Power or compassion - words from Paul Ricoeur

Paul Ricœur disait « Si vraiment les religions doivent survivre, il leur faudra renoncer à toute espèce de pouvoir autre que celui d’une parole désarmée et faire prévaloir la compassion sur la raideur doctrinale... »

Do you do God?

Last week ended with a friend sending me news that someone with the same name as a local journalist has said he's a Christian. This is part of a campaign being run to counter the National Secular Society's campaign to get yourself de-baptised. There's a similar campaign in France that I've mentioned before.
Meanwhile today an issue of the New Statesman arrived and it's all about God. A N Wilson has written an interesting article rather against the trend charting his return to faith. About 20 years ago Wilson "converted" to become a born again atheist. In the article he charts how his return to faith has been "slow, hesitant and doubting". I think my favourite line in the article is "My doubting temperament made me a very unconvincing atheist."
There's also a question and answer with Wilson.

My favourite parable

I have been reading some of the aricles on inclusive language that Thinking Anglican has linked to from a day conference organised in February by Inclusive Church and WATCH (Women and the Church). I've particularly enjoyed reading Lucy Winkett's contribution - as much for the great quotes about liturgy and language as for what she says about inclusive language. This evening reading the quote below touched me.

The parable of the lost coin is probably my favourite, if I could choose it for my funeral I would. I have often chosen it for funerals in particularly distressing circumstances. Somehow the God in this parable works for me - it's an intuitive rather than a rational thing. It's also a parable I have loved since childhood (long before even I was a feminist!) I can remember acting it out in Sunday
School and along with one or two other Bible stories it really stayed with me.
I would hate to claim to be a "more mature" theologian today but the image of a God who sweeps hard in the packed earth and dust to search us out speaks powerfully to me and moves me deeply. I also think of the three funerals I took and preached on this text, three sudden deaths leaving the families reeling with shock ... three children left without a parent, parents left without their teenage daughter, a father carrying his son's ashes the long walk to the cemetry ...

Here is what Lucy Winkett says:

If we address God as our father, yes, we are following Jesus' example - but this Jesus also told a beautiful story about God searching for us and rejoicing when we are found - a woman sweeping a house looking for a lost coin. Who is that searching woman if not God?
God is a woman who searches for us and she finds us, she calls her friends and is utterly delighted.

Liturgy, informality and remembering water

I could tell this morning at Oullins that I wasn't in Switzerland. We didn't start the service on time - in a Geneva Protestant Church this would not go down well, it's quite a big difference when you cross the border.(Think Swiss watches and clocks and you begin to understand why!)
Sometimes we talk about the "liturgy after the liturgy" but this morning we had a great lunch after the service but before the service we also had a sort of "gathering before the liturgy". It was spring time, the sunshine was out, the garden was in flower, people were having fun chatting and meeting up, and it was difficult to get people to move in to the worship space. In the end we managed to gather in the worship space and the worship flowed between formality and informality. Holding that together is quite a challenge for a visiting worship leader but it was fun remembering water in the Bible with them and reflecting on Jesus washing his disciples feet.
When I first started working in the French Reformed Church I sometimes used to feel frustrated at the inability of anything to actually start - not entirely suprising given that I trained at the more high church end of the low church spectrum. I used to feel the need to shape things and get things going - these days I just try to make sure that the notices don't last twice as long as the sermon!
Nowadays I understand better that the informality comes from the community gathering, the chatter and noise is part of the holy preparation and I imagine that in Jesus' time it was not so different. The synagogues and sycamore trees were almost certainly informal community times and not ritualistic well-behaved occasions ressembling middle class dinner parties with people being on their best behaviour.
In Switzerland where Protestants don't feel in a minority they seem to like things to be on time and not last too long. In France Protestants are in the minority and tend to be willing to take a bit more time.
I'm still not sure what Calvin would make of any of this - nor how any of our churches today would cope with his style of preaching and leading worship! Back in the 1600s Sunday worship was not supposed to be the perfect 55 minute pearl of poetic perfection which "busy" professionals seem to impose as a norm on the Genevan church.

Escaping to Lyon

I have escaped to Lyon for the night where I'm leading worship tomorrow. I'm spending the night next door the Lyon Observatory overlooking the whole of the connurbation. On a clear day you can see the Mont Blanc from here.
Meanwhile we are watching less peaceable images of violence in Strasbourg as the Nato 60th anniversary is contested.

Celandines, daisies, violets and anemones

I came back to my office to find a lovely posy of flowers from the fields around the office. They are the perfect size for office flowers and sit nicely between keyboard and screen gladdening my heart. This photo wasn't taken until later in the week and the anemones have opened up so much they nearly swamp the rest. Spring really is here.

Praying like a woman ...

This evening thanks to a local Anglican priest a group of women gathered to talk about the spiritual needs and feelings of women in the 55-70 age group. Many churches in Europe have a lot of women in this age range and although they may be seen as the backbone of parish life, how often do these women take time out to to consider their own spiritual questions and needs? Between caring for very elderly parents, looking after grandchildren, dealing with retirement and learning about growing old (dis)-gracefully it's a busy time emotionally and physically.
We tried to answer the questions we were asked as honestly as possible and had interesting discussions in pairs about "what frustrates you, what gives you joy, what saddens you?"
We ate and laughed and talked and prayed together, we made new friends and took time out and it did us all good.
Nicola Slee's book Praying like a Woman was also part of the evening as was her book Women's Faith Development. More ideas of things to read ... will there ever be enough time?

An unfinished theology

This week I've been discovering Ina Praetorius - her writing and website "From equality to reconstructing the World". I'm also intrigued by her latest book "Gott dazwischen - an unfinished theology", though I don't yet have a copy. She's a German feminist theologian who writes and speaks for a living, and now lives in Switzerland. She doesn't seem to have a blog but she does have "Gedankenblitze" on her site and reading this really struck a chord with me:

Bei Eckart von Hirschhausen habe ich diesen Satz gelesen:„Das Beglückendste am Schreiben ist, wenn man sich selbst überrascht. Plötzlich steht da etwas, und du weißt gar nicht richtig, wer es da hingeschrieben hat.“Als Schreiberin kenne ich diese Erfahrung. Als Köchin auch, als Lebende. Wer kennt sie nicht? Ich habe beschlossen, den Irgendwer, von dem der fröhliche Doktor hier spricht, „Gott“ zu nennen. „Ich“ habe beschlossen? Vor meinem inneren Ohr tauchen jetzt Menschen auf, vielleicht auch Eckart von Hirschhausen selbst, die sagen: „Aber Gott gibt es doch gar nicht.“Ich (Ich?) sage: Vielleicht ist die Frage nicht, ob es Gott gibt. Vielleicht ist die Frage eher, ob ich das, was da etwas hingeschrieben hat, so nenne. Ob ich (ich?), mit anderen Worten, das Andere, das mich beim Leben begleitet, in das grosszügige Gefässwort fülle, das ich von Älteren geschenkt bekommen habe.

Bishop Tomas Balduino on Seven Weeks for Water

Last year I was fortunate enough to meet Dom Tomás Balduino who is Bishop Emeritus of Goiás. He was touring Switzerland to raise awareness of a major project in Brazil to divert the course of a river so as to bring water to agribusiness rather than the local population. In 2006 the Swiss and Brazilian churches issued a joint ecumenical declaration on the human right to water, one small way for churches to make sure that local campaigns on the right to water gain some global recognition.
Balduino has dedicated his life to supporting the struggle of the poorest in Brazil for their rights. Today he is adviser to the Pastoral Land Commission, an organization of the Roman Catholic Church that fights for the rights of rural workers and peasants in Brazil.
He has written this week's meditation on Seven Weeks for Water about "Sister Water or Blue Gold?"

At the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Ricardo Petrella, a professor, author, and water activist from Italy, reported that Nestlé and Coca Cola are buying up large tracts of land in Brazil that contain permanent water springs. Those multinationals are investing vast sums of money in Europe in the bottled water market. Their aim in South America is the same. The International Monetary Fund has put pressure on African governments to accept water privatization as a condition for their receiving subsidies for development. There are rivers in Brazil that are dead through the discharge of industrial chemical waste. That is one way in which water is exploited in favour of production. That is happening even in the ancient ecological sanctuaries in our country such as Bacia do Xingu. The water of the River Fresco, that used to be clear, has now become full of sediment through widespread gold-mining. Fish have been found that are blind through lack of light.
Read more here and think about getting your church to sign up to the ecumenical declaration on water as a human right.
Photo by Guilherme Cecilio

Tender mercy ...

By the tender mercy of our God,
the dawn from on high will break upon us,
to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace. Luke 1. 78-79

When he was a child this was the Bible passage given to him when he was baptised. One morning last week in the flower of youth just 17 years old he didn't wake up. Translated his name means blessing. He was his parents' "one and only". Tomorrow family and friends will gather for the funeral.
I pray that the memory of all he was will give light to those who are in the shadow of death.

St Francis reprayed ...

Over at Novice Blogger my best friend Janet Lees has been writing about remembering the Bible and Vision4Life.
Meanwhile her life mate, Bob Warwicker has also started blogging again in splendid low key style - he started before any of us really, way back when he posted every day from his epic Land's End to John of Groats walk on End to End via the Margins. Bob ministers in Huddersfield.
Janet's also written this great re-working of the prayer of St Francis:

Make me a channel of your peace:
where there is chaos,
may patterns emerge;
where there are words,
sentences take shape;
where there are fragments,
stories unfold.

For it is in remembering we forget,
in forgiving we are released to forgive,
and in listening we are empowered to speak;
in fighting we discover our need of peace,
in hugging we gain courage to let go,
and in creating we set free the stuff of life.

copyright (c) Janet Lees

Word of the week - Pimavera

Spring is late this year so the primroses - les primevères in French - are still flowering in profusion. They are so lovely and seeing them flowering in likely and unlikely places gladdens my spirit.
In these mountainous parts we'll still be able to find them much later in the season once the snow melts from the top of the Jura. The meadows there often have examples of primroses, cowslips and oxslips growing side by side. Dr B doesn't really understand my enthusiasm for such things.
This past week we have often had three seasons in one day - snow, gales, rain and sunshine. The humble primrose seems to cope with it all and raise its pretty faces to the sky - they must be special they even survive and flourish in my neglected garden. Not surprising then that in some languages they actually take the name of Spring - and there was me thinking that primavera was the name of a pizza!

Picture hope

Shutter Sisters Dream Assignment: Picture Hope from LittlePurpleCow Productions on Vimeo.

Hat tip once again to Maggi Dawn for pointing to this project by Shutter Sisters called Picutre Hope. I really like the idea of getting photographers to pitch for their dream assignment and then giving them money to help finance it and make dream a reality. I am also moved by the collaborative inspiration behind the Shutter Sisters project. You can check out their Dream Assignment here and if you like it you can vote for them before April 3rd and help make their dream a reality.

Read the spoof FT for the upcoming G20

Anti-capitalism campaigners have published a spoof edition of the Financial Times - that pink paper which is the Stranzblog's guilty secret.
You can read it here. It's very well done - all of the adverts and bits and pieces try to get the environmental message across. My favourite bit so far is the spoof on the atheist bus slogan
There's probably no cod. Now stop asking for it and eat more sustainably.

I admit to also rather enjoying the Blair pilgrimmage story:

Tony Blair, the former prime minister, received a ritual scourging outside Notre Dame Cathedral yesterday as he continued on his expiatory pilgrimage to Rome.
Dressed in bright orange sackcloth, and wearing the ashes of British parliamentary democracy on his head, the penitent was beaten about the face and body by personal envoys of Pope Jeanne I, costumed as apes and eating Camembert.

Thorns in the flesh and jewels in the crown

I've been taking morning prayers for most of this week and this morning as we ended the working week I chose a reading from 2 Corinthians 12 which includes, "Therefore, to keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given to me in the flesh"
The form our morning prayers take depends mainly on who is leading them and whether there are enough of us to dare to sing. Often after the Bible reading we simply keep silence. This morning as we looked back at the past working week I remembered our friend Pauline Mackay telling us about Pauline Webb speaking about at the Harare assembly of the WCC in 1998.
Nelson Mandela visited the assembly and the WCC's controversial programme to combat racism was celebrated. Pauline Webb spoke reflectively at a side event about the PCR - as it is known - saying very astutely that what is celebrated now as the jewel in the crown of the WCC's legacy had actually for many years been the thorn in the institution's flesh.
Sometimes it is the things we struggle most with that become the making of us, but of course this is another case of life being lived forwards and understood backwards.

Rowan Williams on the environment

Thanks to a comment on Seven Weeks for Water I've been reading some notes from Rowan Williams on the environment as an issue of justice:
Getting our relationship with the rest of the created order into proper perspective is both a responsibility and a necessity. Failure could have disastrous consequences especially for some of the poorest and most vulnerable. "There is no way of manipulating our environment that is without cost or consequence ... we are inextricably bound up with the destiny of our world."

Rowan Williams describes:
"what unintelligent and ungodly relation with the environment looks like. It is partial .....It focuses on aspects of the environment that can be comparatively easily manipulated for human advantage and ignores inconvenient questions about what less obvious connections are being violated. It is indifferent, for example, to the way in which biodiversity is part of the self-balancing system of the world we inhabit. It is impatient: it seeks returns on labour that are prompt and low-cost, without consideration of long-term effects. It avoids or denies the basic truth that the environment as a material system is finite and cannot indefinitely regenerate itself in ways that will simply fulfil human needs or wants. And when such unintelligent and ungodly relation prevails, the risks should be obvious."

Is freedom the same thing as liberty?

"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." George Orwell

Word of the day "moneytheism"

This headline made me smile today "Will the global financial crisis mark the end of "moneytheism"?"
You can read more about here.