Silence or applause - really in so many ways it is about how we put our hands together

Our very good friend Paul Oestreicher has travelled from New Zealand together with his wife and fellow peace activist Barbara Einhorn to be here at Kingston. In the 1980s, back in the days when Dr B was the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmamment's international officer the three of them worked closely together, particularly on the German-German working group of END, European Nuclear Disarmament. The peace movement was important and faced political difficulties in both parts of the then still divided Germany. As I look back now I can see that the pain of that division on German soil gave birth to a very engaged peace movement, of course the experience of the war also drove the 1980s peace movement and pacifism in Germany forwards. Paul's personal story is similar to that of my father's - both fled Hitler's Germany in the late 1930s.
In the heat of the Jamaican sun Paul cuts a very elegant figure around the campus here in Jamaica in his light long white clothes. At the opening plenary he gave an inspiring, heartfelt and challenging speech "A New World is Possible - a cry for the end of war".
Here are some extracts:

Wherever you come from, whatever your church tradition, you may be Orthodox or Catholic, Protestant or Charismatic, Evangelical or Liberal, Conservative or Radical, all of us have come here because we wish to be friends of Jesus, rabbi, prophet and more than a prophet. To each one of us he says: You are my friends, if you do what I command you ... This I command you, to love one another as I have loved you. Is anyone, anywhere, excluded from that love? Here is the answer that Jesus gave to his friends: It is said: ‘you shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy’; but I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

Jesus was not an idealistic dreamer. He was and remains the ultimate realist. The survival of our planet demands nothing less than the abolition of war. Albert Einstein, the great physicist and humanist, recognised that early in the last century. He repeated it often with a clarity and credibility that few Christian pacifists have matched.

What I have put before you in stark simplicity, is nevertheless deeply complex. Having spent my life studying politics, I do not believe that there is any room for pacifist self-righteousness. I have not come to Kingston to demonise those who choose the military option. They are part of us, they are the many and we are the few. We must find ways of co-opting them into the peaceful struggle. The critics of principled non-violence are neither knaves nor fools. We must answer them wisely and patiently. They will rightly ask pacifists like me many serious questions: how, for example, is law and order to be maintained globally without heavily armed nations? On this point there is already good news. In the light of the last century’s history of unparalleled violence, international law is paving the way for genuine alternatives.

The other interesting dynamic to Paul's speech was that when the WCC's general secretary introduced him we were requested to follow the Quaker custom of not applauding either at the beginning, during or at the end of the speech. In the context of our meeting here in Kingston this didn't quite work, applause at large events like this is often the only way that "ordinary" people can participate. I can see why Paul requested that - Quaker meetings take place in silence unless one is moved by the Spirit to speak - Paul is both a Quaker and an Anglican priest. Part of me wishes that we could have simply greeted his words with silence. That silence might somehow have "decanted" the truth and the message in the words. It is easy for speakers to play the crowd for applause and sometimes it can change the tenor of a speech, feeding of the rapture of the crowd. Silence doesn't always mean disapproval, it can also lead to a deeper consideration of what has been said.
In the end we were not able to resist responding to Paul's speech with applause, it was a very measured performance but a bravura one nevertheless.
Now we need to decide how we will put our hands together to respond in practical ways to work for the abolition of war. Our hands must not then remain silent.

Photo copyright (c) EKD/epd

Get your hands dirty for a strong arms trade reduction treaty

In the exhibition space at the International Ecumenical Peace Convocation here in Kingston, the Church of Norway are getting people to leave hand prints and sign their name as a way of making a colourful and creative petition in support of an arms trade treaty that will protect and save lives into the future. Conventional weapons kill more than 2000 people every day, these small arms are sometimes referred to as the "weapon of mass destruction of the poor."
The Church of Norway is using the IEPC as a platform to start a global mobilization of the churches in advance of the June 2012 Arms Trade Treaty negotiations. The petition is a way to inspire church leaders and people in congregations to get involved in bearing witness to how harmful armed conflict remains.
So it's not surprising that in the exhibition hall of the Convocation they got the Norwegian general secretary of the WCC to be the first to leave his hand prints and signature on the petition.
The idea is that the hand print should form a heart where the thumbs and fingers meet. Our hands should drop the gun and instead greet one another in peace.
Time for all of us to get our hands dirty and get on with this part of the campaign against the arms trade.

Palm Sunday service on "ecoute Dieu nous parle"

It's not every Sunday that you go to church and are welcomed by a photographer. This morning outside the Temple de Divonne, Jean-Jacques Bauswein took everyone's portrait photo before we went into church. And church was packed - by the time we got there - not quite late but very nearly - there were only seats left right at the every front! The service for Palm Sunday was prepared by the people who teach the young people and children. We were surrounded by the large posters of the EELF and ERF "à visage découvert" evangelisation campaign. Each of these is a picture of the face of a member of one of the Lutheran parishes in Paris together with the Bible verse they have chosen. The photos are also used on postcards and on a calendar. At the end of the service the wholoe congregation left the church in silence and went to the Alain Blancy parish hall to find printouts of our photos and to choose a Bible verse to put beneath our photos. Then we all stuck our photos on the large panel on the wall. Our choice of Bible text revealing a little bit more about ourselves than just our faces. I was impressed by how both adults and children managed to keep silent as we chose our verses and crowded around the tables in the parish room. You can find out more about the campaign here and here.
The Lutherans and the Reformed in France are on the way to becoming a united church in 2013. Although there are legal texts and votes that need to take place, the essence of the union is to bear witness to Jesus Christ today. This creative campaign is part of that. What is great about it is that it builds confidence and offers people reticent about talking about faith simple ways of affirming what is important for them. I'm proud of my church.

Stitching Peace - while war rages ...

Yesterday afternoon I took the catechism group around the Stitching Peace exhibition. I've shown groups of children and adults around the exhibtion during the four weeks it has been in the Ecumenical Centre chapel. It's been a really good and meaningful experience.
Tomorrow we take the exhibition down, pack it up and it will travel back to Northern Ireland and rest before transferring to Jamaica in May when it will be at the core of the International Ecumenical Peace Convication.
Each of the pieces in the exhibtions tells a story of ways individuals and groups can build non-violent and committed societies based on values like solidarity and respect. These are stories born of pain, anger and often deep poverty and oppression. Powerfully though the pieces selected show that even in such situations it is possible to choose to stitch peace.
Showing the young people and some of their parents the chapel yesterday we also looked for a while at the icon of the stoning of St Stephen which the WCC received at the outset of the Decade to Overcome Violence. And again, as I do week in week out with visitors groups, I asked them to consider the physical stones and violence we may each be capable of doing with our hands - the icon shows two people throwing large stones down on St Stephen. And the violence we do with our words - the icon shows Saul (later to become St Paul) looking on, his words have encouraged the violence which makes St Stephen a martyr.
This morning I woke to the news of missile attacks on Libya ... is this where my prayers for the people of Libya lead? Unbearable thought. Is this what is really needed? Will it work - what is hoped for from this?
Pictures of fighter jets and macho military paraphernalia have replaced pictures of the devastation in Japan. These bombs and swift response units make us feel we are powerful. The reality of war is deeply sickening. And of course part of that reality is Ghadaffi having already chopped off water and electricity supplies to whole cities - an act of war as deadly as any missile.
I know myself well enough to know that I am not a true pacifist, but I do not believe in the ease of war nor in retributive violence, (read a reflection from Phil Wood on that). Of course it is hard to weigh up the responsibility to act and defend the innocent against the resort to war, but do we tend towards military solutions more easily simply because the armaments are available to us?

I know that tomorrow as we take down the fragile textiles I know that shall be thinking about how terribly tiny and insignificant, how poverty stricken yet beautiful and creative our efforts at stitching peace are. One missile probably costs more than the whole budget for the peace convocation in Jamaica. When the the women under Pinochet took their flour bags and started stitching their stories and pain in simple powerful ways, they showed that despite horrific oppression and poverty, the human spirit will find a way to express anger, pain and the desire for justice. That same human spirit will also find a way in the depths of distress to dance, laugh, celebrate and make music. To stitch peace we need also to push those values to the fore.
I shall try to go on believing in the small "signs of the kingdom" type of peace building, which relies on flawed, hurting and wonderful human beings telling their stories with creativity. I'm still enough of an idealist to think that "retributive reconciliation" can begin with needle and thread much more effectively than with exhorbitantly priced precision armaments.

And I should add that some of these thoughts are also triggered by conversations with one of the teenage boys about his future plans. He really wants to become a fighter pilot. And it is of course a really great career. Needle and thread or the creative arts don't quite offer the same attractive adrenaline highs ... do I want to package Christ's gospel of the Beatitudes in a similarly attractive way - might I even have the capacity to do that, to understand contemporary culture well enough to be able to do that?

Bitter sweet with Seven Weeks for Water

This week's Seven Weeks for Water has just been posted and includes a trailer from the documentary film "Sweet Crude" by Sandy Cioffi. The focus is water and oil, specifically in relation to the Niger Delta.

Rev. Canon Dr. Ezekiel Olusegun Babatunde, from Immanuel College of Theology and director of the Institute of Church and Society of the Christian Council of Nigeria, has written this week's biblical reflection on Transforming the bitter water waters of Marah. Remembering the Exodus story of Moses making the bitter water sweet, Babatunde looks at the desperate need for transformation in the Niger Delta where oil spills are common place and water is turned bitter with pollution. Here's a taster:

Today, in the Niger Delta area people are also thirsty, searching for clean water in order to survive, similar to the Israelites in Exodus. Their situation is “bitter” – despite an abundance of water around them, they have no water to drink. Searching for clean and drinkable water is a herculean task particularly for women and children who often walk more than three kilometers to get water for their families. Like many other blessed nations situated in sub-Saharan Africa, Nigeria has abundant natural resources, particularly oil, which has made it attractive to multinationals scrambling for its resources. Three decades of oil exploitation have caused ecological devastation in the region. Water provided by various rivers in the area has been polluted, making it undrinkable. ... The Niger delta seems to be indeed a place of bitterness. Yet its inhabitants have not lost their hope and faith. ... The Nigerian people need such leaders, leaders who can liberate them, who can bring justice to the innocent men, women and children who have been mistreated, and to those to whom access to good drinkable water and a good life have been denied. Leaders who will, like Moses, not only purify water but heal the people and restore their trust.

You can find further background to the situation in the Niger Delta here and an article on the dilemma of restorative justice in that situation.
Meanwhile to be part of transforming bitterness to sweetness you can join the oil fast, or sign Operation Noah’s oil resolution asking for the world’s biggest oil producers Royal Dutch Shell and British Petroleum to be removed from the Stoxx Europe Christian Index. You can also pray for "Just Water" and use the EWN-WSCF prayer resource “Just Water” for the Universal Day of Prayer for Students (21 March) and World Water Day (22 March) to pray for justice and peace for all people.It's just one week away.

Photo: Daniel Zimmel

In praise of Mariella Frostrup freshening up the feminist agenda

Sometimes I get bored with calling myself a feminist. It seems sort of tired and old fashioned, yet it is very much part of who I am and what makes me tick. I admit I have sort of given up smiling every time I get comments such as "when are we going to have an international men's day". It is not in fashion to be seen to be championing women's issues or rights. It is interesting that people are quick to moan about what is termed "political correctness"and slow to be challeneged by the clear inequality so many women have to live with day in day out, year in year out, generation in generation out.
So today I felt energised and encouraged when reading Mariella Frostrup's excellent essay in the Observer.
Encouraged because this is a woman who puts the case erruditely and passionately:

In the western world the greatest triumph of spin in the last century is reflected in attitudes to feminism. Our struggle for emancipation and equality has been surreptitiously rewritten as a harpy bra-burning contest while elsewhere, in less affluent parts of the world, the response is altogether different. From Mozambique to Chad, South Africa and Liberia, Sierra Leone to Burkina Faso, feminism is the buzzword for a generation of women determined to change the course of the future for themselves and their families. At female gatherings all over sub-Saharan Africa you'll find enthusiasm and eager signatories to the cause.

...

I visited Internally Displaced Peoples camps in Chad where women refugees from Darfur were being raped daily when they ventured out to gather firewood so they could cook for their children. In Mozambique I cried frustrated tears as the 12 women farmers gathered around me raised their hands in shame and in unison to indicate that every one of them was a victim of domestic violence, a crime they were campaigning to have outlawed. And yes, this was only last year.

Frostup has also transformed her anger and sense of helplessness by founding GREAT the Gender Rights and Equality Action Trust

this is not a women's issue any longer; this is a human issue. There's a new wave of support sweeping from the developed to the developing world through women joining forces and rolling up their sleeves to lend a hand. Weareequals.org is a coalition of NGOs large and small, which have joined forces to pursue gender equality as a tool for economic empowerment. Countries where girls are educated and women play their part in government are places where peace reigns and economies begin to flourish, and women are more interested in ending wars than starting them – there are endless statistics that prove this to be the reality.

Some of the statistics in Frostrup's article about the reality of women's lives globally even shocked me. Frostrup was born in Norway but has spent much of her life in the UK and what I like abotu her essay is the way she links the global statistics to local statistics in the UK and other affluent countries:

Two-thirds of children denied school are girls, 64% of the world's illiterate adults are women, 41m girls are still denied a primary education, 75% of civilians killed in war are women and children, causing Major-General Patrick Cammaert, the former UN peacekeeping commander in the Democratic Republic of Congo, to declare in 2008: "It is now more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier in modern conflict."
These are staggering statistics, and yet not powerful enough to make arguing for women's rights a respectable pursuit, rather than the aggressive histrionics of popular perception. International Women's Day, the one day a year when we're encouraged to celebrate what we've achieved and highlight what still needs to be done, conjures less bile than the F word, but also more apathy. When women are allowed to vote, work, choose when to have babies and dress in whatever fashion pleases them, what on earth do they need their own day for as well?
The fact that 700,000 people will experience domestic violence in the UK, and 90% of them are white British females, that there are sex slaves imported daily to this country who live lives of abject terror, that equal pay is still not a reality nearly four decades after the act enshrining it was passed, that the conviction rate in rape cases still hovers around 6.5%, that only 12% of the UK's boardroom seats (as compared to Norway's 32%) are occupied by women, are just a small smattering of reasons why women's rights should remain a priority

So on March 8 this year, which will mark the 100th anniversary of international women's day, how will you be celebrating women's achievements? How will you be contributing to helping women and men lift themselves out of violence, poverty and powerlessness? Time to feel encouraged to feel that we can make a difference. Thank you Mariella for finding words, passion and commitment. Thank you for making me feel less tired and old fashioned when I say I'm a feminist and for renewing my energy, just what I needed to start this week which I shall enjoy celebrating with my sisters.

Afghan quilt - girls in Germany and Afghanistan stitch together relationships, meaning and hope

So here is an image of the wonderful quilt which was hung at the brilliant Verbal Arts Centre in Derry on Monday. The motto of the Verbal Arts Centre is "tell your story" (more about that later) and this quilt tells a powerful one. Young girls in Afghanistan embroider squares which they then sell in order to be able to pay for their schooling. Each of the squares of this quilt has one of those embroidered squares at its centre but the quilt was made by schoolgirls in a very multicultural part of Germany - each square has the name of a different country or of a German region sewn in writing onto it.
The quilt represents cooperation, learning and solidarity across borders. It also represents the possibility of building relationships in adversity. Young women helping one another without even knowing each other. Stitching a different future and offering all of us hope that things are already changing simply because of small and beautiful initiatives like this.

Cast lead ... bullets, bombs and blood ...

These are photos of the extraordinary textile art work by a German artist Heidi Drahota which is part of the Human cost of war exhibition in Derry. It's called gegossenes Blei - Cast Lead. This was the name given to an Israeli led action action against Gaza. Casting lead is of course also a game played at new year when molten lead is poured into water and you interpret the shapes. So we interpret the shapes of this poured lead ...
Those pretty hanging threads in this textile art are traces of bullets cast into bodies and houses.
Before knowing the story of this piece I was struck by it apparent beauty and technical accomplishment and then you begin to understand the reason for the metal in the red, the bloody mess of war and destruction - the human cost ... the human cost.

You can find the full catalogue of the exhibition here.

The Exhibition is curated by Roberta Bacic who has been organising major textile exhibitions of pieces of popular and professional work which tell a story both in Derry and internationally since 2007.

Worship for the churches week of action on food

At the Ecumenical Centre this morning colleagues from the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance had prepared worship for the beginning of the Churches week of action on food. Lusmarina Campos Garcia led the service and provided a powerful mime and dance on hunger and the longing for food which reflected both the liturgy and the call to hope that change for food justice is possible. John Baxter Brown and Fulata Mbana Moyo led a reflection on Isaiah 65 and the promise of a new heaven and a new earth.

Hungry God,
hungry for justice,
hungry for a world spending on hungry children as it spends on football games,
hungry that your promise of blessing the hungry be fulfilled,
draw us into your hunger
so we discover the life you offer when we give ourselves away,
and others do not have their lives taken away by the greedy and corrupt.
Give us the courage to risk a new hunger to do your will through Jesus Christ. Amen.

Find the full liturgy here and here.

We also signed the petition to the FAO to ask them to take action against land grabbing which is affecting the ability of many of the poorest people in Africa to grow their own food.

For someone who has just returned from a holiday of feasting on wonderful local food in the south of France this was a sobering service and a timely one.

Identity and the rule of law ...

For the past couple of years I have been travelling with an electronic passport. I don't like it.
Every time it goes into one of those machines that reads it I think of the salvific possibilities of human error and creativity. today, unless you really know how to falsify chips etc then all of those folk saved by forged papers during the 2nd World War wouldn't stand a hope ...
The local passport and identity service is housed on the street where we are staying in Liverpool and rather surprisingly it has a street art installation of these small portholes of pictures of British citizens of very diverse origins, their names, places and years of birth are given. At night time the portholes are lit up in blue. Given some of the terrible rhetoric around "foreigners" and "immigrants", given how terribly difficult it is to get a visa to this country I found this artwork surprisingly counter-cultural - perhaps it is an attempt to foster multi-culturalism (now often much despised). Anyway these small blue portholes do give me some hope that all is not lost, that humanity still values decency and inclusivity - even when the terrible forms people have to fill in and the rhetoric that is all too often heard seems to give a very different message. Long live the blue portholes of a different story of British identity.

Love is an orientation ...

My friend Nyambura Njoroge is currently reading Love is an Orientation by Andrew Marin after meeting Andrew in Vienna recently. Nyambura coordinates the WCC's Ecumenical HIV AIDS Initiative in Africa, alot of the work she does is in theological education. She's been telling me about how Andrew's book has given her much food for thought on the need for so called ecumenicals and so called evangelicals to build bridges and try to follow the call of Christ. I'm looking forward to getting hold of a copy myself, sounds like a good read. Does the Bible really encourage us to see any other human being as lesspeople
Meanwhile I've already been enjyoing reading Andrew's blog and will go back there in time to come. I'm quite intrigued by one his most recent posts which offers various takes on a one sentence Bible. But the one sentence Bible seems to be an ongoing project as Andrew reads the Bible this year.

In memory of Steve de Gruchy

At this point last year we were just publishing Steve de Gruchy's short meditation for Seven weeks for water on sewage, justice and the Jordan. This year we are about to publish an article by him in Ecumenical Review.
This morning the news came through that Steve's body had been found. Search parties had been looking for him since a rafting accident on the Mooi river over the weekend. A tragedy for the family and for the School of Religion and Theology in Kwazulu Natal of which he was head.
At lunchtime today we gathered in the chapel and shared stories about Steve: his paper on "A Theology of Shit" given in Belem last year; his wonderful collaborative way of encouraging both students and teaching staff; his creative and academic style; his zest for life and education.
We laughed and we were very sad, Steve's work, his being, his verve and insight were important for many of us and now he is no longer, and it is almost unbearable. We prayed and sang, lit candles and read from the Bible and from some of Steve's own writing. And gradually we left the chapel with damp eyes and returned to work having at least managed to lay down some of our grief ...
Steve may you rest in peace and rise in glory.
Update: I have posted an appreciation of Steve by Tinyiko Maluleke here.

Violence against women is not only a women's issue, men have to take on this issue if change is to happen and the violence is to stop

There were moving moments at the service this morning to launch "Cries of Anguish; Stories of Hope" the Lenten campaign to end violence against women. We stood to listen to the gospel story of the woman taken in adultery, read in Spanish. As we stood and listened and read the story or remembered it in our own languages we held in our hands the stones given to each person as they arrived. This proclamation of the gospel led in to a time of confession 'and we were invited to lay down the stones at the foot of the Coventry cross during the prayers and singing. All this happened naturally and in an organic way that I hadn't quite imagined as I wrote the liturgy. Somehow the liturgy, the work of the people, preached the gospel and it is special when that happens.

Nyambura Njoroge shared reflections on violence, suicide and transformation, encouraging all of us to dare to follow models for transforming attitudes to violence agaisnt women offered through the Tamar Campaign and also through the challenging masculinities project in Africa.

WCC general secertary Olav Fykse Tveit introduced the service with a powerful statement saying that, "ecumenism is about being one, not only on doctrinal issues and questions of faith but also in the face of all that destroys human dignity. This sometimes requires facing painful and very uncomfortable realities, which include violence, and violence against women in particular"
"We cannot remain silent about this reality but we need to bear witness to what 'being one' can do to help transform relationships between men and women. This is quite obviously a particular responsibility of men. Here we have to be quite clear. Therefore, if we do not address this message to men and work together as men and women, there will be no transformation," stated Tveit, who quoted from a Norwegian Joint Muslim Christian statement – "Say No to Violence" – issued last November: "As Christians and Muslims we see women and men as equal and nobody has the right to use violence against the other. Violence in the family and in close relationships are criminal acts and against the convictions of our beliefs. We believe that there is inspiration and guidance in our religions for life in love and mutual respect."

At the end of the service I was pleased that many people said, next time we must involve more men in services like this, we cannot let this be seen as only a women's issue. Meanwhile there are still mainly women supporting the campaign on Facebook. It takes time to change attitudes.
All of us of us are waiting for transformation.
You can find the liturgy here.

For a year of silence

Thanks to Hansuli Gerber for pointing to the German Jahr der Stille a project of several churches in Germany to promote silence as part of prayer and the search for God.
As he remarks there seem to be rather alot of words and printed material and even podcasts to promote the year. Nevertheless I think the idea of encouraging silence, even just a breath between words and ideas is a really important idea. Using silence in public worship is quite complex and somehow words and music need to be used to introduce it as well as some calm leadership (or curatorship as it seems sometimes now to be called). In ecumenical contexts silence can also sometimes be interpreted negatively - silence might mean that the leaders have lost their place, worship meaning that prayer continues.
I am a noisy person for whom silence is essential. Without silence I cannot find my voice. I love the quote from Søren Kierkegaard that Jahr des Stille has at the top of their website - one day I must look at the original Danish as the German has a rather different ring to it compared with the English:
"A man prayed, and at first he thought that prayer was talking. But he became more and more quiet until in the end he realized that prayer is listening."

On my way to Crete last year I read Sara Maitland's A Book of Silence. I understand her search for real and meaningful silence but I also know how terrifying it can be. Holding together words, silence and music, speaking and listening are what worship is about for me. Sometimes when I am alone with God I am surprised that I need to speak aloud or sing to God, to myself to the walls of the room I'm in. Perhaps speech or thought is the only way to stop my busy thoguhts.
So I wonder how silent will I learn to be in the year of silence?

Drum beats, bell ringing, musical notes, bead-threading - act for climate justice

Listen to the drumbeat of creation, weave a rainbow, act now for climate justice make the world leaders hear!
The seven days of creations were the inspiration for the liturgy we've just posted online. 350 drumbeats, 50 for each of the seven days of creation. After each day is read out from Genesis so also one of the great Advent Antiphones is read. Colleagues from different regions of the world have written cries and hopes of and for climate justice.

Here are cries and hopes from the Pacific:

Atua! Your Pacific people call out to you, even as the waters continue to rise...
hear our prayer, we who trust in your love!
Atua! Your Pacific people call out to you, even as our land disappears before our eyes...
hear our prayer, we who hope in your love!
Atua! Our strength! Our life! Our love!

Meanwhile the Danish Council of Churches have put together a great liturgy for bellringing including a powerful hymn by Torsten Borbye Nielsen called bells of the world and an English translation by Edward Broadbridge. They've also got a specially commissioned piece of music with 350 notes in it. A stimulus to creativity - will you be ringing bells, threading beads, beating drums, singing hymns - to get the world to hear the case for climate justice?

Here's the two final verses of the hymn:

For though we know
we should rise higher,
we are consumed by our desire;
hear how our earth, ravaged, consumed,
calls for our care, or we are doomed.
May we free Earth from its pain;
give us hope that once again
Your will be done.

In hope and faith
we shall not cease
striving to make a world at peace,
for all that lives, from pole to pole,
from east to west, from soul to soul.
Lord, our God, whose mighty Word
then and now and shall be heard,
renew our Earth!

Poetry, waste, war and leadership ...

I have just been watching a programme by Jeremy Paxman about Wilfred Owen, the English First World War poet. My mother taught Owen's poetry at school while I was growing up. It was interesting to learn that Owen's poetry only really became part of common cultural heritage in the 1960s.
Listening to the well known lines from Owen's poetry, and the less well-known lines from his letters home, I reflected on how horrifically wasteful humanity is of human beings. Yet in the crucible of desperate, vile battle poetry can sometimes flourish, even if it can take us decades to appreciate and recognise green shoots of pure genius sprouting in the terror of the battlefields.
Watching Annie Leonard's "the story of stuff" last night, I was moved in a similar way to how poetry sometimes moves me, as she described how wasteful of human beings, their lives, their dignity, their dreams and aspirations the systems are which underpin our ridiculous push to consume, buy, own and possess. I began to understand that in some ways today's consumerism is the underlying conflict which those of us fortunate to not live in present day warzones live with.
Churches too can be terribly wasteful, treating employees as commodities, putting up with the "collateral damage" of ministerial stress and congregational distress. Nine years on the ministries commission of my church have shown me how wasteful churches can be of talent, relationships, possibilities for renewal, chances for reconciliation ...
The question for church leaders from elders to archbishops, from patriarchs to sacristans is how to lead with humility and integrity, and yet also be decisive. So many of our leadership models come from the commercial warzone, are these appropriate models for the church? As the church in Europe at least becomes far less maintstream, more minority and counter-cultural will we not also need models of leadership which can inspire us and yet perhaps not necessarily offer us impossible ideals of perfection and effeciency? These issues around models of leadership and what alternatives may be vialble interest me as I work on the paper for my course in Rome.
Meanwhile I have not yet read Stephen Cottrell's Hit the Ground Kneeling nor have I looked much at the poetics of management. It strikes me though that poetics and creative theory may have more to teach us in developing new management models. As we try to be some of the green shoots of hope, creativity and beauty amidst the ongoing attrition of consumerism, perhaps the discipline, metre, craftedness and creativity of poetry may help to free up ways of perceiving what some of those models could be. Poetics may also be the way to help integrate spirituality and leadership while practising integrity and showing humility.

Many waters cannot quench love. Celebrate love and use Valentine's day to campaign for love and justice.

Today is Valentine's Day and amidst the pink and red Schmaltz there are some more serious reflections and also campaigns on this mid February fesitival of love.
Ekklesia is reporting on the Love Zim campaign:
Zimbabwean Christians will join human rights campaigners in a Valentine’s Day vigil outside Zimbabwe’s embassy in London.
Representatives of Christian organisations including the Council of Zimbabwean Christian Leaders in the UK, Tearfund and other Christian agencies working in Zimbabwe, will deliver a Valentine’s card to the embassy, launching the Love Zim campaign.
Meanwhile ENI has been reporting on how Valentine's day has become an issue in Sudan:
A Christian leader in Sudan has distanced himself from a call by some Muslims for young people to boycott Valentine's Day, who said the celebration could lead people astray.
"I don't think this will have any impact," the Rev. Tut Mai of the Presbyterian Church in Sudan told Ecumenical News International on 12 February. Still, he warned, "They may want to isolate those who go on to celebrate the day."
The Sudan Ulema Authority, a group of Muslim leaders group in Khartoum issued a statement on 10 February urging the country's lovers to boycott the day that celebrates romantic love on 14 February - once a Western occasion but that has spread to many parts of the world.

I can understand some of the concerns. When we first arrive in France over 15 years ago Valentine's Day didn't exist and it is a festival purely driven by commerce here.

Meanwhile Elisabeth Gray King has written a Face to Faith in today's Guardian affiring love and it's celebration, she ends her piece:
When we dare to affirm in the face of all cynicism that love does exist, we see the "I love you" in the unlikeliest of people, and discover new realities. No matter how hard the world is, the core underneath all the pap is the profound reality that love just carries on.

So happy Valentine's Day, don't get cynical about it all, show someone else that love can make the world go round.

Credit unions can help beat doorstep lending

There's a good piece here on the new United Reformed Church website on the role credit unions can play in helping people find acces to reasonably priced loans and cultivate the habit of saving. Credit unions are a way of building up communities from the grass roots and giving people back a sense of control over their finances and their lives. A really good alternative to the banks all of us love to hate in the current credit crunch.

A community worker for the United Reformed Church, Simon Loveitt, has highlighted the dangers of so-called ‘doorstep lending’ where borrowers may be charged exorbitant interest rates. He was addressing a conference organised by the Evangelical Alliance called ‘Life Beyond Debt’.
Simon Loveitt said the current difficulties in the financial markets had made credit harder to come by. But those who have a poor credit history or who are unemployed, had never found affordable credit freely available. For them, obtaining a loan usually meant using a sub-prime lender, who might charge an annual percentage interest rate of between 170 and 300 percent.
He quoted a documented case in York, in which a woman was offered a one week loan for £320, which attracted £80 interest over the seven-day period. When calculated over a twelve month period, the equivalent annual percentage rate would be more than 2.6 million percent!

Gaza Emergency Appeal from Physicians for Human Rights-Israel

Physicians for Human Rights-Israel have launched an appeal for money to buy urgently needed medical equipment

Gaza Hospitals Already Filled to Capacity; Medical Supplies on the Verge of Depletion
Since the beginning of attacks in Gaza, over 300 people have been reported dead, more than 1000 wounded, and many hundreds more are in need of immediate medical attention. With a medical system already on the verge of collapse as a result of the ongoing closure, 1.4 million
civilians are in desperate need of urgent medical help from outside the Gaza Strip. PHR-Israel has the means to transfer this help within days and is seeking to raise 700,000 USD during the next week for purchase and direct transfer of supplies to Gaza hospitals.
Palestinian hospitals in the Gaza Strip have asked us for help in securing the following items:
· Basic Sterilization equipment · Needles · Dressings · Anesthetics · Catheters · Medical gases
· Endo-tracheal tubes · Laryngoscope · Oxygen · Portable monitors, ventilators, ultrasounds and x- ray machines · Clothing for medical teams · 105 Essential Medications · 225 Additional Medical Supplies · 93 Laboratory items · Electric Shaving Machine · Trolleys · Hospital beds
As the situation stands, Palestinian doctors are performing surgeries without surgical gloves, local or general anesthetics, gauze, sterilized equipment or sufficient oxygen for patients. All together, there are only 1,500 hospital beds available in Gaza's 13 publicly run hospitals. A
fleet of 60 ambulances is now reduced by half. The endless flow of new wounded and the need for beds has led to a suspension of care for dozens of other patients, including cancer, cardiac, and other chronically ill patients, who have all been sent to their homes for the duration of the crisis. Patients are not being permitted entry to Egypt and all referrals out of Gaza via Erez crossing have been suspended.

The British Shalom-Salaam Trust is collecting funds on PHR-I's behalf and will transfer donations and associated Gift Aid. You can make credit card donations online via the Charities Aid Foundation here. Cheques made payable to BSST and sent to: BSST, PO Box 46081, London W9 2ZF - quoting PHR-I

Anguished Hope

Sometimes it is just wonderful that I have to walk through the WCC library to get to my office (when there are no staff in the library and the library users also walk into my office this is sometimes less wonderful but hey c'est la vie). This morning arriving at work Dr B found this book Anguished Hope: Holocaust Scholars confronting the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict. Looks like the right book for me to read at the moment as I try to sort out my feelings and thoughts on this issue, particularly following the conference I attended in Bern last year on theological perspectives on the Promised Land.

More than 20 years ago my undergraduate dissertation was on "The Confessing Church and Anti-Semitism". It was an important piece of research for me to write but I realise how much the debate has moved on and how much I personally need to be challenged by that now. So finding this book and being able to sign it out of the library as the first person to borrow it really is one of the perks of my job. And I'm on holiday next week so I might even have time to read it. Each essay is followed by questions from the other contributors and then the author's response once more. It looks very interesting. More on it soon - the real challenge in terms of my reading is concentrating on the serious stuff and not letting myself get sidetracked by all that great detective fiction ...

In the meantime "anguished hope" would also be a great title for a sermon.