So I should be ... but instead I am involved in many forms of perfect procrastination

Well I should be packing, getting organised, doing all sorts of things to clear my desk, finish writing projects and get ready to move to Paris. So of course instead of doing any of that I am actually returning to the blog at long last - and yes there is a great deal of tidying up to do here too of course, because almost all of the information about me and about Dr B needs to now change. You have been warned, you may turn up and discover the builders have been in and painted everything white! though rest assured minimalism is not really my style.
Yes I am moving on Friday this week! And on Thursday this week I go to Lyon for my first day conference in the new job. Pictured here is what the appartment in Paris I shall be living in looked like when I visited 2 weeks ago. The Chef de chantier looked a little worried when I said I was hoping to move in on September 30, he looked a little better when I said but it's ok if it's only at midnight!
Anyway you can see that my future colleagues can see straight into my place so you will understand why the only thing packed so far are 6 sets of Ikea curtains bought on special offer last week. I shall have to remember not to wander around this dwelling naked, unless all the curtains are drawn!
Then of course I had a little jaunt to and from Prague on the train - I was interpreting for the Conference of European Churches, I think for now we'll just say it was another one of those ecuemnical meetings, after all I do want them to invite me back.
Then this morning I said yes to talking to a group of specialised ministries folk at the Château de Bossey and that was great fun (for me if not for them!), but really I should have been packing ...
anyway Dr B drove me to the SNCF (even regular readers of this blog may not know that I do not have a driving licence) and I am now the proud owner of an Abonnement Fréquence for the whole of France, in Germany this would cost 150 euros, in Switzerland about 150 CHF, in France 650 euros ...
So I really should stop blathering on here and pack, but you know what? My wonderful colleagues gave me an Ipad as a leaving gift and I'm trying to learn that and then I took some really cool photos at the Ecumenical formation session this morning and I think today is the perfect time to learn how toedit the video I took and then I'd really like to write something about Prague ... and of course before I pack a second suitcase I really should empy the dishwasher. Yes, perfect procrastination when you cannot focus! More soon folks, who knows I might even tidy the house!

Bal populaire, 14 July and la pyrosymphonie

We're back from watching our local taxes go up in the most wonderful array of exploding lights and music. Today was only the second time since the French revolution that the citizens of Ferney gathered to celebrate Bastille Day at the château. At the end of the splendid fireworks - which were accompanied this year by a recording of Joan Sutherland singing some fabulous arias - we were thanked for attending the evening's "Pyrosymphonie". There was no sense of irony in this wonderful neologism - of course in English we call it "son et lumère"!
Anyway it was a great evening, hundreds of people, great food, wonderful jazz music before the sun set, great scenes of adults and children dancing and a full moon.
And who cares how much all those fireworks cost, they made all of us ooh and aah and clap and smile and simply enjoy our national day, even if we are not actually citizens. And it definitely has a lot more class to have the celebration of the revolution up at the château.

Le miel du rocher - concrete turns to honey in St Denis

We came back from our afternoon wandering around the multicultural streets of St Denis with some little pots of miel béton - concrete honey! Far from being concrete the honey is runny and fragrant. It comes from the "banque de miel" which has some buzzy and bee-like qualities on its website and also has a blog. So you've got the idea this is urban honey, these days with all the worries about the health of bees, urban bees are often those who seem to show the least dign of illness - partly because tehre is little chance of them feeding on monocultures.
Anyway if we do end up living in St Denis I think I'll try and invest in heaven (investir le ciel) and become part of this brilliant project which makes sweet honey come from the concrete rock. I love the fact that the banque de miel is run by the "parti poétique"! Now of course in secular France I should perhaps not point out to them that the image is straight from those poems in the Bible called the Psalms - le miel du rocher Psalm 81.16 - I think a modern translation would be honey from concrete.
Long may the urban bees produce honey for us.

News from Ferney Voltaire centre of the universe - second theatre opens!

Last week Ferney voltaire second theatre re-opened its doors. The Théatre du Châtelard which is about 200 metres from our front door has been completely renovated and rebuilt.
Ferney also has another small theatre "La Comédie" which also has a lively programme. It's pretty amazing to live in a small town (I tend to think of it as a village really) whichmanages to keep two theatres going.
The Châtelard opens with a play by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing which has never played in France before called Les Juifs. Our neighbour Hervé Loichmol is the artistic director of the Châtelard, his partner Anne Durand is one of the actors. So we are hoping to get tickets and walk along the road before the week is out! This is what Hervé says about why he chose this play:

C'est une pièce étonnante à plusieurs titres. Pour la première fois, elle critique ouvertement l'antijudaïsme chrétien, c'est-à-dire l'hostilité envers le judaïsme en tant que religion. C'est aussi la première oeuvre montrant un juif sous un angle positif. L'étonnement réside aussi dans la jeunesse de l'auteur. Lessing a 20 ans quand il écrit cette pièce et il n'est pas juif. Il y a chez lui une conscience politique incroyable.

You can find out more about the upcoming programme at the Châtleard here and to be fair about the Comédie here.

Should theology be "well balanced"?

Perhaps this post should be entitled "feminist theology and the meaning of life".
Last night our feminist theology group listened to a man talking about his life, discovering and learning to appreciate his Jewish heritiage while being a Christian minister. Pierre Strauss had brought with him beautiful examples of artistic calligraphy and a deep understanding of Kabbalistic Jewish spirituality. He had obviously prepared much more than he had time to share with us last night, but what was interestingwas how his meditative approach to pulling together the threads of his own life helped us to do the same with our lives, bringing together spirituality and social and political action. It was a good evening reflecting on the past and the future while living in the here and now.
At the end of the evening we came back once more - as it would seem so often in my life - to Chouraqui's translation of the Beatitudes as "En Marche". I've written about that so often that I won't do so again for the time being - you can read more here and here.

Meanwhile, as a result of our evening I put the following post up on facebook and got involved in a discussion with a colleague based in Paris about feminist theology. Which led me to make the statement "good theology is not well-balanced" - my idea I suppose being that good theology is based on conviction as well as on criticial analysis - heart and mind. Later thisled me to ponder that perhaps in ecumenism it is this badly behaved element in theological interaction that is sometimes missing - we are too busy being well-behaved, well balanced and can sometimes sadly lack conviciton or inspiration.

Anyway here is an extract from my facebook conversation with Gilles, who is minister at Le Marais in Paris - they are about to start webcasting all of their Sunday services which I think is a really great idea. I watched last week and thought it was really good, very straightforward and unshowy. Le Marais has one of the best church websites out there and an extraordinary intercultural and multilingual ministry in the heart of Paris.

Been at a very interesting evening of feminist theology, with beautiful Hebrew calligraphy and the potential for listening to be the motor for social change

GB: Feminist theology ?... what does it mean ?

Can you tell me some places where I could hear some good male chauvinist theology

JS: male chauvinist theology is not good theology. However if you're that taken with it you can just pop in to almost any local church. The speaker at our group this evenign was a man btw
GB http://www.la-croix.com/afp.static/pages/110301151311.7n3snl7u.htm
GB I have the intuition that female chauvinism is not the good answer to male chauvinism ;-)

JS ‎@Gilles and I have the firm conviction that feminist theology has never been about female chauvinism ... tho of course it is often portrayed that way :-)
Sarah More details? Sounds interesting.
GB So if feminist theology is this, what is the well-balanced male theology ? Why should theology be male and female ? I thought that there were no more male and female in Christ ? - I'm a bit provocative, but in a real desire to understand those things...
JS @Gilles one day - perhaps quite soon as I shall move to Paris this Autumn - I shall give you my considered opinion of "well-balanced male theology" - over a good bottle of wine I think. Of course in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek neither male nor female.

And "good theology" is not well-balanced - hence the need for mission theologies, feminist theologies, liberation theologies, evangeilism theologies, black theologies etc. Btw I suspect that both male and female French Protestants practise a form of womanist theology - in which male and female Protestants hold together for the sake of identity.
...
And of course "Well balanced male theology" is what some say our institutions have been serving up for several hundred years - some of it is even not all that bad - I think that is what some of the well-balanced males tell me.

Probably I am not very well-balanced, and of course I am not male.

Le jour de la nuit - the day of the night

This Saturday is "Le jour de la nuit" across the whole of France. The idea is to switch off all municipal lights so as to be able to observe the night sky, the stars and enjoy the biodiversity of darkness. It really sounds like fun. Ferney is going to take part, though not Geneva as the idea doesn't seem to have spread to Switzerland yet.
There are several fun things taking place including a night time walk to look at excessive private lighting and the problems of light pollution. The local astronomy club is setting up telescopes in the garden of the Maison St Pierre next door to where we live so that we can all look at the winter night sky. Find out more here.
Meanwhile I just love the play on words of "le jour de la nuit" which means both the day of the night and also the daylight of the night. In spiritual terms I also love the idea of the night and the darkness also being holy. I think Sautrday night might be quite fun - and also the big switch off will really help to reduce carbon emissions - maybe we should be having more days of the night. That night is also the night we all get to sleep an hour extra as the clocks go back, so the switch off will last an hour longer too!

My favourite holiday desert

Quite often if the menu comes with desert I will share or offer mine to Dr B. He was however only allowed the merest taste of this one - a dark and white chocolate mousse eaten at l'Arboussier.

As one of my parrishioners used to say "ah a few seconds in the mouth, years on your hips."

More to ponder upon in this global week of action on food.

Crème brûlée - hmm yes please

Yes of course it was delicious - these two pictures just about sum up one part of the holiday for me.

Well of course you all knew we needed more books

So today France is mainly on strike but strangely the post office in Ferney was open - though we didn't actually receive any post. anyway this strange turn of events meant that Dr B was able to go and pick up a box of books that has been waiting for us since an hour after we left on holiday. There are many goodies in the box which came from the SCM sale but for now I'm going to curl up on the sofa and see whether this one is any good: Murder, Manners and Mystery: Presentations of Faith in Contemporary Detective Fiction: Reflections on Faith in Contemporary Detective Fiction.

It sounds quite fun though the frame of detective fiction it refers to does seem to be rather narrow compared to my highly eclectic selection. I shall have to see whether there is even any mention of the wonderful Fred Vargas, even if only in translation. Meanwhile I should perhaps return to my idea of trying to get people to write a crime fiction book through updates on my Facebook status, it was working quite well for about half a day ... Not sure whether a crime novel I would write would have religious overtones, though I suppose it couldn't not. I think my protagonist would be called Gloria (surname of course Excelsis), she would of course be a cleric but I haven't quite decided which country she will live in and which of her elders will be the first corpse. You better keep watching this space!
UPDATE
Just reading this on page three:
"If short of plot, pop in a caricatured pastor, nun, ex-nun, or woman priest as sleuth"

oh well, he's seen through me already ...

Final 48 hours of holiday - Olonzac, Lo Cagarol, Bize Minervois, Millau and Le Poivrier at le Puy en Velay

Bon appétit and here's to the next holiday ...

Occitan - the sound of the south, linguistic discoveries while wine tasting

In the window of the cave coopérative in Cessenon yesterday there was a poster for Occitan lessons - come and discover or rediscover how to speak, read, write, sing and laugh in the local language. You can find out more here. Occitan is really the sound of the south and we had quite an introduction to it listening to one of the wine growers we visited this week. Proudly Occitan and Mediterranean even in the grapes he planted and made his wine from and the methods used to ferment the wine.
Occitan in its written form traditionally tells of troubadours and ladies with unicorns, courtly love. It also often speaks of the Cathars, the religious sect wiped out following the Albigensian crusades. It's great to see Occitan going through a revival these days - for decades it was considered "dirty" to speak regional languages, now though you can even take Occitan as a baccalaureat subject.
Walking around Causses we came across a memorial to Jacques Vanière, not a writer in Occitan but a Latinist poet and Jesuit priest. The tiniest of villages yet this celebration of culture, language and poetry was at the centre.
Going around the villages in the countryside here, I am continually struck by the incredibly long and rich cultural and religious history. Human beings have been living, singing and versifying for millennia in this part of the world, so much of the languages from long ago is lost so it's good that there is renewed interest and commitment to Occitan. All the place names as you enter the towns and villages are in Occitan as well as in French.

St Chinian and Causses - different views on the same day

So here are some of yesterday's photos arranged here with the municipal cloisters in St Chinian in the centre. The next post will be of the same photos but with a different centrepiece, it's interesting to see how this changes the perspective. You walk through St Chinian's town hall to enter into the cloisters and with great French aplomb they've made a wonderful modern meeting room on one side of the cloisters. It works very well.
It makes me wonder whether what is now the town hall wasn't once a convent or religious house - it does rather have that sort of look about it. In all of the years that we have been coming here I've nover really wondered about that or looked further itno the history of St Chinian itself. Over many of the churches in other towns of the region you'll find the words "Liberté Egalité Fraternité" have been written, sometimes even with the addition of "propriété de l'état". This is a way of clearly marking out state power over the religious buildings.
Anyway, the rest of the photos are from the lovely little village of Causses which we visited to go and taste and buy some of the wines from La Maurine Rouge vineyard. We had great fun wandering in the streets and also discovering the wine we had first tasted at Cessenon on Sunday. More about that later.

"Willows whiten, aspens quiver" - seeing details differently and having time ...

One of the great things about being on holiday is having the time to take things in and appreciate them differently. Opposite the back courtyard where we're staying there is a lovely mediterranean pine tree in the middle of a village garden. It gives me simple but deep pleasure on the late sunny evenings to simplysit and look at it, to watch the play of sun-setting light turning the bark red, to see how the wind makes the outline of the pine leaves move across the blue and darkening sky.
Looking at the bark of the plane trees in the market square or along the canal du midi; seeing the random pattern of the shells on the beach; wondering at the continually changing movement of waves on the sand; seeing the way the leaves of the olive trees move and how the shape of the varieties is different; seeing the asparagus gone to seed in people's gardens and taking pleasure in the way the garlic is plaited and the pumpkins are piled up on the market stalls; seeing the vines changing colour and liking the newly turned ground - all of these things made me think of my irascible English teacher Dan Plim. (Sadly the only online trace I can find of him is his history of Redditch golf club (!) and details on Friends Reunited of his death two years ago.)
I remember him twirling his reading glasses in his fingers and encouraging us to note the poet's eye for detail as we were reading Tennyson's The The Lady of Shallot. The leaves of different varieties of tree behave differently in the wind "Willows whiten, aspens quiver". I was lucky enough to have both a willow and an ash tree in the hedge of the garden at home and so could test what the poet and my English teacher said. And I still get irritated with Dr B for not knowing his oak trees from his willows - though after 20 years in France he can just about spot a plane tree.
There is beauty in majestic landscapes, broad brush strokes and the big picture, but there is also deep beauty in the small almost insignificant details. Artists of the word or brush may capture them for us, Caneletto for instance. But for me this holiday time blesses me with leisure to enjoy details and wide views, to be restored by both and to take that transformative pleasure back into my everyday life. Dramatic sunrises or sunsets, a beautiful autumn leaf or a scurrying lizard searching for fading warmth amongst the rocks, sun from behind the clouds, all help to add a different dimension making life more poetic, less mundane and taking me out of myself. so even when the holiday is over, it won't be over - the poetics of plaisir, loisir et désir will be able to continue. "Pleasure, leisure and desire" was the title of a brilliant Bible study on the Song of Solomon by Jacques Chauvin. Wonderful title and a great holiday ethic it seems to me, more on that theme later.

From the Canal du midi near Homps

So for now here are some more images from part of yesterday's trip to the Canal du Midi. Apparently one of my (about 3) readers complained that yesterday's collage of the olives was not as good as some of the others. Well all I can say is I'm sorry, I'm just doing this for fun folks, I am not a professional artist or photographer.
Anyway, yesterday was a very full day - just the amazing Château Landure and the lovely Abbaye de Fontcaude to add now, but first another day of holiday to enjoy, not many of those left.

Olives galore, tasting the oil

After lunch and some gentle walking along the Canal du Midi and some pottering around the Capitainerie in Homps we set off for Cabezac and Bize Minervois where the Oulibo wine cooperative can be found. I had quite a fun time tasting the oils and choosing some to take back with us. Of course these days you can buy everything over the internet but you can't taste that way. I've chosen some Picholine and Aglandou oils as well as the ordinary oil the cooperative makes. I slightly regret not having bought any Olivière oil but it was so pronounced and peppery that I decided to stay with the other two for now. The Picholine was delicious on our salad tonight.

Well today is overcast but yesterday was the perfect day

Pictures from around the port of Sète - with our evening meal thrown in for good measure!

However books to read still abound, as do vineyards to visit and villages to discover. We'll see what the day brings, first some breakfast and a look in my rucksack to see what books I bought at Le Flo des Mots yesterday.

supper ...

Figs, melon, cheese, bread, ham and wonderful local viognier wine - the perfect supper at the end of the perfect day. A real blessing as the sun finished setting.

A Sunday Collage from the Fete des Vendanges in Cessenon

You can see there is less blue sky on these photos, our holiday weather has turned more autumnal. We avoided rain at the wine harvest festival in Cesseonon and ate some great food at the Restaurant de L'Orb. We pottered around the village, tasted some wine, chatted to a really interesting woman who took over her parents' vineyard about four years ago. Her Parisian husband took over dealing with the vines and she moved from her job as an air hostess to take over marketing and promotion. It was agreat story and the wine was lovely. The wine is called Domaine La Maurine Rouge and their ordianry red is named for their children and called Ange ou démon. Angel or demon - as I said on my facebook update it tastes fiendishly angelic.

On going to mass ... some jumbled up thoughts about ecumenism and other stuff

Last Sunday I admit I was fast asleep despite having intended to attend mass in the Roman Catholic Church here in St Chinian. But this week I managed to get out of bed in time. I should add that there are of course Protestant parishes in this area but none any closer than a 30 minute drive, so that would have take alot more planning - and required my driver to also be willing to get out of bed early during the holiday. So I went to mass. I wanted to be what I am whic is an ordinary every day Christian and see what it is like to worship with others in this small town.

I claim to come from an ecumenical background, yet the first time I ever attended a Roman Catholic mass was during the week of prayer for Christian Unity in Dunkerque about four months after my ordination. I am still rather shocked about this when I think about it - I had been to prayer services in mosques, synagogues, gudwaras, Hindu temples, yet not once had I attended a Catholic mass. To be fair I had been to many Roman Catholic services of prayer and I was taught Old Testament by a Dominican. Thinking about this now certainly makes me realise just how enclosed our different confessional communities can be, how ignorant we are of one another's life and how desperately or perhaps blissfully self-sufficient we can be. It isn't right and it isn't good for us either.

In Dunkerque on a January Saturday evening I was invited to preach at mass, the next day the Roman Catholic priest preached at the Protestant temple. What shocked me terribly as I took part in the mass for the first time was how terribly familiar it all was. Although I knew none of the responses in French I still somehow "knew" them and instinctively knew where the liturgy was going. At that stage I still did not have this instinctive feel about the liturgy of the Eglise Réformée de France, I was not as at home in it as I suddenly felt on that Saturday evening in the Roman Catholic Church. After I had preached, no doubt far too cerebrally, Jacques Duquesne, the wonderful priest in charge, invited me and all other Protestants present to stand with him behind the altar at the point in the eucharistic liturgy where the Lord's Prayer is said. I returned to my preacher's place and the liturgy proceeded and tears just poured down my cheeks. People were filing past me to receive communion and I knew that although I felt so "at home" in the liturgy I could not "communicate", not in that public role in that public place. In that moment I suppose the division of the church became real for me in the bread and wine I did not receive, I understood the brokenness of things. My hands and lips remained empty, my tears were uncontrollable.

Anyway this morning in St Chinian I had no public role I could just be there, take communion according to my own conscience, arrive and leave without saying much to anyone - apart from "la paix du Christ". This morning I felt part of things but also in some ways less at home - perhaps because the music was so unfamiliar. St Augustine said "to sing is to pray twice" so I suspect that this morning I did not pray twice. Nor was I edified by the homily but in itself it is always good for a preacher to listen to someone else and realise quite how soon my attention begins to wander!

The priest was I would guess younger than me (this certainly surprised me, the Catholic Church in France has a crisis of candidates for the priesthood) and attendance was really quite good, the large church was over a third full, the organ was good. It was lovely to hear the words of the liturgy and the gospel in the accents of the south. But I realised that I was one of maybe half a dozen folk of working age there. Apart from the two altar boys the only other child present was a baby being carried by his grandmother. The reality of much of the traditional church throughout Europe is that it is white haired.

I felt very moved as people walked forwards to receive communion, so many with sticks, having problems walking, with a friend or partner helping them. The people of God, work weary, bone tired yet walking forwards in praise, in expectation. And I too went forwards.

I'm glad I got out of bed. It was a useful reality check about who the church is in a community like this. I was glad to see a reflection by the bishop on the deportation of the Roms in the monthly bulletin, invitations to a Christian Mulim dialogue group and a poster to take part in the local Cercle de Silence. I left feeling a little sad, thinking surely these people too might have been offered a little more of a sense of joy. Perhaps I am as ever too judgemental.

Of course I am - like a good Protestant - still pondering and meditating two of the Bible readings: "For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline." 2 Tim. 1.7
And the end of the Lukan parable "So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, 'We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.'"

Just love this photo - it simply says France to me

Taken in the streets of Narbonne - and we weren't the only ones taking a photo of it either.