An attempt at some kennings "en français"

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

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!

Thoughts about "Finitude" at the beginning of a journey

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.

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

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?

Word of the day - entonnoir à conversion

Those who follow me on twitter know that I attended a good seminar on social media last week at the university of Geneva. One of the terms I really liked was "entonnoir à conversion" - conversion funnel.
I suppose it made me smile that a term which has very clear theological overtones for me is really just a blatant way to get people to find their way more easily around websites and even spend money there.
However advocacy websites need to provide some kind of similar simple pay off. Too often we make it really complicated for people to sign a petition, upload a photo or click and say they agree or support us. In the facebook quick click "like" generation we really need to get with the programme. Too often we get obsessed with wanting information from people rather than in building the relationship and facilitating involvement.
More about the seminar in coming days - it's given me lots ot think about.
However oddly enough it was the theological topic of conversion that was the conversion funnel that got me into blogging, as this blog started with a blog about ethical conversion.

Should theology be "well balanced"?

Perhaps this post should be entitled "feminist theology and the meaning of life".
Last night our feminist theology group listened to a man talking about his life, discovering and learning to appreciate his Jewish heritiage while being a Christian minister. Pierre Strauss had brought with him beautiful examples of artistic calligraphy and a deep understanding of Kabbalistic Jewish spirituality. He had obviously prepared much more than he had time to share with us last night, but what was interestingwas how his meditative approach to pulling together the threads of his own life helped us to do the same with our lives, bringing together spirituality and social and political action. It was a good evening reflecting on the past and the future while living in the here and now.
At the end of the evening we came back once more - as it would seem so often in my life - to Chouraqui's translation of the Beatitudes as "En Marche". I've written about that so often that I won't do so again for the time being - you can read more here and here.

Meanwhile, as a result of our evening I put the following post up on facebook and got involved in a discussion with a colleague based in Paris about feminist theology. Which led me to make the statement "good theology is not well-balanced" - my idea I suppose being that good theology is based on conviction as well as on criticial analysis - heart and mind. Later thisled me to ponder that perhaps in ecumenism it is this badly behaved element in theological interaction that is sometimes missing - we are too busy being well-behaved, well balanced and can sometimes sadly lack conviciton or inspiration.

Anyway here is an extract from my facebook conversation with Gilles, who is minister at Le Marais in Paris - they are about to start webcasting all of their Sunday services which I think is a really great idea. I watched last week and thought it was really good, very straightforward and unshowy. Le Marais has one of the best church websites out there and an extraordinary intercultural and multilingual ministry in the heart of Paris.

Been at a very interesting evening of feminist theology, with beautiful Hebrew calligraphy and the potential for listening to be the motor for social change

GB: Feminist theology ?... what does it mean ?

Can you tell me some places where I could hear some good male chauvinist theology

JS: male chauvinist theology is not good theology. However if you're that taken with it you can just pop in to almost any local church. The speaker at our group this evenign was a man btw
GB http://www.la-croix.com/afp.static/pages/110301151311.7n3snl7u.htm
GB I have the intuition that female chauvinism is not the good answer to male chauvinism ;-)

JS ‎@Gilles and I have the firm conviction that feminist theology has never been about female chauvinism ... tho of course it is often portrayed that way :-)
Sarah More details? Sounds interesting.
GB So if feminist theology is this, what is the well-balanced male theology ? Why should theology be male and female ? I thought that there were no more male and female in Christ ? - I'm a bit provocative, but in a real desire to understand those things...
JS @Gilles one day - perhaps quite soon as I shall move to Paris this Autumn - I shall give you my considered opinion of "well-balanced male theology" - over a good bottle of wine I think. Of course in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek neither male nor female.

And "good theology" is not well-balanced - hence the need for mission theologies, feminist theologies, liberation theologies, evangeilism theologies, black theologies etc. Btw I suspect that both male and female French Protestants practise a form of womanist theology - in which male and female Protestants hold together for the sake of identity.
...
And of course "Well balanced male theology" is what some say our institutions have been serving up for several hundred years - some of it is even not all that bad - I think that is what some of the well-balanced males tell me.

Probably I am not very well-balanced, and of course I am not male.

Tomorrow, today, yesterday ...

In recent weeks and months I have probably been doing too much thinking, reflecting and pondering. One of the reasons perhaps for the hiatus on this blog ... there are also others which must for the moment remain unbloggable.
Tomorrow night I shall once more be at the feminist theology group, Georgette Gribi who is a cheesemaker, mother of four and also has a doctorate in theology, will be leading us in thinking about the person of Ruth: Ruth la Moabite : comment habiter son présent, entre un passé tragique et un avenir incertain ? (Ruth the Moabite: how to live in the present between a tragic past and an uncertain future?) I'm looking forward to it.
This year we've had as our overall theme "Between the past and the future how to live in the present?" I have had to confront various personal demons as we deepened reflection of the theme but, having worked through some (though not all) of that, I've been thinking about what it is that we are at any one point in our lives? Am I the sum of my past - the sum of my achievements and failures; of my work, qualifications and relationships up until now? Am I the sum of my future - the sum of my dreams, my hopes, my unexpressed half-formulated desires, of all that may be and could become? Somehow as I live in the present I live between the accomplishments and failures of the past and the hope and possibilities of becoming of the future.
The only way to live in the present has to be with some kind of humility - yes I did once do that, perhaps I will again but for now I am doing this ... and enjoying life and love and what John O'Donohue would call "the shape of a day". I am currently reading his Divine Beauty on the bus in the mornings. Perhaps the kind of living in the present moment he encourages is exmplified by this ""Let us beging to learn how to bless one another".
Maybe as I stumble between the past and the future, incoherently and unknowingly it will be important for me to realise how much I have been and will be blessed by others - but also how much I am blessed in the present I am so much part of.
Part of living in the present is to accept the vulnerability of the moment that is now, but it is also to give thanks for all that has been. Hence the picture of the Canal du Midi. Just thinking of it reminds me of holiday, repose and gentle days - part of the past and also hope for the future.

Midwifery for the barren - Advent thoughts

Midwifery for the barren

She is caught, between two men and her passion
She is caught wanting to give birth to the future
But has lost her voice
They control the money and the power
She no longer even controls her emotion

For a seemingly endless few weeks the belly of her future seemed empty
She was bereft of tomorrow
No heartbeat could be detected
But the pain and the tears...

Small everyday petty betrayal gnawed at her sense of self
Yet the depression has been a tool
And now she senses the future might once more be quickening
How to overcome her fear and midwife a future
Shining with a passion for integrity and not hatred
How to midwife a future of light and meaning

So this barren woman will bear the birthpangs
And the pushing
And the long hard labour
Yet if the men who know the joy of having children
Insist on carrying away the power as their right
The future will continue to be stillborn
And the only one to notice will be her
For they are lost in their dreams of control

She will not let her intellect be appeased
Nor her sense of humour depart
Without laughter the future will remain barren
Without joy there is no heartbeat
Even and especially the barren have a stake in the future

Throughout she will be challenged by her own preaching
And the vision she received through her tears
Only together can they do this
Only together

Will she find strength once more in generosity
And learn to go forwards, wounded but not bitter
Controlling the story … and giving it away

On being a midwife - are women really that subversive

I had a wonderful and powerful conversation with a good friend today. We talked of midwifery and the pain of our roles, trying to birth something into being and being hindered and held back, sometimes by not daring enough to be ourselves, to take on what my friend calls "our grace-filled subversive role as women". She pointed to the five women cited in Christ's genealogy in Matthew's gospel as being powerful subversive models in different sorts of ways:
Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba and "Miriam of Nazareth" - as my friend always calls her.

These women, inscribed through grace into the history of a male saviour, bear the future subversively, carry children in their bellies and give birth to the future despite everything - being seen as prostitutes, foreigners, wife of the wrong man, single mothers ...
Of course even the men God chooses to write salvation history through are hardly the handsome hero types - Moses has a speech impediment, David is the youngest son (and becomes more than just a bit of a philanderer), Abraham is such a man's man that he pretends his wife is his sister to get himself out of a sticky situation ... Cain kills his brother, Jacob steals his brother's blessing...

Then of course there is Joseph. If he had dared perhaps Shakespeare would have said Joseph was cuckolded by God. Earlier this week my friend challenged we female midwives to think about Joseph as a midwife, certainly as a birth attendant, at Jesus's birth. So many male partners are the only ones there to help new life into the world, to tend to the women they love at this most critical of times. Just as there are female doctors so there are also male midwives.
As we trangress and bend gender roles all of us take on some of the power of the subversives.
That subversive power is graced by God.
Happy Advent, happ waiting.

Dealers in purple - a sermon

Well here is my sermon from this morning. I think I shall call it "dealers in purple". I enjoyed praeching this morning, despite my sinusitis. Sometimes things just work and this simple service marking the UN's day for the elimination of violence against women on November 25 worked well by re-using material from earlier in teh year but framing it differently

Psalm 1
Acts 16 11-15

Blessed are those who build community for they will be blessed with the future

So, Brothers and sisters, women and men
How are you feeling this morning?
Are you feeling happy - thank God it's Monday!
Like those who meditate God's law in Psalm 1 do you feel like a tree planted by a stream of water?

Perhaps not (particularly given how very cold it is in the chapel this morning)
Perhaps you are feeling fatigued
even at the beginning of the week
perhaps compassion fatigue has set in
or commitment fatigue
perhaps you are wary and weary of new campaigns and challenges.

More than 20 years ago in one of the most privileged environments in the world I experienced the awful complacency and cynicism compassion fatigue can create
I was studying theology at the University of Oxford and all students for church ministry that year were invited to an all day ecumenical seminar organized by Christian Aid (I’ll spare you the details of how much of an ecumenical achievement it was to simply get all of the denominations to agree to such a day.) We gathered for prayers, there were lectures and workshops on various issues linked to development and advocacy. All of the workshops were able to take place with one exception. Almost noone had signed up for the workshop on women and poverty - I still remember Michael Taylor then director of Christian Aid, challenging us pretty forcefully about both our understanding and our commitment. He faced us with our own smugness and complacency about political correctness. Across the world then as today, the poorest of the poor are women. Of course this doesn’t mean that there are not men living in abject poverty – unfortunately there are of course millions of men and boys suffering from the iniquities of poverty, injustice and war. For every unjustly poor man there is an even poorer woman.

A Monday morning meditation is not the place to remind you of the statistics, you can easily look them up on google yourselves. But it is not a coincidence that some of the key areas for achieving the millennium development goals have to do with women’s health and the access of girls to education.
Later this week the UN will mark once more the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against women. A reminder of one of the additional burdens women across the world bear.

However, before I continue in this perhaps rather ranting tone, I think I should remind myself of a couple of lines by one of my favourite poets and also invite all of us not to a rant but to a celebration:
The German poet Berthold Brecht wrote
"Even anger against injustice makes the voice grow harsh.
Alas we who wished to lay the foundations of kindness could not ourselves be kind."

Today I really don’t want my voice to grow harsh – not only because I’m nearly losing it thanks to my sinusitis. Today I want to point to the possibility and the reality of what we achieve as a community of women and men together. I don’t want to focus yet again on women as victims. I want much more to encourage us to commit to what we can do together as women and men.

Particularly this week when the World Communion of Reformed Churches and the World Council of Churches will mark the publication of a new book “In God’s Image From Hegemony to Partnership – a church manual promoting positive masculinities”


So with Fulata (on Friday) we looked for a positive female biblical role model who could speak to the community of women and men and we decided to choose the story of Lydia for this morning’s meditation.
The first person on the continent of Europe to become a Christian, to hear and believe in the good news is a woman – without her many of us here might never have become followers of Jesus Christ. She gave generations afterwards a future.

Lydia invites those with the message she believes in into her home, they are persuaded by her invitation.
She allows them close to her
She shares with them, together community is built

The evangelisers will move on

But one evangeliser will also stay put, in her own community, living out her baptism in her own place, converting those she comes into contact with through family life and business
Truly she is blessed with the future.

There was of course another reason Fulata and I chose Lydia
She was a dealer in purple 
Purple - the colour of the women’s movement,
the colour of nobility and royalty and riches
Was she a well off business woman or a poor worker selling on the dye she worked long hours to make? Scholars differ

When I think back to that ecumenical day in Oxford and particularly to the female colleagues I trained alongside from the Church of England, I admit to feeling a little sad and angry.

Not one of those women training with me can yet become a bishop and exercise the leadership of oversight in their church. When we were training together we still didn’t know whether they would be allowed to even become priests.
None of them can officially deal in purple yet … some have already retired before this will be possible for them.

(Perhaps I should add that I come from a church that doesn’t deal in purple for either men or women, those who exercise oversight have in recent decades included women. We did though ordain the first woman to the Christian ministry in Britain in 1917 – a year before women in that country had the vote. And just over two years ago we appointed the UK’s first woman church leader at the national level.)


All of us need to overcome fatigue and reinvigorate our commitment. One of the ways I do that is by reading detective fiction, issues seems to get resolved more finally than in some theological circles. I tend to feel that much of the best detective fiction is written by women. I was though surprised when re-reading one of my favourite authors Sara Paretsky - to find detective fiction also offering me encouragement and not just escapism:

"you must live in hope, the hope that your work can make a difference in the world."

Let us never fall into complacent fatigue
But let us never forget to celebrate what we are able to do together as women and men, men and women.

As I was thinking about some symbolic action we could all participate in together in this morning's service I realised that a really important practical thing we can commit to together would be to stand together as women and men for climate justice.

Annegret and I have prepared some of the posters and at the end of the service I invite you to hold the posters and take one another's photos with you mobile phones and cameras and then upload them to the campaign part of the WCC website as part of the photo petition. (or on facebook)
The posters read:
We Care for Creation
Climate Justice Now!
And this is my favourite, I think they used to say love your neighbour even when he plays trombone but this one says: Love your neighbour: Fight climate change

It is only by being together as the community of women and men who follow Jesus Christ that we will be able to combat climate change and so much else besides.
I pray that we may continue to build and celebrate that community.
In that way, bishops or not, we shall all exercise oversight and be dealers in purple, bearing witness to our baptism.

Blessed are those who build community
For they are blessed with the future

Amen

Powerlessness and grieving for the future ...

Reading again about Henning Luther's theology of fragments and his idea that we all have some fragment of the future, a hope for future development, a longing (I bet the German word he used would have been the glorious "Sehnsucht") to go beyond what we are in the present, made me realise that part of my problem in recent months has been grieving for a future that will never take place.
Grief doesn't always make for clear sightedness - blinded by tears it is not easy to see either within or without. But just because one version of the future is no longer possible does not mean that there is no future. Anyway what right do I have to grieve for a future which never "belonged" to me anyway?
As I have been thinking about grieving and fragments, tears and trying to see both myself and the future more clearly I've also been thinking about power and powerlessness. People who know and experience me would probably be surprised to hear me talk about feeling powerless. Sometimes I wonder whether claiming to feel powerless isn't a bit of a cop out, a way of trying to be a victim or perhaps another way of avoiding taking responsibibilty for "things". Perhaps deep within I also recognise that claiming to be powerless can often be a way of denying the power I do have.
From the perspective of feminist theology where the image both of a God who weeps and of celebrating a God who is vulnerable and powerless has been important to my theological formation, I fin it then challenging to be the weeping person experiencing some powerlessness. Perhaps what I'm trying to say is that despite wanting to celebrate these more vulnerable, less almighty images of God I still have problems integrating them into my deeper spiritual understanding. Deep within me resides the judging God of my childhood; the weeping, vulnerable, alongside God I preach of and beleive in, and seem able to convince others of, is often absent for me. The integration of what I believe and what is going on within me is certainly still fragmentary at the best, and I realise that I am even here only partially able to name it.
Then as I was writing this, a gift from a friend came to mind. She sent me this quote:
"When I dare to be powerful--to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid." It's by Audre Lorde.
So perhaps as I wipe away my tears and remember my sense of powerlessness I must also dare to name and own that power I do have and simply move forwards. It may be painful, but I am sure it will also be joyful, for I have always known laughter and humour and that is a profound blessing.

"I'm so terribly sorry I think I may have to be taken to hospital ..."

Life has been busy. Despite a wonderful autumn holiday, I have been a bit stressed and also, well let's just say sad of late. Being a woman in my late 40s (I don't think I like writing that very much!) I'm also facing a problem of irregular sleeping patterns - many women experience this as the menopause begins.

On Tuesday evening nearly a fortnight ago we had as ever a wonderful encounter at our feminist theology group led by Anne Claire Rivolet. I was terribly tired and hadn't eaten anything much all day (anyone who knows me will know how rare that is!) until I got to feast upon a slice of Cornelia's delicious pecan and chocolate cake. (Cornelia provides tea, coffee and edibles to start our evenings.) The evening went well - as almost always - and there were nearly 20 of us there. I was very tired though - I had been interpreting non-stop all morning and been up late.

As we spoke about living in God's present, the session was also quite emotionally charged - at least for me.
Then while standing around chatting after most people had left I suddenly found myself saying to the person opposite me "I'm terribly sorry I think I'm having a stroke. Maybe I should go to hospital." I had suddenly found my tongue and lips not doing what I wanted - as if they had gone to the dentist. I was quite frightened - except that I was also quite calm, I wasn't at all sure whether actual words would come out of my mouth and be understandable.

And then after about 45 seconds, maybe a bit longer I was fine again and didn't need to go to hospital. But it was all a bit of a shock.

I'm so used to living in denial where my MS is concerned that I am not prepared for its more strange manifestations. The last time something like this happened to me was about 4 years ago when my left hand stopped working for about 30 seconds.

After we had all calmed down, one of the women said to me laughing "You know I think I'm always going to remember you apologizing for disturbing things by maybe needing to go to hospital for something serious." Oh dear ...

Anyway thanks to all who looked after me and drove me home. Afterwards I had something to eat, went to bed, slept and was up and well the next day.

So I give thanks.

Meanwhile a colleague who travelling in September was not so fortunate and is still receiving care for the stroke she suffered while in Scotland. Lois you are in our prayers, may your recovery be full and may all be well, especially now you are finally back in the US and closer to friends and family.

Between the past, present and the future at feminist theology

It is nearly two weeks since our feminist theology evening with the excellent Anne Claire Rivolet.
We are this year looking at "Between the past and the future, living in the present" at our encounters this year and Anne Claire invited us to have both a personal and biblical approach to the question of "living in the present"
She began by asking whether "living in the present" or "living the present" (the French is Vivre le présent) is the same as "consuming the present, building the present, suffering or being subjected to the present". What is the present that the God of Jesus Christ gives us to live?
She ended this introduction with the brilliant phrase "my faith inscribes me in a different time to my watch!"
She then asked us to think about the kingdom, God's commonwealth which calls us to be actors in the present. We then spent some time thinking personally about an image from our own lives that brought this idea together for us. Anne Claire also encouraged us to think of a gospel or biblical passage which heléped us see this more clearly.
As always we came up with come wonderful examples - livign in the present is looking at the wheat rather than the tares, to not look at the speck in others eyes or even the beam in our own but to focus on what is growing and good. some spoke of the joy of simple Christmas pleasures; of the joy of recognizing that one's church is outside the church and being in the present of unconditional welcome of the other...

My favourite story was of the heavily pregnant 42 year old single woman who distributes communion in her local Catholic church. Living in God's present, included fully by her church, carrying the future and knowing it will be her baby and God's child, offering a present taste of the kingdom to those receiving the host from her hands.

In this time of exchange I realised and was able to speak about some of my own recent pain and sense of hopelessness. The biblical image I chose to focus on was of the grain growing in secret from Mark 4:26 - to focus on what is growing now almost unnoticed until suddenly it is time for the harvest.
I spoke about how in recent months I had discovered how destructive of the present it is to live without any sense of the future, or any sense of having a role in making that future. As I said that with a heavy heart I also recognized how much this is the case for so many, perhaps even the majority of the world's population. Subjected to the adversity of the present without being given any real stake in the future.
I was also able to say though that in my personal depression something had broken through the previous evening, a kindly offer to take me home, an attempt to rebuild trust. Strangely it was only as I began to see the future again that I realised how much I had been missing it and weeping for it. Yet somehow the seed of it had been sown and was busy growing, I sense there is a long way yet to go until harvest yet I can see that perhaps the fields may turn green and then gold again.

As our discussion moved forwards looking at how the present is the time of revelation, God is revealed in the here and now. Given to us in our own time. Our human time when it is penetrated by the time of God becomes an incarnation.
Much of what Anne Claire shared with us and encouraged us to share together showed how it is spiritual understanding, the work of wisdom and spirituality which help us piece together understanding and commitment to God's future-filled present. this made me think of the work of Sarah Coakley and Grace Jantzen, both working in the area of feminist theology and both insisting on the insights of mysticism and spirituality for theological understanding. A great shaem that neither of them have been translated into French.

Anne Claire is about to move from her responsibilities at the Ecumencial Centre for Catechism here in Geneva to become part of the Swiss religious broadcasting work based in Lausanne. She'll begin on December 1 so we wish her well with this new professional challenge and with her recent marriage. Our thanks to her for imbuing our present with a sense of God's ongoing future. That's what helps us go on living and find meaning in the here and now.

Bravery, generosity and feminist theology

Yesterday evening I came home and decided to try for something a bit more serious than the previous day's reading on theology and detective fiction (edifying though that had been).
Another of the books that arrived this week from the SCM sale is Controversies in Feminist Theology by Lisa Isherwood and the late Marcella Althaus-Reid.
As I read I was moved to find two writers putting so succinctly things I have not actively tried to express myself. I "recognised" something of myself in what they write. It was like an ache I hadn't realised I had suddenly no longer being there, yet the ache was in some way replaced by a deep longing and also some sadness. The resonance with their thoughts did me good - the life of the mind can be healing even when it rouses painful emotions.
Then this afternoon a colleague came to see me, a person so wonderfully centred and clear about her role and convictions. We talked about a publication project and I mentioned my reading from the previous evening. She had known Althaus-Reid, studied with and been inspired by her. We spoke about difficulties and motivations, about bravery and tears being the source of strenght. We spoke also of future projects, things we wanted to write, people we wanted to get to write and the idea of having a feminist theology lunch. When she left she said "As Marcella said 'our work continues'". It was a strange sort of blessing but I recognise it for the benediction it was - our work continues. Ah the generosity of a conversation.

So here are a few bits and pieces from the introduction to controversies in feminist theology which resonated particularly with me - not even for reasons I can clearly state, they simply "echoed" with me as the French would have it.

"What feminist theologies offer, when we get it right, are a political challenge to a world that believes, or large parts seem to, that democracy once decided on can be exported with bombs and repression for the good of all. Freedom through death is a concept feminist theologies gave up on long ago! For feminist theologies, democracy means that controversy will remain at the heart of what we do and that it will fuel us to greater engagement with a world in need of our passion. Our ability to live with disunity is our greatest strength and our greatest question remains how to have the disputes, not whether to have them.
Feminists have always been brave women; they have and do put their lives on the line for the debate to be opened or to continue. Most of us are never asked to actually lay down our lives but we do have to show bravery in the way in which we continue to question and not hide behind either moral certainty or the morality that calls some not to offend the many. We need to be brave in continually questioning our own thoughts and keeping those too open to the unfolding future; a future that 'takes place every time a possibility is imagined, a collective self reflection takes place, a dispute over values, priorities and language emerges' ...Feminist theologies arise from the the lives of allwomen and are aimed at expanding those lives through justice-seeking and right-relation, this is an embodied activity which loses all credibility when confined to the page."

I cried, perhaps with recognition or something else, as I read that last night and tears fell this evening again as I typed these words.

Wishes and the future - from Rilke

"Wishes are the memories coming from our future." Rilke

This little quote from Rilke really pleased me as I read it last night. It made me think once more of Jürgen Ebach's wonderful book title Errinerte Zukunft und erhoffte Vergangenheit - A remembered future and a hoped for past.

And our theme in the feminist theology group this year is between the past and the future living in the present.

La rebelle - a bottle of wine in the feminist tradition

I said it would take at least 10 posts to begin to do justice to our feminist theology evening last night and I sense that I am probably going to run out of energy before I get to the end of what I want to say - unlike our brilliant 89 year old speaker Jacqueline Berenstein Wavre.

We always give our speakers a present to say thank you for their time and last night Ria carefully included a bottle of local pinot noir wine from this vinyard which celebrates local Genevan and Swiss personalities for it various "cuvées".

La rebelle is the female rebel and as soon as Jacqueline received it she started to talk to us about Emilie Gourd in whose memory it is named. I did not know that Gourd had founded an early feminist journal called "le mouvement féministe" in 1912. It will celebrate its 100 anniversary in just under two years. The journal has gone through problems in recent years as has much print media but is continuing with a web presence which I think I may have manged to track down here.

As is often the case when you remember one person from the past you also recall others and speaking about Emilie Gourd prompted Jacqueline to talk to us also about her friend Jeanne Hersch, who had been a close friend of her husband's and a passionate defender of human rights.
So much to learn about about women's history, so much to read, so much to be enlivened by ... just like good rebellious wine!

"La Rebelle" rend hommage à Emilie Gourd, Genevoise qui se battra toute sa vie pour la condition féminine. Ce n’est qu’en 1960, quatorze ans après sa mort, que son rêve se réalise enfin : le droit de vote est accordé aux citoyennes genevoises.

Between the past and the present, live in the present

Jacqueline Berenstein Wavre is pictured here speaking to us at our first evening of feminist theology for the new year. She chose words from Judges 6.14 - the vocation of Gideon - as her leitmotif for the evening - somehow I find this works and resonates much better in French than in English "Va avec la force que tu as". "Go in the strength you have" really doesn't have quite the same élan at all!

She used this phrase to talk about her life and political campaigns - about which more in a later post - but also more particularly to speak abotu what she had discovered really quite late on in life through attending our feminist theology group. "I'm not a theologian but I do have a Bible at home" she said.

Surprisingly it was an evening with Armenian Orthodox theologian Teny Pirri Simonian which gave her most pause for thought. Until then Jacqeuline admits to never having thought much about the Holy Spirit. Thinking about the spirit helped Jacqueline to look at her own life through a rather different lens and consider the energy that drove her forwards and sustained her. None of the campaigns she was involved in were won quickly. Still today she is living proof of extraordinary tenacity.

I was deeply moved to hear Jacqueline speak about her husband, whom she married when she was 40 and who was a secular Jew. He was a lawyer and Jacqueline spoke about how important law is in Judaism and how important faith is in Christianity - in French of course this has the lovely assonance of "loi et foi". In our wide ranging discussion following her presentation I mentioned that the festival of the law in Judaism was taken over in Christianity as the festival of the Spirit - Pentecost.

Et Dieu créa la femme - an amazing evening at feminist theology ...

It will take me about ten posts to begin to try to communicate the sheer joy and energy that I felt after last night's first feminist theology session of the new season.

Ria van Beek had the brilliant idea that we should invite Jacqueline Berenstein Wavre to speak to our group. A few years ago Jacqueline, a famous local Swiss politician and women's rights activist turned up to our group and we felt very honoured. She was genuinely interested in learning more about the faith into which she had been baptised and the idea of feminist theology was quite new to her when we began our francophone group about 5 years ago.
Anyway I shall begin with the ending, here is Jacqueline putting on her her coat at the end of the evening and showing us that even her coat has a feminist message - "And God created woman... " Et Dieu créa la femme - the infamous Brigitte Bardot movie!
"So, Jacqueline" I said - after teasing her for being a socialist and wearingis this designer model coat - "is this coat a few years old?" "oh a bit more than that - I inherited it from one of my sisters in law!" and then she proudly displayed the taped repairs she had made "about 10 years ago"! Twirling like a young woman at least 70 years younger as she did so.

I came home last night feeling truly privileged to have been able to listen in quite intimate circumstances to an extraordinary woman talk about her life and times, her convictions, questions and also of course her current campaigns.
Jacqueline is 89 years young, full of life and the most wonderful example of tenacity and vivacity. She also spoke extremely powerfully about faith and law and the Holy Spirit, more on that in another post very soon I promise.
Ah yes and Jacqueline in on Facebook and also has a blog!

10 reasons why men should not be ordained

Hat-tip to my colleague John Baxter-Brown who posted the link to Theopoetic musings10 reasons why men shouldn't be ordained. Here are the first 5 - and of course I take these no more seriously than if the word "woman" replaced the word "man".

10. A man’s place is in the army.

9. For men who have children, their duties might distract them from the responsibilities of being a parent.

8. Their physical build indicates that men are more suited to tasks such as chopping down trees and wrestling mountain lions. It would be “unnatural” for them to do other forms of work.

7. Man was created before woman. It is therefore obvious that man was a prototype. Thus, they represent an experiment, rather than the crowning achievement of creation.

6. Men are too emotional to be priests or pastors. This is easily demonstrated by their conduct at football games and watching basketball tournaments.

Spirits minds and souls filled at feminist theology

Last night we had our final session of this year's feminsit theology cycle on finding you way and finding your voice. Our final June meeting is always a festive occasion, there is wine and juice and always delicous food. Those present last night spanned the generations from late 30s to mid 80s, it was a gentle and fun time. The weather was mild, our sharing spoke of friendship and relaxation. A special time sitting round the table tasting the delicious things each person had brought.

We looked back and shared what we had enjoyed, learned and taken with us from the varied interventions we've had this year. How the theme had or had not spoken to us at the beginning of the year and how we are still journeying with our ways and finding our voices as our lives and paths progress. We began the food for thought part of our evening by reading a prayer/poem from Francine Carrillo - one of Geneva's mystical spiritual feminist writers. Towards the end we listened to some piano music by Bach which evoked pathways for the member of the group playing it. We spoke or kept silent about how the year had helped us find our way, find our voice and think. For many of us it had quite an inner journey through the different sessions and we found echos of the road we had taken in various places: - the letters page of Vie Protestante, in systemic approaches to psychological and organisational issues, in art, the way our group itself had evolved and found itself during the year ... and much more besides.
And while we were eating Anne Coïdan also told us about her discovery during a recent holiday to the USA of the author of the book featured here. Woman on the Cross by Pierre Delattre sounds like quite a read, something for the summer perhaps. Although the author was born in France he moved the US when just six years old - so far the book doesn't seem to exist in French translation. A shame. Here's an extract from a review:

A stirring and poignant tale about a man and a woman who serve their god and goddess in the most intimate, bodily ways. Lyric and haunting, fierce and tender, Woman on the Cross brings subtlety and depth and an unprecedented twist to the ancient tradition of the Passion Play.

Meanwhile our feminist theology group will meet again on September 12th, our theme for next year: "Entre le passé et l'avenir, vivre le présent". And our first speaker will be the splendid Jacqueline Barenstein-Wavre a local Genevan politician dnd campaigner for women's rights. She's agreed to speak on the verse she received for her confirmation "va avec la force que tu as". Many of us have a complex relationship with the institutions of the church and even with faith itself, yet the texts of faith still speak deeply to us and are often the impetus for our lives.