A new general secretary for the WCC

Late this afternoon the central committee of the WCC elected a new general secretary. Olav Fykse Tveit will take up office on January 1st 2010 when Samuel Kobia retires.
I am very happy at this news and was moved listening to the general secretary elect speaking while watching from the interpretation booths. you can read the moving and motivating presentation he made in the closed session of the central committee.

What does it mean to be one? To be one is to stand up for one another; to step out of our own interests - for the other, for a higher cause of unity; to stand together in the whole mission of God. We are so much stronger together. The agenda for justice and peace demands that we are one; the agenda for unity theologically.

Beauty and gentleness on a full and busy day

Geneva has been thundery these past two night but this morning was fresh and pleasant, though it soon got very warm. I got to work early to prepare the new booths for the interpreters - really I must take a photo of how fabulous it all looks - especially the brilliant new staircase. I should explain that prior to this the interpretation booths for our main meeting room could only be reached by taking a two minute walk up and down staircases quite a long way away. It was the opposite of convenient. Now that's all changed and it's amazing what a difference it makes to the way that we work as a team between documentation and interpretation.
WCC central committee began with prayers this morning and then a moving moment as members gathered in front of the doors of the newly renovated hall for a time of prayer before the plaque naming the hall after the WCC's first general secretary was unveiled - Visser 't Hooft.
Later in the day as I was walking through the garden back to my office several of the stewards were already at work beginning to mark out a large labyrinth in the grass - they are using stones and a simple piece of string - tomorrow photos of that definitely as it progresses. I'm really looking forwards to using it.
As I was leaving my office towards the end of the afternoon one of my colleagues said something very lovely to me - it's easy for me to forget the good and beautiful things people do and say to me. So it's good to blog and remember gentle goodness at the end of a tiring and busy day.

So what is your favourite biblical verse about peace?

The verse of the Bible about peace I probably quote most is "swords into ploughshares" - "Schwerter zu Pflugsharen", though I also like "And everyone beneath the vine and fig tree shall dwell in peace and unafraid". As I prepare the meditational peace walk we'll be painting this week I'm also interested in verses which link walking and peace.
Anyway if you have a favourite biblical or quotes from other sources about peace or about walking do leave a comment.

Word of the day - les retrouvailles

As the WCC's central committee begins there's alot of greeting and hugging going on in the ecumenical centre as people meet up again after a long time. Les retrouvailles is that - friends, couples, lovers, families, colleagues - meeting up and enjoying time together.
I like the word, but as I write this I can't really find an adequate English word - "reunion" doesn't really do it for me in the same way.
I also like that "une trouvaille" is a find or a discovery, so les retrouvailles is also about finding something precious that has been lost. That's stronger than "reunion" for me.
Meanwhile on my fairly infrequent trips to IKEA I always like to look in the bonne trouvaille - which is the bargain corner, the good find or good finds.
So as friends meet up again over the next week I'm hoping all will feel they've rediscovered something precious.

Sometimes even for me life (also known as work!) takes over from blogging

Apologies for the very infrequent posting here in recent days. The WCC's central committee meeting starts tomorrow and the scramble to get the official documents translated has been underway at rather more than full tilt in recent days, including the weekend. It looks as if we will just about make it - at least in time for the interpreters to have copies of the translations before the speakers present their papers. Phew ... We have all been working long hours.
Today also saw the arrival of the stewards - the wonderful young people who come to global events like this to discover more about ecumenism and work very hard.
The language service has two great stewards working with us who have an impressive range of languages between them - German, French, Spanish, Armenian. It always lifts us to work with young people who bring new insights and fresh enthusiasm to the work. I hope they are going to blog a bit while they are at central committee. We'll see.
Meanwhile, with another colleague I have also begun painting a 4 metre square peace labyrinth for the international day of prayer for peace - it's a bit crazy, but it's good relaxation from translating, editing, timetabling and coordinating. More about that soon.

The brand new WCC website

The World Council of Churches has launched a new look website. It's still in four languages and gives you access to news, events and background documents about the WCC's work but it now focuses the way in to the work through the key words of Mission, Unity and Service. I think it looks really attractive and I know how hard my colleagues have been working to get it ready, so why not have a look around.

More on justice and mercy

Today the Scottish government decided to release the person imprisoned for the Lockerbie air attack. I was interested this evening to read this in ENI:

The (Presbyterian) Church of Scotland has said it fully supports a decision taken by the Scottish Government on 20 August to release the convicted Lockerbie bomber, Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, on compassionate grounds.
"This decision has sent a message to the world about what it is to be Scottish," the Rev. Ian Galloway, convenor of the Church and Society Council of the Church of Scotland, said in a statement. "We are defined as a nation by how we treat those who have chosen to hurt us. Do we choose mercy even when they did not choose mercy?"
Galloway said in his statement that the jailed man's release was not about whether a single individual was innocent or guilty.
"Nor is it about whether he had the right to mercy, but whether we as a nation, despite the continuing pain of many, are willing to be merciful. I understand the deep anger and grief that still grips the souls of the victims' families and I respect their views," said the church leader.
"But to them I would say justice is not lost in acting in mercy. Instead, our deepest humanity is expressed for the better. To choose mercy is the tough choice and today our nation met the challenge. We have gained something significant as a nation by this decision. It is a defining moment for us all," said Galloway.

Reading the Church of Scotland's statement really made me think again about the justice and mercy issue, about our human desire to punish others for what they have done, our wish to see others rot because of what we have lost ... set against the gospel imperative.
This is complicated for me, as I've said in a previous post I tend to choose justice over mercy. What I like about the Church of Scotland's statement is that it doesn't try to be too pious, that it sees mercy as giving something more back to all and not just to the individual.
I am though still left wondering, saddened too perhaps by my own (I think righteous) anger that makes me choose justice over mercy in many, many cases. This tries not to be a mercy that doesn't care about the victims, and yet it is a mercy than the families of many victims will find very hard to understand.
Perhaps those of us who hunger and thirst for justice need to recognise that the merciful are also referred to as "blessed" in the Beatitudes:
‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
‘Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
Perhaps the gospel imperative is both to justice and to mercy - a mercy that does not allow for impunity and a justice that never forgets the transformative power of forgiveness.

And here's the great Youtube on prayer from the Church of Sweden

A briliant prayer website from the Church of Sweden

Over the past few days I've been getting a sneak preview of a wonderful new website by the Church of Sweden. Our friend Marianne Ejdersten has been closely involved in managing this project and the launch took place today. She's had more than a full day with press interviews, radio and tv. It's a top story - pray to God now from your mobile. And of course you can pray in languages other than Swedish, there are already contributions in English, Italian and French.
I love the gentle background music on the site and also the really fun way it chinks and chimes as you move your cursor around. If you want to leave a prayer, select the "Skriv bön" ("write a prayer") tab, and then click on "Skicka" (send) when the prayer is completed, after having chosen a church or cathedral for the prayer to be posted in - the church will then appear on the map of Sweden.

Dr B has also written an ENI story about the launch called 'Believers, seekers and cynics' all invited to online prayer site.

"Prayer has no boundaries, specific forms, locations or special language. Anyone can pray, at any time, anywhere and about anything."

Visitors to the Web site can search prayers by keyword and using hyperlinks, and then place a link to the prayers on blogs, or social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter. Together the intercessions form a hyperlinked "universe of prayers" that the church says is the first of its kind in the world ...

The Web page has been launched in advance of churchwide elections on 20 September when about 5.6 million church members are eligible to vote for representatives on governing bodies at various levels from parish councils to the general synod.

The online venture complements a television advertising campaign on prayer that aims to raise awareness about the Church of Sweden and its work in advance of the elections.

A long night in Berlin that changed my life

This post will go up at about 2am on the night of the 17th to the 18th of August.
Twenty years ago today I had arrived in West Berlin. With our friend Horst, Stephen and I decided to see if we could go over to East Berlin for the day. Horst got through faster as he lived in Berlin and we agreed we would meet at the Alex grill. At Friedrichstrasse I insisted on going through first, ahead of Stephen. I waited and waited and he didn't come through. I went through the horrible metal door where you couldn't see the queues or the border guards phoning to check details. I waited. Stephen didn't come. So I set off for Alexanderplatz, found Horst and we waited some more. It was a hot summer's day, children playing in the water. Stephen never arrived. He had been sent back at the border and accompanied by an armed guard back to the S-Bahn to the West.
This was not the first time he had been sent back at the border but there was a finality about this time, up until this attempt there had still been hope. On that day it became clear that he would not be allowed in again probably ever, mainly because of his links to people in the independant peace movement ...
I spent the day in East Berlin, visiting friends we had in common, telling them about Stephen's situation, listening to their concerns and plans for the coming months, discovering that by chance I was going to be spending the next six months in seminary in Wittenberg with one of them.
I didn't go back to the West and to Stephen until much later in the day - something he to this day still can't really understand. He was pretty hyper and upset by the time I got back. Together with out friends we talked for a long time and then the two of us ended up doing alot of talking in our bedroom.
At around 2.0am we got engaged when I somewhat sardonically uttered the words "if you are trying to ask me to marry you then the answer is yes".
So on a day when it became clear that we would almost certainly not see each other much or at all for the next 12 months, we decided to change our lives and link them. Little did we know that it would lead us to end up living like God in France.
I never did get an engagement ring, never really agreed with them anyway. Nearly two years later we got wed and put on some rather good fairly traded anti-apartheid rings, but that's another story.
Somtimes the best decisions are made in the early hours of the morning.
Many waters cannot quench love.

Memorising light and salvation and praying for the Pacific

This morning Faautu Talapusi from Samoa spoke and sang from the heart with great calm and authenticity. She remembered how her parents had made her and her two sisters memorise verses from the Bible each week, she was honest about the resentment she felt. But contemplating the challenges of life today and meditating on Psalm 27, she pointed to two constants, the one fear, the other "light and salvation" or as she put it "God's awesome love". Somehow the gentleness and beauty of the verses she was obliged to learn as a child percolated through with a message of meaning and support.
I was moved as I listened to her because I have met so many people for whom a similar regime of rote learning would have broken their spirit and faith. For Faautu that constrained learning did not lead her to memorise resentment but to memorise light, salvation and love.
She also linked this fear and salvation motif to the challenges facing her region of the world today:

For the Pacific Islands, its churches and communities – there is the constant threat of climate change amongst other things – when the water levels rise to the point that our islands are inundated and uninhabitable what then? How do you deal with a whole country without land, not a single inch of land? Is that still a country? How do you take a culture, its people and identity and transport everything to a foreign land? How do you tell people that they must leave the land that buries their placenta, and their ancestors under water? How does one do this?

I was also moved because this week, as so often during the year praying with the ecumenical prayer cycle, the countries we were remembering were facing current crises or grief. The challenge to all of us is to memorise more light and salvation and less fear as we go through life.

God of mercy – we pray for the people and churches of Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Kanaky and Tahiti. We pray that they continue to bring witness to your Word as they struggle against political instability, economic uncertainty and the consequences of climate change.

Memes, diaries, politics and thinking about the past

As you may have gathered from the rather perfunctory posting here life has rather taken over from blogging. My mother and her partner Martin are visiting us (we are all still at the getting to know you and being very polite stage), Dr B is trying to finish revising the German translation of his doctorate before the end of the month and life at work is no less busy than usual.
Today I finally got around to digging out my GDR diary from the cupboard and spent some time reading what I wrote 20 years ago. It was rather a surprising read, much more personal than I remembered. My comment to Dr B was that the diary seems to mainly be about alcohol, sex and politics, "Oh don't worry" he said "you can always edit it ... and get rid of all the politics". It is quite a shock to discover that I obviously was once young. Meanwhile I do sometimes think that my life has had all the politics edited out of it, I miss being active in a meaningful political way.
Then finally getting back to reading my favourite blogs I discovered that I was tagged on a meme by David Ker a week ago already. Bizarrely the passage he wants his blogosphere friends to share their thoughts about also figures in the background to one of the more lurid passages of my diary. I think that the only time I have heard the passage of the children being mauled by bears in 2 Kings 2:23-24 preached on was in East Berlin a month after the wall came down. David, in my bad girl way I will try and get to your bad boy Bible study sometime this week.
In my rather bad girl diary from 20 years ago, as well as encountering my wild younger self in a form I would rather not remember it was interesting to read musings and rants on prayer, ecology, life, the church and liturgy very similar to what I write here. With a bit of judicious editing to protect individuals I'll try and start posting it in real time from October 4th when I began to write it.

Talkin' about a (peaceful) revolution ...

How to make a revolution. Take a bunch of candles, some prayers and some Taizé chants. Encourage people to come together in small groups to pray for peace to write about peace to talk about how to build peace in a violent world. A warning: it may take years, decades even but every little humanising effort can make a contribution.
Twenty years ago in East Germany that is how it started. Yet actually it began long before. People kept civil society as alive as they could by refusing to bear arms during their military service, or by organising telephone trees if someone got arrested, by meeting in peace, ecology or women's groups, by writing undergound papers and journals, by keeping contacts outside their own context alive, by refusing to take the state "Jugendweihe", by going to church, by organising crazy activities like trying to keep a real tally of how many people really voted in the undemocratic elections or measuring the polution from a chemical factory, by refusing to keep their minds closed even if the borders of their country were.
Today many of those who were the key actors at the forefront and also behind the scenes of East Germany's peaceful revolution are still doing ordinary jobs, raising families, looking after churches, organisations, people ... Some have gone into politics but many are still working at the local level. Even though the system has changed they are still trying to keep the flames of civil society alive, just because walls and barbed wire iron curtains come down does not mean that a country's social tissue doesn't need to be worked on. Just because you have the privilege to live in a democracy doesn't mean your only contribution to civil society is when you vote.
20 years ago this weekend Dr B and I set off for Berlin from Brussels. I was about to live through an extraordinary year. Without those previous decades in the GDR of many people bearing witness to other truths, sometimes in quiet and humble ways, sometimes in creative and confrontational ways, then the extraordinary developments of 1989 could never have been.
Listening to the depressing and sad news from Burma in recent days and weeks, Aung San Suu Kyi's trial and further imprisonment, I have been hoping and praying that the efforts of all those working for the good of civil society there may also one day be celebrated. Maybe some of them will also live to see real fruits of their courageous attempts to continue building civil society. Resistance has been deeply costly for many of them.
It doesn't take much to change things for the better - every little humanising effort does play its role. Yet it also takes so much ... courage, commitment, resistance, belief, motivation ... and of course time.

Reflection: Have you seen Christ lately?

The following reflection was shared by Emma Halgren at morning prayers today.
You can find the full liturgy here.

Reflection: Have you seen Christ lately?
As the road outback unfolds like a ribbon, I look for the telling signs of a Christ-like figure that matches the road and the image within my mind.
Gnarled old trees bend to usher me on through corrugations and dust and casually I look in case I see the Christ within my mind.
An emu runs with a determined stare followed by several more, ignoring me and my road ahead, passing by until it is no more.
The faded homestead now left empty and bare flickers through the mallee scrub. A house, once a home of laughter and tears, now stands open to the elements and years and still I look for the Christ in my mind: could I possibly see Him here?
The whitened bones of a lonely steer glisten in the heat of the day, discarded and broken though once prized and nurtured; surely I couldn’t see Christ here.
A family of four, wide eyed and expectant, welcome me into their home. Their hopes have been sucked dry by the cancerous drought, as day after day the rains pass them by.
Could it be here that I find the Christ in my mind?
In the distance ahead a ramshackle pub quivers in the heat of the day and in the silence of the bar a knowing nod welcomes me this day.
Words are spoken of good times and hard, a laugh, a curse is mixed with what was needed to say and a departing handshake all cracked and hard sees me on my way. Could this have been the Christ of my mind?
As the night sky closes and the birds call their rest in the dark protective trees and as silence falls in the great outback, I know that I have seen Christ in all of these.
Dennis Cousens
Frontier Services Cunnamulla Patrol

A prayer froma friend leaving Geneva

WE ARE ONLY ON LOAN TO EACH OTHER

God our creator and friend,
Let us not take those who are with us today for granted.
Help us to remember that we are only with them for a very short while.
Help us to love them as Jesus loved all those he met,
For he knew that even tomorrow they could be called back to you.

Let me not take these people for granted,
Let me not be blind to all the gifts and talents they have.
Help me to appreciate, especially, the simple things they do
-the sound of their voice,
-the jokes and stories they share,
-the work they’ve done for others.

May the hard things they do to me not cause me to forget that down inside they are good,
created in the image of God.
Give me the strength to always seek out that which is good in each person.

Help me always to remember my own giftedness,
To focus not only on my weakness but also on all the good in me, for I too was created in your image!

Help me to remember that each person here is a gift that has been loaned to me for only a short while.

Adapted from: E. Hays, “Prayers for a Planetary Pilgrim” p.196 (adapted from an Aztec prayer)

ANZAC biscuits and Maori chanting on St Laurence's Day

It's the summer and many colleagues at work are on holiday but prayers in the chapel have continued and have been enriching these summer days for those of us who are around and able to get out of bed in time to attend.
This week the ecumenical prayer cycle moves to Australian and New Zealand and colleagues from that part of the world blended together many elements into a moving a stimulating service which included some wonderful Maori chanting and some great modern songs celebrating creation.
In the reflection Revd Michael Wallace first invited us to remember St LaurenceOne of the seven deacons in Rome during the time of Pope Sixtus the second, Laurence was in charge of distribution of alms to the poor. In 258, the emperor Valerian put to death numerous priests and deacons. When Pope Sixtus was beheaded in this persecution, the prefect of Rome demanded that Lawrence surrender to him the riches of the Church.
Lawrence asked the prefect for three days to gather together the church’s wealth. He then worked swiftly to distribute as much Church property as possible to the poor. On the third day he presented himself to the prefect, and when ordered to give up the treasures of the Church, he presented the poor, the crippled, the blind and the suffering and said, "Behold the treasures of the Church!"
This act of defiance led directly to his martyrdom on August 10th.
Lawrence defied the oppressive power of his day. In spite of the threat of death he kept his focus on serving Christ and his people. Even though the church lost a deacon it gained encouragement to resist the powers of evil. Laurence is remembered for his courage and his focus on not only serving but also valuing the poor.

There was also a powerful reflection on how the church can begin to speak to young people who gather in churches particularly on ANZAC day, moved by stories of those who died in wars far away from home nearly a century ago. What Christian message do we want to share with them?

The fragility of our cultures creates a situation where the demands and values of commerce can override everything else. Commerce threatens to fill the space of culture and religion, and sideline history and shared meaning.
Yet in this context a powerful spiritual yearning still arises. Despite their highly secular worldview and alienation from faith, people want to be part of an heroic and inspiring story, to believe in the kind of self-sacrifice that is displayed in the life of St. Laurence and Blessed Mary McKillop.

At the end of the service we were offered ANZAC biscuits. A sign of women's frugal work for peace.
Find the full order of worship here.

And 20 years ago this weekend ...

Twenty years ago this weekend I set off for Brussels to spend a week with DR B in Brussels before setting off for Berlin together and the beginning of my East German adventure. I know that when I crossed the border into East Berlin later in August I had far too much luggage but I have absolutely no memory of how I got to Brussels nor what I did with all that luggage - surely I must have sent it on ahead to Berlin? Interesting what we remember and what we don't. I have no memory of leaving Oxford and London for Brussels, but I clearly remember setting out from Brussels for Cologne to spend the day with my parents who were on holiday there.
I should really by now have prepared some posts for Holy Disorder for later this month as I shall not have time to add much in upcoming weeks as life will be very busy at work, and my mother and Martin are arriving for a week. We'll see what I manage. Meanwhile Dr B has been writing quite alot - inbetween the long hard slog of revising the German translation of his thesis.

Walking the labyrinth

I walked the grass labyrinth which has been cut into the lawn in Crêt Bérard this morning - it was rather lovely with mist rising over the alps and Swiss cows grazing nearby. There is something wonderfully reassuring and calming about the sound of cow bells. Everything was green and watered by the huge thunderstorm we had on Friday night. The particular labyrinth they have cut into the grass is based on one at Sens in France (that name makes me smile as "sens" is not just a place name but also has the sense of "meaning").

The Crêt Bérard labyrinth is set out in front of a lovely old oak tree. It's discreet and you can miss it if you don't know it's there. It was wonderful to lose myself in its meandres and turns, thinking for a moment that I was getting to the centre just after starting, then being surprised once I truly reached the centre that it still took a long time to get back out again. It was a very gentle 20 minutes - plein de sens!