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.

How do we tell our stories - is it possible to find new methodologies?

So, the International Ecumenical Peace Convocation is over. Today I shall travel home. In my luggage I am carrying the wonderful patchwork quilt called "Journey to Peace" which the WCC commissioned as part of the stitching peace exhibition. I shall be taking it first of all to Dresden for the German Protestant Kirchentag, then perhaps it will journey to other places.
For me travelling back with a patchwork quilt as one of the fruits I am taking away from Kingston also triggers some thoughts about methodologies.
From the outset, inspired by the arpillera and quilt exhibition, we have spoken about weaving at the IEPC, about what threads we have to weave into the fabric of just peace, about the texture of what we are taking away, about how we will sew what we have recieved into our home contexts. I suppose the question is what kind of "Just-Peace Companion" do we take home with us, just the printed one or do we take home with us also the not yet written version and feel that we too can be part of that ongoing story?
There was a good spirit at the IEPC, things went well despite the huge distances covered. I am still left with some questions about methodologies. Perhaps this has to do with some thinking about the age of creativity being the age that must follow on the age of post-modernity. PArt of me felt we should dare to do a conference like this in a truly different way, trusting process more than input, participation rather than frontal delivery. Yet I would not have wanted to not receive Paul Oestreicher's wonderful opening keynote address. I've been trying to think about how a Barcamp methodology might work for an international conference like this - at least for part of it.
As we take up threads and go forwards I wonder whether our institutions are able to take the thread of real creativity and reform forwards, do we dare to think about how to do things in a different way, so as to truly network our stories and experiences and also have a truly common experience and learn to speak with something like a common voice.
Just some passing thoughts. We still need written ecumenism, and our thinking needs to be stretched and challenged more in that format. We need to move beyond well-behaved ecumenism to something that remains respectful but which is truly engaged and open to new ideas. The arts have from the outset been part of the WCC's history, maybe we need to discover that a bit more in these times, the arts can help us htink and act in new ways. More about new methodologies later - I must remember to get on my plane! In the end logistics are logistics!

Praying the Devil back to Hell and celebrating the extraordinary Christian and Muslim women of Liberia

Twice this week at the IEPC we have shown Pray the Devil back to Hell, an extraordinary film which movingly and brilliantly charts the feisty story of the women's peace movement in Liberia. It's a story I knew almost nothing about until I saw the film for the first time last week. It brings together so many elements that have been shared, discussed, sung about and prayed for during these days at the Convocation.
A desperate tragic situation: war, oppression and dictatorship raging for over a decade. And women in the churches coming together with a crazy idea to pray for peace ... and Muslim women joining them.
There's powerful footage of the women dressing in white to go on their first demonstration and warlords preparing weaponry. These were women who knew only too well what they wanted, only peace could secure a future for each family and the whole country. It is a powerful illustration of Paul Oestreicher's call for the abolition of war on the first day of the convocation. Without peace the hope of any kind of future is absent. "We want peace, no more war. Liberia is our home". They sing, they dance, they go on sex strike, to get the men to join with them.
The women showed such tenacity as well as great and creative organisation, this campaign begins in the grassroots - we want our husbands, sons and brothers back. It ends up at the international peace talks in Ghana and finally in involvement in the detailed implementation of the peace agreement and beginning to build a democratic culture and structure in the country afterwards. They didn't think just because they got an agreement everything will be ok. At one point they even take on the UN in the disarmament process.
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said in her presidential inaugural address "it was the women who led us to peace."
Are you willing to step out in your home, to work for hope in the most desperate of circumstance? Am I willing to do that?
It's a very powerful film. Highly recommended

Where next for peace? How do we take the #IEPC forwards

The Peace Convocation here in Jamaica will draw to a close tomorrow and already people are beginning to think about what they will take back with them and how this experience can help motivate and drive forwards the peace work in our churches and well beyond our church landscapes.

Dr B has written a commentary piece for Protestantnews.eu which he begins by saying:

The International Ecumenical Peace Convocation in Jamaica symbolizes the emergence of a remarkable consensus among Christian churches on issues of war, peace and justice. Yet the task facing the ecumenical movement in the 21st century is now to work for a consensus on justice and peace that transcends cultural and religious boundaries.

The WCC's general secretary Olav Fykse Tveit is also setting out the way forwards more in terms of the Christian values of justice and peace being the core and truly fundamental values of Christian faith:

“I hope that from here we will have an understanding that we have some Christian values together that can be described in terms of justice and peace, and that these values unite us.”
Many churches are interested in clarifying the concept of how we as churches are peacemakers. I hope that we all can take back a renewed understanding of how the call to work for peace and justice is a Christian calling. This is actually what Christ has called us to do – to be peacemakers.”
The IEPC has been about gathering new ideas and a new sense of hope that is strong enough to help participants realize it is possible to make justice and peace a reality, not just a dream and a wish.

One of the things that I observe here is that the peace-making churches and groups undertake is on the one hand very grassroots based and orientated towards deep reconciliation between former enemies. As soon as we start working for peace we begin to see the inter-relatedness of all things, even local work for peace has to be global in its consciousness. Perhaps it is this renewed global consciousness and local rootedness which is in some ways renewing peace movements across the world.
On the other hand, though, at an international gathering there are also expectations and questions to the institutions, to the churches, the United Nations and the World Council of Churches itself. In the age of post modernity we often hear that this is not the time of institutions. Yet I sense a new breeze blowing, coming in part from the grassroots, from the way international institutions are using local information networks, twitter and crowd-sourcing information. This by-passes the national level sometimes and shows how the local and the global can mutually inspire and inform one another. The challenge then for any institution is how to be at the same time strong and organised but also open to the breath and energy coming from the grassroots. Bureaucracy meeting activism is always a bit of a challenge. However, here at the IEPC it does seem to be working rather well.

Stephen puts this rather differently and sets out the challenge for the WCC particularly in taking peace and justice issues forwards:
It is no longer enough to forge and to promote a consensus on justice and peace within Christian churches. Nor can issues of interfaith dialogue and cooperation be matters only for a few specialists, important as such expertise is. Neither is it question of simply seeking areas of common ground on which members of various faiths can already agree. Taking seriously the search for “just peace” in the 21st century means promoting authentic dialogue, one that may be marked as much by debate and disagreement as was the emergence of the ecumenical convergence seen now in Jamaica. In this process, alongside others, the World Council of Churches has a major role to play.

Meanwhile, at the back of the plenary tent in Jamaica there is a piece of net which people are encouraged to weave threads and fabrics through - weaving peace with justice. It will be taken back to Britain as a tapestry of our commitment and involvement. I've heard it said that the age of post-modernity will be followed and has to be followed by the age of creativity. As Margot Kässmann says in her opening essay in Ecumenical Review, peacemaking needs creativity. So perhaps each of us brought both our set ideas and stories to Jamaica, now the creative challenge is to take away some of our own story woven together with the story of many others. In the age of Twitter and Facebook perhaps this is easier than ever before as our walls are ways of weaving other people's stories into our own and ours into theirs.
So let's get weaving our take home souvenirs.

IEPC photo galleries

IEPC videos

Silence or applause - really in so many ways it is about how we put our hands together

Our very good friend Paul Oestreicher has travelled from New Zealand together with his wife and fellow peace activist Barbara Einhorn to be here at Kingston. In the 1980s, back in the days when Dr B was the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmamment's international officer the three of them worked closely together, particularly on the German-German working group of END, European Nuclear Disarmament. The peace movement was important and faced political difficulties in both parts of the then still divided Germany. As I look back now I can see that the pain of that division on German soil gave birth to a very engaged peace movement, of course the experience of the war also drove the 1980s peace movement and pacifism in Germany forwards. Paul's personal story is similar to that of my father's - both fled Hitler's Germany in the late 1930s.
In the heat of the Jamaican sun Paul cuts a very elegant figure around the campus here in Jamaica in his light long white clothes. At the opening plenary he gave an inspiring, heartfelt and challenging speech "A New World is Possible - a cry for the end of war".
Here are some extracts:

Wherever you come from, whatever your church tradition, you may be Orthodox or Catholic, Protestant or Charismatic, Evangelical or Liberal, Conservative or Radical, all of us have come here because we wish to be friends of Jesus, rabbi, prophet and more than a prophet. To each one of us he says: You are my friends, if you do what I command you ... This I command you, to love one another as I have loved you. Is anyone, anywhere, excluded from that love? Here is the answer that Jesus gave to his friends: It is said: ‘you shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy’; but I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

Jesus was not an idealistic dreamer. He was and remains the ultimate realist. The survival of our planet demands nothing less than the abolition of war. Albert Einstein, the great physicist and humanist, recognised that early in the last century. He repeated it often with a clarity and credibility that few Christian pacifists have matched.

What I have put before you in stark simplicity, is nevertheless deeply complex. Having spent my life studying politics, I do not believe that there is any room for pacifist self-righteousness. I have not come to Kingston to demonise those who choose the military option. They are part of us, they are the many and we are the few. We must find ways of co-opting them into the peaceful struggle. The critics of principled non-violence are neither knaves nor fools. We must answer them wisely and patiently. They will rightly ask pacifists like me many serious questions: how, for example, is law and order to be maintained globally without heavily armed nations? On this point there is already good news. In the light of the last century’s history of unparalleled violence, international law is paving the way for genuine alternatives.

The other interesting dynamic to Paul's speech was that when the WCC's general secretary introduced him we were requested to follow the Quaker custom of not applauding either at the beginning, during or at the end of the speech. In the context of our meeting here in Kingston this didn't quite work, applause at large events like this is often the only way that "ordinary" people can participate. I can see why Paul requested that - Quaker meetings take place in silence unless one is moved by the Spirit to speak - Paul is both a Quaker and an Anglican priest. Part of me wishes that we could have simply greeted his words with silence. That silence might somehow have "decanted" the truth and the message in the words. It is easy for speakers to play the crowd for applause and sometimes it can change the tenor of a speech, feeding of the rapture of the crowd. Silence doesn't always mean disapproval, it can also lead to a deeper consideration of what has been said.
In the end we were not able to resist responding to Paul's speech with applause, it was a very measured performance but a bravura one nevertheless.
Now we need to decide how we will put our hands together to respond in practical ways to work for the abolition of war. Our hands must not then remain silent.

Photo copyright (c) EKD/epd

At the traffic lights ...

At the traffic lights a desperately thin young man is kneeling in a terribly dangerous place in the middle of the road between notional lanes between the cars. He stands up and looks through the open window of my taxi "sometin' to eat man" he says.
I look at him with confused guilty compassion and the taxi driver curses, saddened to see such a young person, 16 at most, headed in a very wrong direction.
I remember the dilated pupils, the threadbare tshirt and the total resignation with which he turned away from me when he realised no cash would be forthcoming.
Only as we pulled away did I realise that kneeling in the middle of the road he was inhaling lighter fluid in some strange addictive ritual linked to danger and perhaps a cry for help. Perhaps exercising his addiction in a public way like this is the only way he can get enough money to scrape by.
As the traffic lights changed we pulled away and I thought about how the Levite and the Priest were on foot, only the Samaritan had transport. In my transport I just drove on by, it was all too easy.
Then I went off to my convocation on peace, peace in the community, peace in the marketplace …
And I know that praying for that distressed young man at the traffic lights is not enough.
I shall however try at least to do that. The Good Samaratian did a great deal more …

Peace on Earth

Get your hands dirty for a strong arms trade reduction treaty

In the exhibition space at the International Ecumenical Peace Convocation here in Kingston, the Church of Norway are getting people to leave hand prints and sign their name as a way of making a colourful and creative petition in support of an arms trade treaty that will protect and save lives into the future. Conventional weapons kill more than 2000 people every day, these small arms are sometimes referred to as the "weapon of mass destruction of the poor."
The Church of Norway is using the IEPC as a platform to start a global mobilization of the churches in advance of the June 2012 Arms Trade Treaty negotiations. The petition is a way to inspire church leaders and people in congregations to get involved in bearing witness to how harmful armed conflict remains.
So it's not surprising that in the exhibition hall of the Convocation they got the Norwegian general secretary of the WCC to be the first to leave his hand prints and signature on the petition.
The idea is that the hand print should form a heart where the thumbs and fingers meet. Our hands should drop the gun and instead greet one another in peace.
Time for all of us to get our hands dirty and get on with this part of the campaign against the arms trade.

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)

The dance of justpeace?

This wonderful sculpture is at the University of the West Indies not far from the staff offices. From a distance it looks almost like a mural, only close up to you begin to get the idea of the wonderful movement and energy in the sculpture.
This truly is a woman in praise and joy:
"Glory to God and Peace on Earth"

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

I have enemies, I have people I don't like, people who have done harm to me ... there are people out there who don't like me, people who if I am really honest I do not wish well. Of course this is not an easy thing for a minister of the word and sacrament to admit to, but I am not always a very nice person, I keep trying to be better, sometimes I even manage it.

Today I read this story about a woman blinded by acid thrown in her face in a violent and desperately spiteful act. Now she gets to pour acid into the eyes of her attacker - literally an eye for an eye.
Today I was also interviewed for the International Ecumenical Peace Convocation here in Kingston. The Jamaica Council of Churhces is celebrating its 70th anniversary by hosting the world church here in for the IEPC. On Thursday evening they are holding a special event at which Father Michael Lapsley will speak. Lapsley had his hands blown off, was partially blinded and deafened by a letter bomb sent to him in South Africa. He seeks not revenge but forgiveness.
"The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind." said Martin Luther King jr

So how to we hold justice and peace together? An individual has a right to pursue justice, but does justice have to be retribution? How do we combat evil - by becoming evil ourselves or by seeking ways forwards that create win-win situations, restorative justice for ourselves and for others. Does it help a violently blinded person to become the perpetrator of that same act towards another, will vengeance help her to "move on"?
Think of the public expressions of joy when Bin Laden was killed ...

As I approach the opening of the Peace Convocation, I am thinking deeply of my own imperfections as a peace maker, how my own desire for justice sometimes holds me back from stepping forwards in peace. On the radio today I was asked why the World Council of Churches wanted to have this meeting about peace and rather than starting with the history of the Decade to Overcome Violence I simply said "it's because we want to follow the example of Jesus of Nazareth in building peace". Afterwards I wondered about that - do I as a Christian hide behind a sort of moral veneer of non-violence, am I able to practise what I preach. And of course the answer is not always, not always at all. Sometimes peace building means living with the absolute horrible mess of life and trying to celebrate goodness and joy despite everything. Some time ago we read in chapel this meditation by John Lederach on the dynamic relationship between mercy, truth, justice and peace, it is beautifully and powerfully written and comes from real experience of the pain of building peace.

As I continue to meditate and pray about this and about my own lacks in this area all too often I say this prayer:

Lord God preserve me from the hatred of my enemies. Teach me to pray for them and for myself. “Guide our feet into the way of peace” (Luke 1:79) Amen.

And here is the full quote from Martin Luther King:

Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends by defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.

Walking on water to journey to peace ... the IEPC begins

This stunning piece of textile art in patchwork and quilting is called "Journey to Peace" and is by Deborah Stockdale. It is the central work commissioned for the Stitching Peace exhibtion which will come to Jamaica as part of the International Ecumenical Peace Convocation - the exhibition has itself been on a journey, it was displayed in Geneva for a month earlier in the year. Roberta Bacic who curated the exhibition comes from Chile but lives in Northern Ireland. Many of the pieces are packed in Ireland and waiting to come to Kingston as I write this ...

I arrived in Jamaica just after midnight local time last night. Members of the local committee were waiting to meet us at the airport - it was wonderful when feeling so tired to be welcomed and taken to our accommodation. What was interesting though was that even in this brief meeting at a midnight hour with all of us tired, we were already getting into the theme of "just peace". One of the people arriving at the same time as me was a young person from Syria. As we waited we exchanged perhaps rather superficial comments about the situation in Syria with her. Her response was interesting, "much of what is said is propaganda". Given the late hour and our need for sleep after 24 hours of travelling there wasn't time to have much follow up conversation. I'll admit to wishing I could be a fly on the wall at the youth programme where I am sure that discussion and many others will continue.
Once I was compos mentis enough for some cogent thought again this morning after a few hours sleep, I thought back to our conversation last night. It struck me that "just peace" is definitely not about easy slogans or one-size fits all solutions. It's about having good quality and nuanced information about situations (both of conflict and of reconciliation), but it is also in some way trying to come to a judgement about those situation. Not a judgement for all time but a judgement in the here and now. Syria could be a good case in point, but so are many other countries and situaitons.
To be for justice and for peace will often mean knowing not to take sides in a simplisitc way but knowing rather how to stand up for the (gospel) values of peace and justice as such. Sometimes though to be for justice and peace will mean taking sides, and being prepared to be vilified for taking that stance. Being for a just peace is not something static or set in stone it is very much about being on a journey and sometimes it will mean daring to put our feet on what is not solid ground. Daring to get it wrong.
In Deborah's Journey to Peace this sense of moving towards something is clear but what you can't see so clearly from this image is that there are people in the ecumenical boat, people also walking in the labyrinth of peace which is the IEPC logo of locked hands. There are however also people who have stepped out of the boat and are walking on the water. They really are daring to believe that the journey to just peace will carry them on. Pilgrims of hope borne forwards by hope and belief in water and the word... a beautiful baptismal image.
Here in Jamaica we are surrounded by water, all of us coming here have to cross it in some way or another. As we arrive and as we leave Kingston will we dare to go on walking on water into the future so as to build a just peace?

Stitching Peace - while war rages ...

Yesterday afternoon I took the catechism group around the Stitching Peace exhibition. I've shown groups of children and adults around the exhibtion during the four weeks it has been in the Ecumenical Centre chapel. It's been a really good and meaningful experience.
Tomorrow we take the exhibition down, pack it up and it will travel back to Northern Ireland and rest before transferring to Jamaica in May when it will be at the core of the International Ecumenical Peace Convication.
Each of the pieces in the exhibtions tells a story of ways individuals and groups can build non-violent and committed societies based on values like solidarity and respect. These are stories born of pain, anger and often deep poverty and oppression. Powerfully though the pieces selected show that even in such situations it is possible to choose to stitch peace.
Showing the young people and some of their parents the chapel yesterday we also looked for a while at the icon of the stoning of St Stephen which the WCC received at the outset of the Decade to Overcome Violence. And again, as I do week in week out with visitors groups, I asked them to consider the physical stones and violence we may each be capable of doing with our hands - the icon shows two people throwing large stones down on St Stephen. And the violence we do with our words - the icon shows Saul (later to become St Paul) looking on, his words have encouraged the violence which makes St Stephen a martyr.
This morning I woke to the news of missile attacks on Libya ... is this where my prayers for the people of Libya lead? Unbearable thought. Is this what is really needed? Will it work - what is hoped for from this?
Pictures of fighter jets and macho military paraphernalia have replaced pictures of the devastation in Japan. These bombs and swift response units make us feel we are powerful. The reality of war is deeply sickening. And of course part of that reality is Ghadaffi having already chopped off water and electricity supplies to whole cities - an act of war as deadly as any missile.
I know myself well enough to know that I am not a true pacifist, but I do not believe in the ease of war nor in retributive violence, (read a reflection from Phil Wood on that). Of course it is hard to weigh up the responsibility to act and defend the innocent against the resort to war, but do we tend towards military solutions more easily simply because the armaments are available to us?

I know that tomorrow as we take down the fragile textiles I know that shall be thinking about how terribly tiny and insignificant, how poverty stricken yet beautiful and creative our efforts at stitching peace are. One missile probably costs more than the whole budget for the peace convocation in Jamaica. When the the women under Pinochet took their flour bags and started stitching their stories and pain in simple powerful ways, they showed that despite horrific oppression and poverty, the human spirit will find a way to express anger, pain and the desire for justice. That same human spirit will also find a way in the depths of distress to dance, laugh, celebrate and make music. To stitch peace we need also to push those values to the fore.
I shall try to go on believing in the small "signs of the kingdom" type of peace building, which relies on flawed, hurting and wonderful human beings telling their stories with creativity. I'm still enough of an idealist to think that "retributive reconciliation" can begin with needle and thread much more effectively than with exhorbitantly priced precision armaments.

And I should add that some of these thoughts are also triggered by conversations with one of the teenage boys about his future plans. He really wants to become a fighter pilot. And it is of course a really great career. Needle and thread or the creative arts don't quite offer the same attractive adrenaline highs ... do I want to package Christ's gospel of the Beatitudes in a similarly attractive way - might I even have the capacity to do that, to understand contemporary culture well enough to be able to do that?

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

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.

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.

Stitching Peace collage

Some images from our wonderful Stitching Peace exhibtion

Remembering the Bible - stubbornly

The Ecumenical Centre chapel is housing the wonderful Stitching Peace exhibition until March 18 - here is a picture of the amazing Roberta Bacic who curated the exhibition for the WCC, showing some of the young stewards from central committee around the exhibtion. I'll be writing more about that in coming weeks.

Each morning this week we have remembered a Bible text at morning prayer and then gone and visited one of the pieces of textile art hanging in the chapel.
Yesterday morning we remembered the plagues of Israel and then went and looked at an arpillera which showed how a village responded when under Pinochet the water to the houses was cut off - by coming together and making sure their village looked well kept for despite the terribly added pressure of not having water.
As we tried together to remember the plagues one person said that the thing that she was thinking most about was the stubbornness of Pharaoh. Insistent at holding on to power. In the end only able to forge fowards to destruction of himself and his army because of that - how much pain and suffering could have been avoided if he had allowed compassion and understanding into his heart. We never did manage to remember together the ten plagues of Israel but somehow we did remember this essence of the story ...

Soooooo, we go back to the blog

So for the first time since I started blogging over three years ago I have managed not to blog for a whole month - admittedly the shortest month of the year. This is about to change. There have been both good and bad reasons for the silence and I'll be able to talk about more of that in days to come.
Anyway I have found my blog voice again and I did wonder if that would happen.

Our lives our moving out of transition and into, well, transition ... To say that it has not been an easy time would be an understatement but something new does seem to be taking shape and it may even be quite exciting.
In the meantime February was very busy with WCC central committee and more particularly with the putting in place of the wonderful Stitching Peace exhibition which looks totally wonderful in the Ecumenical Centre chapel at the moment. In May it will move to Kingston Jamaica for the International Ecumenical Peace Convocation, and there it will have sewing groups as part of the exhibition.
Anyway, you have been warned I am about to return to the blog. We'll see whether I manage of not.

Of Holy Innocents

Depending on which branch of Christianity you belong to yesterday, today or tomorrow marks the feast of Holy Innocents. It seems strange somehow to call something so horribly violent as Herod's brutal massacre of the boy children around Bethlehem a "feastday".
Often the date goes almost unnoticed, lost in the lurch from Christmas to New Year, forgotten in the rush to post Christmas sales and the return to work.

As I re-read the story in Matthew's gospel I've been reflecting on the disproportionate violence that the birth of the vulnerable baby provokes. I also wonder how many other times God tries to break into human history and yet is brutally stopped by human jealousy. Today children in so many places are massacred - through poverty, war, abandonment and the awful personal and thoughtless violence of those closest to them ... Herod today can take many forms and does not necessarily rule from a palace.

Often at Epiphany I have preached on how the Magi were not so wise and learned after all. They did not understand Herod's power or obsessions, their learned naivity leads to the massacre and the wailing of the parents ... the vulnerable prince of peace born into violence.

"Warned in a dream" the Magi return by a different route, this gives the newborn Christ and his family vital time to flee from the jealous political power that wants him dead ... and I wonder does God also weep at the spilt blood of the innocent children, does God rejoice that God's own son is saved, are not all children, children of God?

T.S. Elliot in his wonderful poem The Journey of the Magi has the Magi learning and reflecting on their homeward journey, precisely on this life and death paradox in the experience of the birth in Bethlehem. The child born in that place was destined to die and only thus to reign over a kingdom of peace. The gift of myrrh speaks powerfully of the perfumed spices that the women will carry to the tomb after the resurrection ...

were we lead all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I have seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.

Meanwhile, Patrick Comerford, whom I was privileged to meet on my recent trip to Ireland, has written as ever learnedly about Holy Innocent's day here. Here's a taster, but do read his whole post, and the ones that will follow for the remaining 12 days of Christmas:

Oscar Schindler famously said: “Whoever saves the life of one saves the entire world.” He was referring to a well-known teaching in the Talmud: “Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world” (Jerusalem Talmud, Sanhedrin 4: 8, 37a) ...
This is an appropriate day to remember those children whose innocence has been destroyed by people working in the Church.

We have become a published author!

On Monday evening there were strange scenes in our household as champagne was drunk despite it being the beginning of the week. At last we received a copy of Stephen's book! The publisher's had tried to send one last week but a different - also quite interesting book - arrived instead. We knew it was at last published because a Facebook friend told us her copy had arrived!

Anyway, it is cause for much rejoicing. The foreword has been written by Dr Margot Kässmann and Dr B has benefitted from a veritable harem of German proof readers. Thanks to all of them.

He is trying to say that he will be doing an English version soon, but I think I may need a holiday before that!
Anyway Amazon.de claim to have already sold out of copies but maybe they'll stock up soon, so to buy Dr B's book for now you can go to the book depository here.