Ouff! So, perhaps now back to the blog ... of ecumenical springtime ...

Well, this evening it seems to be happening. I seem to feel that I have at last properly arrived in my new "home" in Paris. Finally the internet is working (getting a phone line installed took two months!) and I am actually at home and well enough to contemplate blogging (I've had a nasty bout of bronchitus the past 10 days). Tonight will be the first time in two and a half months that I have slept eight straight nights in my own bed in the flat here and I'm also looking forward to spending every night between now and December 24 in the same place too. Some of the time I've been away from Paris I've of course been in that other bed which is mine (or at least partly mine!) in Ferney Voltaire, but much of the time away has been been visiting local ecumenical groups in different parts of France, on speaking engagements or representing the Fédération Protestante de France (FPF) . Perhaps I should start a special guide to overnight stays and food in some of France's religious houses. So far I would have to say that the delicious mixed vegetable and parsnip soup eaten on a stormy evening in "Douvres la Délivrande" would top my list of delicacies. (The photo of the sky is from there.)
I am also getting the opportunity to pray with other Christians in many different places and this is a particular joy. I must start taking photos of the chapels where we share in these times of silence, song, word and prayer ... sometimes of course the prayers take place just in meeting rooms too. So far my two favourite chapels have been at the Frères de la Campagne in Meaux and at the Domaine St Joseph in Lyon.
To say that my learning curve has been steep would be an understatement. Doing everything in French, especially almost everything I write, has made me hyper aware of my failings with the language and more hesitant than I might usually be. Things take longer too ... though I find writing pretty hard work in English too truth be told. The French have an amazing capacity for frontal learning in "colloques" etc and I think I am used to having more tea and coffee breaks in my life! I had also forgotten just how bad I am at learning names and how tiring starting in a new place is ... I didn't expect to miss Stephen as much as I do, but conversely I am also really enjoying time on my own in my still rather empty but getting more comfortable by the moment flat.
Part of me had hoped and expected that in starting this new job I would somehow just press a switch and the past would be forgotten or transformed. Ah well. I suppose you can guess it wasn't quite like that ... Another reason I have not been blogging. When you wake at six in the morning in tears it is sometimes better not to bore the world with all that. That intensity of grieving, welling up from the unconscious and taking me unawares seems at last to be passing. Much as I have learned about myself through it, I am deeply, deeply grateful that it seems to be ebbing. More about this time as I move forwards. But it has been good for me to be silent on the blog front for a while, though perhaps the healing would have been faster had I been writing.
Anyway as for my new job, it is extraordinary and terrifying and brilliant and hard work. I hover between feeling like a complete fraud (whatever made me think I was an ecumenist?) and thinking, yes I think I may have a real contribution to make here. Honestly though, I have been having quite a bit of fun, you could look at some of the videos my colleagues made of me here - folk seem to particularly like the bonus one. I am working with a group of extremely hard working and talented colleagues, there is a mass of great creative work going on based from the FPF. It has been balm to my soul in this new environment simply to be trusted. I had forgotten what that was like and how very beautiful it is. On this Sunday evening the thing I give thanks for most is "la confiance", it a very lovely French word and a great feeling.

So here are a few glimpses of things I would have blogged about had I been blogging ...

• A great photo of myself and an Orthodox priest in full liturgical regalia sitting on the front row of Les Etats généraux du Christianisme both of us taking notes on our Ipads - the photographer just couldn't resist. Now we just need to see if Apple do religious sponsorship!
• Explaining my job to a young Tunisian woman while waiting for the RER to (not) arrive. "Oh but you should become Muslim" she said. An interesting conversation on day one of my new job and her fourth day in France!
• The shock as an Orthodox priest drove myself and my Roman Catholic colleague to the railway station in Caen on a short cut through the red light district made up of old camper vans each with a candle lit on the dashboard. Most of the women came from Africa.
• The deeply beautiful and moving sound of over 150 bishops singing in Gregorian plain chant in front of the Grotte de Lourdes and the Roman Catholic bishops conference. I was one of only four women present.
• Having lunch with my church president and him deciding we'll go back to work to have a coffee as the price for an espresso in the local restaurants is to say the least prohibitive and would be a sizeable percentage of our salaries!
• Still, but still getting lost in the Gare St Lazare ... ugh.
• Enjoying the beauty of Paris even if I have so far done nothing cultural whatsoever.
• Must try and say something at some point about L'histoire de la virilité and all the stuff about la théorie du genre.
• A wonderful conversation about the Ecumenical Prayer Cycle with a woman who has for over ten years been updating the country information and writing new prayers in French for this wonderful ecumenical resource. A great link between my former and new jobs and i get to join the group this week!
• And finally lunchtime today. We ate with the brothers at the Couvent St Jacques and I felt very privileged to be at table with four very eminent ecumenists: Hervé Legrand, Michel Mallèvre, Franck Lemaître and Stephen Brown. I'd like to say that I held my own, but really I have no illusions, but strangely I didn't feel too much like a fraud, just like I might need to have a different kind of conversation to be able to make my contribution. Ok I admit it, I was completely out of my depth. I think it was at this point that I realised that living with Dr B is a bit like living with a Protestant Dominican!
  

Enough I'm back on the blog, still alive and beginning to find my way around my new life. I am enjoying it. And one day I will blog about the infamous line "Bar à whisky, 500 mètres dans cette direction!" For now perhaps all you need to know is that I wander around talking to folk about ecumenical springtime. It's not a bad life.

Beauty, surprises and the generous liturgy of friendship and prayer ...

It had not been easy to find a date to go out for a drink together, and I was quite surprised that I was expected at the ecumenical centre reception for 17.00, I even got an sms reminder. Wow we must be having some serious fun ahead of us starting this early. In honour of a night on the town I even put on some mascara - with hindsight this was perhaps not a good idea!
I met with Maike and she took me not out to the bar but into the chapel - that place of course for the real gluttons and wine bibbers! In the side chapel were quite a number of my colleagues gathered very quietly and Maike explained that they simply wanted to say thank you by organising Holden Evening Prayer in such a way that all I had to do was to be there.
I was very moved - hence the problems with the recently applied mascara and the depserate search for a hankie in my bag (I've learnt from facebook they had even discussed this eventuality before my arriving - this of course is what friends are for).
A group of my friends had been preparing for a long time, rehearsing the piano and flute and solo parts since August, tonight was the first time they sang and played together. It was a very beautiful moment, and the liturgy should be beautiful but not perfect. I thought back to Stephen and Sara Padre, Itonde Kakoma, Luke Smetters, Colin Williams, Annie Osbourne, Michael Wallace and many others who have introduced and sung Holden with us since 2004. It is so good to know that the singing will go on, especially as more musicians know the parts. It reminded me of all of those times when I have come to the end of very busy days in the office and felt that perhaps the most important thing I had done was pray with others.
Tonight was truly "leitourgia" - the work and praise of the people, many were involved in reading the wonderful selection of Bible verses chosen by Ruthann, in the music, in the preparation. I know how much coordination that takes so I felt very blessed.
The liturgy is the space that frames our grief, joy, distress and doubt. This was the space where I could finally allow some tears to fall in public as I grieve at leaving a job I love, recognising my failures, seeing too some achievements and simply accepting that moving on is painful at this time. Tonight my tears were for the first time about leaving these wonderful people and this wonderful space, rather than tears about that which is broken in the present and the past. No more struggling is needed. Singing and praying to God held all of us in that moment together in love.
This was the second time this year I have received a sign of pure grace. It is quite hard to receive such creative, simple generosity. But I realised that grace has that capacity to transform and heal. The thirty minutes of tonight's service was a special gift to me, nourishing me with joy despite the tears.
Thank you all very, very much.
And so to Paris where I hope to occasionally say the Beatitudes with others at midday according to the tradition of les veilleurs.
But for now simply gratitude.

The beautiful chapel chez les Diaconnesses de Reuilly - starlight, perfect sound and Geborgenheit

I am about to move to Paris and take up a new job with the Federation of French Protestant Churches, more about that soon! I shall move in just over two weeks, tomorrow I get to see the appartment I shall be moving into for the first time -though it is likely to still be a bit of a building site! From Thursday to Saturday I met with my new colleagues from the Federation on retreat at the Versailles mother house of the Diaconesses de Reuilly. I stayed on for two extra nights. So I have had four days of being able to go to prayers with the sisters here in their extraordinary new chapel. It is like an architectural meditation on the word "matriciel". It gives a wonderful sense of shelter of being known yet also of worlds and universes beyond our own as the light coming through resembles starlight. I'll write more about it over coming days.
It has been restful and restorative to attend worship and not have to do anything other than be there and try to pray, or give in to tears, or try to be silent. I was also moved that the Protestant sisters here take their ecumenical commitment so seriously and joyously - the major focus in the chapel at the moment is "time for creation" prayers are regularly said for ecumenical and church leaders.
Singing the Beatitudes at midday each day has been particularly moving for me for all sorts of reasons. It has been an emotional week, I had my leaving party from my job at the WCC on Wednesday, having preached a final time on Monday in the chapel ... yes I am sad and I am of course also terrified about the task ahead, but as in all times of transition I have to trust that things will "become", somehow.
First task after seeing the flat on Monday will be to order a bed. I think I should be able to cope with the rest if I'm able to sleep! Knowing that the sisters here will also be praying for me as they did and do for my predecessor also adds a further dimension to being supported. Knowing that this beautiful place is just an hour away by metro also gives me the idea that there is somewhere I can run away to and it wouldn't even be running away ...

In memory of her ... loose threads sewn up ...

Something shocking and beautiful and wonderful happened to me today. I came home from work and Dr B mentioned in passing that there was a package waiting for me - I assumed this meant I had to go to the post office and pick something up later in the week. Then as I went into the kitchen I came across a small box and saw it came from Deborah Stockdale in Ireland. (Deborah is the artist who made "journey to peace" for the WCC and which is part of our stiching peace exhibition - it is stunning, but more of that soon!)

So I unwrapped the small box and inside found the stunning quilt you can see in the photo here - actually it is much more stunning than this mobile phone photo taken late in the evening allows for. I have already christened this piece "In memory of her ..."
Nine years ago I went to a quilting shop with a friend and bought the material you can see in this quilt. I had never made a quilt in my life (I still have not) but I spent money - quite alot of money - buying the lovely material. I knew I needed rainbow colours for the idea I had and I felt fairly sure I ought to be able to design something that would just about work and make a Huguenot cross out of patchwork, the rainbow colours being the symbol of God's covenant.
On Mondays in early 2002 I would go round to my friend's house and make desultory attempts to sew - mainly she would sew and I would chat and admire her creations. Her name was Rowena Reamonn, she was a brilliant artist in patchwork, embroidery and quilting.
That winter and early spring she was preparing to die, giving away quilting books, handing over things and fabrics, asking me to take her funeral. And as part of that I picked up needle and thread while she was alive, but really I just listened and laughed and heard her anger. She was about 18 months older than I am now.
I took her funeral on my first official day of work at the World Council of Churches ... as we hung the Stitching Peace exhibition I realised that the last time quilts had hung in the Centre was probably at her funeral. The gospel text she chose was the woman who anoints Jesus with perfume - of whom the Christ says "in memory of her ..." (pace Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza)
For Stitching Peace we needed fabric and an activity for the launch so I searched out material from the bottom of the deep drawers in my grandparent's bookcase. I had no real idea what was still there but I knew there was part of the fabric and quilt we had pinned together at Rowena's funeral and that I had a lot of material from abandoned dress-making and other projects. I bundled it all together and with Deborah discovered that part of it had even begun to be sewn together by me. Deborah took these bits back to Ireland with her - I didn't realise she had discovered the whole quilt I had actually cut out and stuffed in a bag!
I felt extraordinarily blessed today, to see something that I had imagined almost a decade ago, looking just like I had hoped, yet more so, more beautiful, more finished and so vivid.

I have been weeping too much in recent months and weeks, the reasons are too boring to mention - other people's pain is so often like that: depression, rage, incompression, grief, lack of self worth ... yet tonight I shed tears of joy and incomprehension. Feeling utterly blessed that someone I hardly know could do something so wonderfully generous as give her time for me and do this. It is SO lovely and something I shall treasure always and today I realised powerfully that this was exactly the right time for it to be finished.
Threads are being tied up.
In memory of her ...
Gratitude, colour, thread and tears ...
And for me an experience of pure grace.

The darkness is also holy ...

Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are mine.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.
Because you are precious in my sight,
and honoured, and I love you ...

A year ago I was quoting that passage from Isaiah after a mainly sleepless night in the hospital with Dr B. Tonight I came home to a gourmet meal he prepared and we have gently celebrated the fact that one year on he is alive, very well and looking to the future.

Meanwhile at the end of the working day today a good friend visited me on her way home. We talked about spirituality, prayer and wisdom. Sometimes I feel as if my own recent pain has torn not only hope but also wisdom out of my soul, so it was good to have a conversation about the darkness also being holy, about wilderness spirituality.

My friend spoke to me about the book Dear Heart Come Home - midlife spirituality. As we exchanged pain and hope, frustrations at the excesses of patriarchy and much laughter besides I began to piece together some small piece of hope and I switched off my computer and came home. Work will still be there in the morning. As a walked out the strong Geneva icy "bise" nearly took my breath away, a reminder winter is still very much here even if the recent week has seemed almost springlike.

Today truly I have so much to give thanks for. Sometimes gratitude is a hard and stony path of darkness, but it is a holy way and I trust it may at last lead to something that looks like hope.

Hope sleep and laughter - speech by Stephen Brown at the farewell to ENInews staff

'Hope, sleep and laughter'

Remarks at the farewell to ENInews' staff, 16 December 2010

First of all, my apologies. By the end of my remarks you will probably be asking yourselves what I have learned about post-colonial and gender perspectives during my 16 years at the Ecumenical Centre. For, as you will hear, my comments seem to revolve around the 'dead philosophers' society' - all the members of which, in this case, are white, male and European!!

Karl Marx, the German political economist, once wrote, "People make their own history but not in circumstances of their own choosing". It is no secret, I think, that the circumstances that we are marking today are not ones that I, or many of us here, would have chosen.

Rather than dwell on the circumstances, I prefer to concentrate on the first half of the sentence - the opportunity offered in whatever circumstances to make one's own history. Søren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher whose name has sometimes been confused with that of our current president, Anders (Gadegaard), put it like this: "Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forward."

Nevertheless, at an occasion such as this I also need to cast a glance backwards and give thanks for the enormous opportunities I have received over the past 16 years. I am and remain immensely grateful for these opportunities, and immensely proud of what we have achieved at ENInews. I owe an immense debt of gratitude to all those people and organizations who have allowed me these possibilities.

The danger of beginning to single out people for particular thanks is that either you read out a long list of names or that people who should be on the list are not there. So, I have decided to thank several categories of people, but these thanks should be understood as inclusive thanks to all of you.

Firstly, I want to thank the colleagues at ENInews I have worked with over the past 16 years: Eddie, Desirée, Danielle, Samia, Laurie, Peter, Valerie, Jean-Michel, Mylah, Doris, and David. Anything and everything that has been achieved is because we have worked as a team. Secondly, I want to thank the moderators and presidents of ENInews governing boards: Margot Kässmann, Jean-Jacques Bauswein, Robin Gurney, David Lawrence and Anders Gadegaard, for their advice, support - and belief in ENInews. Thirdly, the treasurers that I have worked with: Marianne Ejdersten and David Lawrence.

I also want to pay tribute to Jan Kok, who many of us still miss and who died much too young, for his vision and foresight in believing in ENInews and taking the action that made it a possibility (and Libby (Visinand) who did much of the actual work to prepare for ENInews). I want particularly to thank my current colleagues - Peter, Jean-Michel and David - for being such a great team. Particularly in the last weeks and months, we have been able to pull together, make sure the work gets done and support each other in what have not always been the easiest of times.

If I single out one organization, then it is the World Council of Churches. Without the opportunities I received from the WCC I would not be here today: attending the 1983 Vancouver assembly and a receiving a WCC scholarship to study in East Berlin in the early 1980s.

It was in Berlin that I first came across the saying of another 'dead philosopher', Immanuel Kant: "Three things help to bear the hardships of life: hope, sleep and laughter."

Those who know me know of my proclivity to be able to fall asleep anywhere, and almost at any time. But what I want to wish for all of us for the future, is not sleep, but much hope and laughter.


Stephen Brown

Bravery, generosity and feminist theology

Yesterday evening I came home and decided to try for something a bit more serious than the previous day's reading on theology and detective fiction (edifying though that had been).
Another of the books that arrived this week from the SCM sale is Controversies in Feminist Theology by Lisa Isherwood and the late Marcella Althaus-Reid.
As I read I was moved to find two writers putting so succinctly things I have not actively tried to express myself. I "recognised" something of myself in what they write. It was like an ache I hadn't realised I had suddenly no longer being there, yet the ache was in some way replaced by a deep longing and also some sadness. The resonance with their thoughts did me good - the life of the mind can be healing even when it rouses painful emotions.
Then this afternoon a colleague came to see me, a person so wonderfully centred and clear about her role and convictions. We talked about a publication project and I mentioned my reading from the previous evening. She had known Althaus-Reid, studied with and been inspired by her. We spoke about difficulties and motivations, about bravery and tears being the source of strenght. We spoke also of future projects, things we wanted to write, people we wanted to get to write and the idea of having a feminist theology lunch. When she left she said "As Marcella said 'our work continues'". It was a strange sort of blessing but I recognise it for the benediction it was - our work continues. Ah the generosity of a conversation.

So here are a few bits and pieces from the introduction to controversies in feminist theology which resonated particularly with me - not even for reasons I can clearly state, they simply "echoed" with me as the French would have it.

"What feminist theologies offer, when we get it right, are a political challenge to a world that believes, or large parts seem to, that democracy once decided on can be exported with bombs and repression for the good of all. Freedom through death is a concept feminist theologies gave up on long ago! For feminist theologies, democracy means that controversy will remain at the heart of what we do and that it will fuel us to greater engagement with a world in need of our passion. Our ability to live with disunity is our greatest strength and our greatest question remains how to have the disputes, not whether to have them.
Feminists have always been brave women; they have and do put their lives on the line for the debate to be opened or to continue. Most of us are never asked to actually lay down our lives but we do have to show bravery in the way in which we continue to question and not hide behind either moral certainty or the morality that calls some not to offend the many. We need to be brave in continually questioning our own thoughts and keeping those too open to the unfolding future; a future that 'takes place every time a possibility is imagined, a collective self reflection takes place, a dispute over values, priorities and language emerges' ...Feminist theologies arise from the the lives of allwomen and are aimed at expanding those lives through justice-seeking and right-relation, this is an embodied activity which loses all credibility when confined to the page."

I cried, perhaps with recognition or something else, as I read that last night and tears fell this evening again as I typed these words.

Daydreaming and sinfulness ... understanding through the labyrinth and Simone Weil

It has been good for me to lead the retreat over the weekend to travel out and back and have time to think of different things. Travelling helped me get some distance from my recent pointless pain as well. The labyrinth, both the idea and the practice of it, helped alot with this.

I suppose one way I might now understand what I have been feeling and how I have been reacting to events beyond my control would be to say that rather than losing the plot I have got lost in my own story.
While preparing for the weekend in Lübbecke I re-read parts of For Lovers of God Everywhere which has so many wonderful fragments of wisdom and came across the passage below from Simone Weil, which I mentioned last week. It made me realise that I have perhaps indulged in a daydreaming of grief over the past two months.
Last week I found myself quoting Weil to someone who may yet become a friend while apologizing for seeming to have lost hope. These weeks have been a strange experience for me and I found myself deeply challenged while reading Writing in an Age of Silence by Sara Paretsky and realising that I was finding it very hard to find hope. My facebook entry read:

Feels a little pathetic that a passage on hope in a piece of detective ficton moves me to tears ... "Me, I don't believe in God, let alone the coming of the Messiah. But I did learn from my Zeyde that you must live in hope, the hope that your work can make a difference in the world."

The only way back towards hope will be in the iterative labyrinth of pain and joy.

For a woman who loves daydreaming as much as I do it will be hard to give up getting lost in my own story of inner pain, but I suppose if I don't I really will lose the plot ... as the Bible says perfect love casts out fear. Love is not about daydreaming.

I believe that the root of evil, in everybody perhaps,

but certainly in those whom affliction has touched, is daydreaming.

It is the sole consolation, the unique resource of the afflicted;

the one solace that helps them bear the fearful burden of time;

and a very innocent one, besides being indispensable.

So how could it be possible to renounce it?

It has only one disadvantaage, which is that it is unreal.

To renounce it for the love of truth is really to abandon all one's possessions in a mad excess of love and to follow Him who is the personification of Truth.

And it is really to bear the cross;

because time is the cross.

In all its forms, without exception,

daydreaming is falsehood.

It excludes love. Love is real.

Simone Weil

"Are you joking God?"

A year ago our friend and colleague Suzanne died, she took her own life in moment of despair.
This morning we sang and prayed, lit candles and picked up grain seeds of hope. A colleague from Aotearoa sang a wonderful lament in Maori, other colleagues played flute and piano, read despite tears and emotions.
Nyambura Njoroge preached an extraordinary sermon from the heart. She had suggested preaching and chose powerful texts from Numbers and 2 Corinthians as her starting point. She spoke of a meeting of bishops in Africa of the despair some of them expressed about working for the kingdom of God. In particular she spoke of her own son's suicide, of Suzanne, of her daughter's depression. Facing such suffering she said made her ask "Are you joking God?"
Gently, calmly, without notes but with humour and with a conviction that comes from faith and hope, she preached for herself and for us. Despair cannot have the last word, we have to learn to speak the truth to power - that truth has to be addressed to ourselves before we address that truth to others. I wish I had recorded Nyambura preaching but I'm glad there were so many of us there to hear God's word of hope and resurrection preached slowly, passionately and from the heart.
You can find our liturgy here. You'll see that we sang Shine Jesus Shine - this was Suzanne's last joke against me - I always stopped her from putting it onto the service sheets, it is one of my least favourite hymns. This morning as we began our serivce with it I really enjoyed it. Hope can tranform us.
We ended by saying "live love laugh" together before receiving the blessing. These were the words on a necklace that Suzanne had given to her sister a few years ago.
So we try to carry hope forwards.

Love parade - the ecumenism of grief

I've been reading Wolfgang Thielmann's post on the ecumenical service for those died in the Love Parade. Telling of the tears of politicians during the service he speaks about the ecumenism of grief, about how when Nikolaus Schneider preaches about loss his words are not seen as empty - for he too knows what it is to lose a child. Such moments of mourning bring people together across confessional boundaries.

As I read it I thought again about the fact that sharing grief almost brings us closer together than sharing joy ... so sad, so important.

Sailing between the stars and reaching for hope ...

Kurk Gayle's father is reaching the end of his life - it is a wrenching terrible time and and yet he is caring for his family and loved ones by reading to them ... in a whisper but with such strong words.

Tonight as I read what he had shared I felt ministered to by a man at the end of his life whom I have never met. He is caring for his family right to the end.

In recent weeks I have felt ministered to by many who have received terrible news, of death, of illness, of redundancy, of divorce, of miscarriage ... Yet I continued to weep for my own loss, the loss of a dream, the loss perhaps of love, the loss of a sense of the future. So very selfish, so very self-obsessed, so very petty.

Reading this helped me a little to at least know that hope will return and I shall one day be in a place where the tears do not fall unbidden every day.

There aren’t any easy answers to the big questions that haunt us and hunt us down. Friends commit suicide. Grandparents die awkwardly and alone in nursing homes. We get fired. We have affairs. Our kids get hooked on drugs. Time and gravity wear us down as we travel across this vale of tears.

Yet when we have hope, we have a refuge. I like how Paul put it: “We do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day”. Or, as … Peterson paraphrases it …, “We’re not giving up. How could we! Even though on the outside it looks like things are falling apart, on the inside, where God is making new life, not a day goes by without his unfolding grace.” And grace is always stronger than my circumstances.

Every day we’re both wasting away and being renewed. When God’s Spirit moves, joy is reborn, and our lives, once new, can continually be renewed through faith and the promises of faith.

Here’s what I have to keep reminding myself: pain is real, but so is joy. Every moment, hope is available. Even now, peace can be mine. And the sparkling moments of joy that make life worth living are just as much a part of our world as the speeding tickets and funerals. When you take the time to look at both sides of the equation, you realize that life is both more depressing and more delightful than you thought.

I think it’s significant that the Bible never says Jesus enjoyed suffering. Pain is no fun — at least now for healthy, emotionally stable people. Hebrews 12:2 says we should keep our lives focused on Jesus, “who for the joy set before him endured the cross.” Jesus didn’t enjoy the cross; he endured it. If you meet a Christian who acts happy all the time — that shallow, plastic kind of happiness — avoid him like the dentist after Halloween. He has one eye closed to reality.

Jesus never acted artificially happy. And despite what you may have heard from some well-meaning preacher, Jesus did not like being tortured to death. He didn’t delight in it; he put up with it. To enjoy pain isn’t Christianity; it’s masochism. But to willingly endure suffering because you love something more than your own comfort level, well, that’s getting closer to the heart of the divine.

Joy is often wedded to sorrow, peace often accentuated through pain. Christianity isn’t just about putting up with hardships or dealing with problems or handling suffering. One of the paradoxes of faith is embracing those things voluntarily as a way of expressing devotion to God. Christianity is a journey that takes you everywhere you’ve always wanted to go but never by the route you’d expect. Or choose.

This voluntary aspect of love (and in some cases the willing acceptance of pain because of it) is one of the features of Christianity that sets it apart from other religions. Obligation and duty are not the same as love. Love offers itself. It actually volunteers for the cross.

…i want to untangle the future
…but for now i’ll let
…the riddle of
…your love for me
…take me along the current
…of this moment
…as i whisper
……my yes
…and strive to live out
……my thanks.

From Steven James’s book Sailing Between the Stars

Nothing can separate us from the love of God - solidarity in depression

A good friend phoned me on my mobile, she's never phoned me before, I didn't recognise the number but as soon as I heard her voice I knew she was getting in touch to offer consolation. I have been crying in recent days, feeling sad and as if the future has drifted out of my grasp. I'm normally rather noisy and upbeat, I suppose people get worried when this British woman can't control her tears.
My friend is a wiser woman than I am, she listened to my as usual incoherent pain and then warned me she was going to be unfair, "this is mean what I'm going to say you know, but really Jane, nobody has died and you know even if they had we believe that death will not conquer or have the last word."
My friend did not offer this tritely, I know her story and the death and loss she continues to bear. But she offered it out of deep compassion, her way of calling me back to life. It reminded me of the words I have read next to countless graves:

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8:37-38

Meanwhile as I return to blogging and reading I also came across this prayer on Steve Taylor's blog and found it quietly inspiring and reassuring.

Father God,
it is hard to hope each morning,
to look forward to new treasures and mercies,
discovered when we are alive to your presence in all that we encounter.

Open our minds to the endless possibilities of life and power and thought.
Help us to meet you in our everyday life, in our anxieties and difficulties,
for you are there with us in our pain and sorrow.

Lift us from despair to new hope. Restore and renew us each returning day,
so that we may find joy in our journey with you.

Amen

A prayer from the Mozarabic Sacramentary (10th century) (Hat tip)

Radically open church - Holding in rage

A friend died. It was not an easy death, she still had young and needy children. Their father in some other country across an ocean appeared for occasional summer holidays. She struggled to survive but the cancer was strong in her beautiful and vital body. There were no beautiful moments of reconciliation, just preparation for the inevitable worst and requests to look after the children.
Her dying was part of those of us around her. I remember the beautiful fragile translucence of her skin as painkiller was injected. That terrible intimacy of the needle which brings pain and relief. The injecting she could not do alone, that at least could be shared.

She asked us to keep someone away from her funeral, a person who had behaved badly towards her in practical petty and real ways. We didn't manage of course to exclude this person or even to have a quiet word with them beforehand. Our grief was too acute. I remember it was early springtime and as I preached at the funeral I thought of Susan Hill's wonderful book "in the Springtime of the Year" - unknown of course to the francophone congregation. At the end of the service our friend's "enemy" made a point of coming and speaking with me - they really wanted to be seen to talk with "the minister". It probably wasn't conscious this trying to achieve absolution by talking to the cleric, but I recognized in that moment just how much rage I was containing as I remained civil and in role. I listened to this person's pointless platitudes (you may note that civil as I may have been I did not refrain from judgement!) and felt as though I was betraying the friend I had only just placed in her grave.

Only now many years later do I realise that I would not want to exclude anyone ever from church, let alone from a funeral. All of us will know grief in our lives - it is not life if it does not know grief - all of us need to be welcomed at those times, Being radically open means that you may find yourself singing and praying to God with your enemy sitting next to you. You trust in some way that God can hold all of these conflicting versions of truth and reality together, because you know that you cannot, even if we all try to hear the insistent call to reconciliation.

And of course in the end who am I to throw the first stone? It was not the "holy" people who worried about excluding an enemy from the funeral, but an ordinary non-church family who took in the children and provided a home for them. Simply and straightforwardly.
I think it's called love. It's what the gospel is about but theologians like me often worry about whether we've got our thinking about love sorted out and forget to just get on and practise it in humility, simplicity and joy.
May God forgive me.

Tears and feeling

I have been thinking alot about passion, deep-felt feeling, conviction and emotion in recent months. There are lots of reasons for this, as with most people there's been quite a lot going on in my life, not all of which gets written about here (fortunately!).
When I was at my middle school from age 10-12 I was very proud that I never cried at school - neither from physical or emotional pain. I'm really not sure where the idea came from that I should control my emotions, that it would be better not to cry in the public setting of my school, try to be "strong". I'm sure it wasn't a very healthy approach to life, somehow I must have been fearful of my emotions taking me over, of them being a separate power over me rather than part of me.
There are times today when I also wish that the red heat of emotion did not drive through me so clearly, but for the most part I just surf the roller coaster of emotional living. For women who have historically been seen as being over emotional it is particularly complex to walk the path of integrating emotions. Though perhaps for men the path is equally hard, as anger and aggression are more valued in their expression than other "softer" emotions.
Integrating our feeling and thinking is a challenge most of us face.

I've been reading through parts of John Bell's The Last Journey again this afternoon, looking for inspiration for some writing I need to do and I came across this prayer

What did they think, Lord, those who watched you cry
in front of women, in front of other men,
for your dead firend, or your favourite city?

Did they admire your tenderness having seen your toughness?
Were they disgusted by your tears and loss of self control?
Or were they drawn into your sorrow for the plight of the world and the pain of its people?

Help me to share the solidarity of your deep sorrow so that I can share in the certainty of your deeper joy.

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.

Anger, rage and pain in terms of finding your voice

Some years ago a friend died from cancer. She was not ready to die and she was angry at the disease taking her life, her energy, her creativity, her future. She was an extraordinarily talented artist.
In the end she managed to say good bye to those nearest to her, and months before the end she asked me to take her funeral. I was still in parish ministry at that time and when I didn't spend my Mondays off at calligraphy class I would spend Monday with her.
On the day that I came back from my neurologist with the confirmation that I had my second MS incident - and therefore had MS - she turned up bringing with her the most perfectly arranged posy of flowers I have ever received and took me out to the lakeside to have ice-cream. I suppose my ministry to her was that I allowed her to be angry, and she knew how to be angry - not only at God but also at others. At the end of some of those Mondays I would sometimes be exhausted, partly because of the energy and integrity of her anger. It was her way of finding her voice in a desperate situation.
At her funeral one of the hymns we sang was Now the Green Blade Rises to Noël Nouvelet, it's a hymn I hope people might sing at my own funeral, it speaks deeply of resurrection and new life. However, there are also other words to this tune where one verse begins "Jesus Christ is raging, raging in the streets ..." Elemental anger is so rarely part of our spirituality and yet any reading of the Psalms whould help us see how important "imprecation" and expressing prayerful anger in pretty colourful language can be.
I've been thinking about my friend and her brilliant and frightening anger and also about the challenge of the this year's theme at our feminist theology group - finding your voice, finding your way. How do we find our voice when we are angry and raging? It's a particular challenge for women I think. Our societies find it hard enough as it is to listen to women, to treat our input as of equal value; we are immediately seen as "aggressive" when we challenge people or issues (when a man would be seen as "tough").
So what does this mean for finding our voice, for me finding my voice? I've revistied an old post on anger and on Lytta Basset's Holy Anger and in many ways I almost feel I have nothing to add - and I would still use as my starting point the great quote from Brecht: "Even anger against injustice makes the voice grow harsh. Alas we who wished to lay the foundations of kindness could not ourselves be kind." As I consider my own anger and rage - which is different from that of my friend in her illness, but no less elemental - I wonder about how I can possibly speak in a way that can be heard given the passion of emotion. I wonder too about whether given strong emotions I am even able to listen to myself and hear my own voice or know what it might be?
My friend in her pain at her situationi did not question her right to be angry, perhaps I too as an angry and passionate person need to accept this about myself and learn to find my voice.
Meanwhile I give thanks that at my friend's funeral I preached about beauty and creativity, and that anger was part of that.

An appreciation of Steve de Gruchy from Tinyiko Sam Maluleke

The following extracts come from an email sent to friends of Steve de Gruchy by Tinyiko Sam Maluleke, president of the South African Council of Churches. Tinyiko has his own blog here but has said we're free to repost his words, which spoke to many of us very powefully given Steve's strong commitment to water, development and green issues.
We will cross post on Monday to the Ecumenical Water Network. Tomorrow family, friends, students and colleagues will gather for Steve's memorial. We remember them as we celebrate Steve's life and try to understand how to go on with his work and our work without him. The paper by Steve mentioned here is one I'm currently preparing for publication in Ecumenical Review.

I will be at the funeral as well. I also spoke to John and Isobel just before they left Volmoed to go join the search for Steve’s body at Mooi River and I have been in touch with colleagues in Pietermaritzburg. Some of you may know that I left Pietermaritzburg where I taught just before Steve joined the department. I was in the committee that interviewed Steve for the job. The rest is history. We have worked together in the Journal for Theology in Southern Africa ever since he took over its editorship. He addressed the SACC conference in ‘Green Theology’ three years ago when I was elected president. Like him, I was theologically brought up by John de Gruchy.

When I saw, early on Monday morning an email message speaking of Steve having been involved in an accident in Mooi River (literally the beautiful river) my reaction was to write back to all recipients saying something like; ‘I hate hoax emails but I sincerely hope that this one is a hoax email’. How wrong I was! Sensing my knee-jerk denialism and the pain behind it, Rev Edwin Arisson, author of that email, wrote back to me separately to confirm its contents.
Several things strike me about some of the last words and gestures left by Steve’s departure and there is neither time, space nor energy to go into details here – and I have shared in brief, with some of you, some of my sentiments.
Steve was bumped off (the life) boat unaware that that would be his last ride. Steve was a lively person who loved life. He died riding the boat of life and riding it with joy and zest. His family informs us that shortly after being bumped off the life boat, he emerged and signaled to his son David to ride on, gesturing that he (Steve) would be okay. It seems therefore that Steve’s last ‘message’ to his son is instructive; instructive to his son and instructive to all of us. The signal is first and foremost one that says ‘ride on’. The second element is a gesture that says ‘ I will be ok’. A moment later, Steve was nowhere to be seen. Several hours later, he was nowhere to be found. Four days later, his lifeless body was found. Clearly, we are not Ok with this. We are not fine with this loss. Truth is; we are broken. But Steve’s last sign was that he would be fine. Do we have it within us to see the truth of Steve’s gesture? Maybe not now, but going forward, can we embrace the suggestion that Steve is Ok where he is now? Is that suggestion, in fact, not in keeping with our faith? The other piece of that gesture Steve gave was ‘ride on’. We ask, how can we go on? How can we go on without you, Steve? How do we go on doing what only Steve could do? How do we go on being what only Steve could be? And how do we go on doing the things Steve helped and made us do? But the gesture from Steve is: Ride on. Go on. What shall do with this suggestion? Can we find it in us to mourn Steve not only with tears but by going on riding the boat of life with zest and joy? Can we find it in the depths of our pained hearts to go on riding the theological life-boat with Steve-like zest and honesty? It seems to me that Steve’s last gestures bequeath us seeds of how best to remember his legacy.
In one of his last papers, read in Belem, Brazil in January 2009, Steve wrote and spoke about water. It was titled: Dealing with our own sewage: Spirituality and Ethics in the Sustainability Agenda” Typically, it was not an abstract theological treatise about water. He wrote about the South African government’s fifteen year old quest to get rid of the bucket toilet system – a system designed for black people living is areas where there is no running water. He wrote about a scientist dismissed from his work for writing a paper suggesting that South Africa was not managing its water resources prudently and that a water crisis was looming. In that paper he wrote about the tragic outbreak of the water-born disease Cholera in Zimbabwe during 2008. He wrote about the dogged human problem of how to deal with our own sewage and waste – and how we have always turned to water to help us. But what if there is little or no water? In that article Steve introduced what he called the ‘River Jordan Motif’ and the ‘River Jordan Ethics’. It brings to mind the river Jordan spiritualities that have sustained the township churches. These songs we sing about the crossing of the river Jordan. These songs we sing about water and the Samaritan woman. But Steve is very much alive to the life-giving and death-dealing possibilities inherent in the water. Thus he speaks of the living waters of the Jordan flowing into the dead water of the dead sea.
It is clear that water was an important pole around which Steve’s theology revolved. Here is someone who loved and respected water. He was happiest in the midst of water. He made water his theological motif. And the water he loved took him in and refused to give him back to us. Can a man die better? Was this why Steve signaled that, in water, with water, he would be fine? Without water our world will not be fine. What a rich theological legacy, Steve has left us!
Rejoice oh waters of Mooi River. The one whom you have taken is a lot more beautiful even than the river in which you flow!
Tinyiko Sam Maluleke
University of South Africa

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.

Raw prayers of grief and beginning the the year

Over on Novice blogger Janet has posted a raw prayer called dying day. On Christmas morning an asthma attack caused a 17 old's death. Raw praying in the cold, in the wet, in the sunshine, in the wind; thus begins a New Year for so many.

Tomorrow will be my dying day:
the day before yesterday was yours.
You didn’t buy a ticket,
you didn’t book a place
and yet there you were
suddenly at the front of the queue.

Today ...

Today the sun shone. The views were beautiful, snow again topped the Jura after the previous fall had been washed away by days of mild rain. The frost is back.
We attended a funeral of a friend and former colleague, presided by a Lutheran pastor in a small French village Catholic church. We spoke a mixture of French, English and German. As we walked uphill behind the hearse to the cemetry we had glorious views but this was not easy grieving. Resurrection will be hard struggled for even as the snow clad peaks and sunshine spoke to us of a possible different dimension.
Her grandson threw roses into the grave, two: one for his grandmother the other for his mother with whom she now lay ... and a letter.
And after chatting and trying to say how sorry we were, we came home. Everyday grief for all of the family, it's not special, it's hard work. And it can break your heart.

At the service we read a confession of faith by Ion Karakash that I must try to try translate into English, it offered hope in ambiguity.

Yesterday in a conversation about grief someone else who has recently lost a close relative sent me this powerful hymn by Fred Kaan which moved me deeply. He was about my age when he wrote these words ... So we all try to take up the thread of life ... in many ways today has not been a sad day for me but a gentle and joyous one. I had time to think and pray and be.

Today I live, but once shall come my death.
One day shall still my laughter and my crying,
bring to a halt my heartbeat and my breath.
Lord, give me faith for living and for dying.

How I shall die, or when, I do not know, nor where,
for endless is the world's horizon;
but save me, Lord, from thoughts that lay me low,
from morbid fears that freeze my power of reason.

When earthly life shall close, as close it must,
let Jesus be my brother and my merit.
Let me without regret recall the past,
then, Lord, into your hands commit my spirit.

Meanwhile I live and move and I am glad,
enjoy this life and all its interweaving.
Each given day, as I take up the thread,
let love suggest my mode, my mood of living.

Fred Kaan © 1975 Hope Publishing Co