Fragments, mosaics, patterns ...

For quite some time I seem to have been dwelling on fragments, fragments of lent and Advent. Bits and pieces, scraps of cloths, small quotes, kennings, beginnings of ideas, theology of fragments, an ecumenism of fragments ...
This evening I went out to supper with a friend and was given a very special box covered in tiny fragments of beautiful wood and precious mother of pearl. I couldn't stop running my hand over it, so pretty, so lovely, Not perfect but simply beautiful.
I talked about the fragments and my friend began to speak about the importance of mosaic in her culture, how it offers a different approach to melting pot multiculturalism. In the culture of the mosaic each shapely fragment is valued because it is used to make up part of the pattern. The fragments are part of a pattern.
In a way I cannot even really put into words I found this deeply meaningful today. It was both reassuring and grace filled as an idea for me. As I try somehow to gather up what I feel is shattered and put it together it is purposeful to feel that these shards of precious life-giving colour may actual produce pattern, pattern that may even be aesthetically pleasing or spiritually meaningful.
The fragments may yet come together in a new whole, that too may of course be shattered. Yet the patterning and the yearning for meaning and beauty will remain.
I realise I have been blessed.
Meanwhile I must try to find more of Henning Luther's writing in the theology of fragments.

Listen, Build, Engage, Share … an article written for a Danish web portal

Sometimes we only write because other people ask us to write. So thanks to Christian Cohr Arffmann for asking me to write. Now my jottings have been translated into Danish. Perhaps I will get around to writing the four other particles I thought about as I was writing this. It's not very edgy, but perhaps that's what you get when you ask a church bureaucrat to write. Oh dear is that really what I am? aie!
Anyway here it is ... and you can read the Danish here.

The future of the church is not behind us. That may sound obvious, but often in western Europe our vision for how the church should be is modelled on how things were in the past. Yet globally today’s church is youthful, it’s growing and it's engaged with people in their daily struggles for life, existence and meaning. Millions of people in today’s world continue to be inspired and transformed by the words and story of Jesus of Nazareth. It’s difficult to know how many Bibles are being printed in China today; nearly impossible to count how many meals Christians serve to the world's hungry each day. That should be reason to hope and give real energy for the future. We need to listen to stories of hope and change and allow ourselves to be fed by them.
In rural Tanzania a young Anglican community worker, employed by a Lutheran agency, encourages people in civil society to take action to safeguard their right to water. Working with local mosques and churches is an important part of that advocacy and education. To make a change in people's daily lives in a meaningful way, building bridges across denominations, across religions and engaging with civil society is essential.
Across the world working for transformation, development or education means tapping into the extraordinary network of professionalism, creativity and community that is the church. Not many other organisations have the inbuilt capacity for national and international advocacy while maintaining strong local involvement.
Sometimes in western Europe the picture looks different. Of course some parts of the church will not continue in their present form. There are institutions that will not survive, buildings that will be closed. There is pain and grief when things die. There are also real worries: will there be churches committed and able to take the agenda of social justice and peace into the future? It can be a frustrating and very challenging time for institutions, desperate to hold on to and assert their identity.
Nevertheless, I believe that what is emerging is a complex picture of new ways of belonging to church and practising faith. People will shop around for a community which "fits" their needs at a particular time in their faith journey. At the same time there is enormous gospel creativity, new forms of church - not so based on denominations - are emerging. People want to bear witness to the gospel that inspires them, be involved in practical service with the suffering and dispossessed, using church buildings in new ways, discovering both a new monasticism and a new ecumenism - look at the exciting development in the harbour of Hamburg, where 18 churches decided that instead of building their own places of worship, they would pool their resources in one ecumenical centre. Others like the Moot project in Britain live out their faith in small groups in the heart of vulnerable communities - daring to live alongside and share with those whom society would rather forget about or scapegoat.
So are we dreaming the right dream for the future? Do we want something big and powerful when the future of the church - at least here in western Europe - may lie in something smaller but much more transformational. Worldwide most Christian churches exist in the context of being minorities. This needs to inform how we dream and hope. We need to let those biblical kingdom visions of yeast, seeds and hidden treasure inform our theology of hope more clearly.
One thing I believe I discern in the current situation of the church globally is that many Christians are learning that there are people working for peace, justice, health and service from all parts of the church.
The World Council of Churches recently held an International Ecumenical Peace Convocation in Jamaica. At the gathering in Kingston extraordinary stories were told, a common spirit for peace with justice was discovered and celebrated as we read the Ecumenical Call to Just Peace. The stories of the encounters and experiences of Christians and churches working for social justice and to overcome violence will go on being told.
The Quaker theologian Grace Jantzen repeatedly points to how Christian theology needs to focus more on that which is "natal" rather than that which is "mortal". Human beings are made for life. Are our churches able to do that?
We need to be challenged by social media and networking in the way we build the future. We need to find ways for our stories of life, hope and inspiration to go "viral". But we can be encouraged by social media, which focus on four key words: Listen, Build, Engage, Share. That’s not a bad starting point in charting a path for the future of the church.

The Ecumenical Call to Just Peace: http://www.overcomingviolence.org/fileadmin/dov/files/iepc/resources/ECJustPeace_English.pdf

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

Revenge, justice and nature bites back ...

I believe in justice and in judgement, I believe in righteousness.
I also believe in mercy and love and care and gentleness.
I do not however believe in retribution. Oh yes of course I do sometimes feel Schadenfreude - and rather enjoy it - but somehow deep down "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" leaves a world unable to see or to eat.

Many moons ago someone I did not much like experienced a difficult personal crisis. I often think about that event when I hear or read the phrase "When bad things happen to good people". I had not particularly wished that individual well and I felt very challenged by what happened to them. So how do we cope, pray, react when bad things happen to bad people, or just to people we do not much like?

Perhaps in the end it is just about trying to follow the line set by Desmond Tutu that we are all "Made for Goodness" - we need to believe this about others but we also need to believe it about ourselves. We too are made for goodness.

The earthquake and ensuing Tsunami in Japan are almost beyond our ability to find a framework for understanding. I do not think that it is nature's revenge to create nuclear pollution - neither nature nor God chose to build nuclear power plants in the country that is one of the most earthquake prone in the world. "Rational" scientists and politicians doubtless chose to do that The "rational" electorate no doubt wanted relatively cheap and "clean" electricity.
I cannot be pleased at the prospect of nuclear pollution. If it serves perhaps as a wake up call (did Chernobyl?) then I wonder for quite how long it may be effective.

At the moment the people of Japan need not theories of retribution but clear solidarity and practical compassion. Later, when there is time for calmer analysis, I would hope that the (sometimes) corrupt way that decision-making and political power operated might also give way to forms which involve all the people much more. In the aftermath of disaster it is not only the physical that needs to be rebuilt, political cultures and structures also need to be rebuilt. In the process it is good to be guided by Tutu's phrase and believe that all of us are made for goodness. Perhaps though it's also a good idea to also keep the phrase from Matthew's gospel in mind , to "be as wise as serpents and as harmless as doves".

Eschatology - some extracts from John Polkinghorne

On New Year's Day I started reading the chapter in the Polkinghorne Reader on eschatology ... my reading was in part triggered by our post-party new year's day brunch discussion with friends about faith and science.

I don't often quote large chunks of writing like this but reading this moved me - perhaps in part because this extract ends by quoting "Many waters cannot quench love" which was the theme for our marriage.

I like that things make sense for Polkinghorne - I don't entirely agree with him - about the active and powerful God. But reading what he says about the power and steadfastness of God's love made me realise that I feel a long way from such a sense at the moment - caught between desolation and the hope for perhaps unreasonable consolation.
Anyway it has been a joy to feed my mind by reading some of what Polkinghorne writes - now I shall have to read what Sarah Coakley writes about eschatology and see how it compares.

"Hope is the negation both of the Promethean presumption, which supposes that fulfilment is always potentially there, ready for human grasping, and also of despair, which supposes that there will never be fulfilment, but only a succession of broken dreams. Hope is quite distinct also from a utopian myth of progress, which privileges the future over the past, seeing the ills and frustrations of earlier generations as being no more than necessary stepping stones to better things in prospect.
If eschatology is to make sense, all the generations of history must attain their ultimate and individual meaning. Christianity takes the reality of evil seriously, with all the perplexities that entails. It 'refuses the premature consolation that pre-empts grief, the facile optimism which cannot recognize evil for what it is.' As part of its unflinching engagement with history, Christianity will recognize that episodes like the Holocaust deny to it any shallow conception of what hope for the future might mean, as if it could be divorced from acknowledgement of the horror of the past.
Holding in mind such a clear-eyed view of the woes and disappointment of history, one must ask what could then be the ground of a true hope beyond history? There is only one possible source: the eternal faithfulness of the God who is the Creator and Redeemer of history. Here Christianity relies heavily upon its Jewish roots. It is only God who can bring new life and raise the dead, whose Spirit breathes life into dry bones and makes them live (Ezekiel 37.9-10). Hope lies in the divine chesed, God's steadfast love, and not in some Hellenistic belief in an unchanging realm of ideas or an intrinsic immortality of the human soul. Christian trust in divine faithfulness is reinforced by teh knowledge that God is the One who raised Jesus from the dead. Only such a God could be the ground for that hope against hope that transcends the limits of any natural expectation.
This means that a credible eschatology must find its basis in a 'thick' and developed theology. A kind of minimalist account of deity, which sees God as not much more than the Mind behind cosmic order, will not be adequate. Nor will a kind of minimalist Christology, which sees Jesus as no more than an inspired teacher, pointing humanity to new possibilities for self-realisation and with his message living on in the minds of his followers, provide a sufficient insight into the divine purposes for creation beyond its death to be the ground of an everlasting hope. These concepts are too weak to bear so great a weight of expectation. To sustain true hope it must be possible to speak of a God who is powerful and active, not simply holding creation in being but also interacting with its history, the one who 'gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist' (Romans 4.17). This same God must be the one whose loving concern for individual creatures is such that the divine power will be brought into play to bring about these creatures' everlasting good. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is just such a God. To be persuasive, eschatological hope requires more than a general intuition that something must survive death. The problems that beset the realistic hope of a post mortem destiny are complex and demanding. They call for a corresponding richness and depth in our understanding of the power and steadfast love of God.
The question of eschatological hope is also the question of the fundamental meaningfulness of human life within creation. Are those moments of our deep experience when we glimpse that reality is trustworthy and that all will be well, intimations of our ultimate destinay or merely fleeting and illusory consolations in a world of actual and absolute transience? Moltmann says, 'Our question about life, consequently, is not whether our existence might possibly be immortal, and if so what part of it; the question is: will love endure, the love out of which we receive ourselves, and which makes us living when we ourselves offer it.' If God is, as Christians believe, the God of love, then love will indeed endure. 'Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it' (Song of Solomon 8.7) - not even the waters of cosmic chaos nor the tumultuous breakers of human evil."

More fragments ...

I have been re-reading an interesting article by Sören Asmus I am more than you think - Fragments and Diversity within. The essay explores identity and how the idea of fragments can actually help to put identity together. I was particularly struck by reference to Henning Luther's theology of fragments as formative for identity - fragments of the the past, fragments of the future and fragments of relationships to others. Asmus writes about interesting elements from on how we construct modern identity citing Anthony Giddens, Bonhoeffer and Amin Maalouf amongst others, but I think what I like is how he ends by pointing to the idea of developing a pilgrimage identity as a way of holding things together in a tension of movement. It's not easy for me to explain why I find this so moving and meaningful at the moment but I do. Here's how the essay ends, with a prayer from Jan Comenius:

As we are called to live our lives as being on our way to an aim which we will not fulfil, but which is promised to us, we might as well learn to develop the identity of a pilgrim people: the awareness that we do not “hold an identity”, but we are called to become what we are not yet. The theologian, pedagogue and reformer, Jan Amos KOMENSKY (COMENIUS), being a migrant for most of his life, expressed this attitude:
“I thank my God, Who has wanted that I shall be a man of longing for all my life. I praise Thee, my saviour, that You have given me on Earth no native country and no home. Thereby You saved me from the folly to mistake the accidental for the substantial, the way for the aim, the striving for the peace, the shelter for the home, the wandering for the native country.”

Coffee in the garden of Eden

Today there was sad news of a death in the family of a friend; stories of destruction and suffering in the Philipines following the typhoon; prayers for Srilanka and Pakistan ... sometimes the world is too big, pain too great to comprehend or even begin to uphold in something like prayer. Or so it would seem ...
And then there was also a beautiful invitation following a friend's morning meditation prayer ritual with her daughter. Drink coffee with me, find time for some "Eden" time together. And so three of us have promised that tomorrow we will try to find time for coffee, or tea or a glass of water and a tiny little bit of paradise time in Eden.
Thinking of the beauty of the invitation I realise too that even if we never get to actually drink our coffee together tomorrow or the next day, just the invitation to a moment of collaboration in the Eden of coffee is in itself a foretaste of communion and fellowship.
So it is across the world where grief and pain strike, folk meet support one another and projects of new futures are born. We are natal not mortal.

Rowan Williams on perceiving and living unity

One of the reasons I buy books is that then I am allowed to scribble in them and go back to my scribblings.
At the end of Rowan Williams Silence and Honey Cakes there is a section of questiosn and answers that he took from the original audience for the lectures, The World Community for Christian Meditation. What follows below is part of his response to a question on "Can the institutional church teach the contemplative path?" Reading it I was reminded of some of the reflections by both Cardinal Walter Kasper and Bishop Kalistos Ware on spiritual ecumenism and an ecumenism of spirituality which we were privileged to listen to when they came to the ecumenical centre a few years ago.
Anyway the insights Williams offers here are a challenge for anyone working for the church as institution but then they come from someone who very much also works for the church as institution. Some more from the same question and answer session about the challenges of that role as Williams sees them in a later post.

"Nearly all Christians have inherited a functional idea of what the local Christian community is for: it gathers us for sacramental worship (with the sacraments seen rather as routine duties). But i think we need to break free a bit, recognizing that, in addition to the sacraments we meet for other kinds of togetherness, in study and prayer - which means challenging any model based on Sunday patterns alone.
Another thing harder to express, is that those of us who have the function to do so need to go on asking where the unity of the church lies and in what that unity consists. I believe it is a unity which exists fundamentally in a shared gazing towards Christ and through Christ looking into the mystery of the Father (which is what the sacraments celebrate and make possible). If we believe our unity comes from that looking together into a mystery, occasionally nudging each other to say, "look at that!", we can perhaps recognise that the unity we enjoy is not first and foremost an institutional matter; it is the common direction in which we strive to look. Of course we must be willing to nudge each other, as I put it, and tell each other what we're seeing. I think if we began with something a bit more like that, we'd see more space in the church for the contemplative dimension. If there aren't enough people looking into the mystery, unity comes to be seen in functional terms - meeting for events, discharging our obligations - and we miss the vital and living element of unity." p.110

The greatest dignity is that of belonging to the community of the beloved disciples of Jesus Christ - a reading at morning prayer

Morning prayer this week is being led by Theodore Gill. On Tuesday he read this for us as we reflected on 1 John 1. You can find the order of service for the prayers here. These were powerful words to hear early in the morning ...

Conclusion of Raymond E. Brown’s
The Community of the Beloved Disciple
(Paulist Press, New York, 1979, p.163-4):

…At various times I have referred to the theology of the Fourth Gospel as challengingly different, volatile, dangerous, and as the most adventuresome in the New Testament… Over the centuries John’s Gospel has provided the seedbed for many exotic forms of individualistic pietism and quietism (as well as the inspiration for some of the most profound mysticism). Johannine christology has nurtured a widespread unconscious monophysitism, popular even today, in which Jesus is not really like us in everything except sin, but omniscient, unable to suffer or to be tempted, foreseeing the whole future. (At the same time, Johannine christology has been the mainstay of the great orthodox faith of Nicaea.)

The ultimate check upon what Kysar calls the “maverick Gospel” has been the church’s hermeneutical decision to place it in the same canon as Mark, Matthew, and Luke, Gospels which implicitly advocate the side opposite to many Johannine positions. This means that the Great Church, “the church catholic” of Ignatian language, whether consciously or unconsciously, has chosen to live with tension. It has chosen not a Jesus who is either God or man but both; it has chosen not a Jesus who is either virginally conceived as God’s Son or pre-existent as God’s Son but both; not either a Spirit who is given to an authoritative teaching magisterium or the Paraclete-teacher who is given to each Christian but both; not a Peter or a Beloved Disciple but both. Tension is not easily accepted in ordinary life, and we usually try to resolve it. So too in church history – but because of the church decision about the canon, attempts at simple resolutions of these theological tensions into a static position on one side or the other are unfaithful to the whole New Testament.

This means that a church such as my own, the Roman Catholic, with its great stress on authority and structure, has in the Johannine writings an inbuilt conscience against the abuses of authoritarianism. (So also the “free” churches have in the Pastorals an inbuilt warning against the abuses of the Spirit and in 1 John a warning against the divisions to which a lack of structural authority leads.) Like one branch of the Johannine community, we Roman Catholics have come to appreciate that Peter’s pastoral role is truly intended by the risen Lord, but the presence in our Scriptures of a disciple whom Jesus loved more than he loved Peter is an eloquent commentary on the relative value of the church office. The authoritative voice is necessary because a task is to be done and unity is to be preserved, but the scale of power in various offices is not necessarily the scale of Jesus’ esteem and love. In this day when Catholics quarrel about how much respective authority pope, bishop, priest, and lay person should have, and when Christians quarrel about whether a woman should be an ordained minister of the eucharist, John’s voice cries out its warning. The greatest dignity to be striven for is neither papal, episcopal, nor priestly; the greatest dignity is that of belonging to the community of the beloved disciples of Jesus Christ.

Florence Nightingale as theologian and Liverpool's lady chapel exhibition

The Lady Chapel at Liverpool's Anglican Cathedral is currently housing an exhibiton by Alice Lenkiewicz on "noble women" - noble women is the theme of the women celebrated in the Lady Chapel's windows. I'm reading about them thanks to this great little book. One of the few working class women celebrated in the windows is Kitty Wilkinson who promoted practical hygiene and education in a selfless way. A statue of her is due to be erected. Kitty's story is less well-known than the story of Grace Darling pictured here or than Florence Nightingale whose legacy is better known and is also being highlighted this year as the 100th anniversary of her death is marked.

Nightingale was particularly remembered at the service in the Cathedral we attended - 13 August is the day she is remembered in the Anglican calendar. There is an excellent article by Rachael Kohn on Nightingale 's theology on the ABC religion and ethics site here.
Because my own view of Nightingale is so influenced by childhood tales of her heroic hospital reform in Scutari, I remained fairly ignorant about her theological writing. Judging by Kohn's piece it sounds as if I would have had much in common with her thinking - a deep spiritual longing combined with a broad church approach to understanding God.

"You say that mystical or spiritual religion is not enough for most people without outward form ... For myself, the mystical or spiritual religion as laid down by John's Gospel, however imperfectly I have lived up to it, was and is enough."

Kohn's piece is based on Val Webb's book Florence Nightingale: the making of a Radical Theologian (Chalice Press, 2002).
Perhaps one day hundreds of years into the future there will be other windows in other cathedrals depicting wonderful women - be they noble or not. Most of the "nobility" celebrated in the Liverpool windows was not so well behaved. Most of the women had to transgress to get anywhere ... this makes them a hard act to follow.

Being edified by thoughts about evil ...

Thanks to Nick Baines I recently came across Terry Eagleton's book On Evil and until a copy arrives in our household I've been posting some of the quotes that Nick has on his blog to my facebook page. For starters here's a bit from the blurb:

For many enlightened, liberal-minded thinkers today, and for most on the political left, evil is an outmoded concept. It smacks too much of absolute judgements and metaphysical certainties to suit the modern age. In this witty, accessible study, the prominent Marxist thinker Terry Eagleton launches a surprising defence of the reality of evil, drawing on literary, theological and psychoanalytic sources to suggest that evil, no mere medieval artefact, is a real phenomenon with palpable force in our contemporary world. In a book that ranges from St. Augustine to alcoholism, Thomas Aquinas to Thomas Mann, Shakespeare to the Holocaust, Eagleton investigates the frightful plight of those doomed souls who apparently destroy for no reason. In the process, he poses a set of intriguing questions. Is evil really a kind of nothingness? Why should it appear so glamorous and seductive? Why does goodness seem so boring? Is it really possible for human beings to delight in destruction for no reason at all?

As I was reading Nick's original post I realised that I hadn't thought much about evil - perhaps not something a theologian should admit. However the parts Nick Baines quoted really brought a smile of understanding to me. I felt strangely edified by thinking about evil in the way Eagleton seems to be suggesting - oddly heartening. Beginning to think about evil also led to a friend sharing an interesting quote from Karl Barth with me:
‎

"Die Torheit des Toren verbirgt sich mit sicherem Instinkt und Griff in ihr Gegenteil, sie gibt sich als Weisheit aus." Karl Barth, in KD IV/2 §65 Des Menschen Trägheit und Elend 2

Anyway for now here is part of what Nick Baines originally posted - I think these quotes are just brilliant!

[Evil] is boring because it keeps doing the same dreary thing, trapped as it is between life and death. But evil is also boring because it is without real substance. It has, for example, no notion of emotional intricacies. Like a Nazi rally, it appears spectacular but is secretly hollow. It is as much a parody of genuine life as the goosestep is a parody of walking.

Isn’t that perfect? He goes on:

Evil is philistine, kitsch-ridden, and banal. It has the ludicrous pomposity of a clown seeking to pass himself off as an emperor. It defends itself against the complexities of human experience with a reach-me-down dogma or a cheap slogan.

Wonderful! And then:

Hell is not a scene of unspeakable obscenties. If it were, it might well be worth applying to join. Hell is being talked at for all eternity by a man in an anorak who has mastered every detail of the sewage system of South Dakota.

I think I’ve met him!

But Eagleton, taking in Aquinas, Augustine and Blake, goes on to conclude:

…evil is a kind of spiritual slumming… The evil, then, are those who are deficient in the art of living.

You can find further reviews of Eagleton's book here, here and here - that final one is a review both of Eagleton's book and of one on Pessimism by Roger Scruton.

Fragments and unjoined up thoughts on this and that

So today I started an idle thought on Facebook "Wondering whether a 'theology of fragments' might be one useful starting point in thinking about the ecumenical movement" and was surprised about where it led.
Dr B pointed me to David Tracy's fragments as a theological category:

Fragments show the need to shatter any reigning totality system, such as the "white" understanding of modernity and culture. At the very same ... time fragments embody quite a positive meaning: a break out of totality into infinity by discovering one's own routes and one's own traditions. In this process, one discovers all the others and the different, in the very same way, as possible disclosures of infinity.

My friend Simon Oxley pointed to Duncan Forrester's "Theological Fragments: Explorations in Unsystematic Theology" which was not what I had been thinking about - my own thoughts had been more a half remembered musing on Henning Luther's theology of fragments and the idea of Christ's own life as a fragment. Luther seems to have developed his thoughts in part as a pastoral theology to find meaning in situations of palliative care, particularly for younger patients with AIDS or cancer.

Today fragments of my day would include:
A conversation about biblical archeology with a Palestinian Muslim and a surprising conversation about Thomas L Thompson in which I was definitely the person on the learning curve.
Thoughts exchanged in French about Unitarianism within Protestantism as an important yet often unexpressed part of our tradition.
Sadness at the realisation that my own life is also just a fragment and wondering if Jesus may have felt something of that as he faced death so young - then wondering whether the struggle with meaningless was ever part of earlier cultures. Yet my life being just a fragment is also oddly quite reassuring. Not sure I can quite explain that just yet.
And now at the end of the day as I return to the idea of a fragmentary theology of ecumenism, I suppose I wonder whether we need both an unsystematic theology of ecumenism and also a deep understanding of the ecumenical movement as a fragment - a humble fragment. Can't take this much further than that for now but maybe one day in heaven or in the other place I will have time to ponder some more.
Fragments of the day also included coping with the welling up of tears and being surprised when laughter and ideas drove away my current deep sadness.
Fragmentarily, I look back at the day and remember the morning dew, the heavy late afternoon rain, the humility of getting it wrong when interpreting, the pleasures of translating well written German, the joys of editing, the grind of grief, the stunning light of sun through crowd, a great conversation with an Arabic translator and the support of friends.
All as weighty as dust, yet part of the pathetic yet essential struggle against meaninglessness in my fragmented life.
For tonight fragmentary ambiguity is where I'm at.
Tomorrow as they say, is another day. Thank God.

What does ABC mean to you?

So although I have blogged much less in recent weeks I have tried to add a few new links to my side bar. Really my blog should have a bit of an overhaul but honestly I'm not all that at house work in the real work so I see no reason to start trying to prove otherwise in the virtual world.
Anyway one of the links is to the new ABC Religion and Ethics site which is a place I could happily spend far too much time I suspect. I read about it first here on Ben Myers Faith and Theology and, because on the post he publicises it on there's a picture of Rowan Williams, I took the ABC to mean Archbishop of Canterbury, I was a bit flumoxed for a while! Anyway it is well worth checking out.

So what does ABC mean to you, any other acronyms out there?

An early morning disarmament poem from Kurt Marti

Abrüstungschoral - Kurt Marti

Wir preisen Dich, Göttin Gott
die Dunie eine Waffe gebrauchst,
die Du Tote ins Leben erweckst,
Feinde als Gescwhister entlarvst.

Wir bitten Dich, Göttin Gott,
steck uns mit Deiner Liebeskraft an,
weck Gefühl in uns und Mitgefühl,
gib uns Mut, gewaltlos zu sein.

Wir danken Dir, Göttin Gott,
die Du Lust am Lebendigen hast,
die Du gegen Vernichtungen kämpfst
für den Sieg der Gerechtigkeit.

This is the final poem in a collection by Swiss theologian and poet Kurt Marti, it's called DU Rühmungen. I read this on my way to the shower this morning. On this sunny quite peaceful morning I felt quite inspired by the idea of a disarmament choral.

Radically open church - Holding in rage

A friend died. It was not an easy death, she still had young and needy children. Their father in some other country across an ocean appeared for occasional summer holidays. She struggled to survive but the cancer was strong in her beautiful and vital body. There were no beautiful moments of reconciliation, just preparation for the inevitable worst and requests to look after the children.
Her dying was part of those of us around her. I remember the beautiful fragile translucence of her skin as painkiller was injected. That terrible intimacy of the needle which brings pain and relief. The injecting she could not do alone, that at least could be shared.

She asked us to keep someone away from her funeral, a person who had behaved badly towards her in practical petty and real ways. We didn't manage of course to exclude this person or even to have a quiet word with them beforehand. Our grief was too acute. I remember it was early springtime and as I preached at the funeral I thought of Susan Hill's wonderful book "in the Springtime of the Year" - unknown of course to the francophone congregation. At the end of the service our friend's "enemy" made a point of coming and speaking with me - they really wanted to be seen to talk with "the minister". It probably wasn't conscious this trying to achieve absolution by talking to the cleric, but I recognized in that moment just how much rage I was containing as I remained civil and in role. I listened to this person's pointless platitudes (you may note that civil as I may have been I did not refrain from judgement!) and felt as though I was betraying the friend I had only just placed in her grave.

Only now many years later do I realise that I would not want to exclude anyone ever from church, let alone from a funeral. All of us will know grief in our lives - it is not life if it does not know grief - all of us need to be welcomed at those times, Being radically open means that you may find yourself singing and praying to God with your enemy sitting next to you. You trust in some way that God can hold all of these conflicting versions of truth and reality together, because you know that you cannot, even if we all try to hear the insistent call to reconciliation.

And of course in the end who am I to throw the first stone? It was not the "holy" people who worried about excluding an enemy from the funeral, but an ordinary non-church family who took in the children and provided a home for them. Simply and straightforwardly.
I think it's called love. It's what the gospel is about but theologians like me often worry about whether we've got our thinking about love sorted out and forget to just get on and practise it in humility, simplicity and joy.
May God forgive me.

Reading against flow - going against the tide ...

So we returned from Berlin with lots of books. Our house is full of books. I have recently ordered lots of books by post and so has Dr B. So what am I reading? A library book of course! One of the risks and benefits of having my office in the library is that I walk past the display of new books to get to my office which is how I ended up checking this book out today. Very glad I did, my bus got stuck in traffic and it's great and easy read, but also profound and moving writing. Here's an eminent theologian linking life, faith and theology quie unapologetically. It's wonderful.
Each piece is only about three book pages long. Perfect for reading on the bus! Flicking through it before I decided to take it home I got hooked by a piece entitled "not by sausage alone". It recounts Miroslav Volf's search for a "kulen" sausage and how he finds a devout and wise man who makes sausages and reads his Bible - blessed indeed are the sausage makers!
Here are two quotes from that piece:

"If the Bible is the book you read then your conversations will likely concern the deep questions of life rather than skirt them."
"But that loss (the loss of biblical literacy) is small compared to the moral, spiritual and intellectual impoverishment that comes from letting our lives be saturated by the superficial instead of being immeresed into the profound."

There are some beautiful personal pieces: on the adoption of his first child - called "ambiguity and grace"; on perceiving God's delight through the delight of a child in a parent; on married love; on grieving for a friend who died in a psychiatric hospital or for his father ...
The writing has great physicality, humour and honesty but it also shows deep spirituality. Here are some more quotes from "Evil and evildoers".

"Doesn't calling a person evil make us go after him with a vengeance, seeking to eleiminate or at least neutralize him?" my friend protests. "It all too often does," I agree. But it should not. God's love is broad enough to include evildoers, the worst of them. We know this because Christ died for their salvation no less than for the salvation of the rest of us who are one and all by nature God's enemies. To call someone evil is not to place her beyond the pale of God's redemption. Similarly, to call her evil is not to exempt ourselves from the obligation to love her. If our enemies are hungry, we should feed them; if they are thirsty we should give them something to drink. Instead of being overcome by evil, we should overcome evil with good.
I worry when I hear politicians speak of bin Laden as the Evil One Who Hides. But I would worry even more if we were to refrain from naming morally reprehensible acts, and those who commit them, as evil."

I suppose just the title of this book really spoke to me and deeply challenged me "Against the Tide - love in a time of petty dreams and persisting enmities"
It made me wonder about my own capacity to truly love in the midst of my own desperately petty dreams and persisting enmities ... my pondering was not as edifying as Miroslav Volf's. Do I just kid myself that I am going against the tide when really the way I go is also with the flow of an individualistic culture which loves far too little.
You can read a preview of the book by clicking here.

Running away or becoming hyper active - how do you respond to Good Friday

On Good Friday I often return to Charles Elliott's reflection and challenge in his book Praying the Kingdom where he encourages the reader to practise a form of one of the Ignatian exercises where you inhabit the person of Mary at the foot of the cross contemplating the crucifixion.
A harrowing experience, watching the one you have brought in to the world dying a dreadful and seemingly pointless death.
Elliott recounts two main responses to taking part in this spiritual exercise. Many men respond to the exercise by fleeing the scene, leaving so as not to have to contemplate the unbearable. Many women respond by trying to tear Christ off the cross, be desperately trying to do something to stop this terrible travesty of all that is good.
But we are called in the midst of a political spirituality to simply be witnesses to that which is terrible and awful, to dare to live with it - not accepting it, not running away from it, not believing that we can stop it - simply surveying the cross and seeing it for all that it is, the terror, the horror, the pain, the injustice.
Sometimes though it's hard to stop running, sometimes it's hard to stop doing and just be in the terrifying space of another's pain.

Sarah Coakley and my desire for theology

Later this year the first volume of Sarah Coakley's systematic theology will be published, God, Sexuality and the Self: An Essay 'On the Trinity' it sounds fascinating I am looking forward to buying and reading it. For the past week I have been trying to decide whether or not to be completely crazy and try to attend to the Sarah Coakley and the Future of Systematic Theology symposium taking place in Sidney in July. It's not going to work for me I fear and I'm a bit sad about that because it sounds extraordinarily exciting. Read more on Ben Myers blog here.
Anyway you can hear Coakley's inaugural lecture"Sacrifice Regained: Reconsidering the Rationality of Christian Belief" at Cambridge here.
My crazy idea about going to Sidney was in some ways an expression of my need to nourish the mind, to nourish my theology and to continue to grow theologically. It's so easy to get stale and I get terribly bored by listening to myself saying the same thing again and again.
Anyway I've got plenty of reading matter - including some Sarah Coakley, so instead of desiring a theological experience perhaps I'd better just get on with doing some of the hard graft!

The deep links between the liturgy and our advocacy and engagement

As Holy Week begins so Seven Weeks for Water offers a final Lenten meditation. This week Canon John Gibaut who is director of the Faith and Order Commission brings things together by focusing on the Easter Vigil and looking at how reflecting about water liturgically can also nourish our engagement and advocacy about water as a human right.
Holy Week is the week that remembers on Maundy Thursday Christ washing his disciples feet; Lent is the time that traditionally prepared people for baptism. To be a disicple, to be a Christian is be a person of faith willing to follow, willing to step forwards. As we understand the spiritual meanings of water more we can also find deep and real resources to nourish and "water" our commitment to working for water justice at global and local levels.
Here's an extract from John's meditation from this week:

What the Christian community says and does around water in prayer—the water of Baptism, the Baptism of the Lord, the Blessing of the Waters at the Theophany, the example of Jesus washing his disciples’ feet, and all liturgical uses of water in public prayer—has profound implications for Christian understanding and awareness of water today. That we use water in prayer—and how we use it, and how much of it we use—has consequences. The Christian community’s liturgical use of water has the potential to be a rich source of theological reflection about what water is, and about the care with which it is used. The degree to which Christians experience the holiness of water in prayer will also contribute to the churches’ engagement with other faith communities, governments, environmentalists, and with all who thirst for a just and ethical use of water today.

Water of vulnerability and of liberation

Maike Gorsboth's sermon from yesterday's world water day service is now online. It pays hommage to the thinking of Steve de Gruchy and his Olive Agenda linking creation and liberation ethics.

"Water is more than a symbol ... Water being the source of life makes it much more than 'just' a sacramental symbol or a symbol of liberation. It also makes it a means of liberation."

Over on this week's Seven Weeks for Water there is a powerful reflection by John D. Roth on footwashing and practising the politics of mutual vulnerability.

Jesus was challenging his disciples to cultivate a life of mutual vulnerability rooted in the confidence of God’s extravagant and abundant love. By washing the feet of his disciples, Jesus offered a physical, embodied demonstration of this new kind of politics—a politics demonstrated even more dramatically in his death and resurrection in which power was “made perfect in weakness.”

I'll try to return to some thoughts about vulnerability in a later post. I've been doing some thinking about the issue linked to leadership in recent weeks, not sure where that will take me but foot washing is a challenging model for Christian leaders.

Meanwhile this picture and others of our toilet queue were taken by the WCC's great photographer Peter Williams.