Fallen walls of shame are symbols of hope

Dr B took these and other photos at a short ceremony at the end of the day around the two large pieces of the Berlin wall which are in the garden of the Ecumenical Centre. In the public park of Grand Saconnex a special sign was put up today to point the way to these pieces of the wall in the ecumenical garden. At the same time another sign was erected pointing in the opposite direction to a boat shaped commemoration by the Vietnamese community who were received by the commune of Grand Saconnex in the 1970s after fleeing across the seas.
The local Swiss authorities all turned up dressed in full regalia, I always find this rather wonderful and it made us smile to watch them walking through the car park and up to the pieces of the Berlin wall. It seemed right and Swiss and a good honouring of local democracy and civil society.

The WCC general secretary Olav Fykse Tveit welcomed the local authorities saying:

I'm old enough to have seen this wall in its former place in Berlin. One of the worst experiences of my life. It was a sign of what humanity should not be and should not do, to separate those who belong together.
I am grateful this wall is now in pieces and these pieces are signs of hope and of the future. They are signs that it is possible to make a difference.
We have a "prophetic role" to tear down what should be torn down and to "have a vision" This is our calling from God. To bring together what belongs together, to be one.

He then handed over to Jean Fischer who is a former general secretary of the Conference of European Churches and was in the at role when the wall was given to CEC. It's always interesting to compare what we thought we knew about the pieces of the wall with what Jean told us in his speech

I made a request to have two pieces of the wall the when in Berlin the week after the wall came down. Heard nothing for months and then got a telephone call from a colonel in the German army who said, your two pieces of the wall are here, please send a lorry to pick them up.
The wall was put up in 1961 but fell in several hours. The wall of shame and the Iron Curtain was destroyed. CEC had since WW2 tries to keep links between the free world and the Soviet ruled world.
There are new walls in Cyprus, in Ireland. A report in Le Monde from Belfast recounts how more and more walls are being put up to keep the communities apart. Never has the city been so calm, never has it been more divided. More and more people say "High walls make good neighbours".

Jean ended by calling for walls of shame around the world to be brought down - from Mexico to Israel, from Belfast to Cyprus - both the physical walls of shame and the shameful walls of racism, exclusion and poverty.
More photos here.

More on reconciliatory leadership

During one of our sessions at the staff planning days yesterday there was a picture of a herd of elephants to remind us of Bishop Duleep Chickera's wonderful Bible study on reconciliatory leadership

here's a quote from the study:

And finally and perhaps most importantly, grievance, in Christian spirituality is always an invitation to growth in unity, mission and witness. An illustration from the community life of elephants may help us understand this better. (In fact a study of the community life of elephants is a fascinating exercise and may even have some lessons here for the ecumenical movement! For instance the leader of the herd is always a female and when young males become troublesome they are driven out of the herd by the mature females !!) Recent research tells us that elephants communicate through murmuring sounds in their stomach which can be heard only by the herd and for quite a distance too. One of the most common “stomach” communications from the matriarch to the rest of the herd, is “let’s move”. Similarly in Christian spirituality the murmurings of people is God saying “Let’s move “ and wise Reconciliatory Leadership will see this as an invitation to a fresh experience of unity, witness, mission and growth.

Laughter on hearing the gospel

There is an ancient Easter tradition of laughter - Das Osterlachen in German. I thought about that this morning as we gathered in the chapel for prayers led by Faautu Talapusi and listened to Matthew 6:25-34 read superbly as ever by Theodore Gill. He read the passage in a quite ironic and humourous tone ending:
"So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today"
Perfect for staff planning days!
The gospel made us smile and even laugh out loud, was our laughter "knowing", were our smiles foretastes of the resurrection or just rueful accecptance of the post-modern gap between the gospel call and the day that lay ahead?
Even as I smiled my eyes were full of tears, unaccompanied we had just sung "Here I am Lord" one of our friend Suzanne's favourite songs, but she is no longer there to play for us. I had problems getting through verse three, my voice breaking with emotion.
That morning time play between laughter and tears helped me accept my emotions as both important and as unimportant. The trouble of today may be enough to make me weep but I should not worry about weeping tomorrow.
Laughter speaks so much of something opening up and being released within us and tears are in many ways similar. Perhaps both can be harbingers of resurrection.

Stories from the edge with ASBO Jesus

Looking at Jon Birch's brilliant cartoons on ASBO Jesus is one of my guilty pleasures. In recent days Jon has been posting a series of very powerful black and white images originally drawn for Dave Wiles' book Stories from the Edge which is published for the Frontier Youth Trust.
these two don't really need any further comment from me. You can follow up with comments of your own here and here.

Sour dough or yeast? And can I still be baker ... random thoughts

When I was 18 and working in Germany I bought a wonderful baking book "Das ist Backen"and have spent much of the rest of my life reading it, translating recipes from it for friends and just enjoying going back to to look at the pictures. My mum still remembers me coming home from Germany with it and the ensuing kitchen chaos as I made "Schwarzweissgebäck" and special new year's "Glückschweinchen". It was my main source for bread baking recipes when I was a student (before I got a copy of Elizabeth David's wonderful English Bread and Yeast Cookery) but there were problems in store for me because I didn't understand anything about the German concept and reality of "Sauerteig". I had never really used rye flour or any kind of slow rising yeasts and it took me quite a while and lots of talking with friends who were bakers to begin to understand and create my own sour dough.
I was thinking back to those times as a student when I would bake twice a week and how my bread changed over time as I discovered how to use sour dough and really enjoy the flavour it gives to bread. This morning in our staff Bible studies at work we were reading parables of the reign of God in Matthew's gospel including one of my favourites of the kingdom being like the leaven that a woman kneads into the dough. Leaven is yeast but it's different from yeast. It's a slower, more natural way of raising the dough and it adds a different flavour to the bread. Here in France baguettes made with levain naturel really taste better. Industrial yeast produces a different flavour and a different crumb to the bread.
Sour dough, leaven, can even raise heavy, dense flours. The stiff-knecked, tough and dense dough of humanity can be risen with leaven - slowly, tastily, thoroughly. But either leaven or yeast require kneading, the work of the kingdom requires some elbow grease but is also a mystery. In the end it's not a question of whether I still bake bread (I live 30 metres from a great boulangerie so no not often any more) but rather about whether I allow bakerwoman God to knead the stiff-knecked stuff of my life. Will I give God's leaven the time it needs to mysteriously work in my life and in the lives of those around me?

Local ecumenism in the global context

Last night I attended the AGM of the local council of churches. We have a strange Swiss style problem - all of the member churches pay their membership fees so we have (relatively speaking) quite a lot of money in the bank. However, we don't really have an ecumenical project or much ecumenical impetus in the bank somehow.
However, we were meeting in Onex last night where the five local churches from different confessions have strong ecumenical links going back decades. As the meeting discussed prospects for ecumenism in the canton of Geneva, the minister of one of the evangelical churches in Onex encouraged us to see ecumenism happening at the local level. In Onex during 2009 there had been no fewer than 47 meetings, meals and encounters between all five of the town's Christian confessions. Local ecumenism based on live encounter is alive and well, perhaps at the cantonal level our job is to try to link up and communicate more of what is happening at the local level.
Anyway having been worried that the meeting would not be very energizing I came away with lots of questions but also with ideas that could take things forwards.
From an international perspective being involved with the local churches in the city where our organisation happens to be based is a challenging experience, it brings me face to face with the weaknesses of ecumenical structures but also the brilliant tenacity, creativity and openness of the people of God. The global church is the local church. The local church is the global church.
It was in many ways just another boring meeting, but it was also in many ways a blessing.

The day the peace came - a story of resurrection

Our service this morning focused on peace, the promise and hope of peace. The WCC's general secretary, Olav Fykse Tveit opened and closed the service and also preached a very personal and pastoral sermon on what real peace can mean.
His text was from John's gospel 20.19-23 Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." and he told a story his mother had told the family time and again, the day the peace came to Norway, to Oslo.

One story my mother told again and again with a never ceasing joy in her eyes was the story of when the peace came. It was almost as if peace was a person: with a real presence, coming, being, breathing, staying.

Tveit went on to talk about how the rumour of the peace spread and then could be seen by three concrete proofs: people talking freely with one another on the streets, the Norwegian flag being flown even though it had been banned and the burning of the paper blackout curtains on the streets.

The feeling of what the coming of peace means, can only really be experienced by those who have been living with the fear of war, the burden of injustice, the tension of waiting for the day of peace and new life to come.
The more I see the realities of life for many people in this world, in different kinds of conflicts and injustice, the more the story of when the peace came becomes a story of hope and solidarity: listening to the longing for justice and peace; longing that something wonderful will happen, that it must happen …

At the end of the service just before the final blessing we shared the peace, having just sung "la paz del señor" we moved around sharing the peace with one another. It worked well and was quite moving. In an ecumenical setting we cannot share the eucharist but we can share the peace, it's another way of affirming communion and fellowship.
As the service ended I reflected on how it is narratives of meaning, stories of hope that tell us as much about the resurrection as simply retelling the gospel story. The stories of hope, peace and resurrection that we tell can go on being told after we ourselves are dead and no longer here to tell them. The narrative of hope continues, the story does not end. It's particularly true of stories our parents and grandparents tell us.

Colocaterre for all of us as colocataires

I made it to church here in Ferney this morning which was good. It helped me reconnect with folk in the parish and was good for the soul. Bernard preached on the Alliance biblique theme for last year of "colocaterre". It's a terrible pun but quite clever - "colocataires" are people who share the rent or the tenancy lease on a property. Colocaterre means we need to think about how we live together on planet earth (the pronunciation is identical, French is dreadful for homophones).
When I came home from the service I realised I missed a reading from the New testament. We had readings on the jubilee from Leviticus - making it clear that the earth belongs to noone - and Psalm 8 was also read as part of a celebration of creation.
I suppose what I felt was missing was resurrection hope in the face of the degradation of creation, particularly as we were still singing Easter responses. It's interesting that I didn't really notice this lack until I came home, a long time after the post worship coffee and chat.
So how do we live together as fellow tenants on planet earth? At the end of his sermon Bernard challenged us to think about what we might be willing to give up so that there could be more consistency between what we say and what we do on the issue of ecology. It all fitted in quite well for me as earlier in the week I finished the editing and preparation of texts for the next issue of Ecuemnical Review which is all about churches caring for creation and climate justice.

Ferney dans la rue - local democracy and protest

Yesterday morning Alex Décotte was wandering around the Ferney market with a sign around his neck protessting at the plans by our town council for the redevelopment of the centre of Ferney. He told us to visit the Ferney dans la rue site. I'm actually in favour of some of the plans but it's important to go and check the PLU (plan local d'urbanisme) at this stage and to offer complaints, alternatives and comments before it's too late. One of the challenges for Ferney is that all around the communes have alot more land than Ferney does and across the whole of the Pays de Gex housing developments have been taking place without even a hint of a structure plan or green belt. The past 10 years have seen a mushrooming of building projects. So there are good reasons - not least public transport and reducing the number of car journeys - for trying to develop the centre of Ferney rather differently. However one big challenge in our area is the lack of social housing and the current plans would lead to some of the existing social housing being taken down (particularly hideous stuff built cheaply in the 1950s and 60s) but those living there at very low rents at the moment may not find anything similar in the new project.
Anyway there is a series of public meetings underway on the PLU and of course the opposition is getting organised as well through Ferney dans la rue.
Décotte comes from an old Ferney family and is a journalist. He has been involved in writing the local satirical magazine and now website "Ferney Candide". He was on the town council here in Ferney for a while just after we moved here, but he's really happier involved in satire, campaigns and opposition politics.
I suppose what I like about the project that our council has put together is that it is ambitious. I'm not convinced by the collective's claims that it involves the destruction of greenery (a tarmac car park with a few trees on it?) and I think the town deserves a bit of a rethink to encourage people to walk and use public transport.
Anyway all this to say that things in Ferney are set for quite a political battle over the coming months. Should be fun, it makes the British general election campaign seem quite tame.

Angels against my inner demons

Another picture of one of the icons from the exhibition in the chapel: the angel of prayers.
Throughout this week I have been wrestling with some inner demons: the usual stuff of feelings of lack of self worth, rage against my uselessness and an inability to even glimpse the future (or so it seemed). Loving other people is one thing, learning to love myself is another.
And then there came the angels. I should perhaps explain, I am Reformed, I'm not really into angels particularly ones that look like this beautiful one painted by Didi Marmoud. And yet ... I do occassionally buy strange guardian angel knick-knacks to give to friends and have rather wacky magnetic guardian angel on the oven door.
In human form angels have helped me this week with the inner wrestling and wreckage. It won't have been easy for them, I'm not always open to help even when I know I need it. The angels have come in various forms: wearing suits and ties, lipstick and jackets, jeans and dreadlocks, designer clothes. Some listened, some talked, some brought me gifts, some walked with me, some gave me encouragement, some hugged me, some gave me advice, some watched me weep. Angels are messengers and this week I have been blessed by the silence, the words and the gentleness of my angelic visitors. Like the artist Tirabosco last week when he was decorating the water carafe I would put a halo over each of them, each is blessed and they have blessed me by opening up more than glimpses of the future again. Ah yes, and the angel bearing Italian earings inside a late Easter egg was particularly appreciated - I'm just a material girl really and one day I really should do a blogpost about my earring fetish!

Miroslav Volf on justification by grace

On Thursday morning I read this extract from Miroslav Volf's Against the Tide at chapel. This is from a wonderful essay called "Shopkeepers Gold".

Could the hope for the inner cities lie in part in the retrieval of the doctrine of justification by grace? How could dead streets receive life from a dead doctrine? Imagine that you have no job, no money, you live cut off from the rest of society in a world ruled by poverty and violence, your skin is the "wrong" color - and you have no hope that any of this will change.
Around you is a society governed by the iron law of achievement. Its gilded goods are flaunted before your eyes on TV screens, and in a thousand ways society tells you every day that you are worthless because you have no achievements. You are a failure, and you you know that you will continue to be a failure because there is no way for you to achieve tomorrow what you have not managed to achieve today. Your dignitiy is shattered and your soul is enveloped in the darkness of depair.
But the gospel tells you that you are not defined by outside forces. It tells you that you count - even more, that you are loved unconditionally and infinitely, irrespective of anything you have achieved or failed to achieve, even that you are loved a tad bit more than those whose efforts have been crowned with success.
Imagine now this gospel not simply proclaimed but embodied in a community that has emerged not as a "result of works" (Eph. 2.10). Justified by sheer grace, it seeks to "justify" by grace those whoa re made "unjust" by society's implacable law of achievement. Imagine furhtermore this community determined to infuse the wider culture, along with its political and economic institutions, with the message that it seeks to embody and proclaim. This is justification by grace, proclaimed and pacticed. A dead doctrine? Hardly.
As I was reflecting on the social significance of justication by grace, I remembered a passage from Nietzsche's Thus spoke Zarathustra ... "O my brothers, I direct and consecrate you to a new nobility: you shall become begetters and cultivators and sowers of the future - truly, not a nobility that you could buy like shopkeepers with shopkeepers gold: for all that has a price is of little value."
Justification by grace, I thought, musing on Nietzsche's profound observation, is so deeply at odds with our "shopkeeper's culture". It takes the price tags off human beings not so as to devalue them but so as to give them but so as to give them their proper dignity, a dignity not based on what they have achieved but rooted in the sheer fact that they are loved unconditionally by God. Divine love is that indispensable nourishment for the human soul of which the prophet speaks when he calls, "Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters: and you that have no money come buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price." (Isa. 55:1)

I shall now try to stop quoting large chunks of Volf but really recommend the book, deeply satisfying. Go out and buy a copy! I feel profoundly challenged to think about how to "love in a time of petty dreams and persisting enmities". I often feel caught in petty dreams and persisting enmities, reading Volf's has helped me once again to see my faith as the key way through that. I like the way he speaks about faith rather than spirituality too.
The book is a real reminder of why societies need intellectuals and why Christianity needs thinkers.

Allegiance and rebellion in against the tide

I've been leading morning prayers at the end of this week. Yesterday and today as well as a Bible reading I've offered the handful of folk at morning prayer a short extract from the wonderful Miroslav Volf book Against the Tide. Volf's writing is extraordinarily powerful and I could post quotes from every essay, really profound spiritual writing. Here are the passages I read for colleagues this morning, from an essay called "Allegiance and rebellion" which recounts some of his thoughts on the Good Friday he was naturalized as a citizen of the USA.

On my application form for naturaliztion I stated that I would not bear arms. To demonstrate the sincerity of my convictions, I appended a brief statement explaining that in communist Yugoslavia I had been persecuted partly because of my pacifist stance. The explanation didn't help. To be exempt from the obligation to bear arms in the United States, I had to be a member of a recognized religious body with an official pacifist position.
During the interview about my application for citizenship, my interlocutor tried to persuade me to change my mind.
"A stapler is an 'arm'", said the exasperated woman behind the counter.
"I use a stapler every day" I responded "but not to kill people."
"We don't want you to kill people!"
"So we agree?"
"But would you not defend your wife and children?"
"I will defend but I will not kill."
"There are mean people out there, ruthless autocrats you know."
"Yes I was born in the former Yugoslavia."
"Then you should know better. "
"Maybe I do," I said.
Later another official listened for about ten minutes to my dozen ways of saying I will defend but not bear arms and then suggested a compromise. At the place on the form where I had checked that I will not bear arms, she drew a line and wrote. "Will defend." I initialed, and was granted permission to become a citizen - citizen Volf, who will defend without bearing arms ... except staplers, of course.
...
A day or so after I was naturalised, I received a congratulatory card from my in-laws. It featured not a patriotic slogan but this quotation:
As citizens, Christians share all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners. Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers ... They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven. They obey the prescribed laws, and at the same time surpass the laws by their lives.
The passage was from the early second century Epistle of Mathetus to Diognetus. The words put in a memorable way the dialectic of distance and belonging, of strangeness and domesticityx, of surpassing the laws and obeying them. A word of welcome appropriate to citizen Volf, who for the first time would be celebrating Independance Day as an American citizen - a citizen whose ultimate allegiance is to a polity ruled by the crucified Messiah.

An iconographer's prayer - God as the artist of my life

As a Reformed Christian I come of course from an iconoclastic tradition so it has been interesting to reflect on the meaning of icons and art, to find myself challenged by and "chosen by" the artwork on display in the chapel. The artists have put up prayers with the icons they are displaying and the one I've translated here is the iconographer's prayer - it spoke to the iconoclast that I am. I particularly like the idea of God being the artist of my life.

Lord,
Your Spirit breathes where beauty is created
Come to my aid
In my prayer let me become an icon which reflects your being
Guide my spirit
Inspire my movements
Enlighten my looking
Put your word onto my lips
For you my life will then become a work of art, a sacred work.
May those who look at me be able to recognize you.
Blessed are you Lord for having made me as your brush;
You who are the artist of my life.

(Translated from the French)

Breastfeeding madonna

This icon shows a breastfeeding madonna, which according to this post here is something the Vatican has been trying to promote to put across the idea that Christ was fully human.

The Paintbox of possibilities

Another photo of the exhibition in the chapel, this one with the palette of pigments at the entrance and showing some of the visitors. The chapel does not have holy water to remind us of our baptism at the entrance but we walk through virtual water at the entrance. This is where the paintbox of possibilities is positioned, a reminder of the creativity and recreativity of baptism perhaps.

Colours for the icon that is your life

I really like the icons which are part of the exhibition in chapel but in many ways this is my favourite photo of the expo. This is a box of beautiful pigments, it's clear that it's in regular use by an artist. Like any artist's palette it speaks to me of the world of creative possiblities, of new art that may be created, of the openness and discipline that creativity requires.
I suppose in many ways I simply want to find a brush and use these pigments and paint ... instead I suspect the computer calls, but then that's just another kind of palette in many ways.

St Michael and the Dragon

So you can see how great the icons lookagainst the wood of the chapel.

Icon exhibition in the chapel

I had a real Martha and Mary moment this afternoon and it was quite funny. I was busy preparing the "apéro" for the opening of the icon exhibition and wanted to take a drink to our two artists who were in the chapel. Walking from the apéro table into the chapel I suddenly realised that I was completely missing the main event, there were lots of people looking at the icons, enjoying the music, looking around and talking gently. It was a wonderful moment - I suddenly realised that the real party was taking place in the chapel not around the crisps and wine bottles outside!
Many of the people who came in today had never been to the ecumenical centre before and it was agreat opportunity to talk about our work and meet new people, including a very engaging man who works as a clown and wanted to come dressed as a clown and do a talk on God, humour and spirituality. Not really something that someone who writes a blog called of life, laughter and liturgy could really say no to!