A basket of peace

The artist comes from Rwanda. I admired the lovely colours in his painting and then he explained that it is the basket of peace. In his culture women carry such baskets on their heads, filled with precious gifts - food or milk. His basket carries the very precious gift of peace, carried by women as it is more often than not the men who wage war.

Saying goodbye ... sort of ...

The Lord will keep
your going out and your coming in
from this time on and for evermore. (Ps 121.8)

I seem to have been saying goodbye to people rather a lot over the past eight or nine months. I'm not very good at it - perhaps it's my way of resisting change - if I don't say goodbye maybe folk I really like won't move on! Silly really because I'm also a person who has moved on quite often in my life.

Tomorrow morning our friend Colin Williams will preach at the ecumenical centre before moving away from Geneva and going to be team rector in Ludlow, a beautiful historic town which is part of the distant view from my parents' house. Colin is going "home" - even if in many ways for him home is further north in England. As I prepare to say good bye to him, part of me is sad to lose another good friend from the propinquity of my daily life here in the bassin lémanique and another part of me is jealous of his sense of "home".

Last year I also nearly went "back" to work in Britain, but decided against it right at the last moment. I didn't write about that here for all sorts of reasons - it was a bit of a personal crisis for me - a difficult time and one which made me realise just how much France and perhaps in particular the French Reformed Church are where I feel "at home", at least at this time in my life. If I move away this is the base I feel I will come back to.

About 12 years ago a very good colleague who ministered in a neighbouring Reformed parish (please note "neighbouring" in the French Reformed context tends to mean between 60 and 100km away!) moved to a new charge in the south of France. I remember putting the phone down after speaking to him and his wife just before they moved house and bursting into tears. I was sad to lose a colleague and sad too because in ministry life is so full that it is very hard to find time for friendships with other ministers. What we had had was a rare time of what the French call "complicité" and it ended when he moved away. We're still pleased to see each other when we meet up, we still occasionally share a great book with one another by post. But work and the regular daily contacts in our lives mean that "complicité" is simply something from the past to give thanks for. I still miss him and miss the way we worked together and the way we could have gone on working together. My tears were also an expression of the loneliness of ministry - it's not easy and it sure ain't easy without colleagues you can trust.
Sometimes today too when people move on I grieve for a future that will no longer be.

They say that home is where the heart is and if that is so then each of my friends who moves away and onwards - to Canada and New Zealand, Romania and South Africa, the UK, Germany, Finland, Norway, Brazil, Kenya ... - takes a bit of my heart and my sense of home with them. In the 12 years since my friend and colleague set off for ministry in the south of France the only compensation for saying goodbye that I have found is that sometimes relationships with those who move away actually become deeper. Facebook, sms, email and fleeting visits means we actually exchange more ... but this isn't always the case. So perhaps I shall have to try to find my sense of "home" in the relationships and put a bit more time into building those up. In the meantime I should certainly learn to say goodbye in a more heartfelt and generous way.

Blogs - for daily bread and greater campaigning solidarity

This week the WCC is holding its UN advocacy week in New York, alot of my colleagues from Geneva will be there. However to get a fuller picture of some of the international work involving campaigning by NGOs and others at the UN I've been reading the Ecumenical Women at the United Nations blog for quite a while. There are some fascinating posts there - you can find posts from Cambodia, Kenya and the Middle East among other places: comparing the role of women disciples of Jesus and female followers of Martin Luther King; about female condoms, child brides, shopping and fashion justice, the rich poor divide and much more besides. A few months ago the blog adverstised for new writers and as a result posting is much more regular and more diverse than in the past. It's a useful window onto international campaigns but with personal insights from the authors.
One of the new writers there is Paola Salwan, Programme Assistant for Africa, the Middle East and Europe at the World YWCA and co-founder of the blog Café Thawra, Her blog is in French and English and offers insights into Middle East issues - a special dossier on the Lebanese communist party, where the left is in Middle East politics, as well as promotion of social entrepreneurship.
The Women's desk at the Lutheran World Federation is preparing for next year's LWF assembly with a blog on Give us Today our Daily Bread. As the women in ministries network prepares to meet on the theme of food for the soul perhaps someone would like to write something for their blog. As the issue of food security moves up the world agenda how do women, who grow, harvest and prepare much of the food eaten in the world, think about food justice and spirituality. I'll admit that as a woman who has spent most of her life eating far too much the "stuffed and starved" agenda is one I find particularly challenging. What does the promise of the heavenly banquet mean to those of us who live in permanent food plenty? Lots of issues around food will develop on the blog as preparations for the assembly in July next year advance, so why not drop by from time to time and join the discussions?
(this is a cross post from the Women in Ministries blog)

Manure or sweet hay - what do carry in your back pack?

Giuseppe Platone, the longest serving member of the Kirchentag's international committee said his official goodbye to the committee and the Kirchentag's General secretary Ellen Ueberschär at the beginning of the Kirchentag in Bremen. He also handed over to his replacement from the Italian Waldensian Church on the committee Sergio Manna.
The Waldensian Church like many minority churches punches above its weight. In his speech Giuseppe also said how important it had been for him to feel that the Kirchentag made space for people from minority churches from beyond Germany's borders.
He brought all members of the committee a special present from the Waldensian valleys, called a kippa which is a small basket used to carry everything on peoples backs in the steep mountain farmlands. These baskets are symbols of hard work, minority, sustainable living and very much like a form of basket rucksack.
In a brief and moving meditation Giuseppe spoke about how people would carry all kinds of different things in these baskets depending on the time of year, from manure and seeds, clothing, harvested produce, food, firewood and newly cut hay to feed to livestock or to take down to be stored.
Sometimes the basket is full, sometimes waiting to be filled. It made him think of the biblical verse "bear ye one another's burdens" - though this didn't stop him from giving Ellen Ueberschär a much larger basket than the rest of us, the general secretary certainly has a heavier burden than many of us. As he handed out the baskets Giuseppe also remembered how his own basket had been filled with memories over the years and thought of how we fill each others' baskets with good things. He remembered a visit he had undertaken in the 1990s to many other members of the international committee and how this had cemented relationships and support for the Kirchentag.
As we wished him well we were all pleased to hear that Sergio will be maintaining the Waldensian Kirchentag tradition of an evening of Bible and spaghetti.
Meanwhile Giuseppe will also be leaving his position as the editor of the Protestant newspaper Riforma early next year - the lead article says Mensch wo bist du in Italian. We wish him well with all his new projects.
Meanwhile are you handing out manure or sweet hay from your back pack?

Singing and dancing from Kenya and Greenland

International visitors to the Kirchentag always get a special welcome. This year despite the credit crunch more than 3,500 people from overseas will attend. For the first ever Kenya has topped the list as the country with the highest number of visitors, for many of the Kenyans this is their first time outside Africa, they have taken holiday from work to be here and their flights will have cost them proportionately much more than the Europeans will have had to pay for their travel.
their presence really changed the atmosphere at the international welcome hour as well. When the choir from Nairobi began to sing the Kenyans in the hall sang along, clapped, stood up and became part of the praise, their presence changed the dynamics in a good way. to their voices from the south was added an extraordinary voice from the North, from the "roof of the world". A singer from Greenland invited us to close our eyes and listen ... so we did and it was quite extraordinary: a breathing, howling, quiet, loud lullaby-screaming song without words. Amazing.

Visitors from abroad to German Kirchentag

Later this morning we shall learn just how many visitors from outside Germany are coming to the Kirchentag. There was high emotion yesterday when over 100 Kenyans arrived at the main railway station just as the rehearsal for the opening worship was coming to an end. Most of the international visitors are lodged with local families to give them a real taste of German life in the region the Kirchentag takes place in. It's quite challenging logistically to match up host families and visitors. anyway we hope that the visitors arriving from Kenya had a good night's sleep and will be ready for the openign party tonight.
Find out more about Kirchentag in English here.