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?

Putting part of the puzzling ecumenical picture together

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

A week of surprising news ... and a promise

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

It's all about a Code of ConductConversion

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

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

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

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

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

Word of the day - entonnoir à conversion

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

Holy irritant or fresh water?

Really please to see that bloggers like "Holy Irritant" have got inspired by this year's Seven Weeks for Water on Water, Conflict and Just Peace. Of course I think that Holy Irritant is a great name for a blog. Tony Robertson whose blog it is writes:

Water was one of life's gifts we took for granted.
A lifetime of travel has made me more aware of the fragile gift of water. I have seen the destruction of the OK Tedi River system in PNG. I have lived in Queensland with the experience of drought and most recently the impact of flooding.

Meanwhile although we have been enjoying the extraordinarily mild and clear late winter and early spring weather around Geneva of late, news here is of an exceptionally dry winter and of water tables only one quarter full as we begin spring and summer.

Adamah - the land we come from

The first biblical reflection on Seven Weeks for Water this year comes from Ani Ghazaryan who has been working with the WCC as an intern for the past year. Ani is working on a doctorate in biblical studies at the University of Lausanne but has been working with the climate and economic justice teams at the WCC. She reflects on the link between land and water, water and justice, land and justice.
At the same time the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance has also made a great campaigning contribution to Seven Weeks this year and is encouraging people to sign a letter to the food and Agricutlure Organization (FAO) in support of the food and water rights of vulnerable populations. So do sign the letter and also look at the resources EAA are putting together as part of their fast for life campaign.
Sign up here to get the Seven Weeks for Water updates.

Meanwhile here's a taste of Ani's reflection:

Despite the deep relationship of humankind to the earth, today, humankind overexploits the land and water for our own interests, forgetting that we were called to take care of the Earth, God’s creation. Our greediness is such that we covet ever more without thinking about the Earth and the needs of vulnerable people.

The Tenth commandment of God commends us to not covet our neighbour’s property (Exodus 20:17). However, today many companies and governments invest in land resources for large-scale industrial agriculture in very poor countries – in a way which often affects the livelihoods of local communities, such as peasant farmers, pastoralists, or Indigenous Peoples. For these people the link to the land, including its rivers, lakes, and springs, is strong and vital.

How can we ignore the fact that millions of people are already suffering and dying because of the greediness of others? How should we address issues which are linked to the unjust sharing of land and water, such as land and water “grabbing”? How is it possible to come from the land, to be adamah and then to become a land grabber? To deprive people of the land from which they come - and to which we all will return eventually?

Should theology be "well balanced"?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Water, water everywhere - today is blog action day on WATER!

All posts today will be about water in some way or another as part of blog action day.
The photo here of the mediterranean, from our recent holiday, reminds me powerfully of water as a glorious source of recreation and transformation. You can't be next to the sea without feeling the pull and energy of water.

But much as it would be fun to focus on a celebration of the beauty of water for blog action day, this day is about water and justice.

"Right now, almost a billion people on the planet don’t have access to clean, safe drinking water. That’s one in eight of us who are subject to preventable disease and even death because of something that many of us take for granted. Water is a global issue, and it affects all of us."

Over the past few years during Lent I have highlighted the work of the Ecumenical Water Network. It's a project at the place where I work which I always feel energised about and committed to. I can just see how important it is for churches and Christians to be part of a global campaign for water justice. Water is life! And of course water is also used by Christians in baptism and footwashing as well as being a major biblical theme.

But water is a deeply practical issue too, it's not just about well-building and sanitation, it's also about getting communities to act together to protect and restore their existing water supplies. You can see a great video about this here and also read an interview with the wonderful Moses Kulaba, who works in Tanzania with Norwegian Church Aid, linking accountable governance to issues of access to water.

Just access to water has the capacity to positively transform lives and communities. Lack of water justice has a desperately negative impact.

I'll write another post later today about how each of us can try to act for more water justice, locally and globally. Meanwhile as Moses said when he was talking to us in Geneva, getting people to find their voice is also part of the work of getting water to local communities.

URC Assembly moderators blog

Earlier on this summer the United Reformed Church elected two women to be its moderators for the next two year period. I feel a bit bad for not blogging about this at the time but I was on a bit of a depressed blogging holiday in June and July. Anyway I have just discovered that Val Morrison and Kirsty Thorpe are writing a blog about their experiences in the job and it's good mix of their thoughts, encounters and experiences.

I was interested to see that Kirsty has been at Labour Party Conference this week (Val will attend the Conservative Party conference next week).
The paragraph below from Kirsty's post set me thinking about how we describe people - do we describe people from a Christian background as "atheist Christian" but Ed Milliband is described as "atheist Jewish" ... It was interesting for me listening to Ed Milliband's speech that he also made reference to "not walking by on the other side" and I found myself thinking ... that's a very new testament reference. Then I wondered whether I would have had such a thought had a non-believing member of the shadow cabinet from a nominally Christian background made the same remark. Knowing me probably I would but it made me think about language and culture - in the labour party the language of the Bible is also part of the culture of the party.

Anyway enough passing thoughts from me, here's part of what Kirsty wrote and good luck to her and Val as they go around the country on behalf of the church over the next two years. Hope they continue to blog:

A few generations ago, a church leader might have been preoccupied with questions such as whether we could have confidence in an atheist Jewish party leader, who’s not yet married to the mother of their children. Today, those issues seem far less relevant to me than how this autumn’s cuts will impact communities across Britain. The churches are well placed to alert MP’s to places where the pain becomes too much for people to bear. From what we heard this week and last, there are plenty of politicians of all hues who expect us to be in touch with events around our churches, and who are waiting to hear from us how things look on the ground when the budget cuts bite.

Enjoying reading Margot Kässmann's blog from the USA

Until Christmas the former head of the Evangelical Church in Germany, Margot Kässmann, is at Emory University in the United States, and she's blogging - allerdings auf Deutsch. Evangelisch.de is hosting her blog which is an interesting mix of reflections on religious encounters and cross cultural experiences. The most recent post is about Yom Kippur which took place in a Friday evening synagogue which is actually one of the local church buildings.
There's also a post about lunch with former president Jimmy Carter as well as passing thoughts about the Koran burning threat, US radio shows and much more besides.
Certainly worth reading and checking in with once a week.

Visit the Communio Garden of the LWF

And here's another great idea from the LWF Assembly website the communio garden you can find out who's tweeting about #lwf2010, watch some videos, read blogs from around the world. It's a fun idea. I like that it's called a garden, like the Luthergarten that is being planted in Wittenberg in preparation for 2017 and the 500th anniversary of the reformation. Find out how you can plant a tree in the Luthergarten in Wittenberg and also where you are here. In the meantime why not plant a blog post about Daily Bread, or plant a tweet, or plant a video. The Assembly isn't just for people who can be in Stuttgart it's for those who can just drop in and visit the garden now and again. So help the garden bloom - plant some words and see them grow!

on blogging and generosity and all that

Apologies for my repeated absence from blogging here over the past month. Let's just say life has been complex and rather busy and I gave my "élan" (what a lovely French word that is and how I hate to have to try and translate it) to other work. It has also been very hot and for anyone with MS this means you get a bit slow now and again.

Meanwhile I have finally found a bit of time to get back to reading other blogs - for a while I thought that everyone I enjoyed reading seemed to have given up on blogging. Fortunately J.K. Gayle hasn't stopped but seems to have become a multiple personality with several blogs including Mind your language. Not sure I shall have time to read everything but I'm relieved he's still out there giving me ideas about what I should read. Over on Facebook he's also encouraging folk to donate blood to the local blood bank. Obviously a multilayered, engaged, intellectual sort of guy who loves his family and friends. If it weren't for blogging I wouldn't know he existed.

Today I've been reading reviews of Clay Shirky's book Cognitive surplus: Creativity and generosity in a connected age. Charles Leadbeater's review in the New Statesmen ends:

The web still has vast untapped civic potential. But that potential will be snuffed out unless we stand up for a free, public, open web against the encroachments of companies and governments. Cognitive Surplus tells us why that battle is worth fighting.

I love the way his review begins with Songs of Praise and moves through his son teaching him something he's just learned from the internet.

One of the reasons I like blogging and tweeting etc. is that there is an enormous amount of generosity in the systems, the fabulous amount of information and opinion out there. It's fun simply to be part of it, maybe it just gives me the illusion of being part of something - and it's interesting I notice even just typing this - blogging make me happy - I've been depriving myself of that in recent weeks and it hasn't been good for me. Perhaps it's like that for loads of other folk out there too - blogging facebooking and all the rest of it unleashes a little bit of our creativity and gives us an outlet for musings and humour.

Anyway more passing thoughts from me soon as I get back to finding my voice.

From tweeting to blogging and back again ...

So as well as tweeting and interpreting over thenext few days I'm also going to try and get folk to blog on the Unity of the Spirit in the Bond of Peace blog. My boss for these days Kristine Greenaway has written a late night post from the press room last night and we've both got other folk we're trying to encourage to write. We'll see what we manage between now and the end of next week ... if you're at the Council and reading this and would like to write a post, drop by the press room and leave us your name.
Meanwhile the official writers have been working hard. Charles Honey who's in charge of the newsletter and newsroom has written a great piece about a discussion of the Accra confession and it comes with a great picture by of the wonderful Ofelia Ortega. Esther Suter from Switzerland has been writing reports from the women's pre-Council meeting

Busy

I've been busy. Kirchentag is like that. It tends to take up not only all of the available time but also more than the usual amount of enregy too. Nick Baines has been blogging about his time there and seems to have enjoyed it - i'm quite jealous about him seeing Küng and Motlmann in action.
I spent most of my time at the WCC stall in the Agora and had a fascinating time getting people to write tweets for us and engaging wtih people about ecumenism and the WCC's work. I'll admit to looking forward to my beer at the end of each day - even if it was for the most part not the marker of the end of the day but just an opener to the next shift of writing and translating. Anyway, it's taking me a while to recover from the backlog of work following Kirchentag, so normal blogging service will return only after a while - I have two big writing projects to deal with this weekend as well as several hundred pages of proof reading ... more from me soon, who knows I might even have some thoughts about ecumenism to share with you!

Bible study and blogging

On three mornings of the past week we had Bible studies led by John Baxter Brown, currently working as the WCC's consultant on evangelism. The studies were simple but powerful times of listening to the Bible and sharing - about our lives, work and vocations. In the words of the old advert they reached parts that other meetings and discussions simply could not. We ended on Friday by meditating on the story of the miraculous fish catch from John 21 with brilliant repeated readings of the text by various colleagues at different points during our "study". We ended by listening to a version read by colleagues mainly in English but with the words said by Jesus and Peter read in Syriac - a language very close to the Aramaic spoken in biblical time. It was very powerful.
In our table discussions we first focused on words in the text that spoke to each of us. Then we shared something of our own contexts, what the text awoke in us. It's at moments like this that you realise what an extraordinary privilege it is to be part of such a culturually diverse staff community. In one thirty minute session you can hear a story from the shore of an African lake where people would fish at night time, a perspective from a human rights activist, a contribution on struggling with Peter's conversation with Jesus (given in a language the rest of us didn't understand, but interpreted for us) or a further appreciation of the Peter's words ‘Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.’
It was good to begin our final day of staff meetings with this wonderful eucharistic text which has all of the sensuality of a barbecue on the beach, water, fish, friendship, love - deep conversation, pain and joy. Reurrection is made of such things, miracles of togetherness and common work too ...
Meanwhile John BB has started a new blog csalled Evangelism is in your comfort zone. Join in the conversation through the comments section.

My first ever blogpost from a high speed train

Dr B and I are sitting in the restaurant carriage of a German ICE train which left Berlin Hauptbahnhof and goes all the way to Interlaken - we'll probably get off in Olten or Bern to catch a connection to Geneva and then take the F bus all the way home. It's been a great time away and also the final phase in Dr B's healing process. On Monday he's going to go back to work, it will have been nearly three months. This week in Berlin has been a real holiday and re-integration to life for him and he seems to have grown in strength as the week progressed - being in his favourite city no doubt helped that, as did having the family from Merseyside with us, it was great fun.

As you can tell this post is really just an excuse to show off how totally connected we now are thanks to our splendid little vodaphone prepaid "surf stick" (I assure you that is a German word!). Bizarrely this German provider will not only give us good value 3G connectivity in Germany but also cheaper connectivity in France than any of the solutions available there. Sometimes cartel capitalism offers the consumer no choice at all and that's the case with mobile connectivity in France at the moment, so we are returning from Berlin with two of these surfsticks. However this is perhaps the moment to launch the campaign for a common European mobile phone with roaming at no extra cost.
You can find out more about sim card deals and options in various countries from a great blog on mobile connectivity here. The guy writing it has 8 sim cards just for Germany which seems a bit over the top to me, he even has one to switch on the heater in his car. Not something we need, we just take the bus.

barcamp church and bar camp ecumenism?

Over on evangelisch.de the new German Protestant web portal they have loads of great ideas and initiatives - they launched the Twitter Bible in German last year which is great fun and now they're inviting people to a "Barcamp" on churches, social media, web 2.0 and so on. It's taking place in Frankfurt on May1-2 and you can find out more here. I'm really quite tempted to go along.

The barcamp idea sounds fun and makes me wonder about how we could build something similar into our international ecumenical meetings. We've got to find new ways of doing things. These days methods and content need to mesh more clearly. For church bureaucracies and hierarchies these new informal and networked ways of organizing, making decisions and doing things are quite challenging. I still rather like the idea of trying to do barcamp ecumenism, an unconference conference sounds like the sort of thing I'd quite enjoy!