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

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.

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

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?

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

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!

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

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 ...

Giving thanks ...

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

Today

"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.

Memories of Berlin - 2 - the underbelly of a city

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.

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

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!

Bal populaire, 14 July and la pyrosymphonie

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.

The triumph of life - a poem by Marjorie Pizer

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 ...

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

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?

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

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.

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

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.

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

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!

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

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.

The valley of consolation ...

This evening on the eve of Maundy Thursday I have made a surprise discovery.
There is a place not very far from where we live up in the Jura mountains in the Franc-comtois called the "val de consolation" or the valley of consolation. Up in the Jura there are many strange and extremely beautiful geological formations and wonders but this is not one we have visited so far.
I try hard not to write too much on my blog about the total despair I sometimes feel, my inner pain, its complete pointlessness and uncommunicability. Silence is sometimes the only option. Yet in my own version of the dark night of the soul, I have been offered much solace, support and humour. The promise too that there is a way forwards, somehow - though at the worst I have sometimes felt as if the present was no longer attached to a future. I have been fortunate that my laughter has never completely left me - perhaps the most frightening time was when I began to take myself far too seriously. If you are British and this happens to you then you know that things are pretty bad!
Psalm 23 talks about the valley of the shadow of death but by pure chance this evening I dscovered the existence of the valley of consolation. So wonderful. Just knowing that people could be so inspired as to give a glorious green wooded valley such a wonderful name lifts my spirits. And the fact that it is not far away from where I live speaks to me too. See, something green and abundant and beautiful is already there - you just need to find it and it may be closer than you realise. Perhaps this all sounds too easy and rather too much like Chicken Soup for the Soul. Our need for consolation may indeed be insatiable, but that consolation may sometimes just be a google click away!
Christ risen from the dead promises the Spirit to his followers and friends, the comforter, the one who begins the work of consolation ...

Of tears, laughter and flowers ...

It is desperately hard to explain the personal pain one feels to someone else, and in some ways it is quite pointless yet of course entirely necessary. You can tell that one part of my reaction to the pain I myself feel comes from that British stiff upper lip school that doesn't let much hang out. The other part of me though speaks freely, perhaps too freely about how I feel. I can see how my pain shocks people, makes them step back and really - whatever their origins - hope that you will be well-mannered enough not to mention such distress again over the post lunch coffee. Hmmm ...
Today someone really saw my distress and didn't avoid it, he put his hands on my shoulders and showed compassion, he wasn't frightened by my pain. As that happened, I thought, thank God. It was quite a relief.
And then, as is the way of life, my stiff upper lip kicked in again and I decided I wouldn't write too much more about that side of things. Let's just say it's been a day when tears have threatened to dominate - even while I've been preparing budgets. It's a very strange state of affairs but oddly I've begun to realise too that just like when I have a cold I blow my nose, now too so long as I have enough hankies available, I can continue even if the computer screen looks a little blurry now and then.
Meanwhile, I also today heard a good and for me moving and invigorating sermon from my colleague Deenabandhu Manchala. Given that yesterday morning in church we had experienced one of the worst ever sermons, this morning really was a blessing. Bandhu spoke about how joy and the capacity to rejoice are signs both of resilience and of resistance. He preached on the text from Philipians 4.4 "Rejoice in the Lord always and again I say rejoice"

To be able to rejoice, to smile and be hopeful amidst fear, loss and adversity is a gift, a sign of resilience and of profound inner spiritual strength. It asserts that the spirit of life has the final word over the forces of death.

Listening to Bandhu preaching about the power and resources of joy I felt myself smiling and I also felt something of the Easter promise burning through into our Lenten reflections. I have often preached on "Easter laughter" but I had never take Philippians as my text. Lost in the pointless pain of depression it is easy, far too easy to forget joy and laughter, and their restorative resurrection values. I have been fortunate that throughout my own pain I have continued to be able to laugh and be joyful at least to some extent.

We can only rejoice and be happy when we have no fear. When violence is caused by the fear of the powerful, let us not preach non-violence to the victims, but in obedience to God, let us preach non-violence to the structures and cultures and to the agents of death and destruction. Let us call them to repentance, telling them to ‘rejoice in the Lord’, and not to fear and act violently, to submit themselves to God's sovereignty and peace. Let us therefore attempt to bring hope in the lives of the threatened through a discipleship of resistance, and transformation. Let us strive for justice and wait for peace to sprout and flourish.

Meanwhile we had some surprise visitors on Saturday afternoon who brought us flowers from the mountain top. It was an act of spontaneous pleasure and joy at having found such a perfect meadow on their part and we were the first people they knew on their way home. It was a lovely moment to see them standing there at the door, holding out the pretty posy pictured here, and to know with a smile on my face and a slightly sinking heart, that I had 10 minutes earlier decided to put off tidying the house for a little while longer ... aie! However, many who have experienced the untidy houses I have lived in may think that my levels of embarassment have perhaps not quite reached the required level for ensuring a tidy place!
The flowers from the mountain top will have faded and wilted by the end of the week but their meaning for me, the memory of their fragility and the smiles with which they were offered will remain. "Say it with flowers" the adverts used to say ... yet there was much that was unspoken in this small bunch of colour we received and which I placed in our favourite jug. So the yellow daffodils and the purple vetch speak for all that cannot be, for those things which cannot be said, for the deisre for joy even when this seems far off, for the promise that fear will truly be overcome.
For such small fragile yet powerful signs I give profound thanks.

So who are you? A manifestation of the human spirit or a failed reality?

The world in which you were born is just one model of reality. Other cultures are not failed attempts at being you they are unique manifestations of the human spirit. Wade Davis

Pretty little books by Elisabeth Ivanovsky

I managed to resist the first time I saw these lovely mini books by Elisabeth Ivanovsky but when in Paris last week I gave in and bought myself these 25 tiny little books, which are beautiful reproductions of books first published in the 1940s.
For me they are very evocative of the drawings and commentaries that my aunt used to do first in Berlin and then in London at the same period. Here books of drawing were bigger than these but have a similar flavour, Ivanovsky, like my aunt, was also a migrant. Perhaps that's part of what this style evokes for me.
Anyway, these really are books as works of art and I treasure them and love them. Tiny, pretty, pointless books that speak to me of fun, beauty, attention to detail, poetry and art. Looking at them makes me happy.

Birthday wine tasting

The weekend has been pleasantly busy with social pursuits as we celenbrated Stephen's birthday with a wine-tasting on Friday evening and Saturday morning. It was good to take time out with friends and fun to put together wine and cheese to share together.
Everyone attending brought a quote about wine. More details in a special guest post by Dr B.