seized others meant only for gods.

How do we tell our stories - is it possible to find new methodologies?

2011-05-27T15:10:00.001+02:00

So, the International Ecumenical Peace Convocation is over. Today I shall travel home. In my luggage I am carrying the wonderful patchwork quilt called "Journey to Peace" which the WCC commissioned as part of the stitching peace exhibition. I shall be taking it first of all to Dresden for the German Protestant Kirchentag, then perhaps it will journey to other places.
For me travelling back with a patchwork quilt as one of the fruits I am taking away from Kingston also triggers some thoughts about methodologies.
From the outset, inspired by the arpillera and quilt exhibition, we have spoken about weaving at the IEPC, about what threads we have to weave into the fabric of just peace, about the texture of what we are taking away, about how we will sew what we have recieved into our home contexts. I suppose the question is what kind of "Just-Peace Companion" do we take home with us, just the printed one or do we take home with us also the not yet written version and feel that we too can be part of that ongoing story?
There was a good spirit at the IEPC, things went well despite the huge distances covered. I am still left with some questions about methodologies. Perhaps this has to do with some thinking about the age of creativity being the age that must follow on the age of post-modernity. PArt of me felt we should dare to do a conference like this in a truly different way, trusting process more than input, participation rather than frontal delivery. Yet I would not have wanted to not receive Paul Oestreicher's wonderful opening keynote address. I've been trying to think about how a Barcamp methodology might work for an international conference like this - at least for part of it.
As we take up threads and go forwards I wonder whether our institutions are able to take the thread of real creativity and reform forwards, do we dare to think about how to do things in a different way, so as to truly network our stories and experiences and also have a truly common experience and learn to speak with something like a common voice.
Just some passing thoughts. We still need written ecumenism, and our thinking needs to be stretched and challenged more in that format. We need to move beyond well-behaved ecumenism to something that remains respectful but which is truly engaged and open to new ideas. The arts have from the outset been part of the WCC's history, maybe we need to discover that a bit more in these times, the arts can help us htink and act in new ways. More about new methodologies later - I must remember to get on my plane! In the end logistics are logistics!

Mango peace building at the IEPC and beyond

2011-05-27T05:46:00.005+02:00

One of my abiding memories of the IEPC will be of eating mangoes every day fresh from the tree, the juice, the delicous sour-sweetness, the hairy stone in the middle to be sucked. There were mango trees wherever we walked on the campus of the University of the West Indies and it was difficult to resist picking up the fallen ripe fruit from the ground. There were lovely stories of people from the local organizing turning up with bags of particularly ripe mangoes from their our trees - "you really must eat these today, they're just right". So abundant, so sensual, so sticky and glorious, and so irresistable. I even overheard a conversation where someone from India was telling a companion who was stooping down to pick one up, "You know there is a theory that the tree in the garden of Eden was a mango tree". Tempting mangoes as the forbidden fruit, honestly I don't think Adam and Eve would even have needed a serpent to whisper in their ears, the perfume of the fruit would suffice. I have a personal pet theory - completely unscientific - that the mango may contain everything that is needed to sustain life.

As we walked and hurried and sweated from one event to the next, this image of abundance, nourishment and refreshment was all around us. In many of the workshops and meetings we were hearing stories of terrible suffering and pain. People spoke sometimes from a sense of helplessness, demands were made for someone to do something, the Church, the world, the UN ... The final message tried to weave some of all of this together.

Many of us from the Peace Convocation have already left Jamaica, I shall leave myself tomorrow. What do we take away with us? Extraordinary stories from often desperate situations, questions more than answers, ideas for ways forwards evoked rather than set in stone, but true expressions also of real pain and frustration, and of embodied tangible hope.

As each of us returns to our own contexts we try to take the fruits of the IEPC back with us. some of us may even pack a mango or two into our suitcases. Perhaps the perfume, generosity and juiciness of the mangoes all around us in Kingston will inspire our continued peace-making. A promise that peace can become as abundant as war-mongering and violence seems to be; a promise that peace can be shared by all; a promise that things don't quite taste the same at home as they did here but that we can share hope and experience.

I'm looking forward to sharing some abundant sweet and sensual mango peacebuilding. The fruits we have to share are less about knowledge and more about perfume. The time is ripe for peace with justice.

Tree planting as part of the IEPC

2011-05-25T19:03:00.005+02:00

Each day at the IEPC the Convocation paused at midday for a very simple form of prayer which remembered how God planted a tree in Eden and how we are called to live like trees planted next to a source of water.

Each day trees have been being planted, in the grounds of the university of the West Indies. Forty-nine trees in all have been planted, all of them local species and the University is really pleased to have this lasting legacy of the IEPC which will go on growing here. A good sign of peace with the earth. I wasn't able to get to an actual tree planting but was sent this really great photo of one of the Bible study groups watering "their" tree with water from their "just water" water bottles. This photo comes courtesy of Tara Curlewis, general secretary of the National Council of Churches of Australia.
It's good to know that we're leaving something that will grow here.
Meanwhile some folk are also sending in photos of the trees they planted on World Sunday for Peace. Here's a great one from Sweden where the group planted an apple tree. The just peace we build has to be lovingly planted and firmly rooted.

Praying the Devil back to Hell and celebrating the extraordinary Christian and Muslim women of Liberia

2011-05-24T02:58:00.006+02:00

Twice this week at the IEPC we have shown Pray the Devil back to Hell, an extraordinary film which movingly and brilliantly charts the feisty story of the women's peace movement in Liberia. It's a story I knew almost nothing about until I saw the film for the first time last week. It brings together so many elements that have been shared, discussed, sung about and prayed for during these days at the Convocation.
A desperate tragic situation: war, oppression and dictatorship raging for over a decade. And women in the churches coming together with a crazy idea to pray for peace ... and Muslim women joining them.
There's powerful footage of the women dressing in white to go on their first demonstration and warlords preparing weaponry. These were women who knew only too well what they wanted, only peace could secure a future for each family and the whole country. It is a powerful illustration of Paul Oestreicher's call for the abolition of war on the first day of the convocation. Without peace the hope of any kind of future is absent. "We want peace, no more war. Liberia is our home". They sing, they dance, they go on sex strike, to get the men to join with them.
The women showed such tenacity as well as great and creative organisation, this campaign begins in the grassroots - we want our husbands, sons and brothers back. It ends up at the international peace talks in Ghana and finally in involvement in the detailed implementation of the peace agreement and beginning to build a democratic culture and structure in the country afterwards. They didn't think just because they got an agreement everything will be ok. At one point they even take on the UN in the disarmament process.
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said in her presidential inaugural address "it was the women who led us to peace."
Are you willing to step out in your home, to work for hope in the most desperate of circumstance? Am I willing to do that?
It's a very powerful film. Highly recommended

Where next for peace? How do we take the #IEPC forwards

2011-05-23T17:44:00.007+02:00

The Peace Convocation here in Jamaica will draw to a close tomorrow and already people are beginning to think about what they will take back with them and how this experience can help motivate and drive forwards the peace work in our churches and well beyond our church landscapes.

Dr B has written a commentary piece for Protestantnews.eu which he begins by saying:

The International Ecumenical Peace Convocation in Jamaica symbolizes the emergence of a remarkable consensus among Christian churches on issues of war, peace and justice. Yet the task facing the ecumenical movement in the 21st century is now to work for a consensus on justice and peace that transcends cultural and religious boundaries.

The WCC's general secretary Olav Fykse Tveit is also setting out the way forwards more in terms of the Christian values of justice and peace being the core and truly fundamental values of Christian faith:

“I hope that from here we will have an understanding that we have some Christian values together that can be described in terms of justice and peace, and that these values unite us.”
Many churches are interested in clarifying the concept of how we as churches are peacemakers. I hope that we all can take back a renewed understanding of how the call to work for peace and justice is a Christian calling. This is actually what Christ has called us to do – to be peacemakers.”
The IEPC has been about gathering new ideas and a new sense of hope that is strong enough to help participants realize it is possible to make justice and peace a reality, not just a dream and a wish.

One of the things that I observe here is that the peace-making churches and groups undertake is on the one hand very grassroots based and orientated towards deep reconciliation between former enemies. As soon as we start working for peace we begin to see the inter-relatedness of all things, even local work for peace has to be global in its consciousness. Perhaps it is this renewed global consciousness and local rootedness which is in some ways renewing peace movements across the world.
On the other hand, though, at an international gathering there are also expectations and questions to the institutions, to the churches, the United Nations and the World Council of Churches itself. In the age of post modernity we often hear that this is not the time of institutions. Yet I sense a new breeze blowing, coming in part from the grassroots, from the way international institutions are using local information networks, twitter and crowd-sourcing information. This by-passes the national level sometimes and shows how the local and the global can mutually inspire and inform one another. The challenge then for any institution is how to be at the same time strong and organised but also open to the breath and energy coming from the grassroots. Bureaucracy meeting activism is always a bit of a challenge. However, here at the IEPC it does seem to be working rather well.

Stephen puts this rather differently and sets out the challenge for the WCC particularly in taking peace and justice issues forwards:
It is no longer enough to forge and to promote a consensus on justice and peace within Christian churches. Nor can issues of interfaith dialogue and cooperation be matters only for a few specialists, important as such expertise is. Neither is it question of simply seeking areas of common ground on which members of various faiths can already agree. Taking seriously the search for “just peace” in the 21st century means promoting authentic dialogue, one that may be marked as much by debate and disagreement as was the emergence of the ecumenical convergence seen now in Jamaica. In this process, alongside others, the World Council of Churches has a major role to play.

Meanwhile, at the back of the plenary tent in Jamaica there is a piece of net which people are encouraged to weave threads and fabrics through - weaving peace with justice. It will be taken back to Britain as a tapestry of our commitment and involvement. I've heard it said that the age of post-modernity will be followed and has to be followed by the age of creativity. As Margot Kässmann says in her opening essay in Ecumenical Review, peacemaking needs creativity. So perhaps each of us brought both our set ideas and stories to Jamaica, now the creative challenge is to take away some of our own story woven together with the story of many others. In the age of Twitter and Facebook perhaps this is easier than ever before as our walls are ways of weaving other people's stories into our own and ours into theirs.
So let's get weaving our take home souvenirs.

IEPC photo galleries

IEPC videos

Whatever langwij you speak, may your words be words of peace

2011-05-23T16:15:00.006+02:00

Every day I go past "Di Jamiekan Langwij Yuunit" several times on my way between the various places I need to get too. It always makes me smile and I'm a bit sad that the WCC's langwij yuunit hasn't managed to link up with them. Last night I stayed behind in the tent to offer moral, though I admit not much practical, support to the great colleagues and stewards who had to work very hard to take down all of the equipment following the great musical we had last night. Listening to the local Jamaican stewards I realised that the local language is very beautiful but that often I'm only pretending to understand. I'm pleased to say that this is mutual, my rather horrid RP (received pronunciation) English seems to be just as difficult for many Jamaicans. Anyway by the time I leave on Friday I really hope to have got my Jamaican vowels practised to perfection. Peace mon, yeah mon!

Behind the scenes ... how the #IEPC keeps on track

2011-05-23T03:17:00.005+02:00

Most participants I chat with are really enjoying themselves the the Peace Convocation - some are suffering a bit with the heat, humidity and the distances we have to walk; a few might like a bit more variety in the food we get to eat (personally I've got rather addicted to rice n peas), generally there seems to be a great spirit and a wonderful atmosphere, particularly in the evenings at the open air bar at the Rex Nettlesford halls of residence. There are good conversations going on there every night and I admit to having developed quite a taste for the coconut rum on the rocks.
However, the pictures here don't show scenes of conviviality but of the back rooms where staff are busy working to keep data input, computer terminals, communications, documentation, finance, accommodation, Bible studies, workshops, seminars, plenaries and much else besides on track as much as possible. Lots of the work is physical, requires alot of concentration and sometimes also nerves of steel - cabling, data entry, collating documents, chasing down speakers, rebuilding the stage between worship and plenary sessions, building interpretation booths, spending ages with administrations on the phone tracking down shipments, dealing with payments converted between several different currencies, filming, writing, updating the web, finding people to sing or pray in different languages and much more besides ...
Creating an event for 1,000 people requires dedicated and committed staff and coopted staff - and liaison with a brilliant local team here in Jamaica, including many volunteers and students. We are not perfect, but together we're a good team, some of us more exhausted than others. When the IEPC is over we will have a real feeling of achievement, proud to have been part of this significant event in the WCC's history. It would not have been possible without us.

Blessed are those who fill in data and greet us at registration with a smile and get us a room!
Blessed are the finance folk who deal with our reimbursements
Blessed are the html programmers, the writers and filmakers getting the story out there
Blessed are the cleaners, the cooks, the travel agents
Blessed are the planners, the speakers and the inspirers
Blessed are the ones who find us ladders, boards, ramps, sound equipment and bamboo poles
Blessed are those who stock the frig with beer
Blessed are those who translate, convert currency, change air tickets, find doctors
Blessed are the musicians who in the midst of it all allow us to think we could still dance
Blessed is Nan, who coordinates us, with aplomb
Blessed is the IEPC staff, co-opted staff and volunteer team.

Thanks to all of you guys, you've done such a good job, we think we might try and do it again ... maybe in about 10 years time.

Silence or applause - really in so many ways it is about how we put our hands together

2011-05-22T23:28:00.008+02:00

Our very good friend Paul Oestreicher has travelled from New Zealand together with his wife and fellow peace activist Barbara Einhorn to be here at Kingston. In the 1980s, back in the days when Dr B was the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmamment's international officer the three of them worked closely together, particularly on the German-German working group of END, European Nuclear Disarmament. The peace movement was important and faced political difficulties in both parts of the then still divided Germany. As I look back now I can see that the pain of that division on German soil gave birth to a very engaged peace movement, of course the experience of the war also drove the 1980s peace movement and pacifism in Germany forwards. Paul's personal story is similar to that of my father's - both fled Hitler's Germany in the late 1930s.
In the heat of the Jamaican sun Paul cuts a very elegant figure around the campus here in Jamaica in his light long white clothes. At the opening plenary he gave an inspiring, heartfelt and challenging speech "A New World is Possible - a cry for the end of war".
Here are some extracts:

Wherever you come from, whatever your church tradition, you may be Orthodox or Catholic, Protestant or Charismatic, Evangelical or Liberal, Conservative or Radical, all of us have come here because we wish to be friends of Jesus, rabbi, prophet and more than a prophet. To each one of us he says: You are my friends, if you do what I command you ... This I command you, to love one another as I have loved you. Is anyone, anywhere, excluded from that love? Here is the answer that Jesus gave to his friends: It is said: ‘you shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy’; but I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

Jesus was not an idealistic dreamer. He was and remains the ultimate realist. The survival of our planet demands nothing less than the abolition of war. Albert Einstein, the great physicist and humanist, recognised that early in the last century. He repeated it often with a clarity and credibility that few Christian pacifists have matched.

What I have put before you in stark simplicity, is nevertheless deeply complex. Having spent my life studying politics, I do not believe that there is any room for pacifist self-righteousness. I have not come to Kingston to demonise those who choose the military option. They are part of us, they are the many and we are the few. We must find ways of co-opting them into the peaceful struggle. The critics of principled non-violence are neither knaves nor fools. We must answer them wisely and patiently. They will rightly ask pacifists like me many serious questions: how, for example, is law and order to be maintained globally without heavily armed nations? On this point there is already good news. In the light of the last century’s history of unparalleled violence, international law is paving the way for genuine alternatives.

The other interesting dynamic to Paul's speech was that when the WCC's general secretary introduced him we were requested to follow the Quaker custom of not applauding either at the beginning, during or at the end of the speech. In the context of our meeting here in Kingston this didn't quite work, applause at large events like this is often the only way that "ordinary" people can participate. I can see why Paul requested that - Quaker meetings take place in silence unless one is moved by the Spirit to speak - Paul is both a Quaker and an Anglican priest. Part of me wishes that we could have simply greeted his words with silence. That silence might somehow have "decanted" the truth and the message in the words. It is easy for speakers to play the crowd for applause and sometimes it can change the tenor of a speech, feeding of the rapture of the crowd. Silence doesn't always mean disapproval, it can also lead to a deeper consideration of what has been said.
In the end we were not able to resist responding to Paul's speech with applause, it was a very measured performance but a bravura one nevertheless.
Now we need to decide how we will put our hands together to respond in practical ways to work for the abolition of war. Our hands must not then remain silent.

Photo copyright (c) EKD/epd

World Sunday for Peace - what is the right hand of God doing in your land?

2011-05-22T22:03:00.009+02:00

Today is World Sunday for Peace. Across the world's churches people have been invited to pray for peace, to plant a tree, to use the prayer for peace written by the host churches of the Peace Convocation. Here in Kingston, participants were invited to a wonderful service of praise and celebration in the main tent led by the Jamaican churches and the churches of the Caribbean. We had wonderful choirs, great readings, heartfelt and meaningful prayers, a fabulous steel band with brilliant drumming, dancing and music. We ended with wonderfully rousing singing of the hymn known as the Caribbean anthem "The Right hand of God" - the final verse goes:
The right hand of God is planting in our land
Planting seeds of freedom, hope and love
In these many peopled lands, let his children all join hands
And be one with the right hand of God.

Afterwards the blessing affirmation read:
"And instead of the cacophony of war we will compose a symphony of peace; instead of a world of chaos and confusion, we will create a new order of harmony and solidarity."

And that harmony of blended trained voices, enthusiastic steel drummers and cries of "Amen" accompanied us as we set out into a more gently paced day. A day of rest and enjoyment, time to get to know our host churches, discover some local specialities - (the hot chocolate rum was delicious, thank you!) and even for some to go to the beach. A reminder that #justpeace is not only about striving, writing reports or always "doing" more and more, it is also about making time for one another, letting things settle down and allowing things to emerge. Justpeace may often have to be struggled for but it cannot be achieved by force.

So what might the right hand of God be pointing to for justpeace in your country, in your context, in your life? What seeds of peace and justice are being planted, do we open our eyes to see what is already growing?
The prayer for peace written by the Caribbean churches and shared today with the world's churches begins:

God of peace and possibility, Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier: We approach you to ask once again for your mercy, forgiveness and a fresh start. We ask you to help us give peace a chance, in this world.
Even as World Sunday for Peace closes may our prayers for justpeace continue.
Here are the links to the different language versions.

Tears - we shall not hang our harps on the willows

2011-05-21T17:52:00.006+02:00

The opening worship for the IEPC included a prayer of lament, during the words of the prayer we hummed the tune to from the rivers of Babylon and then in the silence in between one of the young people from Jamaica bent down to a bowl of water and rose, wringing out tears of injustice and suffering. It was moving and powerful. As we moved from the lament further into the liturgy, our humming became singing - "By the rivers of babylon, where we sat down, and we wept when we remembered ..."
As we reflect on and work for just peace there is enormous pain but there is also hope. We will not hang our harps on the willows, we will continue to hum and sing the song, both of pain and of hope.

More images from Stitching Peace

2011-05-21T03:54:00.007+02:00

The Stiching Peace exhibition is going well in the Assembly Hall of the University of the West Indies. Roberta Bacic had to travel back to Ireland today but the exhibiton continues with Mairead and Marlene from Derry. Roberta was really enthusiastic about the experience of this international gathering in Jamaica and has alraedy got several invitations for further exhibtions. Today we had a visit from a group of local quilters here in Kingston, they left some great comments in the visitors book which has praise in many languages for the exhibtion.
The catalogues are also available in four languages and look really great.

At the traffic lights ...

2011-05-19T15:57:00.002+02:00

At the traffic lights a desperately thin young man is kneeling in a terribly dangerous place in the middle of the road between notional lanes between the cars. He stands up and looks through the open window of my taxi "sometin' to eat man" he says.
I look at him with confused guilty compassion and the taxi driver curses, saddened to see such a young person, 16 at most, headed in a very wrong direction.
I remember the dilated pupils, the threadbare tshirt and the total resignation with which he turned away from me when he realised no cash would be forthcoming.
Only as we pulled away did I realise that kneeling in the middle of the road he was inhaling lighter fluid in some strange addictive ritual linked to danger and perhaps a cry for help. Perhaps exercising his addiction in a public way like this is the only way he can get enough money to scrape by.
As the traffic lights changed we pulled away and I thought about how the Levite and the Priest were on foot, only the Samaritan had transport. In my transport I just drove on by, it was all too easy.
Then I went off to my convocation on peace, peace in the community, peace in the marketplace …
And I know that praying for that distressed young man at the traffic lights is not enough.
I shall however try at least to do that. The Good Samaratian did a great deal more …

Peace on Earth

Get your hands dirty for a strong arms trade reduction treaty

2011-05-19T03:49:00.008+02:00

In the exhibition space at the International Ecumenical Peace Convocation here in Kingston, the Church of Norway are getting people to leave hand prints and sign their name as a way of making a colourful and creative petition in support of an arms trade treaty that will protect and save lives into the future. Conventional weapons kill more than 2000 people every day, these small arms are sometimes referred to as the "weapon of mass destruction of the poor."
The Church of Norway is using the IEPC as a platform to start a global mobilization of the churches in advance of the June 2012 Arms Trade Treaty negotiations. The petition is a way to inspire church leaders and people in congregations to get involved in bearing witness to how harmful armed conflict remains.
So it's not surprising that in the exhibition hall of the Convocation they got the Norwegian general secretary of the WCC to be the first to leave his hand prints and signature on the petition.
The idea is that the hand print should form a heart where the thumbs and fingers meet. Our hands should drop the gun and instead greet one another in peace.
Time for all of us to get our hands dirty and get on with this part of the campaign against the arms trade.

Morning meditation

2011-05-18T16:06:00.005+02:00

We have moved to accomodation on the campus of the University of the West Indies. We're housed in groups of 8 in small almost monastic rooms with shared bathroom facilities and a large common area. The central garden courtyard is lovely.
This morning as we awake people try to be as quiet as possible, but in the (rather too) early morning we try to be careful about making noise as we rise and speak as little as possible. We can still hear someone in a room somewhere snoring gently. We wander around washing, brushing our teeth, drinking water - not everyone is a morning person ... it's a quiet and quite meditative time, beautiful light comes through the louvered window shutters and we can see the green palm leaves outside. We acknowledge one another but just get on with waking and preparing for the day.
Then the silence is broken by a song, sung gently but joyfully from one of the rooms. It was like a sign that we were now allowed to speak and enter more fully into the day.
The lines of song made me smile and another song rose inside me but remained this morning sung only by my heart:
"Er weckt mich alle Morgen, Er weckt mir selbst dar Ohr."
Peace to the whole of creation on this new day.
(I should add that there's is another story to be told about this which would be called the spirituality of the lost suitcase - time for that tomorrow)

collage from the first day of the IEPC - registration, exhibition and ... carbon off setting

2011-05-17T19:12:00.000+02:00

Beginning to hang the Stitching Peace exhibition

2011-05-17T19:02:00.000+02:00

Come and visit at the Assembly hall of the University of the West Indies open daily during the IEPC

The risen Christ calls us to peace not to vengeance - Olav Fykse Tveit preaches at Webster Memorial United Church

2011-05-16T21:54:00.000+02:00

Sometimes it's really worth making the effort to get out of bed early on a Sunday morning and yesterday was a good case in point. It was good to begin the 10 days of the IEPC worshiping with local people at their normal Sunday service. The tradition of dressing up to go to church is alive and well in Jamaica. Twenty years in France, where this really isn't the case, had made me almost forget this part of my own tradition of church going.

I was moved by the sermon preached by the WCC's general secretary, Olav Fykse Tveit. He really engaged with the congregation, blending humour about unity in diversity - recognizing the real differences between the Caribbean where tropical fruit juice is drunk and Norway where salt cod tends to the local speciality - with a powerful and heartfelt message about the true Christian values of righteousness, peace and joy.
He began by saying quite meditatively
"We are the church
We are the Kingdom
We are the World Council of Churches ..."
It is a sign of the united church to value righteousness, peace and joy as true fruits of the Spirit

He took Romans 14.11-18 as his text, encouraging the congregation to focus on joy, as this 3rd Sunday after Easter is called Jubilate, Rejoice!
This rejoicing is the gospel of resurrection which comes across locked doors in the person of the risen Christ breathing the words "peace be with you". "This tells us alot about how God calls us to just peace. The theme of just peace is not just something to discuss but it is a sign of the Kingdom of God and that fruit of the Spirit called joy. The risen Christ is present to bring justice and peace to the world as a sign.
Christ's presence brings with it a new reality of joy and peace. Despite the betrayal, humiliation, torture, pain and death that he has endured it is not with revenge that Christ comes back but with a true justice, he returns from death bearing the fruits of the kingdom. This is what he brings to the world through his presence.

Tveit then went on to speak about situations of war and peace in the world, mentioning in particular a visit in January to a minority church in Libya which had at that time particularly been praying for the Coptic martyrs of Alexandria
He continued by saying that the church is called to give witness to what is not seen, like a seed hidden in darkness, God's presence is alive. Pointing out that the WCC was not quite as old as Webster Memorial Church, he also made reference to the speech made by the then bishop of Oslo in the run up to the WCC's founding in 1948 "The Enemy divides, God unites". Reflecting on this Tveit then returned to the Romans 14 passage saying "We are created to be united, to be togehter." The text takes us further even than this towards accepting that God has created nothing that is unclean. It is we who make one another unclean.
We are here to be a signs of righteousness, justice and peace. God justifies us so we can bear witness to a unity of diversity, of difference. All of us are called to accept one another.

Getting to be 70 means we are still young enough to change while building on what those who went before. Change is possible. Another world is possible. To illustrate this Tveit told a favourite story of his mother who spoke of peace coming at the end of the German occupation of Norway. How her story of the day the peace came helped him to see pictures he had never actually seen, like the blackout curtains which had separated people and kept the light out burning in teh streets. The burning curtains were a clear sign of peace, not just a rumour. the story of peace also speaks clearly of the joy of something. People around the world carry such stories of peace and part of the practice of peace is to give and share them as signs to one another.
In any home life can be complicated, we can forget that peace also needs righteousness and joy.
"I believe the Holy Spirit calls churches to do everything we can together to witness to the reality of Christ's presence. There is no way of separating Christ from these values of justice, peace and joy."

Going through my (I should add imperfect) notes to type this up I realise that what moved me about yesterday's sermon was the very gentle but convinced weaving together of favourite themes the WCC's general secretary has preached about over the past 18 months. Tveit is keen to assert that justice joy and peace are the core Christian values. In all our talk about unity we must not separate ourselves from that. There were subtle but very clear messages about inclusivity and I think I am beginning to better understand the statement he sometimes makes when he says he doesn't believe in enemies. Here the idea received a bit more context for me and I was very struck by the idea of Christ coming back from the grave with the fruits of the Spirit. Justice, peace and joy are resurrection values with great capacity to unite us.
During the service yesterday there were also beautiful moments when a woman sitting close to me was more or less finishing the preacher's entences before he did and saying amen with real joy.
Worth getting up early on Sunday for.

The dance of justpeace?

2011-05-16T13:05:00.011+02:00

This wonderful sculpture is at the University of the West Indies not far from the staff offices. From a distance it looks almost like a mural, only close up to you begin to get the idea of the wonderful movement and energy in the sculpture.
This truly is a woman in praise and joy:
"Glory to God and Peace on Earth"

An early morning start at Webster Memorial United Church

2011-05-15T16:47:00.000+02:00

Webster Memorial United Church in Kingston Jamaica has two services on Sunday mornings and the first one begins at 7.15 - this is quite a shock to the system, and I speak as someone who regularly led Sunday worship at 9.15. Even more impressive at Webster is how many people of different ages were present in the church which seats 700 when full. It's a wonderful cross-shaped worship space and because this is Jamaica the walls are windows open to the outside with fans whirring in the ceilling, all of the work on the building was done by congregation members. It's an impressive and welcoming space.

Webster Memorial is celebrating 70 years of its foundation, and the service was a time of joy and celebration both of history and of the present. It was also a privileged time for those of us representing the world church to be part of a local event full of joy and history. It was a lively and quite long service but there was a strong sense of graciousness and welcome, a blend of the formal and informal that worked well.

One wonderful moment was a sort of extended extemporary greeting of one another about half way through the service. One of the choir members game down to greet us and she like many people in the congregation was wearing a name badge. I was so pleased, she was Marjorie Lewis the first female principal of the United Theological College of the West Indies and someone who while in the UK really encouraged the Daughters of Dissent project and in particular highlighted the work of the redoubtable and brilliant Madge Saunders. It was wodnerful serendipity to meet Marjorie at church because I'd been given a book for her in Geneva and she was busy handing out invitations to the book launch during the greeting session. Now at least there will be one copy of the book at the book launch tomorrow, but you can also find out more about Righting Her-Story: Caribbean Women Encounter the Bible Story. So, as is often the case if you want to find who you are looking for, just got to church! Marjorie is pictured here alongside a new WCC colleague Garland Pierce, who will be working closely with the general secretary, Olav Fykse Tveit who preached at the service.

One of the things that really impressed me at Webster Memorial was the scale of their social ministry and the way they manage to hold together tradition and renewal within the congregation. The 10.45 service is more charismatic in feel but this is very much a united church, a place holding together much diversity and celebrating. Perhaps some of that diversity just depends on what time you like to get up on a Sunday morning. Anyway it was a really good place to begin our time at the IEPC.

I hate my enemy but I do not want to blind the one who hates me

2011-05-13T23:13:00.006+02:00

I have enemies, I have people I don't like, people who have done harm to me ... there are people out there who don't like me, people who if I am really honest I do not wish well. Of course this is not an easy thing for a minister of the word and sacrament to admit to, but I am not always a very nice person, I keep trying to be better, sometimes I even manage it.

Today I read this story about a woman blinded by acid thrown in her face in a violent and desperately spiteful act. Now she gets to pour acid into the eyes of her attacker - literally an eye for an eye.
Today I was also interviewed for the International Ecumenical Peace Convocation here in Kingston. The Jamaica Council of Churhces is celebrating its 70th anniversary by hosting the world church here in for the IEPC. On Thursday evening they are holding a special event at which Father Michael Lapsley will speak. Lapsley had his hands blown off, was partially blinded and deafened by a letter bomb sent to him in South Africa. He seeks not revenge but forgiveness.
"The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind." said Martin Luther King jr

So how to we hold justice and peace together? An individual has a right to pursue justice, but does justice have to be retribution? How do we combat evil - by becoming evil ourselves or by seeking ways forwards that create win-win situations, restorative justice for ourselves and for others. Does it help a violently blinded person to become the perpetrator of that same act towards another, will vengeance help her to "move on"?
Think of the public expressions of joy when Bin Laden was killed ...

As I approach the opening of the Peace Convocation, I am thinking deeply of my own imperfections as a peace maker, how my own desire for justice sometimes holds me back from stepping forwards in peace. On the radio today I was asked why the World Council of Churches wanted to have this meeting about peace and rather than starting with the history of the Decade to Overcome Violence I simply said "it's because we want to follow the example of Jesus of Nazareth in building peace". Afterwards I wondered about that - do I as a Christian hide behind a sort of moral veneer of non-violence, am I able to practise what I preach. And of course the answer is not always, not always at all. Sometimes peace building means living with the absolute horrible mess of life and trying to celebrate goodness and joy despite everything. Some time ago we read in chapel this meditation by John Lederach on the dynamic relationship between mercy, truth, justice and peace, it is beautifully and powerfully written and comes from real experience of the pain of building peace.

As I continue to meditate and pray about this and about my own lacks in this area all too often I say this prayer:

Lord God preserve me from the hatred of my enemies. Teach me to pray for them and for myself. “Guide our feet into the way of peace” (Luke 1:79) Amen.

And here is the full quote from Martin Luther King:

Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends by defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.

From first day in Jamaica

2011-05-13T23:04:00.000+02:00

Here is a first collage from Jamaica - Members of IEPC spiritual life committee greeting one another and photos of some of the wonderful bougainvilia which is in flower everywhere, also the mural from the University of the West Indies where the Peace convocation will take place. The book shop at the university is a wonderful place (when would this blog ever say any thing else about a book shop!) and has supplied me with some poetry and other ideas to keep me going through the meeting.
I just had to get a picture of the dictionary of Jamaican English - yes I stopped myself from buying it, but listening to folk talking here is quite a challenge. A bit like the difference between Swiss German and German. I'm sort of half reassured that the locals seem to find me just as difficult to understand - it's strange we know we're speaking the same language so we nod and say yes and then have to turn around and ask again for clarification. so far all of this takes place in smiles and laughter. i'm going to have to get my Caribbean ears tuned in better and I really want to be able to say "Kingston" like they do here before I leave.

Walking on water to journey to peace ... the IEPC begins

2011-05-12T16:36:00.000+02:00

This stunning piece of textile art in patchwork and quilting is called "Journey to Peace" and is by Deborah Stockdale. It is the central work commissioned for the Stitching Peace exhibtion which will come to Jamaica as part of the International Ecumenical Peace Convocation - the exhibition has itself been on a journey, it was displayed in Geneva for a month earlier in the year. Roberta Bacic who curated the exhibition comes from Chile but lives in Northern Ireland. Many of the pieces are packed in Ireland and waiting to come to Kingston as I write this ...

I arrived in Jamaica just after midnight local time last night. Members of the local committee were waiting to meet us at the airport - it was wonderful when feeling so tired to be welcomed and taken to our accommodation. What was interesting though was that even in this brief meeting at a midnight hour with all of us tired, we were already getting into the theme of "just peace". One of the people arriving at the same time as me was a young person from Syria. As we waited we exchanged perhaps rather superficial comments about the situation in Syria with her. Her response was interesting, "much of what is said is propaganda". Given the late hour and our need for sleep after 24 hours of travelling there wasn't time to have much follow up conversation. I'll admit to wishing I could be a fly on the wall at the youth programme where I am sure that discussion and many others will continue.
Once I was compos mentis enough for some cogent thought again this morning after a few hours sleep, I thought back to our conversation last night. It struck me that "just peace" is definitely not about easy slogans or one-size fits all solutions. It's about having good quality and nuanced information about situations (both of conflict and of reconciliation), but it is also in some way trying to come to a judgement about those situation. Not a judgement for all time but a judgement in the here and now. Syria could be a good case in point, but so are many other countries and situaitons.
To be for justice and for peace will often mean knowing not to take sides in a simplisitc way but knowing rather how to stand up for the (gospel) values of peace and justice as such. Sometimes though to be for justice and peace will mean taking sides, and being prepared to be vilified for taking that stance. Being for a just peace is not something static or set in stone it is very much about being on a journey and sometimes it will mean daring to put our feet on what is not solid ground. Daring to get it wrong.
In Deborah's Journey to Peace this sense of moving towards something is clear but what you can't see so clearly from this image is that there are people in the ecumenical boat, people also walking in the labyrinth of peace which is the IEPC logo of locked hands. There are however also people who have stepped out of the boat and are walking on the water. They really are daring to believe that the journey to just peace will carry them on. Pilgrims of hope borne forwards by hope and belief in water and the word... a beautiful baptismal image.
Here in Jamaica we are surrounded by water, all of us coming here have to cross it in some way or another. As we arrive and as we leave Kingston will we dare to go on walking on water into the future so as to build a just peace?

Now That We Have Tasted Hope - a poem by Khaled Mattawa

2011-05-02T06:14:00.000+02:00

Listen to Libyan poet and recent winner of the Academy of American Poets Fellowship Khaled Mattawa read his latest for the revolution in Libya on BBC’s “The World Today”

Now That We Have Tasted Hope

Now that we have tasted hope
Now that we have come out of hiding,
Why would we live again in the tombs we’d made out of our souls?

And the sundered bodies that we’ve reassembled with prayers and consolations,
What would their torn parts be other than flesh?

Now that we have tasted hope
And dressed each other’s wounds with the legends of our oneness
Would we not prefer to close our mouths forever shut on the wine
That swilled inside them?

Having dreamed the same dream,
Having found the water that gushed behind a thousand mirages,
Why would we hide from the sun again
Or fear the night sky after we’ve reached the ends of darkness,
Live in death again after all the life our dead have given us?

Listen to me Zow’ya, Beida, Ajdabya, Tobruk, Nalut, Derna, Musrata, Benghazi, Zintan,
Listen to me houses, alleys, courtyards, and streets that throng my veins,
Some day soon
In your freed light and in the shade of your proud trees,
Your excavated heroes will return to their thrones in your martyrs’ squares,
Lovers will hold each other’s hands.

I need not look far to imagine the nerves dying rejecting the life that blood sends them.
I need not look deep into my past to seek a thousand hopeless vistas.
But now that I have tasted hope
I have fallen into the embrace of my own rugged innocence.

How long were my ancient days?
I no longer care to count.
How high were the mountains in my ocean’s fathoms?
I no longer care to measure.
How bitter was the bread of bitterness?
I no longer care to recall.

Now that we have tasted hope,
Now that we have lived on this hard-earned crust,
We would sooner die than seek any other taste to life,
Any other way of being human.

The deep consolation, the laughter and tearfulness of reading poetry

2011-05-01T21:18:00.005+02:00

For the past few days I've been reading the wonderful poems in Neil Astley and Pamela Robinson-Pearce's great anthology of hope Soul Food: Nourishing Poems for Starved Minds.
It is a read that is a voyage of discovery: moving, funny, profound there is real food and hope for starved souls in the 150 pages. We are so saturated and stuffed with images and music, yet here simple well-honed lines keep bringing us back to essentials. Few of the poems are long, many are very short.
I'm grateful for the many poems in translation that are included, opening up not only other languages (truth called "he" rather than "she" or "it") and cultures, but also completely different ways of structuring thoughts, poetry and hope itself.
Dr B even found one to read aloud to me last night, this by the fabulous Carol Ann Duffy, only a Radio 4 listener or a sailor would understand the final line!

Prayer
Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims1 sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.

Pray for us now. Grade I piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child's name as though they named their loss.

Darkness outside. Inside, the radio's prayer -
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.

Meanwhile I have this evening been entranced by some poems by Jane Kenyon, in particular the one called Happiness below. It seems quite right that a poet who struggled all her life against depression should write on such a theme. Now I shall have to track down some of the works she translated. I'm always interested in poets who also translate.

Happiness

There's just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.

And how can you not forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what
was lost, and take from its place the finest
garment, which you saved for an occasion
you could not imagine, and you weep night and day
to know that you were not abandoned,
that happiness saved its most extreme form
for you alone.

No, happiness is the uncle you never
knew about, who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes
into town, and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep midafternoon
as you so often are during the unmerciful
hours of your despair.

It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street
with a birch broom, to the child
whose mother has passed out from drink.
It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
a sock, to the pusher, to the basket maker,
and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night.
It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
to rain falling on the open sea,
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.

Anyway, although reading poetry might seem to resolve nothing, it does offer a structure that might be called joy or understanding, consolation or perhaps even hope. Gradually words are beginning to put me back together again, perhaps that is resolution of a kind ...

Ugly Stories are human stories ...

2011-04-30T10:37:00.006+02:00

This morning a package arrived addressed to Dr B but containing a present for me of the book Ugly Stories by Enrique Mayer. It was a wonderful surprise to get the book because I had been looking at another book of Enrique's online in recent weeks but hadn't even spoken to Stephen about that. I'd been looking at a book called "The articulated Peasant" and wondering about how a similar sort of title could work in urban and semi urban settings. The subtitle "Household economics in the Andes" triggered some passing thoughts on oikos, oikoumene and economics - how might economics or ecumenics be articulated in our different secular and ecclesial contexts? Perhaps I'll even have a chance to return to these passing thoughts one day.
Mayer is professor of anthropology at Yale University where the site says he:
specializes in Andean agricultural systems and Latin American peasantries. His work has shown that regions characterized by diversity (such as mountainous environments, small islands, and "marginal" lands), not suitable for agribusiness, are exploited by peasants in strikingly similar ways. Worldwide, peasant forms of production predominate and persist in these environments. These agricultural systems are important to those concerned about world genetic resources, or about environmental conservation, and to scholars who seek an understanding of ancient and yet also very contemporary Non Western rural life-ways.

I have never travelled to Peru nor have I ever met Enrique Mayer (yet), though it did make me smile that in some of the reviews of "Ugly Stories" he's described as "of Peruvian ancestry". I grew up looking at pictures of my parents wedding and being shown a good looking young man on my father's side of the family, someone I never saw at family parties, "that's Enrique" I would be told and his name always sounded splendidly exotic compared to the other members of the family. I suppose he is my second or third cousin and I did manage to engineer a meeting between Stephen and this part of my family when Dr B was travelling to Peru in 1996. By chance Enrique was also there, in part researching for what would eventually become "ugly stories". Over the years news of my family in Peru would reach me through both expected and unexpected routes - an Oxfam worker lodging with my landlady in Oxford who had worked with Maria Scurrah née Mayer - their aunt Lotte Carrive telling me my own mistakes in German mirrored those of Renate Millones née Mayer - and also regaling us with exploits of buying handbags when visiting (and embarassing) the family in South America.
Anyway it is wonderful to have a copy of Enrique's book for so many reasons. I've already devoured the introduction, acknowledgements and first chapter over breakfast. I was moved by his desciption of the painstaking way the book finally came into being - discarding much that was written more than a decade ago and then finally writing approximately a chapter a year each summer, relying on the encouragement of others, feedbook from those he read some of the stories to. It spoke to me of how things can come to fruition even after a long germination and growing time. Ugly stories are both human and deeply political, the book meshes together oral stories with scholarship. I'm looking forward to devouring more of it on my travels in coming weeks. And through reading I in some way get to meet the young man on my parents wedding photos as well as discover new areas of history.
I do also have to admit that the gift of a book at breakfast did not stop me buying further books from the Librairie Centrale at our trip round the market this morning.

Disjointed thoughts on wearing an apron on Easter Sunday and my months of magical thinking

2011-04-26T21:00:00.007+02:00

A friend who is now working in Canada for the Naramata Centre, which looks like a wonderful centre for spiritual refreshment, posted to facebook about Resurrection as a spiritual practice. It set me thinking about what that might mean for me this Easter. I have been very aware of a personal anniversary on Good Friday and Easter Saturday, of a letter I wrote and sent a year ago and of its consequences.
Many of you will have gathered that in recent months - actually I'm shocked to realise that it is not only recent months but quite a lot longer than that - things have been difficult. I've been fortunate that I have never entirely lost my laughter but I have struggled with desperate sadness, depression and suicidal feelings for long months. Some of it has its roots situationally, some personally.
During this time friends and mere aquaintances have seen me in tears more often than I can remember crying in the whole of the rest of my adult life. Some mornings I would wake up already weeping and not knowing why. Despite "knowing" quite a bit about depression I found experiencing this very distressing. Even now I wonder whether it is the path of integrity to try to write about it, and please I don't want sympathy. There was one day when I realised that I was living without any sense of future - for any serious theologian this is a pretty shocking realisation. Fortunately I'm not all that serious ... :-)
In "resurrection as a spiritual practice" this in particular triggered something for me "Find meaning in your experiences and speak the truth to power, and you help put death in its place."
It reminded me of standing next to many gravesides and throwing in earth, a way of both symbolizing and making real the fact that even though we love the one who is dead we are not buried with them.
Sometimes the only way we can put death in its place is by that separation. Sometimes the only thing to do is to shake dust off your feet and name the forces of death for what they are and put them in their place. I was struck by this at morning prayer today as we read St John Chysostom's Easter sermon - repeatedly and poetically he puts death in its place: "hell was in turmoil having been eclipsed." Resurrection begins when we name and identify death for what it is, leave it in its place and let life surge beyond and above it.
Sometimes of course part of that death which needs to be put in its rightful place is within each of us, is within me. When you're depressed dealing with that in a guilt free way is particularly difficult.
On Sunday I put on an apron as I was cooking - I am a very messy cook and should acutally wear an apron more often than I do in the kitchen. The apron says "woman with attitude", I was still wearing it when our guests arrived and it made them smile. Throughout all these months I have been fortunate to have remained in some way myself, essentially a woman with attitude, but it has been hard at times. And I think that the worst times have been those times when I have begun to take myself and my pain too seriously. I'm sure I have been desperately boring at times.
The apron belonged to my friend Suzanne, who took her own life. Wearing it on Easter Sunday was a tiny act of resistance against the forces of depression and death. Even when I weep I shall be a woman with attitude. Also I was able to wear her apron because I know that I have, so far at least, received enough support not to take the same path she did.
Somehow I find strength in vulnerability and hope to rediscover generosity.
This morning we listened to the story of the resurrection in Mark's gospel - the empty tomb. The emptiness of possibility, the void, the germ of transformation, the menace or threat of resurrection.
Joan Didion called the account of grieving for her husband the Year of Magical Thinking and I have understood that more clearly as I ploughed through these months of mess. Depression is in some way magical thinking. Learning to leave behind the obsessive meandering of the the grief-stricken depressive mind is perhaps the threat of resurrection for me this Eastertime - and please don't get me wrong this is not a judgement on others, just my path now. I hope.
So I suppose that this writing is in someways also more magical thinking. I know that as I have managed to get back to blogging I have begun to feel better and that as I have returned to reading I have felt the same. I also know that I have been very fortunate, I have not lost laughter or love completely and I have been blessed with friendship.
I wish I could say I feel I am a better person for going through all of this but I know quite clearly that I am not. Perhaps when I am at last able to forgive myself for that as well as much else I shall truly know that I am feeling better. John Chrysostom put it like this:
Let no one mourn that (s)he has fallen again and again;
for forgiveness has risen from the grave.
Each of us has to find what works for us. May you find yours if this is has also been part of your experience. May forgiveness of ourselves and of others rise from the grave for all of us.
Let's be people with attitude!

Easter blossoms, church going and festivities ...

2011-04-26T20:06:00.001+02:00

Menu:
Starters and appetisers
spicy beetroot blinis
Lightly poached green and white asparagus
fresh organic turpips
Italian plum tomatoes with basil
homemade mustard and balsamic mayonnaise
sour cream

Main course
Roast lamb
new potatoes
broad beans
gravy
Cardomon, pistacho and turnip greens fritata - the vegetarian option

Cheeses
Bleu de Termignon
Stilton
Laguiole
brie à l'ail de l'ours

desert
chocolate mousse
strawberries in cointreau and passion fruit

Coffee - much needed!
find our wine here!

Word of the day la Glycine - Wisteria blossoms in Ferney Voltaire - the locals certainly know how to "cultiver leur jardin"

2011-04-26T19:35:00.001+02:00

These pictures of just one of the local wisterias in flower were taken on Easter Sunday as we walked down from the temple. There is an even more impressive wisteria growing across the driveway in the house just opposite this one. Back home in the rue de Versoix, our neighbour planted a wisteria which is finally flowering this year and has already reached 15 foot up to his kitchen window.
So sad I cannot post the scent of these glorious blossoms via my blog. Once though, many years ago, I did preach a rather good ecumenical sermon about the glorious honey made from the lilac, wisteria and blackthorn flowers intermingled in an Oxford college garden - the sermon however was preached in a French roman Catholic church!
For now I just concentrate on the wonderful dancing beauty of these ephemeral blooms and I hope that something in this Eastertide will be blooming and perfuming your lives with hope, meaning and glory.

Easter Sunday wine

2011-04-25T21:12:00.000+02:00

Our friend Olive regularly brings wine to our house for special occasions - we do absolutely nothing to warrant this generosity, we are really rather indolent friends ... Anyway, thanks to her provisions, yesterday lunchtime we drank two extraordinary and very delicious bottles of "La Conseillante" from the year before we arrived in France ... we also drank a bottle of Candian icewine which had been a gift for a wonderful wedding I had pleasure taking a couple of years ago. After church in the morning one of the parishioners had brought a magnum of champagne to be shared after the service with the coffee and biscuits ... it's a great Easter tradition.
Meanwhile the Vermentino is the one wine we actually bought ourselves, and is considerably more modestly priced!
Just to reassure you, there was juice and much water consumed as well and there were more than just the two of us for lunch ... menu to follow!

Easter bunnies on the communion table ...

2011-04-25T20:40:00.001+02:00

The service yesterday morning in Ferney was really good, great music, a very mixed congregation with lots of children, a good sermon grappling with resurrection in a time of bad news, reference in the notices to the upcoming Peace Convocation in Jamaica, coffee and Champagne served after the service ... and bunny rabbits and orchids on the communion table. I just had to get a picture ...

Mid-week evening drinks and Friday lunch

2011-04-23T14:14:00.000+02:00

Within a few seconds walk from our front door ... restaurants and drinking establishments, out of shot there's a book shop, boulangerie and around another corner there's a newspaper shop and supermarket. the sort of place in France we might choose to go and spend our holiday. But this is where we live. Time to count our blessings and enjoy.

Easter Saturday at the Ferney market

2011-04-23T11:28:00.000+02:00

Asparagus and borad beans, rhubarb, basil, mint, beetroot, tomatoes, carrots, new potatoes and lost of salad and some peonies not in shot and waiting to be put in a vase.

A poem by Charles Causely as we meditate the cross ...

2011-04-22T15:34:00.003+02:00

From a Normandy crucifix of 1632

I am the great sun

I am the great sun, but you do not see me,
I am your husband, but you turn away.
I am the captive, but you do not free me,
I am the captain but you will not obey.

I am the truth, but you will not believe me,
I am the city where you will not stay.
I am your wife, your child, but you will leave me,
I am that God to whom you will not pray.

I am your counsel, but you will not hear me,
I am your lover whom you will betray.
I am the victor, but you do not cheer me,
I am the holy dove whom you will slay.

I am your life, but if you will not name me,
Seal up your soul with tears, and never blame me.

Charles Causley

Ways of meaning on Good Friday

2011-04-22T10:43:00.005+02:00

In German it's called Karfreitag - "Kar" it would seem is derived from an old-high-German word "chara", which means complaint, misery or mourning, so "grief Friday" or "grieving Friday". I can almost hear the keening or the lament in "chara". In English we call it Good Friday - good also has the meaning of "pious" or "holy". In Norwegian it's called Langfredag - long Friday, perhaps because of the unbearable time spent watching and waiting for death, or perhaps just the long time spent in church services in centuries gone by ... In French the day is called vendredi saint - holy Friday...
These bits and pieces of meaning and translation all contribute to my sense of this day in the Christian calendar. In addition there are the memories of other Good Fridays, of my father carrying the cross on the walk of witness into the town centre in the year that he was mayor, of my mother playing passion chorals on the violin, of preaching, of praying, of music and silence. And of Hans Ruedi Weber's book "On a Friday Noon", given to me for my 18th birthday. Christ's generous suffering and death speaks of so many other deaths, due to human violence and intolerance ... have we learnt from the passion story, have I learnt? Was I there when they crucified my Lord? ... well no, but in many ways I am still there for he is still being crucified, raped, violated, stoned, strung up today.

Fragments for Maundy Thursday

2011-04-21T23:22:00.002+02:00

We weave together on this day
Perfume and water
Wine and bread
Tales of liberation
Meals of hope and a story of deep, deep betrayal
We know that death will follow the bread and the wine
And yet they still speak of hope
Of a red sea crossed
Of an older covenant fulfilled and a new one to be fulfilled in our wtiness

And then a Brazilian Friend on Facebook translated the beginning to my homily ...

Fragmentos de uma Quinta-feira Santa.
Tecemos juntos neste dia
Perfume e água
Vinho e pão
... Contos de libertação
......Refeições de esperança e de uma história de profunda, profunda, traição
Sabemos que a morte seguirá o pão eo vinho
E ainda assim eles nos falam de esperança
De um mar vermelho atravessado
De uma antiga aliança cumprida e uma nova para ser cumprida em nosso testemunho ...