Word of the day la Glycine - Wisteria blossoms in Ferney Voltaire - the locals certainly know how to "cultiver leur jardin"

These pictures of just one of the local wisterias in flower were taken on Easter Sunday as we walked down from the temple. There is an even more impressive wisteria growing across the driveway in the house just opposite this one. Back home in the rue de Versoix, our neighbour planted a wisteria which is finally flowering this year and has already reached 15 foot up to his kitchen window.
So sad I cannot post the scent of these glorious blossoms via my blog. Once though, many years ago, I did preach a rather good ecumenical sermon about the glorious honey made from the lilac, wisteria and blackthorn flowers intermingled in an Oxford college garden - the sermon however was preached in a French roman Catholic church!
For now I just concentrate on the wonderful dancing beauty of these ephemeral blooms and I hope that something in this Eastertide will be blooming and perfuming your lives with hope, meaning and glory.

So do you take off your shoes or eat blackberries? The solace of poetry

... Earth's crammed with heaven,

And every common bush afire with God[de]:

But only s/he who sees, takes off [her] shoes,

The rest sit around it, and pluck blackberries...

From Aurora Leigh by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The quote above came to me today at the bottom of an email from a friend and it sent me off reading Elizabeth Barratt Browning's poetry on the net. I realised that I have hardly read any Barratt since school and that I do not have a collected version of her poetry, something to treat myself to very soon. It is powerful stuff.
Spingtime is not at all the time to think of the autumn harvest of the hedges filled with the finger-staining dark fruit that are blackberries, bringing sweetness just before the winter. I love the flavour and fragrance of the humble blackberry - though given the choice I would probably still opt for the raspberry.
But the quote in this fragment (really that word seems to be one of the major subthemes to my blog these days) of the poem is actually a judgement on those sitting around gorging ourselves thoughtlessly on late summer fruits. The bramble, like the biblical burning bush, is full of thorns. An invitation, a reminder ... of God's grandeur, of humility, of the possibility that like Moses before us, we too could remove our shoes as we remember we are on holy ground.
I glimpsed some of the immensity and beauty of creation this evening, walking through the wonderful trees, smelling the sweet violets and listening to the wonderful birdsong as the sun persisted in picking out the primroses in the grass. With every step I gave thanks for the burgeoning season that is spring - these early flowers speak of fruit to come. Truly a miracle. God turns not only water into wine but petals into fruit and pollen into honey - earth is surely crammed with heaven!

So who are you? A manifestation of the human spirit or a failed reality?

The world in which you were born is just one model of reality. Other cultures are not failed attempts at being you they are unique manifestations of the human spirit. Wade Davis

Do no harm, leave a lingering trace ...

Bits and pieces of our lives interact in the living room piling system and the fragments of life made up of old newspapers, new books and things waiting hopefully for attention.
One of the reasons I still prefer real newspapers to the online variety is the serendipity of reading while (not) tidying up. So it was yesterday evening in my desultory attempt to look as if I might be cleaning up the sofa I got side tracked into reading Michael Billington's interview with Peter Brook. I found Brook's idea about a pared down Magic Flute which concentrates on the music, on character, story and situation rather wonderful. Even if I never get to see it, just reading about it inspired me to think about opera and also my own "performance art" liturgy in new ways.
However, what moved me and offered me some sense of meaning about my life was Brook saying this at the end of the article when asked about his legacy:

"What does touch me is when people come up to me in the street, as they sometimes do since they mistakenly think I've retired, and talk about some experience that has remained with them. That for me is the only real legacy: the idea that one has left a lingering trace in people's memories. In the end, that's all a director can hope to do."

Brook's humility of ambition - coupled with brilliant artistic vision- impressed me and moved me because it challenged me - I suspect that I would hope to leave rather more than a trace and yet I also know that at the end of my life probably the most I shall be able to say about my achievements is that I will have managed to offer grieving families meaningful funerals and joyful couples happy weddings. Fragmentary traces.
So I began pondering "impact" - our desire, my desire, to "make a difference" to "have a legacy" - and I thought about two women working in development I interviewed earlier this year. They were working according to the "do no harm" development principles - make a positive difference but don't just try to have impact for the sake of being seen to do something. "Do no harm" takes longer but tends to become the work of the people, of whole communities much more, and as a result of that it tends to be much more sustainable. In terms of providing rural communities with water say, that has to be a good thing. I have no idea whether it can be applied say to mission or ecumenism or church life but I like its conscious humility and desire to work with rather than dominate and impose. Yet I know how much, like Psalmist in Psalm 90, I am motivated by wanting my work to have a lasting result (Donne à nos travaux un résultat durable).
Meanwhile a further fragment of a lingering trace is Andrei Makine's latest book, (the entrance to my new place of work is framed by bookshops, this is not good and I succombed when visiting Paris this week) which beautifully evokes how even in a life of suffering brief eternal loves can be transformative.
So rather than having impact I shall hope to linger and to seek to be ambitious with my vision rahter than with my impact. Yet as I reflect on my carbon footprint and on the plastic bottles I will have used in my lifetime I shall also have to face up to the fact that be it impact or lingering, it will sadly not have been as sustainable or without harm as I might aspire to. So I shall focus on the hope of transformative eternal love.

Antiphonally yours ...

Time for me to confess that I am always rather grumpy about Christmas - I'm not quite sure when this started, I think when I was at university and received presents I just didn't want and felt bad about it all. So I took refuge in doing night duty at the Samaritans and taking Christmas services. Now in recent years I have been privileged to travel - last year to Venice, before that Berlin. It feels a bit selfish, but I'm happy trying to do Christmas my way for now.

I am terrible at buying presents and not even very gracious at receiving them and yet I love the Christmas story, the repetition of words and narratives that continue to speak to me. And I love the wonderful quiet liminal time of waiting that is Advent.

This morning we prayed the great Advent antiphones for the first time this Advent, I love the images, the memories of candles lit in the past and the glory of the music to O Come O Come Emmanuel - Chantez chantez il vient à notre appel combler nos coeurs Emmanuel. That French version "he comes to fill our hearts" is one I particularly love.

This morning's liturgy, during which we were privileged to hear John's gospel and the passage from Genesis read in Chinese by visitors from the China Christian Council, can be found here - with antiphones of course!

In praise of nothing ...

Well tomorrow the holiday begins in earnest. Pictured here are just some of the books we thought we ought to bring with us ... shame to leave them at home when they might like to visit the Languedoc too I suppose! Some of these have been read by one but not by both of us. Really though they took up an obscene amount of space in the car and will mean that we won't be able to fit enough wine in the boot on the way back!
So tomorrow I may have to decide - do I begin with Pain, Evil or the Alexandrian Quartet? hmm ...
Meanwhile this evening I have both begun and finished my first book of the holiday. Now in some ways this is cheating becaue the book is by Christian Bobin and called Eloge du rien. I don't think Bobin has written a single book of much more than100 pages and many of his books are around about the length of a longish written sermon. They are beautifully produced and printed, so feel like reading books. It's right for them to be produced like this because the density and poetry of his prose means it would be hard to cope with too many words on a page. You need to have pages to turn to have time to think. Not quite sure how this would work if you were reading him on a kindle. I think miniatures of literature might not work so well in that format.
Reading Bobin this evening I gave thanks with a wry smile for the fact that I would not have to find an entirely inadequate translation for this glorious half sentence:
"seul l'amour donne un sens à ma vie, en la rendant à elle-même insensée."
The thoughts in his "excurse" are triggered by a letter asking him to write about what gives meaning to his life. He passes through his dislike of such exam-like questions, remembers how the only way he got through school was by learning everything by heart and so ruining his memory and somehow in the middle he chances upon love.
Towards the end he says that love could never fit within the narrowness of meaning (ne saurait se tenir dans l'étroitesse du sens) and then he continues:

"L'amour est liberté. La liberté ne va pas avec le bonheur. Elle va avec la joie. La joie est comme une échelle de lumière dans notre coeur. Elle mène à bien plus haut qu'elle: là où plus rien n'est à saisir, sinon l'insaissisable. Bien sûr, je ne réponds plus vraiment: je chante. Mais v-t-on demander à l'oiseau la raison de son chant?"

The philosophers' Bible part one

As befits the beginning of a week of holiday Dr B started it at the newsagent's. He came home with a fascinating array of reading matter, much of it about 1989 but more about that over on Holy Disorder.
He also brought back a special Philosophie magazine on the philosophers' Bible. You can read the table of contents here.
The issue brings together some original interviews with shorter extracts from various (mainly male) philosophers re-readings of parts of the Hebrew scriptures.
There have been some complaints that the articles don't go into enough depth but what I like about this approach is that it gives you a taster and sets various philosophical insights down next to one another, it's not pretending to be an academic journal. In France where all young people taking the baccalauréat have to study philosophy it also provides useful and attractive material for work with young people, linking the Bible to their academic work.
I'm particularly enjoying reading Eco, Benjamin, Trigano, Lévy and Barthes on the story of Babel. I'm already looking forward to the New Testament issue which will be out soon. Meanwhile the final extract in the magazine is by Jean Jaurès, the famous French socialist orator, pacifist, journalist and teacher. He also fervently defended the separation of church and state. there are roads named after him in most French cities. The extract quoted here celebrates the Bible as a book that teaches people to think if it is translated into people's own languages:

C’est dans la lecture de la Bible, traduite partout en langue vulgaire, que les peuples apprendront à penser, dans la Bible batailleuse et âpre, toute pleine des murmures, des cris, des révoltes d’un peuple indocile dont Dieu, même quand il le châtie et le brise, semble aimer la fierté, dans cette Bible où il faut que les chefs, même prédestinés, persuadent sans cesse les hommes et conquièrent, à force de services, le droit de commander, dans ce livre étrangement révolutionnaire où le dialogue entre Job et Dieu se continue de telle sorte que c’est Dieu qui a l’air d’être l’accusé, et de ne pouvoir se défendre contre le cri de révolte du juste que par le tapage grossier de son tonnerre ; dans cette Bible où les prophètes ont lancé leurs appels à l’avenir, leurs anathèmes contre les riches usurpateurs, leur rêve messianique d’universelle fraternité, toute leur ferveur de colère et d’espérance, le feu de tous les charbons ardents qui brûlèrent leurs lèvres. C’est ce livre farouche que la bourgeoisie industrielle a mis aux mains des hommes, des pauvres travailleurs des villes et des villages, de ceux-là mêmes qui étaient ses ouvriers ou qui allaient le devenir, et elle leur a dit : Regardez vous-mêmes, écoutez vous-mêmes. Ne vous abandonnez pas aux intermédiaires. Entre Dieu et vous la communication doit être immédiate. Ce sont vos yeux qui doivent voir sa lumière. C’est votre esprit qui doit entendre sa parole.

Walking the labyrinth

I walked the grass labyrinth which has been cut into the lawn in Crêt Bérard this morning - it was rather lovely with mist rising over the alps and Swiss cows grazing nearby. There is something wonderfully reassuring and calming about the sound of cow bells. Everything was green and watered by the huge thunderstorm we had on Friday night. The particular labyrinth they have cut into the grass is based on one at Sens in France (that name makes me smile as "sens" is not just a place name but also has the sense of "meaning").

The Crêt Bérard labyrinth is set out in front of a lovely old oak tree. It's discreet and you can miss it if you don't know it's there. It was wonderful to lose myself in its meandres and turns, thinking for a moment that I was getting to the centre just after starting, then being surprised once I truly reached the centre that it still took a long time to get back out again. It was a very gentle 20 minutes - plein de sens!

The problem of evil ...

As always over on Ben Myers Faith and Theology blog there is an excellent discussion on the question of evil beginning as a result of Kim Fabricius posting his vote of thanks following a lecture on “Horrendous Evils: A Theological Problem of Evil and its Solution” at the University of Swansea by Marilyn McCord Adams.
I've been thinking alot about evil recently, its banality, its horrendousness, its attractiveness. That terrible phrase "for evil to triumph all it takes is for the good to say nothing" rings too often in my ears. Evil requires countering.
I don't believe in a theology of meaning in suffering - certainly not in a theology which imposes meaning on those who suffer. I also don't at all believe there is meaning in either banal or horrendous evil.
One of those commenting on Kim's post mentions Hans Jonas' Theology after Auschwitz. This made me once more remember the work on a similar theme of my friend Alain Blancy, the tentative final version of his paper (written a few days before he died) on theology after Auschwitz seemed to indicate it might be possible to blame God as the only theological way through impossible, unthinkable evil.
I'm still not sure about this, though the Psalms often have no such qualms!
But as I think this evening of news received in recent days from Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo, China, the local women's refuge ... I somehow do not feel it is "enough" to simply blame God and so get over the problems of evil.
After all in the play God on trial, after God has indeed been found guilty, those who have judged God turn around and say the morning prayer.
What I sense I may be groping towards myself has something to do with grace existing powerfully despite horrendous violence and the silence that imposes. I can see what is meant by McCord encouraging a reaquaintance with mortality outlined in the second quote below. But I wonder about the sometimes prurient focus on evil. Is it possible to find a Grace Jantzen way through the minefield of horrendous evil, a way of of valuing natality and creativity despite evil? Perhaps a narrative theology that takes both evil and resistance to it seriously would be one possibility, a way of honouring that "suffering is without explanation or compensation" but is still part of our human and divine story. After all Jesus the Riddler threw down questioning, parabolic stories of hope, which did not offer simplistic answers to the ambiguities of life in first century Palestine. The complexity of the narrative of our lives linked to the divine may be my way towards living despite evil.

Anyway here is an extract from Kim's original post and from one of his comments in the discussion, and Bishop Alan's thoughts triggered by the same post:

Professor Adams, firstly, fully acknowledges the irreducible horrendousness of horrendous evils, the meaninglessness as well as the pain. Second, she knows that a moral taxonomy is insufficient to account for the sheer intensity and scale of suffering, and she knows that the free-will defence fails because of its overblown account of human agency (not to mention its competitive account of divine and human freedom). Third, if Professor Adams speaks of the participatory suffering of God, it is, quite unlike the process theologians, only in connection with a robust two-natures Christology: it is the crucified and risen Jesus who is the horror-bearer and-defeater. Finally, Professor Adams consummates her theodicy with a robust faith in universal salvation, not because all must win prizes but because God is good and resourceful, the maker and re-maker of meaning, and because the penal options (as she puts it) of “liquidation or quarantine” are hardly a satisfactory quid pro quo for hell on earth. And all so tightly argued: Professor Adams is, after all, a philosopher in the analytical tradition.

"Perhaps it is time for philosophers of religion to look away from theodicy - not to appeal blandly to the mysterious purposes of God, not to appeal to any putative justification at all, but to put the question of how we remain faithful to human ways of seeing suffering, even and especially when we are thinking from a religious perspective. Part of the task of a good theology and a candid religious philosophy is, I believe, to reacquaint us with our materiality and mortality. And part of that is the knowledge of suffering as without explanation and compensation" ("Redeeming sorrows: Marilyn McCord Adams and the defeat of evil", in Wrestling with Angels: Conversations in Modern Theology, pp. 271-72).

On meaning, interpretation, logos and Sophia

What follows is a quote from part of Suzanne McCarthy's excellent post on Logos and Sophia. Read the whole post here.

The human need for meaning may be met in the Christ (word), but it cannot be the Christ of someone else's mediation, created in the image of someone else's humanity. The notion that the logos/tao/davar are first, along with sophia/hokmah, means that meaning is before and has priority over every interpretation that is known to man or woman.

We can listen to the interpretation of others, but, going back to the allegory of the cave, we must not mistake the human interpretation for the actual meaning of reality. The lesson is that intepretation does not create meaning. Meaning precedes intepretation and not the other way around.

Manure or sweet hay - what do carry in your back pack?

Giuseppe Platone, the longest serving member of the Kirchentag's international committee said his official goodbye to the committee and the Kirchentag's General secretary Ellen Ueberschär at the beginning of the Kirchentag in Bremen. He also handed over to his replacement from the Italian Waldensian Church on the committee Sergio Manna.
The Waldensian Church like many minority churches punches above its weight. In his speech Giuseppe also said how important it had been for him to feel that the Kirchentag made space for people from minority churches from beyond Germany's borders.
He brought all members of the committee a special present from the Waldensian valleys, called a kippa which is a small basket used to carry everything on peoples backs in the steep mountain farmlands. These baskets are symbols of hard work, minority, sustainable living and very much like a form of basket rucksack.
In a brief and moving meditation Giuseppe spoke about how people would carry all kinds of different things in these baskets depending on the time of year, from manure and seeds, clothing, harvested produce, food, firewood and newly cut hay to feed to livestock or to take down to be stored.
Sometimes the basket is full, sometimes waiting to be filled. It made him think of the biblical verse "bear ye one another's burdens" - though this didn't stop him from giving Ellen Ueberschär a much larger basket than the rest of us, the general secretary certainly has a heavier burden than many of us. As he handed out the baskets Giuseppe also remembered how his own basket had been filled with memories over the years and thought of how we fill each others' baskets with good things. He remembered a visit he had undertaken in the 1990s to many other members of the international committee and how this had cemented relationships and support for the Kirchentag.
As we wished him well we were all pleased to hear that Sergio will be maintaining the Waldensian Kirchentag tradition of an evening of Bible and spaghetti.
Meanwhile Giuseppe will also be leaving his position as the editor of the Protestant newspaper Riforma early next year - the lead article says Mensch wo bist du in Italian. We wish him well with all his new projects.
Meanwhile are you handing out manure or sweet hay from your back pack?

gaps, inbetweens and fragments ...

"The love of God and for God resides in a gap"
Julia Kristeva, Tales of Love

This short quote came to mind as I read Maggi Dawn's post cited below about Jeanette Winterson saying that creativity is in the space inbetween the interior and exterior struggles. It also reminded me of Simone's Maundy Thursday sermon and the theology of fragments.

Bits and pieces, fragments, gaps, inbetween ... sooner or later perhaps I shall perhaps craft some kind of narrative drawing this together, or maybe just tell parables instead.

One thousand posts

This is my 1,000th post on this blog. I'm not sure which day it will be posted on nor what other posts it will appear alongside. But I thought I should use the occasion to reflect a little on this strange reflective, expansive activity that blogging has become for me.
I do not find writing easy at all. I find writing to order and sticking to deadlines painful - though of course deeply necessary! Yet I find blogging easy, motivating and simply "my sort of thing". I am truly surprised that I have made it to 1000 posts on this blog and amazed that I seem to be blogging elsewhere as well - though for how much longer I'm not sure.
For me I think that the biggest change that blogging makes is somehow awakening the desire to write and showing me that I can write - at least to some extent. Blogging has also though made me more anglophone in my focus and I regret that. I must make more effort with the two French blogs I'm also involved in.
In the next week I shall be trying to help a friend set up a wordpress blog to house all of her original music and hymn translations. So far however my greatest success has been to get Dr B to start blogging. Now I can enjoy reading his blog output too.
Anyway enough of this self-indulgent reflection, thanks to all of you who read these jottings and leave the occasional comment.