What greatness have you come to earth to accomplish? Reflections on Hebron, the pain of dialogue and how we live ...

Gradually what I interpreted yesterday morning is shaking down, getting decanted and I can begin to remember a bit more of it.One of the ideas that Rabbi Marc Raphael Guedj ended up talking about yesterday morning was weakness and strength, what is the greatness that we are called to. He got on to this subject following a question from a Palestinian participant about the spiritual importance in Judaism of Hebron. It was a genuine question in the respectful setting of dialogue, but the background was of course the present day situation in Hebron.
Guedj explained that Hebron is the place where according to tradition Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are buried. It is seen as the cave that Abraham chose to bury Sara. At one point as Guedj was saying this he said "you know myths are facts - just because they are myths doesn't mean they are not facts. We live with the reality of the resonance of old myths right up into our present time." So Hebron has this particular resonance and mythic religious quality in Judaism. And of course in Islam it has a different mythic resonance.
Guedj went on to explain that there is even a tradition in Hassidic Judaism that Adam and Eve themselves are buried in the same Hebron cave. It's therefore symbolic almost as the birthplace, the cradle of humanity.
Yet today this deeply symbolic place is fought and struggled over. A place of mystical meaning is a place of violence and contestation.
This then led to quite a spiritual reflection from two Jewish Hassidic masters, the first from Rav Ahkenazi who said "Show me what you celebrate and I will show you your weakness". The second came from Rav Zadok of Lublin who encouraged his followers to think about the greatness each of us is called to, and to consider that the greatness we are called to accomplish is in some way to repair our weakness, the weakness within us ...
Guedj then brought these two ideas together - more carefully than I am able to in my half remembered interpreters brain - in thinking about Hebron. He said, perhaps the greatness I am called to is to be present in that situation in Hebron, to repair that weakness which Judaism celebrates, to be present in the present day reality and facts of the celerbated myth. Seeing Hebron not only as the tomb of the Patriarchs but also as the cradle of humanity helps to enter into the dialectical counterpoint of weakness, greatness and celebration.
So what do I celebrate? What is my weakness? And you?

Are we pregnant with God or is God pregnant with us?

It is always interesting to interpret, especially philosophical and religious French as I did this morning for Rabbi Marc Raphael Guedj who was once more sharing his insights at the Bossey inter-faith summer school. Guedj always insists on the way values inform one another: not justice or charity but charity and justice, not just the letter but also the spirit, not just the spirit but also the letter - he often quotes Emmanuel Levinas' idea that "the letter is the folded wing of the spirit". Not just the written tradition but also the oral tradition. Not just one single and fundamentalist interpretation, but many in discussion and even in disagreement with one another.
Today he took us into rather different territory as he tried to get across the idea of immanence and transendence. At several points he said things along the lines of God being pregnant with humanity, wanting to offer some trace, some outline of Godlikeness to humanity. He spoke movingly of the feminine qualities of God, in the same terms as of the Western (wailing) wall of the Temple in Jerusalem - a totally dependable support. Interesting to think of a feminine quality in those terms. He went on to say that humanity, made in the image of God, is also in some way pregnant with a trace of God, wanting to give birth to that search for the Divine.
The word for pregnant in French in "enceinte" - it has the same root as the French for belt, ceinture, also "une enceinte" is a girded place, within the castle walls for instance. If you want to say in French that a man, or a male gendered object like "un pont", is pregnant it is almost impossible to do this grammatcally - you should say "le pont était enceint" but today of course Rabbi Guedj said "c'est comme si Dieu était enceinte de l'humanité". I really wish I had been able to take notes and so offer more than these fragments of remembered words which went into my ears and sort of came out of my mouth, I do know that I smiled as I heard him say that - knowing that the word "pregnant" in English would not entirely get across the shock of what he had just said.
Thinking about it now it reminded me of Ursula Le Guin's wonderful line "the King was pregnant" in the Left Hand of Darkness. And so I googled and got to this re-reading of Le Guin and now I know one of the books I shall be taking on holiday with me.
So I wonder, what trace of God might I be able to be pregnant with, to give birth to?

Comedies always have to end with a wedding ...

On Saturday night we went to the newly reopened Théatre du Châtelard and saw Les Juifs by Gottfried Lessing. The production is the first time the play has been produced in French and it was interesting to see such a German play but in French. Our neighbours from the copropriété Hervé Loichemol and Anne Durand directed and acted in the lively and very carefully thought through production. It was good to be in the newly renovated theatre and to bump into folk we know there. How amazing to be able to walk to a first class theatre production less than five minutes from my front door.
I have never seen or read the play in German. Although it is a comedy, it is almost impossible to see it today without being struck by the tragic undertow of the story. The way that Jews are referred to in the play is of course heard by us today in the light of the holocaust that took place two hundred years after it was written, but also now in many other ways. Today you could hear similar things said about Muslims in most parts of Europe, and other parts of the so-called "civilised" world too.
There is a love story between two individuals which is cut short by the weight of society's deep prejudice. You can save a man's life, save his fortune, win his respect and his friendship. Yet because you belong to a despised religion you cannot marry his daughter. Generosity will not in this instance be repaid with anything other than shock and disdain. Lessing allows some crumbs of understanding to dawn amongst the characters. They appear to step away from some of their absolute anti-semitism, but only because of the extreme graciousness of the generous Jewish character - who is of course almost too good to be true. Comedies traditionally always end with a wedding and this play so very nearly does too. In the end though the young women curls up and weeps in incomprehension. The Jew walks away, lonely in his generosity. He has no other option.
Have we learnt the lessons? Did anyone learn Lessing's lesson?
Played for laughs it is a deeply serious story. It spoke to me of how deeply engrained and irrational our hatreds and prejudices are, how hard, impossible even it can be to leave them behind if society itself is not open enough to allow individuals that freedom.

Enjoying reading Margot Kässmann's blog from the USA

Until Christmas the former head of the Evangelical Church in Germany, Margot Kässmann, is at Emory University in the United States, and she's blogging - allerdings auf Deutsch. Evangelisch.de is hosting her blog which is an interesting mix of reflections on religious encounters and cross cultural experiences. The most recent post is about Yom Kippur which took place in a Friday evening synagogue which is actually one of the local church buildings.
There's also a post about lunch with former president Jimmy Carter as well as passing thoughts about the Koran burning threat, US radio shows and much more besides.
Certainly worth reading and checking in with once a week.

Fragments and unjoined up thoughts on this and that

So today I started an idle thought on Facebook "Wondering whether a 'theology of fragments' might be one useful starting point in thinking about the ecumenical movement" and was surprised about where it led.
Dr B pointed me to David Tracy's fragments as a theological category:

Fragments show the need to shatter any reigning totality system, such as the "white" understanding of modernity and culture. At the very same ... time fragments embody quite a positive meaning: a break out of totality into infinity by discovering one's own routes and one's own traditions. In this process, one discovers all the others and the different, in the very same way, as possible disclosures of infinity.

My friend Simon Oxley pointed to Duncan Forrester's "Theological Fragments: Explorations in Unsystematic Theology" which was not what I had been thinking about - my own thoughts had been more a half remembered musing on Henning Luther's theology of fragments and the idea of Christ's own life as a fragment. Luther seems to have developed his thoughts in part as a pastoral theology to find meaning in situations of palliative care, particularly for younger patients with AIDS or cancer.

Today fragments of my day would include:
A conversation about biblical archeology with a Palestinian Muslim and a surprising conversation about Thomas L Thompson in which I was definitely the person on the learning curve.
Thoughts exchanged in French about Unitarianism within Protestantism as an important yet often unexpressed part of our tradition.
Sadness at the realisation that my own life is also just a fragment and wondering if Jesus may have felt something of that as he faced death so young - then wondering whether the struggle with meaningless was ever part of earlier cultures. Yet my life being just a fragment is also oddly quite reassuring. Not sure I can quite explain that just yet.
And now at the end of the day as I return to the idea of a fragmentary theology of ecumenism, I suppose I wonder whether we need both an unsystematic theology of ecumenism and also a deep understanding of the ecumenical movement as a fragment - a humble fragment. Can't take this much further than that for now but maybe one day in heaven or in the other place I will have time to ponder some more.
Fragments of the day also included coping with the welling up of tears and being surprised when laughter and ideas drove away my current deep sadness.
Fragmentarily, I look back at the day and remember the morning dew, the heavy late afternoon rain, the humility of getting it wrong when interpreting, the pleasures of translating well written German, the joys of editing, the grind of grief, the stunning light of sun through crowd, a great conversation with an Arabic translator and the support of friends.
All as weighty as dust, yet part of the pathetic yet essential struggle against meaninglessness in my fragmented life.
For tonight fragmentary ambiguity is where I'm at.
Tomorrow as they say, is another day. Thank God.

Simply beautiful ...

I simply like these two paintings - both have meaning and movement - one more minimalist the other more filled and geometric. The artists worked outdoors, slowly and quietly, interrupted by our noisy visits from time to time.

Simply beautiful.

A beloved wife's name, a labyrinth of love, a scroll of peace and so much more besides

Action and reflection spiral with two ways of looking at things

I think the artist of this piece came from Indonesia. The spiral is the increasing action reflection spiral of his life, encountering joy and pain on the way. Then there are two beautifully executed faces which look upwards and downwards at the whole, different perspectives from afar and close up - what do we see?

The Palm tree can be used in every part

This was the only work to be done by two people and I enjoyed its evolution and the lively way they spoke about it - as well as the creative use of collage and paint. A palm tree can be used in every part. We too need to commit our whole selves to peace and dialogue, being useful in all our parts to those tasks. A really great idea,

Hands on for meaning

I don't seem to have a picture of the final version of this work which ended up with a wonderful bunch of flowers between the open and closed hand. Each hand represents how life can be more up and down, yet will still end the same way for all of us. The flowers were not for death but for joy.

A basket of peace

The artist comes from Rwanda. I admired the lovely colours in his painting and then he explained that it is the basket of peace. In his culture women carry such baskets on their heads, filled with precious gifts - food or milk. His basket carries the very precious gift of peace, carried by women as it is more often than not the men who wage war.

An earthenware vessel ...

I was intrigued by what this blue form would finally turn out to be. The sister chose her favourite colours for what she described as "an earthenware vessel", a clay jug. She put such attention to detail into getting the yellow cut out just right. Very lovely and a splendid act of imagination to make something that looks yellow but which begins life as something blue. I like that.

Labyrinths and artwork to bring the interreligious summer school to a close

So here are the participants at this year's Interreligious Summer School with my great colleague Tara Tautari taking their photo and the IEPC cloth labyrinth in the foreground. The Christian, Muslim and Jewish participants at the school have been reflecting on how religions can contribute to peace building.
I've joined them on three occasions as their interpreter and it has been a fascinating experience interpreting the local rabbi or representative of the mosque. Today however I changed roles and encouraged the participants to think about where they had come from and where they were going with what they had experienced during the four weeks of the summer school.
Each of them received a photocopy of the Chartres labyrinth and also an A4 version of the IEPC logo which we used as finger labyrinths to get into the idea of travelling into and out of places, issues and experiences. Some walked in the cloth labyrinth outside. And then they started, painting and chopping and sticking; laughing and keeping quiet, in groups or alone, at tables or outside on the grass. The results were simply wonderful.
We closed the session with the group photo but before that, many of the artists shared the meaning behind their paintings and collages. It was a beautiful, restful and recreative time. A time to believe in and celebrate the playfulness of God. A real privilege to have been asked to spend this time with such an extraordinary group. What a wonderful sunny afternoon.

The next few posts will show some of the works.

Can Islam be republican? Open Source Ecumenism reads a new book in French.

While I'm away Dr B has been busy taking some time out with his newspaper and at our local bookshop where he's bought"L'Islam Republicain: Ankara, Teheran, Dakar" by Jean-Francois Bayart.
You can read more about the book over on Open Source Ecumenism. Here's a taster:

In one sense the book is a investigation of the relationship between religion and the state in three majority-Muslim countries.In another, it's a polemic, sparked off by the discussion on a burka ban, with a prevailing intellectual atmosphere in France that asserts a fundamental incompatibility between Islam and Republican values, such as the equality of women, and according to which "Republican Islam" is an oxymoron.

The Beloved and the many names of God, coffee and epiphany

For Epiphany Martin Sinaga who comes from Indonesia and works for the LWF led prayers yesterday morning and reflected on how Christ's baptism is the true sign of Epiphany in Orthodox theology.
Martin wove the festival of the shining forth of Christ to all the nations with the countries we are praying for in the ecumenical prayer cycle this week. He focused in particular on the country of Yemen - much in the news at the moment because of terrorism and its dictatorial regime. He told a story about how coffee and the drinking of coffee was according to one story discovered in Yemen by a Muslim Sufi mystic - who brewed his first coffee drink after seeing a goat chewing on a coffee berry and supposedly seeming much better afterwards. Might that first drink of coffee have been a kind of epiphany. It had been Muslims from Yemen who had taken the story of the Prophet to Indonesia and converted many there to Islam, to the 99 most beautiful names of God - the compassionate one, the patient one, the source of peace, the shaper of beauty ...

As we reflected on Christ being God's beloved one, Martin encouraged three people to share the stories of their names, their sense of being "beloved" by God, their following of Christ, their stories of baptism.

So there was much to think about after our epiphany morning prayer but I did have a passing thought about whether that coffee berry chewing goat was called Starbuck.

Christian history at KT - confessions, divisions ... and chance of unity?

I've spent part of today teaching KT. It's always good for me, helps me centre on people outside myself. Compared with the UK there is very little teaching about religion or the differences between religions at state schools in France. So we decided that with the vote about the minarets in Switzerland last weekend, and the interest that the young people had shown at the beginning of the year in learning about other religions we would try to do some of that today.
We began with Christianity before going on to look at Judaism and Islam.
In everyday French it's fairly difficult to trace the fairly key nuance between a different confession and a different religion. I was shocked at my first Week of Prayer for Christian Unity meetings in France to have people from the Catholic Church come up to me and say "we must do more inter-religious dialogue like this".
Today we started by looking at the different Christian confessions and by tracing where each of the many branches of Protestantism came from and then going back to what had preceded the Reformation and the great schism of 1054.
So we moved from the complex diversity of Christianity to looking briefly at Judaism and Islam. I was impressed by how genuinely the coung people voiced their concern that all people should be allowed to worship as they see fit. There is also an enormous ignorance of what the beliefs and practices of other religions are and part of me felt that we should try in local churches to offer an opportunity to discover other religions - not just for young people but for their parents and grandparents.
After lunch we did some remembered Bible of Christ's nativity with them. Fascinating to remember the story and then to read first Matthew and then Luke. I was struck by the different kind of Messiah each evangelist seemed to be expecting - in Matthew the baby is portrayed as the equal of kings and great Eastern intelectuals; in Luke this birth brings hope to excluded shepherds on the hillside. The beginnings of Christian diversity are right there in the way the gospels each tell their story of Christ. Christian unity and reconciled diversity are perhaps only possible if we dare - across our confessional differences - to go on telling our own and Christ's story to one another.

In search of ...

This seems like the right week to mention some of the excellent interreligious work and projects that exist in Switzerland.
The news of the Swiss referendum vote against the building of new minarets is leading to much comment and discussion well beyond the borders of this small federal state known in the past for its neutrality.
Pictured here is this year's interreligious calender from Geneva's Inter-religious Platform. This year the ascetic life and mysticism are the theme - in previous years themes have included food, death, pilgrimage and ecology.
The Calender always runs from September in one year through to December of the next year. It's a great thematic resource and also shows the dates of major religious and non religious festivals. Click on the link to order a copy.

On Advent Sunday Switzerland votes on whether minarets can be built

Today Switzerland is voting on whether or not building minarets can be allowed according to the federal constitution. The referendum initiative had been put forward by the extreme right-wing people's party. A great way to pile on the pressure to polarise public opinion. Very clever and very worrying, these days the repurcussions will be felt not only in Switzerland.
The early results seem to indicate that the majority will be in favour of banning the building of minarets. Geneva and the Canton of Vaud seem to be voting in favour of building minarets but the German-speaking cantons are coming out very clearly against.
Perhaps there's still time to hope for a late surge of voters choosing the other options.
Not a good day as Switzerland last week took over the presidency of the Council of Europe. One of the priorities of the sixth month presidency is to be human rights.
There are already four minarets in various parts of Switzerland.

Today is Advent Sunday ...

Look into your neighbour's eyes or walk on by in fear?

There are things I really like about living in a smallish place in France. One is that when you go out for a walk people you don't know at all will greet you with a "bonjour madame, bonjour monsieur" as you walk past. It makes for a slightly more sense of belonging that the rather more standoffish British way where you might just marginally acknowledge someone as you go past.

I thought about this last week at the end of Bossey's interreligious summer school while listening to two young women - one from Palestine one from Israel. The young Jewish woman spoke about how difficult she often finds it walking down the street in the area of Jerusalem where she lives. She wants to be able to reach out in peace to all. Despite her work in peace-building she recognized every time she was on a particular street just how hard, how impossible it is for her to meet the eyes of others on the street, to greet them with a look or a smile or even words ... the deep sadness she felt at this situation almost led her to even give up the idea of trying to learn with others in an interreligious environment beyond her own.
The young Palestinian woman spoke about how hard it was to know anything about the "other" when you are simply holed up in your own territory and not allowed out. You can see the others you wish to reach out to on the other side of the fence but you cannot reach them. Even if you made a sign to them it might be misinterpreted.
Both of these young women are now back "home" on different sides of the fence, seeking somehow to overcome barriers of mistrust, fear and injustice.
So who will you be walking past today, will you be looking at and acknowledging at them, smiling perhaps? Or will you be walking on by in fear, preoccupation or indifference?
It seems right somehow that the next major seminar in Bossey this summer will be on healing of memories.

An interreligious summer evening barbecue

The closing ceremony for the Bossey Ecumenical Institute's third annual inter-religious summer school was held yesterday I was there interpreting for Geneva's former grand Rabbi Marc Raphael Guedj. It was a moving time which we ended with a rousing singing of "we are the world"
Some of the contributions from the participants really gave me hope for the future - an old cynic like me having hope for the future is really quite a concern ;-)
A wonderful pastor from the Assemblies of God in Nigeria gave a brilliant performance of why "it is possible" and not impossible for inter-religious dialogue and just simply dialogue to change the world. A young Palestinian and a young Jewish woman spoke quietly but passionately about their reservations about coming on the course and also the loneliness they felt, believing in peace but not always being able to act for peace in their communities, yet the hope they have for peace as they prepared to return home.
Guedj spoke of how important authentic rather than facade dialogue is in the building of real understanding and peace. Hafid Ouardiri from the Genevan Islamic community said how this month that participants had spent together helped to build community and encounter the other differently.
An old Hassidic story recounts that a Rabbi begins by wanting to change the world, gradually his ambition changes and he ends up realising that in order to change the world he must begin with himself. Each participant in the summer school had changed in the few weeks of deep encounter and so each had begun to change the world - holding on to this experience will be important as they move back to their own often quite conflictual and complex inter-religious contexts.
The evening ended with us all singing a rousing version of "we are the world" followed by a fabulous barbecue prepared by the Bossey kitchens.