Water the source of life – and not of violence - reflection by Priscille Djomhoue

Women carrying water, Nile, Egypt. Photo: Walwyn/Flickr

Over on Seven Weeks for Water Professor Priscille Djomhoue reflects on the resonances between women's lives in the Bible and present day Africa. She also tells stories of women and girls suffering terrible violence and vulnerability because of lack of access to decent water and sanitation. Yet she asserts clearly "Water is the source of life, not of violence".

Here are two tasters from her meditation:

in many developing countries, not everyone has access to drinking water. In towns and in rural areas water is worth its weight in gold. People often have to travel long distances to find a supply of water in a river or a spring, and then carry it on their heads or their backs, exposing them to the risks of malformation of the spine or other back troubles. In many town areas, as is often the case in Cameroon, water has to be bought from a neighbour who has been able to have a well dug or who has mains water. That is not a new situation, since in the Bible, water was often such a scarce commodity that mention is made of people paying for it (Num. 20:17-19; Lam. 5:4).

In Africa, many women are denied their rights and do not have the money to buy water from their neighbours. This situation makes them vulnerable when an urgent need for water arises. In September 2009 in Yaoundé, in an area called Mendong, two young girls under the age of 12 were regularly sexually abused by the man in charge of the well where they often had to go to fetch water for their mothers. The police took up the matter, but it was too late. The physical and psychological damage done to them was immense.

Of Holy Innocents

Depending on which branch of Christianity you belong to yesterday, today or tomorrow marks the feast of Holy Innocents. It seems strange somehow to call something so horribly violent as Herod's brutal massacre of the boy children around Bethlehem a "feastday".
Often the date goes almost unnoticed, lost in the lurch from Christmas to New Year, forgotten in the rush to post Christmas sales and the return to work.

As I re-read the story in Matthew's gospel I've been reflecting on the disproportionate violence that the birth of the vulnerable baby provokes. I also wonder how many other times God tries to break into human history and yet is brutally stopped by human jealousy. Today children in so many places are massacred - through poverty, war, abandonment and the awful personal and thoughtless violence of those closest to them ... Herod today can take many forms and does not necessarily rule from a palace.

Often at Epiphany I have preached on how the Magi were not so wise and learned after all. They did not understand Herod's power or obsessions, their learned naivity leads to the massacre and the wailing of the parents ... the vulnerable prince of peace born into violence.

"Warned in a dream" the Magi return by a different route, this gives the newborn Christ and his family vital time to flee from the jealous political power that wants him dead ... and I wonder does God also weep at the spilt blood of the innocent children, does God rejoice that God's own son is saved, are not all children, children of God?

T.S. Elliot in his wonderful poem The Journey of the Magi has the Magi learning and reflecting on their homeward journey, precisely on this life and death paradox in the experience of the birth in Bethlehem. The child born in that place was destined to die and only thus to reign over a kingdom of peace. The gift of myrrh speaks powerfully of the perfumed spices that the women will carry to the tomb after the resurrection ...

were we lead all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I have seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.

Meanwhile, Patrick Comerford, whom I was privileged to meet on my recent trip to Ireland, has written as ever learnedly about Holy Innocent's day here. Here's a taster, but do read his whole post, and the ones that will follow for the remaining 12 days of Christmas:

Oscar Schindler famously said: “Whoever saves the life of one saves the entire world.” He was referring to a well-known teaching in the Talmud: “Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world” (Jerusalem Talmud, Sanhedrin 4: 8, 37a) ...
This is an appropriate day to remember those children whose innocence has been destroyed by people working in the Church.

A day of blessings and presents

Today was my first day back at work after three weeks away. It was great to meet up with colleagues again and to start the week back in the chapel. As always though after a long holiday there is the slight feeling of re-entry, so I was extraordinarily blessed to return to my office after lunch and discover a card, a huge purple flowering orchid and a great new handbag. To then discover that these presents were from female colleagues at the World YWCA was like an added blessing of sisterly solidarity.

In just over a month the World YWCA and YMCA will holday their annual week of prayer

This year’s YWCA/YMCA Week of Prayer will be held from the November 14 to 20, 2010 . The theme is ‘Women Creating a Safe World,’ which is also the theme of the World YWCA Council and International Women’s Summit to be held in Zurich, Switzerland, in July 2011. The International Women’s Summit will explore the intersection between violence, sexual and reproductive health and rights and the spread of HIV. The theme celebrates women as leaders and co-creators of life everyday. In the company of many faith traditions, Christianity explores and affirms the role of women in creation, nurturing life and reaching out to the other.

I was asked to write six daily meditations for the week which you can find by scrolling down and clicking on the week of prayer booklet link here. And here are the themes for the six days:

Day one: Blessed are those who risk, for they shall be offered safety
Day two: Blessed are those who refuse to violate women, for they
have chosen life
Day three: Blessed are those who recognise and value the unique
talents of others, for they shall succeed
Day four: Blessed are those who raise their voices for health justice,
they shall be heard
Day Five: Blessed are those who build community, for they will be
blessed with belonging 13
Day Six: Blessed are those who dare to change, for they shall be
blessed with the future

Here is the meditation from day two, you'll have to go to the booklet for the questions and prayer. And thanks once more to my wonderful colleagues at the World YWCA for their generosity, support, creativity and leadership. This week they mark their week without violence.

Blessed are those who refuse to violate women, for they have chosen life
But the men would not listen to him. So the man took his concubine and sent her outside to them, and they raped her and abused her throughout the night, and at dawn they let her go. (Judges 19:25)
This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live. (Deuteronomy 30:19)

The Bible text in Judges 19:22-30 tells a terrible story of gang rape. Do the men inside the house listen to the woman's screams as they last through the night or do they sleep? Do they pray for her or for themselves? Do they fear that she may not make it through the night and that the gang will come back to use them in the same way? If the gang comes knocking again, should they offer the virgin daughter of the host in order to protect their male honour?

Well, she was only a concubine. Not a real wife. And she's only a woman…

As terrible as the shrieks and violence during rape may be, terrifying too is the silence often imposed on women - by others or by themselvesafterwards.
Dare we speak and name what has happened?

There is a thumping sound next door, muffled shouts and cries. My neighbour is hitting his oldest daughter. He has been drinking. She is pregnant. How will his sons learn that this is not the way to treat the women in their lives?

And it's called "domestic violence" as if it were something tame. It is not.

The word "home" sounds so safe yet it can be a place of terror for many women.
To "choose life" is to campaign against everything that treats women as objects rather than as equal human beings. Choosing life is about longterm work with individuals, families and societies which examines the root causes of violence in sexism and the feelings of disempowerment.

Across generations, class, race and nations it is time to clearly say that violence in the private sphere is also unacceptable. We have the right to be safe in our homes. We choose life.

Käthe Kollwitz - sculpting for peace

So here are the photos I took at the memorial in Berlin to all victims of war and violence. This sculpture is a copy of a work by Käthe Kollwitz, a mother cradling her dead son. Stephen first introduced me to Kollwitz's work more than 25 years ago and I still find it very powerful and deeply moving.

Is it feminism or sexism that is alive and well?

As soon as I saw this over on the ever splendid ASBO Jesus I knew I wouldn't be able to resist posting it. It's been interesting to go back to it a few days after seeing it originally and read the discussion about feminism in the comments.
There are so many pre-conceieved ideas around what feminism is. Part of me is sad that feminism has such a bad press, but in the end it's about getting the message across about equality and dignity for women. For the vast majority of poor women across the world it is not about discussions about who does the housework, but about access to education, healthcare and a decent life. These poorest women are growing much of the world's food, working hard at home and beyond the home, they often live in situations of extreme vulnerability and are not seen as equal citizens. In the end for me feminism is about passionately believing that women deserve as much dignity as men. Of course women are not better than men. Of course men are not better than women.
A cartoon like this one reminds me that I am hugely privileged - to have access to work, to live with a man who values me as an equally flawed human being (of course we do sometimes disagree as to who is more flawed but that's just married life!), to have leisure to reflect on the meaning of life rather than to worry where the next meal will come from or whether the next bullet, bomb or rape will be for me. In the end feminism for me is about saying my (perhaps seemingly petty) struggles are not unrelated to greater and more important struggles by women in many places. How societies view, judge or value women has a direct impact on ordinary women's lives. I'm trying to play my own small part to make sure that feminism stays alive and remains fun as well as feisty.
Meanwhile if anyone seriously believes that sexism is dead I would encourage you to watch some of the videos on the Lenten campaign to overcome violence against women.

"Sexual and gender-based violence shreds the very fabric of society" said Dr Manoj Kurian, WCC programme executive for Health and Healing. "While it undermines the physical and psychological health of people, it also questions the integrity of our life and faith. We have no illusions that these problems will be easily solved. Our aim with the study is to encourage our churches and communities to examine these often unspoken and unrecognized acts of violence, so as to address the root causes. We also encourage churches and communities not to use theology selectively nor hide behind cultural tenets to defend such violence. It is only by acknowledging the pain and the ongoing hurt that we can begin to seek justice, truth and ultimately the healing and reconciliation of individuals and communities." More here.

Women and Violence a liturgy, a way forwards

I spent some time last night writing a liturgy for the service on Monday morning to launch the campaign to end violence against women. We'll see on Monday whether it works as I hope. We will all have stones which we lay down as part of the prayer of confession, having listened to the story of the woman taken in adultery from John's gospel.
The first week's study is already up, from cries of anguish to stories of hope. I like the way the study focuses of how women are overcoming the violence they face and how transformation of both women and men is what is aimed for.

Anyway you can find the simple but rather tough liturgy I've put together here. Hope it can also go up on the campaign's main site soon. I had the idea of how it should be going around in my head for a while and last night as the deadline approached it did come together. Phew 5% inspiration, 95% perspiration. It's interesting to have to work with the 30 minute limit we have for our chapel services.
Meanwhile Maryann Philbrook has been blogging about the campaign here and here. You can also join the campaign on facebook.
Here's part of the opening litany from the liturgy:

A litany of violence against women from the Bible
This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live. (Deuteronomy 30:19)

When Shechem son of Hamor the Hivite, prince of the region, saw Dinah, he seized her and raped her. (Gen 34:2)

Choose life. (Deut. 30.19)

But the men would not listen to him. So the man took his concubine and sent her outside to them, and they raped her and abused her throughout the night, and at dawn they let her go. (Judges 19:25)

I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. (John 10:10)

But he refused to listen to Tamar, and since he was stronger than she, he raped her.
On the day that Amnon raped Tamar, Absalom decided to kill him. (2 Samuel 13:14; 32)

I have set before you life and death.

International Day for the Elimination of Violence against women

I woke this morning to news that the Britsh government was putting in place educational programmes on violence against women and girls.
I read a good interview with my colleague Nyambura Njoroge about violence against women in the context of her work on HIV with the churches in Africa.

She recalls the sneers she received in Harare, Zimbabwe, at the 1992 All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC) Assembly, when she used the case of Pia Njoki, the woman blinded by her husband in a fit of rage so she wouldn’t see other men. She was accused of washing dirty linen in public.
"We had all cried for Pia. When I wrote my doctoral dissertation, the issue of domestic violence had come up. So what was the dirty linen that I was washing at the Assembly?" she asks.
She was the first Kenyan woman to research and document the contributions of the pioneering Presbyterian Church women who stood up against female genital mutilation in 1928 and later, highlighted the rape of students at St Kizito High School.
"Newspapers are good at covering these issues, but what do we do with those reports to change our society for the better?" she asks.
Not many women realise that sexist, patriarchal traditions, practices and beliefs remain in the church and society. And women’s response to them, even in Church ministry, has been shaped through the eyes of men. Speaking out to offer an alternative perspective then makes one the odd one out and is frowned upon.

I spoke with colleagues about the ongoing power of patriarchy in many international structures.
I learnt about the brilliant idea called circles of names from the NCCUSA. Women not as victims but as role models.
My husband wrote an article today that began:
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu has joined a "Network of Men Leaders" set up by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to combat violence against women.
"You are a weak man if you use your physical superiority to assault and brutalise women," said Tutu in a U.N. video clip to mark the launch of the network for the 10th anniversary on 25 November of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

So what have you been learning on this day, exactly one month before Christmas, a season which in many parts of the world sees a big rise in reports of "domestic violence". Maybe you think it's just political correctness and the situation is not so bad. Of course that's the problem, because it's "domestic" it's hidden, "we shouldn't judge what goes on inside a marriage" which of course is an easy way of siding with injustice in such situations.
In the same way we shrug our shoulders at stories of women raped as part of war and conflict. Margot Kässmann has also come out today and stressed how unacceptable this is. So is anyone listening, have you begun to change the way you behave, are you encouraging men you know to join the white ribbon campaign or ist all a bit too embarassing and "domestic" to mention in polite company?

Violence and health

Together with more than 20 other colleagues we began our WCC meetings week with a visit to the World Health Organization which is almost next door to the ecumenical centre in Geneva. We had four fascinating presentations linking some of the WHO's work to areas of the programmatic work on Health and Healing and also on HIV on the WCC's agenda. I certainly learnt a great deal, including that the issue of "spiritual" health has been tabled for inclusion in the WHO's declaration on health but doesn't ever seem to ever quite yet make it into the organization's declaration about health. It was both heartening and depressing to hear workers in that much bigger international bureaucracy talk about the challenges of their campaigning work, decision-making procedures and actually having some impact.
The final presentation of the morning was quite a revelation to me. The Decade to Overcome Violence team at the WCC has been working with the WHO's Global Campaign for Violence Prevention. Listening to the global statistics about violent death I was very struck by suicide causing more deaths worldwide than war in the most recent figures available. One death every forty seconds. I wondered how much of my time I spend in praying for peace and overcoming war and how much I spend in praying for those suffering from depression, unhappiness and daily anguish. The fireworks and pornography of violence attract so much of our attention, our theological reflection, our prayers- and yet this "attraction" also distracts our attention from the at least equally important spiritual and theological issue of combatting misery, unhappiness and meaningless. Of course it shouldn't be "either / or" but "both /and". I left the WHO with alot to think about.
The powerful poster here is one of a series from the campaign called "explaining away violence" - you can look at the others and download them by clicking on the link.

Can any of us truly live gently in this violent world?

Hans Uli over on Upside Down Heaven has been writing about Jean Vanier and Stanley Hauerwas' book Living Gently in a Violent World: the Prophetic Witness of Weakness.

I particularly like this quote from Vanier "I'm not interested in doing a good job. I'm interested in an ecclesial vision for community..."
In a later post Hans Uli goes on to reflect on traffic accidents and pacifism, the potential violence of car driving which is very interesting. I don't drive - though I do own a car and am often driven to places in it.
How can any of us live gently in this world where for some of us simply waking up in the houses we live in means that we have consumed more of the planet's resources than any individual in previous generations? My carbon footprint is not brilliant, is it an easy option to then proclaim my peace activism?
In some ways we do ourselves violence by becoming aware of how difficult it is for any of us today to feel we can truly walk gently on the earth that is our common home. Yet perhaps such violent realisation is the shake up, wake up call all of us need so that future generations can even have a chance to think about how they too may live gently on our (still) green planet.

Living letters blog from Pakistan

As part of the Decade to Overcome Violence the WCC is organizing a series of "Living Letters" visits. Currently my coleague Henrik Hansson is in Pakistan with the living letters delegation. You can read the blog they're doing here.

Forgetting the massacre of the holy innocents

Preparing the sermon I preached today and then talking about it with people over lunch has led me to wonder why almost all major Christian traditions mark the massacre of the holy innocents between Christmas and Epiphany - when almost noone is in church? Why does the text not seem to appear as part of the Sunday lectionary? (To be fair, in the past when these dates were fixed churches were perhaps alot fuller than today.)
There seems to be a need to hide away this embedding of one of the gospel stories of the incarnation in a context of horror and violence. We prefer saccharine and a curtailed narrative, to having to wrestle with the reality and issue of violence.
We confuse Good News too often with niceness, pleasantness or not being offended. And all too easily in our so-called educated age we seem almost unable to struggle with complex and challenging narrative.
I can see that people could feel "assaulted" by a violent biblical text in church, but surely the challenge is not to sanatise the Bible and its stories but, as Simon Barrow eloquently argues in his Faith and Society blog, to encourage theological education and training. The emphasis on training and education is something I really appreciate about the Eglise Réformée de France. Sometimes it can become a bit over-intellectual and not quite earthed enough but rather that than sacharine I think. Rant over, promise.