Evening prayers for justice and peace

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

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

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

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 ...

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.

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?

Morning meditation

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

What do you hold in your hands at the beginning of Holy Week - nails or palm branches?

For the beginning of Holy Week the service this morning in the ecumenical centre was called "From hosanna to crucify him".
In the meditation I asked - what do you have in your hands? Palm leaves, palm crosses, branches to greet the coming king? Or nails to crucify him?
There is such hope among the crowd as they strew their garments and give Christ the red carpet treatment - Hosanna is a cry of wanting to be saved, save us, be our saviour ...
Do the same ones just a few days later scream crucify him?
This movement from the jubilant expectant hopeful crowd to the murderous mob is one of the aspects of the passion story I find most difficult to bear and contemplate, am I too so unable to remain faithful even for a few days?
As I reflected this morning I realised that I hold both nails and celebratory branches in my hands - the capacity to be part of the murderous mob and the hopeful crowd.

And when the resurrection comes it is not in the first place to crowds but to individuals, small groups of doubting, stunned, hopeless believers. Hosanna ...

After asking my question about the nails and the palms I read this wonderful poem which my colleagues Manoj Kurian wrote in 2008. And we kept silent as the sun streamed into the chapel before singing "Jesus Christ is waiting ..."

Are we part of the crowd or are we among the witnesses?
Are we part of the crowd ?
Swayed by the influential and the appealing?
Making convenient compromises,
Preserving and expanding our power and status;
Oblivious of the Messiah among the vulnerable and the poor;
Broadening the highways of our selfish desire;
Obstructing the narrow paths;
That lead to the reign of God.

Are we among the witnesses?
Striving consistently to know God;
In creation, community, in the other and in oneself;
Reflecting truth in our own lives and all that we do.
To recognize the crucified Christ amongst us;
To be with and work with the suffering and the tortured;
For the liberation of all creation;
From the shackles of greed and exclusion.

Striving consistently to see the risen Lord;
In creation, community, in the other and in oneself;
Working for liberation in all we endeavor.
Humbly persisting to be transformed, to transform the world.
In victory and in failure;
In joy and in pain;
In solidarity and in betrayal;
Are we among the witnesses or are we with the crowd?

copyright: Manoj Kurian / WCC

So do you take off your shoes or eat blackberries? The solace of poetry

... Earth's crammed with heaven,

And every common bush afire with God[de]:

But only s/he who sees, takes off [her] shoes,

The rest sit around it, and pluck blackberries...

From Aurora Leigh by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The quote above came to me today at the bottom of an email from a friend and it sent me off reading Elizabeth Barratt Browning's poetry on the net. I realised that I have hardly read any Barratt since school and that I do not have a collected version of her poetry, something to treat myself to very soon. It is powerful stuff.
Spingtime is not at all the time to think of the autumn harvest of the hedges filled with the finger-staining dark fruit that are blackberries, bringing sweetness just before the winter. I love the flavour and fragrance of the humble blackberry - though given the choice I would probably still opt for the raspberry.
But the quote in this fragment (really that word seems to be one of the major subthemes to my blog these days) of the poem is actually a judgement on those sitting around gorging ourselves thoughtlessly on late summer fruits. The bramble, like the biblical burning bush, is full of thorns. An invitation, a reminder ... of God's grandeur, of humility, of the possibility that like Moses before us, we too could remove our shoes as we remember we are on holy ground.
I glimpsed some of the immensity and beauty of creation this evening, walking through the wonderful trees, smelling the sweet violets and listening to the wonderful birdsong as the sun persisted in picking out the primroses in the grass. With every step I gave thanks for the burgeoning season that is spring - these early flowers speak of fruit to come. Truly a miracle. God turns not only water into wine but petals into fruit and pollen into honey - earth is surely crammed with heaven!

Believing in the little things - a lenten liturgy of fragments and cherry blossom

This morning we tweeted as part of worship - you can read our tweets at http://twitter.com/oikoumene. It was an interesting experiment, we did low tech tweeting with pencil and paper and I typed the tweets into the site in themed groups in free moments during the day.
Tweets are of course just little things, fragments of communication, yet even in just 140 keystrokes you can say something meaningful, you can link to a photo or audio file, to an article or video. You can try to "hook" people, you can make statements and of course you can also preach and pray using the medium.
Today I tried to get people to tweet in four ways - first a tweet of confession of brokenness, after that a tweet of hope for just peace after hearing the assurance of forgiveness and listening to Isaiah 52, then a tweeted biblical reflection on Matthew 6 25-33 - the lilies of the field; and finally prayer tweets of intercession for peace and justice.
We had a group of people from the Danish churches so many of today's tweets were in Danish, others were in German, French, Swahili and Tagalog (I think ...) so I had an interesting time typing them up - especially as Twitter was painfully slow this afternoon.

I did not preach but as an invitation to the biblical reflection I took with me a small branch of a pink flowering prunus. The gospel reading we listened to - in French - was of the lilies of the field. Yesterday I read this moving and beautifully written article by Joji Sakurai on cherry blossom and transience as a source of strength. She wrote:

For the Japanese, it will be a particularly poignant sight. Even in normal times, the flowers are a cause for rejoicing tinged with sadness, because they fall at the moment of their greatest beauty. They are the embodiment of a notion that is central to Japanese culture — "hakanasa," a hard-to-translate word that conveys the fragility, or evanescence, of life.

I was moved to learn that the cherry blossom is also the symbol of valour for the Samurai. this prompted me to think about how we so often have such grandiose plans for our projects - our peace-making and events too. Our work for a just peace today needs somehow to be like cherry blossom willing to bloom beautifully and then let go. Just-peace can never be about something set in stone. I believe in the little fragile things, in the arpilleras of the stitching peace exhibition, in the petals that gently fall and look like snow, in folk who find time to have a meal with one another and in the transience rather than in the permanence of our witness, in the God of small things. Like the cherry blossom, Christ too was at his most evanescent just before his life ended - how else can you read and understand his passionate words and actions, his foot washing in John's gospel, if it is not in some way about a vital fragile blossoming: "That all may be one".

If the blossom does not fall there will of course be no fruit. Only sacrifice bears fruit.

Here are two tweets written by someone at this morning's service, they sum up fragmentally but succinctly some of what I'm trying to say.

#IEPC Is 52:7 Mt 6:25 Transient lives contributing to the justice mercy & peace on earth
#IEPC Is 52:7 Mt 6:25 Transient blooms that bring everlasting beautiful memories

I grew up in blossom country in the Vale of Evesham, and thinking about the cherry blossom reminded me of A. E. Houseman's Loveliest of trees the cherry now ... which has its own strong intimations of mortality and celebration of nature. I like the idea of spring and winter almost being one in terms of the beauty, how the snow reminds of the springtime blossom. How sad that when I was studying it at school I never quite reached such gentle understanding of it. Now I can see how this deep human understanding of passing seasons and transience links east and west, north and south.

This evening coming home on the bus I realised that I shall never really be a systematic theologian but always a fragmentic theologian. Outside the main entrance to the Ecumenical Centre a prunus is in flower next to the white cross outside the chapel, it always makes me smile to see that in springtime, even on a wet grey morning like today. And seeing it reminded me of this which we sang in the chapel at the end of last winter, when spring was merely a vague promise, but nevertheless on the way:

“O make our barren trees to grow, our hands to blossom,
and let our lives bring forth such fruit that heals our neighbours’ grief and pain.”

It's by a Norwegian artist and hymn writer called Svein Ellingsen.

Poetry about blossom, thinking about the transience of blossom gives me strength, reminds me of the orchard in the garden at home and pure pleasure at beauty. It also offers a slightly subversive paradigm to my understanding, one that is glorious, mystical and filled with both pain and perfume. It is good to be a fragmentic theologian, a source of tearful strength.

The story of water deprivation is linked to so many other oppressions

At worship this morning Maike Gorsboth and Christine Housel preached a powerful and moving dialogue sermon, as we marked the international day for the elimination of racial discrimination and world water day.

As we ponder the present day and biblical stories, we cry out with the prophets for justice, and for mercy. The earth and the people are violated. Communities and nations are in conflict. Commerce and power dominate. We seek repentance. We honour the prophets among us. We seek to be and are a part of the solution. We open ourselves to the ways of peace, and we ask God to lead us to become ever-better peacemakers and prophets.

The liturgy also had both poignant and moving moments. Before the prayer of confession a series of people stood up from their places and said phrases like these:

In the country with the world's highest incidence of rape, statistics indicate that a girl born today has only a one in three chance of finishing school, and a one in two chance of being raped.

Those defending justice and human rights often become victims of death threats, assaults, criminalization and murder.

Every year, millions die from poverty – from malnutrition, from the lack of safe water and sanitation, from the lack of medical treatment and health care.

We also fed our prayers on cards in different languages on blue coloured cards through the congregation like a bucket chain to the reader at the front. This way of praying was inspired by one of the arpilleras in our stitching peace exhibition showing a bucket chain. At the end of the service we shared the peace and in the lobby afterwards all shared a drink of water rather than the more traditional post service coffee.

An excellent start to the week.

You can read more about the Ecumenical Water Network's Seven Weeks for Water here. And abotu the World Student Christian Federation's Water Justice campaign here.

And don't forget to read the sermon and the liturgy - where you can also see a picutre of the arpillera.

It is pointless yet it is essential - it is all we can do - we prayed

At lunchtime today we did it.
There was some chatter as we gathered in the chapel and then the gong began to sound and our conversation dimmed.
We came together to pray and it became quiet.
We read and prayed terrible words from the book of Lamentations and from Jonah and Psalm 46 and Mark's gospel.
And yet there was still numbness, the images and scale of the devastation haunt us, too much to comprehend, too much to bear ... are we supposed to make sense of this?
And so we offer words and silence, we sing and light small candles ... and we know it is not enough, how could it ever be.
As the candles had been lit and many were leaving as the gong finished sounding at the end, a colleague remained standing and began singing his prayer aloud in Greek. I only really understood the word "tsunami" in what he sang and yet his prayer was deeply meaningful and profoundly moving to me. Often when I pray in my own language I will understand less than than even one word.
So we left the chapel, the uncomfortable lamentations and sense of powerlessness, and we moved back to our conversations, concerns and work
Of course it is pointless to pray. Of course it is essential to pray.
Together we offer our powerlessness in words and silence and trust that God in all his vulnerability may hear such prayers as ours.

Prayers for the Peoples

Wednesday 16 March 2011,

Remembering Japan, Libya, Bahrain and the world

The gong sounds

From Psalm 130

Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.

Lord, hear my voice: Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications.

Silence

How lonely sits the city

that once was full of people!

How like a widow she has become,

she that was great among the nations!

She that was a princess among the provinces

has become a vassal. (Lamentations 1:1)

Song: 156 “O Lord, hear my prayer”

Blessed is our God now and for ever and unto the ages of ages.

Amen

A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping.

Rachel is weeping for her children;

she refuses to be comforted for her children,

because they are no more. (Jer 31:15)

Silence

For these things I weep;

my eyes flow with tears;

for a comforter is far from me,

one to revive my courage;

my children are desolate,

for the enemy has prevailed. (Lamentations 1:16)

Song: 156 “Gott, hör mein Gebet”

Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God, saying,

I called to the Lord out of my distress and he answered me;

out of the belly of destruction I cried, and you heard my voice.

You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me;

all your waves and your billows passed over me.

Then I said, I am driven away from your sight!

The waters closed in over me; the deep surrounded me;

weeds were wrapped around my head at the roots of the mountains.

I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever;

yet you brought me up from the Pit, O Lord my God.

As my life was ebbing away, I remembered the Lord,

and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple.

Those who worship vain idols forsake their true loyalty.

But I will bring my prayers before you in thanksgiving:

Deliverance belongs to the Lord.

(From Jonah 2)

Silence

My eyes are spent with weeping;

my stomach churns;

my bile is poured out on the ground

because of the destruction of my people,

because infants and babes faint

in the streets of the city. (Lamentations 2:11)

Song: 156 “Entends ma prière”

Peter, James, John and Andrew asked him privately,

“Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign?”

“Many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’

For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom;

There will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines.

This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.

"But about that day and hour, no one knows,

neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.

"Beware. Keep alert. For you do not know when the time will come."

(From Mark 13: 3-4,6,8,32-33)

Remember this, O Lord,

Remember this, O Lord,

Do not let the downtrodden be put to shame.

Do not let the downtrodden be put to shame.

Rise up, O God.

Rise up, O God.

Silence

They cry to their mothers,

“Where is bread and wine?”

as they faint like the wounded

in the streets of the city,

as their life is poured out

on their mothers’ bosom.

(Lamentations 2:12)

Sing: 156 “O Lord, hear my prayer”

Prayers for people affected by the Japanese tragedy

Lord God of mercy and compassion:

Hear our prayer of incomprehension and confession.

The crust of your fragile world needs to split and shift if it is to last from generation to generation.

We confess we find disaster hard to understand and accept.

Immense waves sweep towns to dust and rubble.

We confess that the human tragedy is hard for us to bear.

Nuclear pollution threatens.

We confess our thoughtless use of energy.

Silence

Lord God of mercy and compassion:

Hear our prayer of incomprehension and confession.

Hear us, O Lord, as we join in prayer for all those caught up in the past week’s events in Japan.

Grant them the time and energy to mourn...

Grant them healing...

Grant them hope...

Grant them the courage to rebuild their lives...

Grant them, and us, the determination to reach out to one another in love.

Prayers for the people of Libya, Bahrain and all regions of the earth

Lord God of mercy and compassion:

Hear our prayer of incomprehension and confession.

Millions of people search and toil for the barest minimum to survive.

We confess that it is easier to think that we are not part of the solution.

Violence is chosen when people demand change and democracy.

We confess that our desire for peace is not matched by our peacemaking.

Silence

We pray for all those caught up in the turmoil of North Africa and the Middle East.

May your will be done on earth, O Lord, and your kingdom come in righteousness...

May justice and peace be revealed in the daily lives of nations and peoples...

And may the voice of the Prince of Peace be heard in every land.

Prayers for the enemy (from the Eastern Orthodox tradition)

O Christ, Our God, who prayed for those who crucified You,

and asked us, your servants, to pray for our enemies;

forgive those who hate and oppress us and, through Your Grace and love for humanity,

change their lives from doing wrong and wickedness

to love for their neighbours and life filled with goodness:

that none of them may perish because of us but rather they and we together

be saved through penitence; we pray You, Lord, hear us and have mercy.

Silence

We are longing for the day when the prophecy of Micah will come true, when "they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks, nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore."

The Lord’s Prayer (in our various languages)

Affirmation

The cross is the way of the lost.

The cross is the staff of the lame.

The cross is the guide of the blind.

The cross is the strength of the weak.

The cross is the hope of the hopeless.

The cross is the freedom of the slaves.

The cross is the water of the seeds.

The cross is the consolation of the bonded labourers.

The cross is the source of those who seek water.

The cross is the cloth of the naked.

The cross is the healing of the broken.

The cross is the peace of the church.

(St. Yared, Ethiopia)

The gong sounds

You are invited to leave the chapel in silence…

Photos by Nikos Kosmidis

And this is the prayer that was sung in Greek

My singing was a part of the Trisagion Prayers for the Departed we offer in the Orthodox Tradition in such occasions. I just felt the need to say some words of prayer for their souls. Here is the English translation of what you heard:
“Among the spirits of the righteous made perfect, give rest, O Savior, to the soul of Your servants. Preserve them in a life of blessedness which is from You, O Lover of mankind.
Within Your peace, O Lord, where all Your saints repose, give rest also to the souls of Your servants, for You alone are immortal.
Glory to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. You are our God who descended into Hades and loosened the bonds of those who were in chains. Grant rest also, O Savior, to the souls of Your servants.”

Bitter sweet with Seven Weeks for Water

This week's Seven Weeks for Water has just been posted and includes a trailer from the documentary film "Sweet Crude" by Sandy Cioffi. The focus is water and oil, specifically in relation to the Niger Delta.

Rev. Canon Dr. Ezekiel Olusegun Babatunde, from Immanuel College of Theology and director of the Institute of Church and Society of the Christian Council of Nigeria, has written this week's biblical reflection on Transforming the bitter water waters of Marah. Remembering the Exodus story of Moses making the bitter water sweet, Babatunde looks at the desperate need for transformation in the Niger Delta where oil spills are common place and water is turned bitter with pollution. Here's a taster:

Today, in the Niger Delta area people are also thirsty, searching for clean water in order to survive, similar to the Israelites in Exodus. Their situation is “bitter” – despite an abundance of water around them, they have no water to drink. Searching for clean and drinkable water is a herculean task particularly for women and children who often walk more than three kilometers to get water for their families. Like many other blessed nations situated in sub-Saharan Africa, Nigeria has abundant natural resources, particularly oil, which has made it attractive to multinationals scrambling for its resources. Three decades of oil exploitation have caused ecological devastation in the region. Water provided by various rivers in the area has been polluted, making it undrinkable. ... The Niger delta seems to be indeed a place of bitterness. Yet its inhabitants have not lost their hope and faith. ... The Nigerian people need such leaders, leaders who can liberate them, who can bring justice to the innocent men, women and children who have been mistreated, and to those to whom access to good drinkable water and a good life have been denied. Leaders who will, like Moses, not only purify water but heal the people and restore their trust.

You can find further background to the situation in the Niger Delta here and an article on the dilemma of restorative justice in that situation.
Meanwhile to be part of transforming bitterness to sweetness you can join the oil fast, or sign Operation Noah’s oil resolution asking for the world’s biggest oil producers Royal Dutch Shell and British Petroleum to be removed from the Stoxx Europe Christian Index. You can also pray for "Just Water" and use the EWN-WSCF prayer resource “Just Water” for the Universal Day of Prayer for Students (21 March) and World Water Day (22 March) to pray for justice and peace for all people.It's just one week away.

Photo: Daniel Zimmel

Pondering earthquakes and seismic change with Julian of Norwich ...

I have just finished putting together a liturgy for common prayer tomorrow morning - it is Lent, we will be praying for the people of Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, focusing on the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance's Fast for Life campaign. We will of course also be praying for the people of Japan. What to say?
I have framed what I have put together tomorrow with verses from Psalm 46 and Psalm 90

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumults.

I learnt today that the quake has shaken the earth slightly off its axis, moved Japan by a couple of metres. Enormous seismic change. I heard about the psychological support and counselling being prepared and offered to people caught up in this desperate trauma and tragedy. And I watched yet more pictures of the destruction and heard the worrying reports of a second nuclear power plant at risk ...
Psalm 90 says: "For a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past, or like a watch in the night."
If there were no earthquakes, no volcanoes our fragile small plant would not have survived even this far - nor would it have been such a green and fruitful planet. What seems merely like brutal meaningless arbitrary tragedy is perhaps rather more part of our beautiful planet's correction mechanisms. A big earthquake now or the whole earth exploding long term? Not much of a choice. Yet this shifting and quaking in the earth's crust is hard for humans to comprehend or accept. How can counselling, psychoanalysis or therapy offer credible frameworks for massive change on this scale? In the end though each of us is just one, limited human life trying to make sense, trying to make our way through, trying to show solidarity, to understand. So hard for us to have the long view, to think of the needs of our planet in 10,000 or a million years ... by then we will be less than dust.
And yet alongside the dust motif of Psalm 90 I want also to hold out the promise of Isaiah 43
Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine ...
Because you are precious in my sight, and honoured, and I love you.
We are nothing but dust and faded grass, and yet we a very deeply not nothing, but intimitely loved and named by God.

As I pondered the fragile restless crust of the earth, the terrible tragedy of huge irrevocable change, I thought about Julian of Norwich and her visions and understanding. Tonight, as often, I returned to her vision of God holding "a tiny thing", all that has been created, like a hazlenut in his hand. In the face of trauma and pain, offering love is perhaps the only viable and sustainable option. So somehow I hold on to faith, almost wordlessly.

At the same time, our Lord showed me in a spiritual manner, how intimately he loves us. I saw that he is everything that is good and supports us. He clothes us in his love, envelops us and embraces us. He wraps us round in his tender love and he will never abandon us. As I understand it, he is everything that is good. He also showed me a tiny thing lying in the palm of my hand, the size of a hazelnut. I looked at this with the eye of my soul and thought, "What is this?" And is this is the answer that came to me. "It is all that is made" I was amazed that it managed to survive. It was so small that I thought it might disintegrate. And in my mind I heard this answer, "It lives on and will live on because God loves it." So everything owes its existence to the love of God. The first is God made it; the second is God loves it; and the third is God preserves it.

Fast for Life?

Anyone looking at my ever expanding wasteline (I cannot believe I just typed that like that rather than like this: waistline: ed) hardly needs to be told that I am not very talented at fasting.
Today is Ash Wednesday, a holy day in the western Christian calendar, Lent begins, absitinence, fasting, giving things up, praying more, being better, discipline ... hmm the pressure mounts, I think I may be developing a spiritual overload headache induced by guilt.

The Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance launched its Fast for Life campaign today. Those of us who gathered in the chapel at the ecumenical centre at midday donated the cost of lunch to the local Salvation Army, as a small contribution to feeding Geneva's poorest.

Given my own complex, difficult and sinful relationship with food, I find this time of the Christian year particularly challenging spiritually. Will I ever get past my guilt, accept something like forgiveness and move towards true transformation? Notice how even here I only evoke rather than really address the issue. Perhaps food is an issue I should preach a sermon about in order to be more honest about the meaning of food and its weight in my life and spirituality ... as well as on my hips! Still not sure what text I would choose for such a sermon, after all the Bible is full of stories of food, feasting and fasting let me know if you have an idea.
Such thoughts bring my rather neatly to the EAA sermon competition on food for life - there're still a couple of weeks left to submit your sermons, closing date March 30!
So what have you got to say about Food for life, what do you think God might have to say about food for life?

And while you're thinking about that here are some more action ideas from the EAA website
Join by taking either individual or collective action:
i) Fast from food as a symbolic gesture in solidarity with people living with hunger.
ii) Fast from fossil fuels by parking your car and walk, ride a bike, or take public transport to help reduce greenhouse gases.
iii) Fast from over-consumption by leaving your wallet at home and commit to ‘buy nothing ‘on 9 March.
iv) Organize a worship service on Ash Wednesday to reflect on the inequalities that allow for hunger and over-consumption in this world.
v) Share your resources on food consumption, reflections and prayers on Facebook on the Food for Life Campaign – Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance page
vi) Sign a letter to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in support of the land and water rights of vulnerable communities

Remembering the Bible in stolen early morning time

All last week at morning prayer we remembered the Bible. From Tuesday to Friday we had no Bible reading but rather we worked with the stories of the Bible that we actually already know in our hearts and heads, written with the words of our memories, with our feelings and more besides.

After we had done a bit of remembering we went off and looked at one or other of the wonderful textiles hanging in the chapel as part of our Stitching Peace exhibition.
We began with the calming of the storm and Christ walking on the water, we ended with the woman who annointed Jesus with perfume "In memory of her". We also remembered the 10 plagues of Israel and the healing of the woman bent double.

It was interesting that we never really did get around to trying to list the 10 plagues but instead we got "side-tracked" by one person saying, "the thing that always struck me was Pharaoh's stubborness". We were looking at an "arpillera" made at the time of the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile and very present in our minds were the images and news from Libya. The plagues the people suffer as the result of one person's intransigence - how much time does it take to understand, what kind of macho posturing is this that takes no account of the human cost of confrontation?

It was wonderful to remember the Bible, it felt like stolen time somehow - early in the morning subversive prayer. It was fun and good and powerful - and interestingly days later now I can still remember all of the readings. If we had read the passages I suspect that might not be the case.

In memory of her ... loose threads sewn up ...

Something shocking and beautiful and wonderful happened to me today. I came home from work and Dr B mentioned in passing that there was a package waiting for me - I assumed this meant I had to go to the post office and pick something up later in the week. Then as I went into the kitchen I came across a small box and saw it came from Deborah Stockdale in Ireland. (Deborah is the artist who made "journey to peace" for the WCC and which is part of our stiching peace exhibition - it is stunning, but more of that soon!)

So I unwrapped the small box and inside found the stunning quilt you can see in the photo here - actually it is much more stunning than this mobile phone photo taken late in the evening allows for. I have already christened this piece "In memory of her ..."
Nine years ago I went to a quilting shop with a friend and bought the material you can see in this quilt. I had never made a quilt in my life (I still have not) but I spent money - quite alot of money - buying the lovely material. I knew I needed rainbow colours for the idea I had and I felt fairly sure I ought to be able to design something that would just about work and make a Huguenot cross out of patchwork, the rainbow colours being the symbol of God's covenant.
On Mondays in early 2002 I would go round to my friend's house and make desultory attempts to sew - mainly she would sew and I would chat and admire her creations. Her name was Rowena Reamonn, she was a brilliant artist in patchwork, embroidery and quilting.
That winter and early spring she was preparing to die, giving away quilting books, handing over things and fabrics, asking me to take her funeral. And as part of that I picked up needle and thread while she was alive, but really I just listened and laughed and heard her anger. She was about 18 months older than I am now.
I took her funeral on my first official day of work at the World Council of Churches ... as we hung the Stitching Peace exhibition I realised that the last time quilts had hung in the Centre was probably at her funeral. The gospel text she chose was the woman who anoints Jesus with perfume - of whom the Christ says "in memory of her ..." (pace Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza)
For Stitching Peace we needed fabric and an activity for the launch so I searched out material from the bottom of the deep drawers in my grandparent's bookcase. I had no real idea what was still there but I knew there was part of the fabric and quilt we had pinned together at Rowena's funeral and that I had a lot of material from abandoned dress-making and other projects. I bundled it all together and with Deborah discovered that part of it had even begun to be sewn together by me. Deborah took these bits back to Ireland with her - I didn't realise she had discovered the whole quilt I had actually cut out and stuffed in a bag!
I felt extraordinarily blessed today, to see something that I had imagined almost a decade ago, looking just like I had hoped, yet more so, more beautiful, more finished and so vivid.

I have been weeping too much in recent months and weeks, the reasons are too boring to mention - other people's pain is so often like that: depression, rage, incompression, grief, lack of self worth ... yet tonight I shed tears of joy and incomprehension. Feeling utterly blessed that someone I hardly know could do something so wonderfully generous as give her time for me and do this. It is SO lovely and something I shall treasure always and today I realised powerfully that this was exactly the right time for it to be finished.
Threads are being tied up.
In memory of her ...
Gratitude, colour, thread and tears ...
And for me an experience of pure grace.

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.

The darkness is also holy ...

Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are mine.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.
Because you are precious in my sight,
and honoured, and I love you ...

A year ago I was quoting that passage from Isaiah after a mainly sleepless night in the hospital with Dr B. Tonight I came home to a gourmet meal he prepared and we have gently celebrated the fact that one year on he is alive, very well and looking to the future.

Meanwhile at the end of the working day today a good friend visited me on her way home. We talked about spirituality, prayer and wisdom. Sometimes I feel as if my own recent pain has torn not only hope but also wisdom out of my soul, so it was good to have a conversation about the darkness also being holy, about wilderness spirituality.

My friend spoke to me about the book Dear Heart Come Home - midlife spirituality. As we exchanged pain and hope, frustrations at the excesses of patriarchy and much laughter besides I began to piece together some small piece of hope and I switched off my computer and came home. Work will still be there in the morning. As a walked out the strong Geneva icy "bise" nearly took my breath away, a reminder winter is still very much here even if the recent week has seemed almost springlike.

Today truly I have so much to give thanks for. Sometimes gratitude is a hard and stony path of darkness, but it is a holy way and I trust it may at last lead to something that looks like hope.

Another passing fragmentary thought ...

Today we sang Holden Evening Prayer and it was like coming home. I chose some poems on silence by Thomas Merton and R.S. Thomas to accompany the service. There was simple pleasure at gathering and singing, keeping quiet and listening together.

At morning and at evening prayer today I read from Leonard Cohen's Book of Mercy a good friend gave me yesterday. I had never come across his writing before and reading his 50 psalms has really been blowing me away to say the least. Very powerful.

But now looking back on my day and given all my recent pondering on fragments, I wonder whether my praying and practice of spirituality are not in some ways mere fragments of longing, for God and for myself. Does that make sense?

Anyway here is one of Leonard Cohen's Psalms (rendered into slightly more inclusive language):

Blessed are you who has given each person a shield of loneliness so that they cannot forget you. You are teh truth of loneliness, and only your name addresses it. Strengthen my loneliness that I may be healed in your name, which is beyond all consolations that are uttered on this earth. Only in your name can I stand in the rush of time, only when this loneliness is yours can I lift my sins toward your mercy.

Silence in the mind - with RS Thomas

I am trying to tidy up and as is so often the case I get sidetracked into actually looking at and then reading and now blogging about what I find in the various prehistoric levels of my desk and office.
Just now it is this poem by R. S. Thomas, it fits in beautifully with Elizabeth Gilbert's book Eat Pray Love which I'm reading at the moment and also with conversations I had while at the Church of Ireland Christian Institute in Dublin at the end of last week. Silence, the search for prayer and contemplation, the freedom which that gives.
I once described my desire to live in community to a colleague and admitted that I would of course have been "a noisy, nosey nun". Yet the discipline and the outer quiet of monastic life still appeals to me greatly, partly of course because I know I would take my own inner noise and turmoil with me wherever I may be.

Many years ago at Great St Mary's in Cambridge I attended a poetry reading and conversation with R. S. Thomas. I remember a shy, self-effacing man, who tried hard to give what he felt were adequate answers to the students and professors present that evening, yet the rootedness of his poetry spoke for itself.

Today I came across this in a book I should be putting on a shelf but which I shall continue to flick through for a few moments longer before teh noise of teh mess in my office finally calls me back to attend to it.

But the silence in the mind

But the silence in the mind
is when we live best, within
listening distance of teh silence we call God. This is the deep
calling to deep of the psalm-
writer, the bottomless ocean
We launch the armada of
thoughts on, never arriving.

It is a presence, then,
whose margins are our margins;
that calls us out over our
own fathoms. What to do
but draw a little nearer to
such ubiquity by remaining still?

Bits and pieces ...

This is a photo of part of a small part of the wonderful stained glass windows that surround two walls of the chapel of the ecumenical centre in Geneva. This weekend I have have tried to put myself on a rapid Wordpress learning curve to create a blog for the Ecumenical Centre worship committee. Images of the stained glass windows will be part of that.

One of the things that sustains and inspires me about these beautiful windows which I see nearly every working day is that in every combination of four small windows they create beautiful images of the cross. I keep intending to make systematic photos of the different images that occur as a result of that but have not yet got around to it. the play of colours and light each day is simply wonderful, calming and inspiring.

The image here is the outer edge of the rising and setting sun which is clearly depicted in the windows on the western wall. It's not the whole image just part of it, you have to guess at the rest. What I like about the way the windows are conceieved is that each little square is lovely, coloured and light-filled, in and of itself, yet each is a piece of the much larger picture. Somehow this idea helps me achieve perspective - on life and much else besides.