Spirituality, resistance and leadership

I'm in Rome for the last but one session of the management course run by the Craighead Institute which I've been following for the past 18 months.
One of the areas we will be looking at over the next three days is "resistance" and I brought with me to read in the train Dorothee Sölle's Mystik und Widerstand which goes deeply into issues of mysticism and resistance.
Depending on whether you are trying to bring about change which you see as necessary or whether you are resisting what you see as bad practice or wrong thinking will of course colour the way you think about resistance. It can be both a positive and negative force, conservative and radical, and discerning between those forces is not easy at all. For instance, do I resist change because the change doesn't serve my personal interests; because I prefer the status quo; because my power is undermined by the change or because I truly believe the change is wrong and won't bring any real benefits given the pain and upheaval of change?
It strikes me that these are also issues which the churches in the secularised west are facing as they see their traditional place in society changing and sometimes try to hold on to the temporal power and status, while claiming also to stand for religious values. It's not an easy path to tread with integrity and if we look at churches in situations of resistance in history it's easy to see that it has been a painful path, a journey upon which many of those who you thought shared your faith will not join you.
If you too are having problems picking your way through the moral minefield of Christianity in a post modern world you may find Simon Barrow's essay on the subject interesting.
Towards the end of his essay he says this:

One of the major tasks of radical Christianity ... is to break open the text again for those for whom it has become buried in ideology. [5]
In conclusion, it is important to remind ourselves that there are discernable and valuable subversive traditions within Christianity (Quakerism, Anabaptism, liberation theology, radical evangelicalism, progressive Catholicism, and so on), which revolve around from what I'd call ‘the Jesus trajectory’ - and which undermine both top-down churchianity, the Christendom settlement (the dangerous alliance of the church with power) and knock-down metaphysics.
You can't read such radical traditions as generating simple spiritual, moral, theological and political prescriptions, of course. And I wouldn't want to. It's more about cultivating a new and ethos for living, alongside and with others. Far more challenging.

Word of the day - la chosification

A word came up in our feminist theology group last night "la chosification de la femme". As I heard it I smiled because I'm not sure I'd ever heard it said aloud before. But making human beings into objects into things which is what the word means is not a smiling matter.
Something I shall ponder now as I make my way to Rome on the night train is whether we should translate in a way that objectifies people through language. Suzanne Mccarthy on her excellent blog has been campaigning against wrong and wrongly interpreted translations. The way we use words can objectify others and encourage others to think it is all right to treat people in reality in the same way as we speak about them.
Racist comments or jokes, sexist comments or jokes may be funny but they are not a joke whatever Carole Thatcher or Prince Harry may claim. Please don't try to sell the "political correctness gone mad" to me line. The words we use to describe the world can also create and change that world for good or for ill. That's no joke.

Remembering women in the gospels

Laurence Mottier encouraged us to remember women in the gospels as she began our feminist theology group last night. It made me smile that she chose to begin by getting us to remember. What I found interesting about our ecumenical group of nearly 30 women trying to piece together the names and stories of the women in the gospel was how this remembering triggered other more recent memories as well.
As Laurence was telling us something about the status of women in the various times of the Bible, some of the women were chiming in saying - "Well it may have been like then but it really isn't so long ago that women weren't trusted here either. Back in the 1980s I wasn't allowed to sign for a loan without my husband's signature."
From remembering we moved on to semiotics and in particular the text of Luke's gospel part of it translated into French by Laurence herself. We looked at how women had been written into and out of the gospel story and how centuries of tradition, assumptions and patriarchy have led to women disciples being forgotten. We also came across some questionable translation issues which I haven't got time to go into now - let's just say that the Bible en français courant's rendering of Luke 8.1-3 owes more to interpretation than translation.
Two things really struck me as the evening progressed.
The clear glimpse we get through the text of how the women disciples are said to have followed Jesus from the outset - from Galilee - and in Luke's gospel it is only the women disciples who are there at the crucifixion. From beginning to end the women disciples or some of them followed the Rabouni, they bear witness to Christ's life, death and resurrection. Only when men take up the story will it begin to be believed.
Laurence also said that the two words that she uses to typify discipleship in French are "service" and "suivre" - service and following. The female and male disciples in Luke's gospel do both. Only the female disciples in Luke still follow to the foot of the cross.

Off to feminist theology

I'm about to go off to tonight's feminist theology session which I'm looking forwards to. We're in the middle of our "Dieu est Belle" series and as I've not been able to attend the last two sessions it will be good to get back into it. We're having one or two problems keeping our wordpress theolfem blog up to date - mainly that means me, I've just not had time to train the other person how to do this. Anyway we use the blog mainly to try and build up an archive of what we've done over the past 5 years and it's quite impressive. Gradually we hope as this year moves on to add audio files so you can download the sessions onto your MP3 players - you just know you want to learn French this way. We're also already planning next year's sessions.
In idle moments I dream of trying to make the blog into some kind of portal of Bible studies and theology by women in languages other than English but probably this will have to wait until I am retired, and as I'm already failing to keep up with what I'm supposed to be doing on this one perhaps I should just get on with reality rather than dream of grandeur! My execrable French typing is also rather trying for folk - just how many ways will I manage to spell "prochaine".

Meanwhile, as I prepare for this evening session with Laurence Mottier, a Genevan pasteure who coordinate the disabled people's chaplaincy, I've also been reading my friend Janet's blog - she's holed up in snow which seems to give her time to write poetry, snug in a blanket of icy white cotton wool:

Here’s to women
Here’s to women, wonderful women:
warm women, cold women,
working women, creative women,
wild women, wistful women,
watchful women, mindful women.

Here’s to women, wonderful women:
reminding me who I am,
encouraging me how to be,
waiting alongside of me,
bringing love to birth in me.

Here’s to women, wonderful women,
both known and unknown.
As the world turns
may we turn to each other
and affirm what we discover there.

Elemental powers

This extraordinary piece of textile art is by Louise Mabbs and called "Elemental Powers". It was made for my friends Janet and Bob and celebrates their 10 years in the city of Sheffield. Bob was an industrial chaplain in the city. Janet has written more about the quilt and its inspirations here.
I normally prefer abstract quilts but what I like about this one is the beauty, lack of sentimentality, the industrial and environtmental themes and the brilliant portrait of the steel worker in the middle.
The quilt has signposts from Land's End to John o'Groats and many 3D elements including a representation of the Angel of the North. During a three month sabbatical in 2003 Bob did this end to end walk (called lejog) and did a diary - an early weblog - which was entitled end to end via the margins. It's a great resource of reflections, photos and prayers from one end of Britain to the other.

Generate your own slogan for the (not so) atheist bus

Hat tip to Maggi Dawn for this bit of fun. You can click here to do your own slogan for the no longer quite so atheist bus.
The French post office also does cards where you can change the words - I rather like the alphabet soup.

Translation in an age of capitalism - word of the day prix choc

As I go around the supermarket my eyes are assaulted by fluorescent orange lables. A few years ago the orange lable meant there was 50% off but then the policy changed and today only 30% off is ever offered in my local shop. However very cleverly the special offer lables are the same shape and colour as the reduced lables.
This evening I could have bought two 500 gramme bags of rice at a "prix choc". Round the corner in a different aisle a single 1000 gramme bag of exactly the same rice was being sold at 20% less. A real case of caveat emptor leading me to grimly observe that a translation of prix choc should really be "shocking price" .
Translation in the age of capitalism is about navigating and interpreting between the fluorescent lables as much as understanding the words.
Meanwhile for many people the huge rise and volatility of rice prices is a matter of survival and not just of irritation.

Adding John Updike to the reading list

Ben Myers has written a good appreciation of John Updike and his work over on Faith and Theology. Myers highlights the theological themes in Updike's work, his appreciation of Barth and how his poetry shows great theological acuity. As usual the comments after the post also make for great reading.
I remember reading Roger's Version in Berlin while waiting for my visa to get into East Germany (to go and study at a church seminary there) and discussing it with a friend also training for the ministry who was reading the German translation.
Meanwhile Kim Fabricius cites this description of what seminaries are like in the comments:
"believing souls are trucked in like muddy, fragrant cabbages from the rural hinterland and in three years of fine distinctions and exegetical quibbling we have chopped them into cole slaw salable at any suburban supermarket. We take in saints and send out ministers, workers in the vineyard of inevitable anxiety and discontent. The death of Christianity has been long foreseen but there will always be churches to serve as storehouses for the perennial harvest of human unhappiness."
Anyway reading about Updike over recent days has convinced me that I must try to make more time for serious reading - and not just for detective fiction.

Ubuntu may be a great operating system but hardware still matters

While he was away at the World Social Forum Dr B sent me some particularly cryptic emails - so cryptic that they looked encrypted. It reminded me of the days where I would sit for hours trying to decipher his handwritten letters to me from the other side of the iron curtain. Anyway now he's home I understand why his emails from Belem were in code.
Oxfam Belgium donated a large number of recycled computers installed with the Ubuntu Linux operating system to the Forum and for work in Brazil afterwards. Quite a number of them were in the press room at the WSF. It's a great idea. However there was one problem and it was Azerty not Ubuntu. Training your brain to make your fingers intuitively find their way around the French azerty keyboard has been something I haven' t managed in nearly 18 years of living in France - the numbers are all on shift for instance (and obviously Dr B has fared no better). Of course the recycled computers from Belgium came with azerty keyboards. It just proves that you can have the hippest operating system you want but you still need to think about the hardware issues.

Surviving on 600 calories a day in Zimbabwe

The Guardian is reporting that the World Food Programme is halving the amount of food it gives to people in Zimbabwe to 600 calories a day.

The WFP says it has cut the ration to meet increased demand and cope with a shortfall in donations. It says it requires another $65m to keep feeding Zimbabweans until the end of March. But donors are reluctant to put more resources into the beleaguered African state and what aid there is has been partly diverted to the cholera crisis that has claimed 3,000 lives.

Bad governance is fatal for the people's health. Meanwhile 600 calories represent a couple of modest snacks to the stuffed rather than starved person I am.

Will diplomacy be able to triumph in Zimbabwe? How many hundreds and thousands will die in the meantime?l

Breaking news - I'm gender neutral!

We guess http://stranzblog.blogspot.com is written by a woman (50%), however it's quite gender neutral.

Is this correct? Yes No Don't know

View results

Well thanks to the irrepressible David Ker I now know that the Stranzblog is apparently gender neutral - according to the remit of this scientific test. Not sure what this makes me but I do wonder about the word "quite" - is 0% "very" gender neutral if 50% is "quite"? Yes you've guessed, I never did study statistics - je n'y comprends rien.
Anyway this stuff at least gives we bloggers something to write about in our aimless way. Let me know what your blog comes out as. The women in ministries blog comes out at 61% female according to the test - only 1% more than the wonderful Kurk Gayle.
What's actually interesting of course is that some men are a little offended to be thought of as women by this data driven device. Whereas of course being gender neutral is an accolade for a woman perhaps!

New blogs on the block

My colleague Hans Uli Gerber has started a new blog which made me smile with pleasure when I first saw it today. It's called upside down heaven and says:
This is about the beauty of messiness, the joy of complications, and the peace of non-conclusiveness. When things are upside-down there is hope for them to get better. This is also about how heaven and life are part of each other and about how heaven is so close, yet can't be possessed.

Those who know me know that I am a messy person so I like the idea of the beauty of messiness. I also wonder whether maybe the beauty of messiness could be linked to "messy church" which is a movement promoting informal more messy forms of church.
Hans Uli coordinates the WCC's Decade to Overcome Violence and his first post on the new blog is all about growing up speaking German in a French speaking part of Switzerland, about language and identity.

There's a link from ideas of messiness to Sarah Hall's new blog "Pieced Together Praise" which she started after the women in ministries meeting in Windermere. Sarah also has a link to Switzerland where she studied theology for a while - despite being British she also speaks fluent German and French. It's because of Sarah's blog that I've discovered the word "craftivism" - although I realise that this has been my approach to ministry and life for quite a while. Anyway craftivism seems to link in to all sorts of wierd and wonderful wacky types out there - including groups of radical knitters. I think I'm going to enjoy learning more about this.
In her most recent post Sarah has written about Jean Parker's exhbition Good Grief which was on in Sheffield recently. That's art rather than messiness but if any emotion is messy then grief is.
Anyway I think it's time not just for messy church but for messy theology. Any takers?

Bookmark it

At the women in ministries meeting I was given a beautiful handmade book from Tree of Life Inspirations.
The one I have is not about the kangaroo leap of faith that this one encourages, the back to this one reads:

To step beyond our own limitations,
no matter how small those steps may be,
is to start on a road of exciting self discovery.
We are all much more than we usually believe ourselves to be.

Justice or mercy?

In idle moments in the Stranz-Brown household we pose the question "Justice or mercy - which would you rather have?"
Tonight I've been reflecting on this difficult question - which of these two virtues is more important in ethical decision-making, or even just in ordinary decision-making? It depends on many things, including the situation. Our household is united in choosing justice rather than mercy if that is the choice. This blog has a justice tag but not a mercy tag, yet justice can be merciful.
I'm not sure what it is we think this says about us but justice rather than mercy is it. Just a way of trying to follow some kind of path through the morass of life and faith.
"Do Justice, love kindness and walk humbly with your God" Micah 6.8

I've just realised that at our wedding we sang these wonderful words by Isaac Watts, suggesting that maybe this is a false dichotomy:

Thy truth and justice I'll proclaim;
thy bounty flows an endless stream
thy mercy swift, thine anger slow
but dreadful to the stubborn foe.

(Tune St Bartholomew, please don't sing it to Rockingham - the links here are particularly cheesy and schmaltzy versions!)

So which is it for you, justice or mercy?

Searching for the meaning of life ...

Concert for Gaza

Midwifery as a metaphor for management

For some months I've been reflecting on the midwifery role in terms of management and leadership. It seems to me that the midwifery role is a good analogy for the leadership role. In many cases there is a lot of solid relational work that goes on before the birth, also some coaching perhaps and then as birth approaches both encouragement, reassurance and the ability to be present and know when it is crucial to intervene and when not, when to use technology and when to let nature take its course.
Of course saying that I have been reflecting on this really just means that it has occurred to me in a few idle moments on the bus and that I seem to come back to it as an interesting and useful metaphor.
Perhaps it's also the feminist theologian in me that is interested in this metaphor. I have always liked the image of God as midwife. In management terms though, it is not about power in the traditional sense but is more about a manager encouraging a new thing to be born that is different both from the person or group giving birth to it and from the manager themself.
As I started my management course I wrote that I was convinced that management was theological work. I still wonder exactly what it is I meant when I put that down. I think that what I am groping towards at the moment as I prepare to write my diploma this year is that management is actually about bringing theological skills, knowledge and models to bear on actual situations and organisations. The thing I think I have most learnt on this particular management course is that it is as much psychology and community building as blatant power that are the building blocks of pushing change through in organisations. What I am learning about drawing different things together is that insights from pastoral and systematic theology may be important alongside insights from systemic management theory and analysis.
Whether we choose to effect change in a way that presents people with a fait accompli, in a way that respects or disregards due process, in a way that is up front or secret, in a way that is top down or bottom up, in a way that waits or pushes, may well also show up theological issues we or our organisations are facing or trying to deal with.
I am not yet quite clear what it says about me - a woman who has no children - or about my management style, theological issues or systemic organisational analysis - to say that I am interested in the issue of midwifery as a metaphor for management. It expresses to me something about some outcomes being so precious that they require and should be offered some extra support, encouragement and coaching. And it also makes me reflect on how difficult the modern workplace is for so many people - and how very western my model of midwifery is. Throughout the world women are giving birth to babies without much hope of this kind of support before, during or after the birth. Many of their indigenous widwives have been lured to other countries where money is easier to come by.

One of the things that regularly happens to me when I think I am having an original thought is that by googling I discover my thoughts are nowhere near as original as I thought. So it is with this. There's an interesting link here on Facilitation as Midwifery, another here on midwifery and philosophy and a very interesting article by Sharon Bell on midwifery and film making here. She can see pluses and minuses in the image of the midwife as a model for creative leadership in the knowledge economy. She also claims that the midwife may be at least as useful as the more male football coach image often used in management and says "the midwife epitomises the concept of leader as engaged facilitator."
Ah well even if my thoughts on this were not as original as I had perhaps hoped at least there's going to be lots for me to read and think about on this subject.

Friendship

Friends have been good to me this week: phoning, visiting, listening, doing my shopping, leaving messages, and today taking me out into the sunshine, beautiful views, snow and blue skies. A great way to build up my strength and morale after the week's fever and infection. It always surprises me when this happens. When I was a teenager I didn't have many friends and ever since I left school I'm surprised that I seem to have friends.
Perhaps these feelings also come from a sense of guilt at not being a very good or dedicated friend myself. I'm no longer very good at keeping in touch with friends from long ago - it's years since I sent a Christmas card to anyone.
Friendship is one of the key building blocks of life, both casual and good friends, networks of aquaintances and even "virtual" phone, internet and facebook friends help all of us to remain connected and not to get lost within our own petty concerns and worlds. In the international and local community here on the Franco-Swiss border friendships are sometimes difficult as so many people are always moving through and moving on. It's difficult for some folk to find the emotional energy to invest in new friendships they think might not last long. Living with the ebb and flow of changing and developing relationships is always a challenge.
Years ago a young woman in my congregation asked to be baptised. I encouraged her to find a Bible passage and, after sitting down with my copy of the Concordance de la Traduction Oecuménique de la Bible, she came up with a number of verses on friendship which all came from the book of Ecclesiasticus. This was quite a challenge both for me and for her Grandfather who was also a pastor - Protestants don't usually read Ecclesisticus as it is one of the Deutero-canonical books and is not normally included in Protestant Bibles. Looking through Ecclesiasticus again today I particularly liked this verse: A faithful friend is the medicine of life."
(Ecclesiasticus 6:16). With all the medicine I've been taking this week I'm also very gratefully aware that my friends have been at least as good as the antibiotics. Friendship is even today the medicine of life.