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?

Mango peace building at the IEPC and beyond

One of my abiding memories of the IEPC will be of eating mangoes every day fresh from the tree, the juice, the delicous sour-sweetness, the hairy stone in the middle to be sucked. There were mango trees wherever we walked on the campus of the University of the West Indies and it was difficult to resist picking up the fallen ripe fruit from the ground. There were lovely stories of people from the local organizing turning up with bags of particularly ripe mangoes from their our trees - "you really must eat these today, they're just right". So abundant, so sensual, so sticky and glorious, and so irresistable. I even overheard a conversation where someone from India was telling a companion who was stooping down to pick one up, "You know there is a theory that the tree in the garden of Eden was a mango tree". Tempting mangoes as the forbidden fruit, honestly I don't think Adam and Eve would even have needed a serpent to whisper in their ears, the perfume of the fruit would suffice. I have a personal pet theory - completely unscientific - that the mango may contain everything that is needed to sustain life.

As we walked and hurried and sweated from one event to the next, this image of abundance, nourishment and refreshment was all around us. In many of the workshops and meetings we were hearing stories of terrible suffering and pain. People spoke sometimes from a sense of helplessness, demands were made for someone to do something, the Church, the world, the UN ... The final message tried to weave some of all of this together.

Many of us from the Peace Convocation have already left Jamaica, I shall leave myself tomorrow. What do we take away with us? Extraordinary stories from often desperate situations, questions more than answers, ideas for ways forwards evoked rather than set in stone, but true expressions also of real pain and frustration, and of embodied tangible hope.

As each of us returns to our own contexts we try to take the fruits of the IEPC back with us. some of us may even pack a mango or two into our suitcases. Perhaps the perfume, generosity and juiciness of the mangoes all around us in Kingston will inspire our continued peace-making. A promise that peace can become as abundant as war-mongering and violence seems to be; a promise that peace can be shared by all; a promise that things don't quite taste the same at home as they did here but that we can share hope and experience.

I'm looking forward to sharing some abundant sweet and sensual mango peacebuilding. The fruits we have to share are less about knowledge and more about perfume. The time is ripe for peace with justice.

Easter blossoms, church going and festivities ...

Menu:
Starters and appetisers
spicy beetroot blinis
Lightly poached green and white asparagus
fresh organic turpips
Italian plum tomatoes with basil
homemade mustard and balsamic mayonnaise
sour cream

Main course
Roast lamb
new potatoes
broad beans
gravy
Cardomon, pistacho and turnip greens fritata - the vegetarian option

Cheeses
Bleu de Termignon
Stilton
Laguiole
brie à l'ail de l'ours

desert
chocolate mousse
strawberries in cointreau and passion fruit

Coffee - much needed!
find our wine here!

Bread not stone, stone not bread ... the Bible speaks to itself and challenges us

Yesterday morning Peter Prove preached a thought provoking sermon. I suggested two texts from Matthew's gospel as we were preparing the service - Christ's first temptation in Matthew 4 to turn stone into bread and then the passage later in Matthew 7 where Christ says which of you would give your child a stone when asked for bread?
What fascinated me about the way that Peter reflected on these passages is how brilliantly the Bible speaks to itself, and how challenging it is to have as inspiration a book of life which says seemingly contradictory things. What was particularly strange for me is that I had chosen these passages because they seemed to me to be part of the same continuum and ongoing discussion. I had never really thought about the passages as opposing one another. In his sermon Peter linked the two sayings:

In the first reading, Jesus – famished after 40 days and 40 nights of fasting – is tempted by the devil: "If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread." But even in the extremity of his physical hunger, Jesus rebuffs this temptation with the words from Scripture: “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God." But of course Jesus’ point is not – and cannot be – that food is not necessary.
His words in the second reading strike a different note. “Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone? Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!”
Bread and fish. Not stones or snakes…

The Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance ,which Peter is director of, is running a Lenten campaign on food justice as part of its Fast for Life and Food for Life campaigns. I was struck by the idea about where is it in our world today, in our individual lives that we are trying to turn stones into bread? Treating people and the earth in a way that does not listen to God's word of life, that does not proceed from God's lips? Yesterday morning Peter posed the question like this:

In what ways are we today tempted to unlearn this lesson, and to try to turn stones into bread? Could it be that our artificial fertilizers, nutritional supplements, genetically-modified organisms and other technological fixes all in some way represent our prideful response to the tempter’s ruse? And that in our headlong rush towards agrofuel at the expense of food production, we are succumbing to the opposite but equal temptation – to turn bread into stone?

Sixteen years ago I preached with a view in the Temple in Divonne les Bains. I turned up with a stone in my hand to begin my sermon (on the woman taken in adultery ...), later I placed the stone on communion table next to the bread and wine. "Bread not stone" has long, long been one of my favourite refrains - even before I had read Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza - yet thinking once more about these texts makes me wonder whether my focus on bread not stone made me less able to see where sometimes the most life-giving thing is to trust in the word rather than break your teeth on stone.
I'll post a link to Peter's sermon once it goes online, you can find EAA's daily devotions for Lent here, and for now I'll end with his words:

In this Lenten season, what fast shall we choose? And what shall we offer the hungry
children: bread, or stones?

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

My favourite holiday desert

Quite often if the menu comes with desert I will share or offer mine to Dr B. He was however only allowed the merest taste of this one - a dark and white chocolate mousse eaten at l'Arboussier.

As one of my parrishioners used to say "ah a few seconds in the mouth, years on your hips."

More to ponder upon in this global week of action on food.

Crème brûlée - hmm yes please

Yes of course it was delicious - these two pictures just about sum up one part of the holiday for me.

Worship for the churches week of action on food

At the Ecumenical Centre this morning colleagues from the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance had prepared worship for the beginning of the Churches week of action on food. Lusmarina Campos Garcia led the service and provided a powerful mime and dance on hunger and the longing for food which reflected both the liturgy and the call to hope that change for food justice is possible. John Baxter Brown and Fulata Mbana Moyo led a reflection on Isaiah 65 and the promise of a new heaven and a new earth.

Hungry God,
hungry for justice,
hungry for a world spending on hungry children as it spends on football games,
hungry that your promise of blessing the hungry be fulfilled,
draw us into your hunger
so we discover the life you offer when we give ourselves away,
and others do not have their lives taken away by the greedy and corrupt.
Give us the courage to risk a new hunger to do your will through Jesus Christ. Amen.

Find the full liturgy here and here.

We also signed the petition to the FAO to ask them to take action against land grabbing which is affecting the ability of many of the poorest people in Africa to grow their own food.

For someone who has just returned from a holiday of feasting on wonderful local food in the south of France this was a sobering service and a timely one.

Final 48 hours of holiday - Olonzac, Lo Cagarol, Bize Minervois, Millau and Le Poivrier at le Puy en Velay

Bon appétit and here's to the next holiday ...

Olives galore, tasting the oil

After lunch and some gentle walking along the Canal du Midi and some pottering around the Capitainerie in Homps we set off for Cabezac and Bize Minervois where the Oulibo wine cooperative can be found. I had quite a fun time tasting the oils and choosing some to take back with us. Of course these days you can buy everything over the internet but you can't taste that way. I've chosen some Picholine and Aglandou oils as well as the ordinary oil the cooperative makes. I slightly regret not having bought any Olivière oil but it was so pronounced and peppery that I decided to stay with the other two for now. The Picholine was delicious on our salad tonight.

supper ...

Figs, melon, cheese, bread, ham and wonderful local viognier wine - the perfect supper at the end of the perfect day. A real blessing as the sun finished setting.

Wine is a foodstuff! Today's collage from the circulade of Aigne

The tiny "circulade" village of Aigne is just so lovely - more than a thousand years old. The church in part dates back to before the schism between Eastern and Western Christianity.
Meanwhile the lo cagorol restaurant gave us an amazing lunch and my translation skills were useful for the visitors from the USA at the next table. It was really great to be part of school children, builders from the nearby construction site and tourists all eating the same wonderful food. Fine, honest, fresh and creative, but also straightforward and not in the slightest bit snobby.
Then afterwards we wandered out to see a local vigneron hosing down his press after harvesting and pressing the grapes and admired the play of light in the tiny village streets.

Lunch in Lédignan - sometimes it's a good idea to have a bad navigator

Ok so now it is time for the non-driver I am to confess to my multiple uselessness. Due to a lack of attention to detail I managed to choose the wrong road coming out of Alès yesterday ... as is often the case when I'm wrong, I didn't even notice and just kept saying "oh yes, next village will be ..."
Hmm ... fortunately Dr B is a geographer and finally said "do we really need to go to Sommières?" hmmm no...

Anyway, at the beginning of this slight detour - in the grand scheme of things it wasn't too serious - we stopped for lunch in Lédignan. We'd been trying to find a place to have a decent cup of coffee since leaving Nyons and failed miserably - though we did come across a fascinating little Protestant temple in one of the villages.

Dr B didn't want to take the motorway too much so we discovered lots of lovely little places that we may or may not visit again, and we travelled through wonderful countryside in great weather. To get to St Chinian from we skirted the edge of the Cévennes and seem to have travelled from the more Protestant Gard to the more Catholic Hérault. We also came past a strange Papal enclave (where our Visan wine from the previous night came from) which has become a peninsula of the Gard within the Drome.

Anyway lunch in Lédignan was wonderful - very delicious, 15 euros for three courses and really great service and food. We ate outside in the garden but the indoor restaurant was full with lots of folk who felt the autumn air was too cool. It's called La Gardonnenque, uses local food and suppliers and seems to offer a great take out service to many folk in the town as well. Pictured here is my starter, a pressé of goat's cheese and fresh tomatoes with a delicious spicy sweet tomato coulis.

So I suppose this is a warning, there may be an occasional serious post on this blog in the next few weeks but mainly it will be about food, wine and the occasional book I may manage to read ... it's called HOLIDAY!

A wonderful supper in the Resto des Arts in Nyons

So So after blogging about the food crisis I went into Nyons and we ate
at the wonderful Resto des Arts, at 13 rue des déportés. Highly
recommended and you can see pictures here of my three courses. I think
my favourite was the St Marcellin wrapped in a feuille de brique with
a cunning topping of honey and almonds inside and servied with an
exquisite salad. I sound ripe foe pseuds corner don't I? Oh dear, I
fear that as it is holiday time there may well be much more of this
sort of blogging very soon ... ... hmmm and the abricot sorbet which accompanied my peach soup desert was divine ...

A bellfry, a restaurant and wine ...

We drove down to Grenoble on the motorway and then headed for a new way for us across the mountains. It was fascinating - if at times very wet - seeing the changing vegetation and then fianlly coming down into the Nyons valley and seeing our first olive trees. We really are in the midi now. I love tht about travelling southwards in France, suddenly you just know you're in a different place, the mediterranean makes its mark.
Another marker of being in Provence are the lovely bellfries in the towns and viallages - pictured here is the one from Nyons where we are staying for the night.
Then I could resist more pictures from the splendid Resto des Arts including the lovely local Visan wine which we took to perhaps rather too much! (Do check out these great photos of the confererie here - great fun!)

The Churches Week of Action on Food - what will you be doing?

Our friend Colin Williams recently moved to the beautiful historic town of Ludlow. We have yet to visit him there but one of the things he particularly mentions is Ludlow's annual food festival and the question of how to link the life of the church in to that.
It's an interesting challenge - churches are places where lots of eating take place, lots of common meals - the Bible is a book with lots of stories of meals, stories too of food scarcity and also of the promise of plenty. By focusing on food justice do Christians sometimes come across as killjoys, holier than thou? Perhaps. How can we find creative ways to hold the call for justice and the real joy and pleasure of food together. With the eucharist as our founding meal we should surely find it easier than we seem to.
Human beings need food and water to even begin to be able to live. Surely, we do not live by bread alone. Certainly however folk cannot live without bread or maize or rice or some real food.
Today news comes in that the UN is warning of a major new food crisis - the situation is likely to become even more acute for many of the world's poorest.
Today I also received the information posted below from my colleagues at the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance on the churches week of action on food where they seek to highlight women and food security.

And yet even as I post this I know guilt and have once more to recognise my own very complex relationship with food - as a fat female Christian from the over-privileged north. Today I am on holiday, travelling. By midnight tonight I shall have eaten two meals in restaurants - I'm in France, these are good meals, delicious food. Sometimes holding justice and joy together is more than hard work, it makes me feel like a sinner and a hypocrite. A sinner and hypocrite who is of course nevertheless invited to the wedding feast of forgiveness and responsibility.
It would not be better if my personal sense of guilt and shame also made me silent.

So do check out some of the resources below - the sermon writing competition sounds fun. Maybe I should give that a try.

Highlight women and food security during Churches Week of Action on Food

The Churches Week of Action on Food will take place 10-17 October 2010. The focus this year is on the vital importance of smallscale food producers, particularly women, in ensuring food security particularly for the almost 1 billion people experiencing chronic hunger.

An action guide and liturgy are available in English, French and Spanish. Join with thousands of others during the week to raise awareness about the root causes of hunger in this world and what we can do to help improve food security around the world.

The resources mentioned below are available at: http://www.e-alliance.ch/en/s/food/2010-churches-week-of-action-on-food/resources-for-churches-week-of-action/

What can I do?

1. Hold a worship service focused on food and gender on the Sunday at the beginning or end of the Week of Action. Use or adapt the liturgy available in English, French and Spanish.
2. Use the resource guide in English, French and Spanish to plan actions for the week, use as a study guide, and share with others to raise awareness of the issues of smallscale food producers, women and food security.
3. Print and distribute the prayer card to members of your church to use at home as the prayer before meals during the week.
4. Encourage a national letter writing campaign calling national governments to safeguard communal land against land grabbing using the EAA Model Letter. Adopt, adapt, collect signatures and send to the same people/institutions on the same day.
5. Enter the EAA Food for Life competition by writing and submitting sermons on food and gender for promotion in 2011. Details of the competition will be available online during the Week of Action or you can write to sermons@e-alliance.ch.
6. Use the information in the resource guide to write a letter to your local paper for World Food Day, 16 October, letting more people know about the issues of food and gender.
7. Share the research and analysis in the 2010 Right to Food and Nutrition Watch, with community organizations, study groups and media. The Executive Summary is available now, and the full report will be available from 7 October.
8. Tell us what you are doing! Inspire others and share your ideas by sending information on your events and actions to foodweek@e-alliance.ch.

We are on holiday and here is proof!

It's only when I get the chance for a lie-in that I realise how tired I am. Today i woke as always just before six but then after a cup of tea in bed fell asleep again. bliss!

We have had a very simply lunch in our very own holiday home in the Ferney sunshine. It was delicious, no wine just "chateau la pompe" and now the chance for a snooze ... well we could be tidying up a bit but I think we might put that off until we come back from the Languedoc where we shall head off to at the end of this week. For now we're just preparing to travel, thinking about all the books we want to take with us and what we might want to do while we're away - probably more days sleeping, thinking, dawdling in bed and pottering on with life. Wonderful.

Ah yes and I've started reading Philip Roth's The Humbling - even only part way in it has given me much to think about. Wonderful pithy writing and a challenge for me to be reading a novella by such a man's man.

Selig and masterchef

This advert in Bielefeld station made me smile in all sorts of ways. I thought of the BBC masterchef series and how the judges there don't wear chef's whites, here in Germany however, they would seem to need to wear the clothes of the trade - looks more professional.
Then of course there's the way it's set up to look like the last supper and the use of the word "selig". Seligpreisungen is the German for the Beatitudes. Also the word used for the beatification of saints. Not sure whether the cooking will beatify the judges though!

Preaching on the roesti graben!

Yesterday afternoon in perfect weather I took the train up to the "Jura bernois" near St Imier. I stayed overnight with Hansuli and Rose and preached this morning at the lovely Mennonite chapel in La Chaux D'Abel.
I realised how little I actually know Switzerland and particularly this part where German and French merge - often known as the Roestigraben - the fried potato ditch. However it's less of a ditch and more a sort of moveable feast as land and house prices mean that people move outside their linguistic areas. Most people over 40 in this religious community speak both languages. Gradually more services are being held in French in the Mennonite communities of the region. Very interesting to chart the linguistic changes for minority communities who have also suffered historic persecution.
Anyway, the service today - a celebration of Hansuli and Rose's commitment to one another and life together - gave me much to think about. We stood with them in a circle - praying for them and for the world. We celebrated love and joy and a sense of belonging in time and space. It was good for me to preach in French again rather than in English and fascinating to hear the beauty of Swiss German even if I don't always understand it. Plattdeutsch or dutch are easier for me, my ear just doesn't get the southern German dialects so well ... interesting that the Bible passages were mainly read in hochdeutsch.
Discovering this until now hidden away region made me realise just what riches Switzerland has - we ate beef, honey, butter, cheese and vegetables from the local villages. Local food is good, in fact it is utterly delicious!
More than a 100 people were fed in the garden this afternoon - there was the occasional queue for food or the toilet, but no sense of hectic. A sense of wider family, of village and local life, and a deep and real openness to a much bigger and wider world beyond, not simply as a place for tourism but as a place for engagement, commitment and challenge.
It was "wohltuend" to be with good people having a gentle and joyful time.
I preached on joy as being "imprenable et essetielle", probably I need to listen to and understand my own message at some point. For now I give thanks for a beautiful and memorable 24 hours in my life.

It's about daily bread and it's in Stuttgart

The Lutheran World Federation is holding its assembly in Stuttgart at the moment. The theme is the verse from the Lord's Prayer "Give us this Day our Daily Bread". It's a good theme in an age of fear about food security, with the continuing scandal of so many millions going hungry every day.

The great website, run by the wonderful Terri Miller - who is also a fabulous vegetarian and vegan cook - looks really great and you can find links to some great Bible studies and reflections not only on poverty but also on whether some of us are too wealthy.