"Toi qui gardes le silence" a hymn from Switzerland

I first sang the hymn "toi qui gardes le silence" at a ministers' retreat on the French shores of lake Geneva. We were looking over the water in the evening to the Swiss Canton de Vaud which is where the hymn origintated. There are not many hymns in French which take up a theme of social responsibility or offer new images of God and I was immediately drawn to this hymn written by the Commission jeunesse of the Eglise réformée du Canton de Vaud. It has a wonderful minor key melody by Olivier Nusslé - no MP3 available anywhere I'm afraid, I'm going to have to try and record it sometime.
I'm writing about it today becuase I have at last had a chance to read through the hymnbook that was produced for the CEC assembly, Gloria Deo. A rather good English translation of Toi qui gardes le silence is included in it - done by Isabelle Bousquet and Karina Graham.
One of the problems with the ubiquity of English is that it is very often English-language culture that gets exported and this is also very often true of spirituality and of hymns - Graham Kendrick is more likely to get translated than Claude Fraysse or writers from another language or culture. (If you also don't like "Shine Jesus shine" just try singing one of the other language versions where the lingusitic triteness is shall we say often further enhanced by translation!) So I was pleased to see this small effort in the opposite direction.
I was also glad to see Federico Pagura's wonderful Tenemos esperanza in Gloria Deo. Bishop Julio Ernesto Murray the President of CLAI, the Latin American Council of Churches, sang a verse of the hymn at the end of his hope-filled address to the assembly. Unfortunately one of the few hymn books on general sale which has Tenemos esperanza in it is currently out print - Agape published by OUP is a great resource so here's hoping that they will reprint soon.
Meanwhile here's the last verse of Toi qui gardes le silence in English - not quite the same without the great music but here you go:

Your world calls us to commitment
For your cause Lord we strive
In a world disintegrating,
your love, reinvigorating,
makes us new. You are strong.
We will follow you, our song.

Liberté, égalité ... gratuité

Last week's Réforme has a great article about how what is free is is just a mirage.
Gilles Boucomont, pastor in the Marais district of Paris and an economist has written an excellent brief rant about how there is no such thing as a free lunch. He actually makes the point that grace and gratuité (things that are for free) are not at all the same thing. In economics there is no such thing as something given away for free - even freeing nations from debt can be a way of tying them in to buying products from a rich nation.
There's also a great dossier in last week's Réforme to prepare the CEC assembly which has just taken a week out of my life. This week's has some good follow up and some great reporting from the brilliant Grand Kiff, where 1200 young people have gathered from France and further afield, there have been ecological fair trade counters and Calvin rap led by my brilliant colleague from WARC Jet den Hollander. Sounds fun but I admit I was too tired to get out there by the end of the CEC assembly. You may have gathered I am almost too tired to blog, this is truly tragic for my personal wellbeing ;-)

Apologies

Normal blogging service will return soon. I've just come back from Lyon where I was running both the press room and the documentation service for the CEC assembly. I was also trying to encourage some of young people to blog and I was also trying to tweet the whole assembly - together with others. It was great fun and the communications operation went really very well, but I worked and played a little bit too hard to find time to blog on my own blog so sorry about that. I'm not as young as I was and can't exist on 4 hours sleep, so sleep counted for more than blogging for once!
However, there are a number of half written posts that I'll try and work on in the next few days.

Follow us at the CEC assembly on Twitter and the blog

Don't forget to follow what is going on at the CEC Assembly on the CEC website but also on the Called to One Assembly blog and via twitter http://twitter.com/cecassembly

Now I'm off to see whether we can coax the photocopier through another day of slow and steady service!

Morning and evening, evening and morning another day at another internatiional church meeting

Staff began our meeting today by listening to Psalm 103 read by Colin Williams, the CEC general secretary. I found it both moving and uplifting to pray with 50 or so colleagues as we began 10 days of quite intensive and stressful work together. From Brussels, Strasburg and Geneva we gathered and by the end of today we have managed to achieve an enormous amount even if there have been a few frustrations on the way too! ;-)
Catherine, Laurent and Damian of our IT team have worked brilliantly and all the computers are unpacked, in place and plugged in. No one has been counting how many boxes we've moved up, down and around - just as well. And formatting of documents, trouble shooting, tweaking the website, preparing the hearings, sorting out interpretation, business plenaries and filling the bags for all the participants at the assembly ... et encore!
At the end of the day we are tired, but we know one another a bit better and we can see that our work is having some impact.
Towards the end of our meal this evening a choir of young people from Denmark sang beautifully for us. A moment of pure pleasure and grace at the end of a long day helping me to remember the morning's Psalm ...

Bless the Lord, O my soul,
and do not forget all his benefits ...
who redeems your life from the Pit,
who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,
who satisfies you with good as long as you live
so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.

Living like God in France ... or maybe not

So for our first meal as staff at the cec assembly we ate outisde in the cité internationale in Lyon. Although bottled water was on the table (which costs a fortune - really we must run an Ecumenical Water Network campaign against bottled water) there was no wine in evidence. I suspect the CEC finance director may have been in charge of the menu!
We talked about how in our different languages we try to ask for a jug of tap water when in a restaurant. Apparently when Jacques Chirac was mayor of Paris the way to do it in a restaurant there was to ask for some "château Chirac".
Despite the lack of wine, which is surely almost a sin agaisnt the Holy Spirit in France, the company and conversation over supper were wonderful. I was honoured to be sitting next to Archbishop Anastasios of Tirana and all Albania who was keen to know how the translation of his sermon for the opening worship on Wednesday was progressing. I was happy to be able to tell him that it is both translated and printed, and that we should be able to give him a copy once the boxes from the printers arrive tomorrow.
So despite Lyon's reputation for being the capital of French gastronomy, this evening we have not been "living like God in France" as the Germans call living well. Given the heat and the work we have waiting for us tomorrow it's just as well I think. My teetotal non-conformist forbears would approve of the water only approach of course.
Meanwhile the stewards have been on a treasure hunt through Lyon today, sounds quite fun, though it will have been hot work today.

Off to the Conference of European Churches Assembly in Lyon

My suitcase is packed and I'm about to set off for the assembly of the Conference of European Churches which is taking place just up the road in Lyon. I'm catching the train at 13.58.
Not sure at all whether I shall have time to blog much while there. The press room and youth desks are running a blog which has already started and we're also going to try and tweet the assembly which will be quite a challenge.

Called to One Hope in Christ - invitation to those under 30 to write essays on hope

The Conference of European Churches has launched an essay competition for young people the theme is: Called to One Hope in Christ: The relevance of Hope in Europe Today.
So if you're under thirty and have hopes for the future and for the here and now, start writing, start hoping and encourage others to as well, full details here. Closing date February 15th.

Called to one hope ...

This morning's session of the CEC central committee in Cyprus spent time discussing preparations for the 13th CEC assembly in Lyon, France next July.
Preparations are well under way, though it's going to be hard work for staff in the three CEC offices in Brussels, Strasbourg and Geneva. Smaranda Dochia the assembly secretary who is enthusiastic, hard-working and very well-organised, guided members of central committee through the plans for the assembly. The planning committee is hoping that this assembly will be more participative than previous ones and really look to the future of ecumenism in Europe.
Anyway you can find the special assembly issue of the CEC Monitor here - including an short meditation in French by me.