Money, money, money ... a common currency, well maybe not

So as discussions today seem to be moving towards a (let's hope) more stable future for the Euro we are actually on a crazy tour around four European countries that don't have the Euro. Quaint as all of these currencies are it is certainly not all that much fun for the traveller. To make it even more confusing Denmark, Sweden and Norway all call their currency the Krone (the crown) but there are different monarchs on each of these currencies. And of course a different monarch again on the British pound which is the fourth non eurozone country we'll be getting to.
This morning we got on a bus to go to the railway station, we had a 50 Danish Kroner note. The bus driver would not take us because we didn't have the change for the machine ... so we then get change and the next bus comes and eats the first 10 kroner piece. This much more laid back bus driver says "free trip". This is even more exasperating when you know that the Danish Krone is actually tied to the euro and we had plenty of those coins in my purse! However, the Danish Krone with holes through some of the smaller coins is very pretty, so I suppose I must simply celebrate this currency diversity and cope with the fact that we shall just have even more change in the little pots in the kitchen. Anyway, despite being thrown off the first bus we still made it for our train in plenty of time.
Now we're in Stockholm, beautiful city, amazing journey across stunning countryside and a fabulous bridge to get to Malmo from Copenhagen. Train journeys are wonderful, except I kept on wanting to get out and look at the waterlilies.
Meanwhile I wonder about these so called rating agencies valuing currencies - who are they? are they fit for purpose? how much money are they making in the dramatic fluctuations their "ratings" cause on the currency markets? Enough, rant over, off to find some supper!

If Christian theme park is to offer "live resurrection" what on earth was resurrection before?

I've just read this report in the Guardian about Europe's first Christian theme park offering "live resurrections". And I just thought - that is just weird! Resurrection is about being alive, about the triumph of life - it's not about "enactment" or pretence. I started wondering what a dead resurrection would look like?

Anyway just a passing thought I suppose, as I get cross about themepark religion and realise how totall behind the times I am.

Anyway, I'm sure the person writing the headline about "live resurrection" had fun.

Identity and the rule of law ...

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

A week ago a view over a field of wheat ...

Last Sunday morning I woke to this view from my room in Crêt Bérard - a field of wheat with a pathway leading to the alps and lake Geneva. Today I wake to a view onto offices in central Liverpool as we begin a week's holiday in the UK, visiting family and relaxing. I also woke to news that Russia has banned exprt of wheat today ... financial speculation on a basic food stuff has been well underway in recent weeks.
And this morning's lectionary reading is Matthew 6:19 Do not store up riches on earth ...

Tell that to the bankers speculating with a "commodity" that represents life for many life.
Food for life or life for money?

What is "strong" leadership, "strong" government - reflecting on the day the election is announced in my home country

It's not really surprising that I think about a quote from Heinrich Grüber's memoirs as I wander around Berlin this week. Grüber describes in his memoirs how he voted for Hitler - as did many others of his class and background - because he wanted "strong" government and the experience of Weimar democracy had been of weak ever-changing government.
Today the election will be called in Britain to take place in just one month's time. It's quite interesting chatting with our family about their voting intentions - our oldest nephew is (shock horror) probably going to vote Tory - but we've also been having discussions about voting systems, whether it's better for democracies to have change after a decade and the place for conviction in politics. It's fascinating to see how approaches to democracy and voting systems are very culturally determined. Do I want strong government or good government?
At a personal level I've also been thinking about "strong" leadership and our need to embue these words which tend to be seen as male virtues with value. Is the only way of describing leadership positively to be seen in macho language? Of course women are also strong and it is very much a female virtue as well. But surely goodness, integrity, mid-wifery, artistry, brick-laying, sculpting and many other things may offer us more useful images for the sort of government and society we want rather than this steroid obsession with strength.
Grüber learnt the strength of saying he was wrong to vote for Hitler and took up resistance to teh regime he had voted in very quickly. There is strength in recognising when we have been wrong, it's called humility and it's not a bad virtue for politicians and leaders to learn.

More links, opinion pieces, reactions, interviews on Margot Kässmann

Retired Bishop Bärbel Wartenberg Potter has an interview in Der Spiegel with the title: "Sexism has a jealous face". She describes Kässmann as highly talented and as speaking the kind of language that could be understood by people within and beyond the church. She goes on to say how Kässmann was not afraid to make herself vulnerable but then also says that women have less experience of coping with public failure than men and that woemn's failure is often much more harshly judged than men's. Women, particularly in leadership roles are still pioneers in the church. She goes on to say that if Kässmann returns to a parish she has many qualities that will be able to be used there.
Yesterday on TV there was already speculation abotu her going in to politics ...
Meanwhile there is an excellent reflection on evangelisch.de by Olaf Droste, a Bremen pastor who works in radio. His piece was broadcast this morning on Radio Bremen/NDR. He takes up once more her theme of never falling so low as not to be caught by God's hand and adds that no one says that god's hand is particularly well upholstered ... it's been a hard fall. He describes her resignation and his own sadness, even if he knows that other faces will now emerge to lead the church.
evangelisch.de also have a a whole series of articles and comments here. Meanwhile the EKD site has various reports on this weekend's EKD Council meeting in Tutzing and this report which made me cry ... There are of course a number of reports on epd. I have good friends working at both epd and EKD and I dare not phone them to see how they are, I can just imagine how hard all in communication and the adminsitration must be working at the moment. Take care out there folks and hope you get some sleep soon - maybe next week?

This is what made me cry - not sure why, but this has certainly been an emotional time

„Evangelisch aus gutem Grund“ – so hieß die Kampagne einer Landeskirche vor einigen Jahren, die sprichwörtlich geworden ist. Und so hegen an diesem Tag viele Menschen, die der Kirche nahe sind, neben den unvermeidlich traurigen auch wieder hellere Gedanken. Dankbarkeit, Traurigkeit und Zuversicht - es gibt Tage, in denen diese Gefühle ineinander greifen. Die Herrnhuter Losung des heutigen Tages stellt solcher Gefühlslage einen hoffnungsvollen geleitenden Vers zur Seite:

„Der Herr wird seinen Engel mit dir senden und Gnade zu deiner Reise geben.“ (1. Mose 24, 40)

Margot Kässmann was a bishop for more than 10 years and a national church leaders for three short months. I should be thankful that I have lived at least to see that. I sort of doubt that I shall see another woman church leader of her stature in my lifetime. Perhaps in my sadness I should trust more. A friend at work said to me today that she is still showing politicians the way to deal with these sorts of crises - quickly and straightforwardly - I did something wrong, I step down from public office. Tony Blair of course never thought he did do anything wrong. Silvio Berlusconi is busy rewriting the law to try not claim he didn't do anything wrong and Robert Mugabe is still depriving Archbishop John Sentamu of wearing his dogcollar.

Will light dawn in CERN's tunnels as they switch on the HADRON collider once more?

As I came back from the bakery this evening I was having problems just seeing to the other side of the road - the Genevan fog is out tonight with a vengeance. Some of our neighbours work as physicists at CERN and I nearly bumped into one as she was leaving in a hurry and great excitement to get to the laboratory - the fog really is bad.
Here's hoping that the scientists will not be in the fog as they turn on and test the Hadron collider in the tunnels beneath us tonight and over the weekend. Perhaps some glimmerings of understanding will begin to shine through the fog of information, figures and results that the experiments will generate. Anyway I hope it's not another big switch off because of over-heating magnets. Perhaps someone will be bringing home news of the elusive Higgs boson through the above-ground fog.
I do wonder though whether all this underground high tech activity and overload on the local electricity and commications infrastructure might not be the reason for our rather flaky high-speed broadband connection at the moment. Probably not. The real reason for that is the non-service agreement any internet provider seems to write in invisible yet indellible ink into all contracts - "No we won't sort out any problems but we will go on charging you. Merci!" In this household at least the future is certainly not france telecom Orange. I really want a sort of organic, wind-generated and fairly traded broadband connection - or maybe generated by the heat from my compost bin, or driven by the enzymes the worms in it produce - is it too much to ask scientists to look into this?
Not sure that finding the Higgs boson would even resolve the crazy issues I have! But hey let's focus on the meaning of life, the dawn of time and the God particle. After all we need some relief from the post-service economy global monopoly capitalism seems to offer. Maybe that's all religion can try to do too!

Dog eat dog and can men really look after children?

One of the pleasures of being on holiday is listening to the radio, however there were bits of this morning's woman's hour that rather made my hackles rise. One of the men interviewed said that men were much better suited to "bringing home the bacon and dealing with the dog eat dog workplace environment" than to looking after children. So we heard that men were good at playing with children and introducing them to risks while women we better at worrying about them. Total tosh, based on phoney, spurious research and bare-faced prejudice. Meanwhile of course there are many ordinary men who spend alot of time caring for their children - and far more women doing the same of course. Relegating women to the "drudgery" aspects of childcare, nappies, laundry, broken nights actually doesn't speak to most modern parents' experience of bringing up children. It also deems "caring" work to be lesser work - according to the speaker men get "bored" by it - the idea being of course that women can cope better with such boredom because of our "hard-wiring". The work of caring is highly skilled, complex and often lonely. Perhaps the dog eat dog men who can't cope with those sorts of demands prefer to escape to the adrenaline of the workplace.
More seriously though the workplace itself is these days often much more about developing cooperation skills and team work than about dog eat dog. Women and men need liberation from the dictatorship of set gender roles in the workplace and in the home. Hard wiring for caring, for thinking, for ambition, or other qualities and vitues, is not dependent on gender.

"Tainted" communion ...

Just over a week ago I celebrated communion. Week in, week out in my last parish appointment I celebrated communion at least twice a week and frequently more often. My vocation is to the word and sacrament. Of course many in the church throughout the world still use scripture to dispute a woman speaking, preaching or celebrating. Over the past ten days I have horrified at the story of "reserved untainted communion" being available at Blackburn cathedral to those who don't want to receive communion that has been consecrated by a woman.
Claims about this being about "trying to be inclusive" and "all being done very discreetly" are quite frankly a travesty of the eucharist. And they still dare to say "This do in remembrance of me" ...?
There is also an international ecumenical aspect to this. Blackburn is in a "local ecumenical partnership" (an LEP) with the German Protestant Landeskirche of Braunschweig. Sometimes I hear "ecumenism" (in this context usually relations with the Roman Catholic Church) being used as an excuse to not progress with women's ordination, to ministry, priesthood or as bishops. Interesting isn't it that noone seems to worry over much about what theologically dubious, "discreet" measures like this may have on ecumenical relations.

You can read more about it in David Watkinson's article from the Lancaster Telegraph:

CATHEDRAL bosses have been criticised for offering “untainted” Communion bread for those who object to it being consecrated by a woman priest.

Opponents in the church have branded giving those who object to women priests the alter-native of Communion bread consecrated by a man as “unacceptable and disgraceful”.

Blackburn Cathedral has introduced the choice in the wake of the installation of Dr Sue Penfold as a residentiary canon.

The cathedral’s canon, Andrew Hindley, defended the arrangement.

He said: “It was agreed by all the clergy and cathedral chapter that this was the best way to handle what we call a mixed economy.”

He said the congregation could choose whether to receive Communion blessed by Dr Penfold, or Communion blessed by a male priest, at the main cathedral service on Sundays at 10.30am.

Canon Hindley added: “The position of the Dean and the Bishop is well known.

"This situation is not ideal, but we are trying to be inclusive.”

He said Dr Penfold was appointed to Blackburn Cathedral to reflect the “broad views” of the Church of England.

An announcement was made to worshippers when the policy was introduced last year, but the policy is implemented in a “very discreet manner”, according to Canon Hindley.

But Sally Barnes, from the group Women and the Church (WATCH), said: “To turn it into a buffet is unacceptable and disgraceful.

“Women are being labelled as tainted.

“Women are not tainted, but the hierarchy of the church is not able to grapple with this.

A dignified end?

Dignitas - the Zurich based assisted suicide enterprise - has been much on the morning bbc radio news listened to as our household persuades itself to get out of bed in the morning. The Times has had two articles describing the rather tawdry and less than dignified surroundings some desperate people pay to end their lives in.
In the Pays de Gex a retired minister of the Genevan church has set up an association called "Le droit de mourir dans la dignité" - the right to die in dignity. This association has nothing to do with the way many people die in dignity, which is well-cared for in hospital on wards specialisng in palliative care. It promotes the "right" to assisted suicide. The retired colleague who set up this local branch likes to think it's his role to shock what he would term Roman Catholic ethical assumptions.

When I first arrived in France 18 years ago I was shocked to discover the lack of hospice care, it was the other side of excellent medical care, death and the end of life were seen by the medical profession as failure and unmentionable. I can think of one particularly tragic situation where the father of three teenage children had invasive and completely unnecessary surgery days before he died. So weak he could only say good bye to his family with his eyes and neither he nor they were really prepared for this goodbye. This has changed enormously in the past 15 years. However, in French the word "hospice" has negative overtones as the places poor people were sent to die - not quite the same visceral reaction as the word "work house" in Britian but similar. Palliative care, pain management and home nurses are much more part of what is on offer now. And Switzerland has an excellent reputation in palliative care, even if it becoming infamous at the moment for "death tourism".

Part of the palliative care movement's philosophy is that a good death feeds out into society. Does assisted suicide feed into society or does it rather feed off and increase people's fears?

Towards the end of my father's life I remember having an uncomfortable discussion with his doctor, saying that I hoped his notes included instructions about not to over-intervene to save his life in an emergency, given his very poor general health - my father had Parkinson's disease for over 20 years, my mother was not getting the support she needed in caring for him, my brother and I both lived a long way away. My father's doctor listened to me carefully - while writing out a prescription for some MS drugs for me - and said that he understood that I felt as I did. As I think back to that conversation I am so grateful that his response sent me back to my own feelings of helplessness and frustration at my father's desperate situation.
We are encouraged to feel that death is something to be feared and the ultimate loss of control in our control-obsessed cultures. What luxury to focus on the very few rich and frightened enough to chose when to end their own lives. Most of the world's population might like access to proper mosquito netting, decent basic health care, enough clean water and regular food - to say nothing of medication. The rich worry about how best to die with dignity, the poor may not be treated with much dignity in life.

"Toi qui gardes le silence" a hymn from Switzerland

I first sang the hymn "toi qui gardes le silence" at a ministers' retreat on the French shores of lake Geneva. We were looking over the water in the evening to the Swiss Canton de Vaud which is where the hymn origintated. There are not many hymns in French which take up a theme of social responsibility or offer new images of God and I was immediately drawn to this hymn written by the Commission jeunesse of the Eglise réformée du Canton de Vaud. It has a wonderful minor key melody by Olivier Nusslé - no MP3 available anywhere I'm afraid, I'm going to have to try and record it sometime.
I'm writing about it today becuase I have at last had a chance to read through the hymnbook that was produced for the CEC assembly, Gloria Deo. A rather good English translation of Toi qui gardes le silence is included in it - done by Isabelle Bousquet and Karina Graham.
One of the problems with the ubiquity of English is that it is very often English-language culture that gets exported and this is also very often true of spirituality and of hymns - Graham Kendrick is more likely to get translated than Claude Fraysse or writers from another language or culture. (If you also don't like "Shine Jesus shine" just try singing one of the other language versions where the lingusitic triteness is shall we say often further enhanced by translation!) So I was pleased to see this small effort in the opposite direction.
I was also glad to see Federico Pagura's wonderful Tenemos esperanza in Gloria Deo. Bishop Julio Ernesto Murray the President of CLAI, the Latin American Council of Churches, sang a verse of the hymn at the end of his hope-filled address to the assembly. Unfortunately one of the few hymn books on general sale which has Tenemos esperanza in it is currently out print - Agape published by OUP is a great resource so here's hoping that they will reprint soon.
Meanwhile here's the last verse of Toi qui gardes le silence in English - not quite the same without the great music but here you go:

Your world calls us to commitment
For your cause Lord we strive
In a world disintegrating,
your love, reinvigorating,
makes us new. You are strong.
We will follow you, our song.

Bernie Ecclestone wrong about Hitler

I got very cross the other morning listening to reports of Bernie Ecclestone having said that "at least Hitler could get things done". You can read the interview with Ecclestone here.
I suppose Ecclestone won't have had time in his busy life making millions to have actually do something as challenging to his ignorance and boorishness as read, for instance Ian Kershaw's brilliant two volume biography of Hilter.
The Third Reich was not a dictatorship that was particularly efficient, decision-making and power were exercised in a social-Darwinist way, with everyone trying to curry favour with and please the mercurial leader who had a rich, highly industrialised and well-educated country at his disposal. Thirteen years of that way of "getting things done" left the country in ruins, millions systematically annihilated, further millions across Europe killed in war.
We must counter the myth that in difficult times we need "a strong man" to bully us through. Difficult times are crucially times for more democracy not for more dictatorship. Leadership is not always about telling others what to do, it's much more about building alliances, convincing others and saying "together we can make a difference", not "I have all the answers just do as I say".

No women speakers at Calvin 500th anniversary event

I spent most of this afternoon interpretting for the official national celebration by the Swiss Protestant churches of Calvin's 500th jubliee. It was a fascinating, thought-provoking and in many ways brilliant event. I'll say more about what some of the speakers said in a later post.
However, when I finally got outside for the apéro (interpreting is thirsty work) my way to a wine glass was hampered by several women who wanted to talk to me about why there had not been a single woman amongst the speakers (of whom there were at least nine).
Little had I expected to post about women in the ecumenical future and then immediately afterwards attend an event that completely underlined the point about the need for the inclusion of women in the ecumenical present. One woman pastor also remarked that often that when there are no women on the panel then the ecumenical dimension doesn't get mentioned. Another woman who is her cantonal church's president and whom I had never met before, said in almost her first sentence to me "They have got to start listening to our bottom-up approach. This top- down approach isn't working if it doesn't take any notice of us."
To be fair the issue of Calvin and his favouring women's education etc. was mentioned at the event but in rather an embarassed half a sentence as suddenly the panelists realised that there was not even one woman amongst them.
I have been involved in so many church events where men mutter about and question "women only" space. When a space or event supposedly for the whole church just assumes that it's ok for it to be a men only space, this passes without a murmur. Fortunately at the worship following the event the preacher was a woman.

What is it we want? Get me some truth ...

It was more than very sobering to be back in Britain during the current scandal about MP's expenses. Very unedifying and saddening.

When you have lived outside the country where you were brought up for a long time, things like this also serve to underline the huge changes in culture and attitudes that have ocurred over that time. You take with you a rather idealised idea of "home" as it was when you left and find that this is not the place you visit when you actually go back there. When values change it is not necessarily always for the worse of course.

But the current scandals make me wonder about the myths that any society makes about itself. Britain has underlying myths - many of which I don't particularly share and some of which came from the culture of the ruling privately educated class - about "stiff upper lips", "pluckiness", "fairplay", tolerance - not much of that showing through in the way MPs have behaved, nor in the way the media and public relish all of the sordid details of this completely unregulated anything goes expenses system. Neither the wonderful magna carta (another myth used to underpin the supposed brilliance of the British democratic system) nor the rules of the "mother of parliaments" seem to have ways of coping with this crisis, which is one of confidence in those who govern. Perhaps this is one of the places an unwritten constitution takes you ...

There are though also responsibilities with wider society and not just with indivduals for what is happening at the moment, the way British society and the media builds up and demolishes celebrities, and anyone in the public eye, makes me wonder about the something for nothing culture that has developed in recent decades.
Seamus Milne writing in today's Guardian has called the "expenses scandal a toxic boost for anti politics" and added that "the scams are a legacy of New Labour's get-rich, ideology-lite culture. The remoralisation must go far beyond the Commons."
In under a month Europe goes to the polls. Will the far right and other fringe parties get more votes in the UK as a result of this scandal? Will British democratic culture and practical politics recover?
As we flew out of John Lennon Airport today we walked past the quote on the photo above, we both just burst out laughing. As we went through the security checks which rather resembled a cattle pen approach to the management of human beings our laughter soon faded. The stark "you will conform to the measures we have put in place" message was a reminder of participation in the war that put the travelling public at higher risk or terrorist attack.
We come home to news that Ryan air will charge customers a compulsory £5 for checking in online ... compulsory because there is no other other way to check in! What a rip off. The British public has no choice but to put up with these ruses of capitalism to get them to pay more money. Meanwhile, many of those who are supposed to be representing the interests of ordinary people are protrayed as lining their own pockets. The message loud and clear is that there's not much point in getting involved in trying to change things, everyone's just out for themselves.
I still try to hold on to the ideal that this is not the case but then I ask what is it we all want? To get rich quick and easy, to bank the cash on shares in our demutualised building societies, to make easy money at any cost so long as it is for ourselves, to see our children long to become cash rich celebrities?
Building the societies we all really want to live in will take deeper values than that. Truth, honesty and integrity will be good places to start.

Women's leadership in the church

Janet Lees has written some more about women's leadership in the church. I've written a bit about this yesterday too on the Women in Ministries blog. Janet's reacting in part to official figures published in the Guardian about women clergy in the C of E and how they have been promoted:
I also wondered about the story behind the story. For women clergy to lead committees is one story but why do we need ordained clergy to lead committees? All denominations do this: clog up the church bureaucracy with ordained clergy. Why? Particularly when most mainstream churches also struggle with the availability of ordained leadership at local pastoral level. Why do we need priests or ministers, women or men, to chair committees? Of course you are hearing from a totally meetings-phobic person here. I can understand that knowledge and skills in theology and ecclessiology etc. may be required of a committee chair, depending on the remit of the committee. But to struggle for all those years for ordination of women to the priesthood and then celebrate by chairing a committee, however prestigious, well I just don't get it. Please someone, tell me the story of that.

I am not as "meetings phobic" as Janet I'm one of those sad people who sometimes quite enjoy a well run meeting. I am concerned though that just as women begin to get some positions of leadership and influence within a few churches in Europe those churches are changing massively. Will that small proportion of women leaders be able to make a difference or find the energy to do things differently? And let's be clear the number of women in these positions is still pretty low despite the supposed feminisation of the clergy.

Meanwhile, given bleating from a small minority of male C of E clergy with "hurt feelings", I feel driven to ask when the talented C of E women who trained more than 20 years ago will begin to ask for compensation for the lack of advancement they receive? Many of them will be retired before they even get a chance to be called to be even suffragen bishops.

In the end, feminist that I may be, the way the debate about women bishops is going takes us away from the reality that ministry and leadership in the churches, whether exercised by men or women, requires vision, humility and commitment to telling the story of the gospel. It's a hard but joyful job. Let's get on with it as a community of women and men.

Word of the day Qual der Wahl from my Brazilian correspondent

So Dr B has gone thousands of kilometres from Ferney Voltaire to the northern reaches of Brazil at the mouth of the Amazon to find he is staying in a hotel run by a Frenchman married to a Brazilian. So far he hasn´t been very ambitious when it comes to eating and just walked 50 metres down the road to the local restaurant which turned out also to display a French flag and be run by a man with an enormous handlebar moustache who used to live in Chamonix! Worse still, he was confronted with the choice on the menu of filet de boeuf or coquelet au four. It´s what the Germans call the qual der wahl ... In the end he decided to go with the Brazilian national dish (beef) which was just delicious (he says).
I suppose qual der wahl is how having to choose makes you suffer - choisir c'est souffrir - the agony of choice - something Dr B normally only goes through when he's trying to decide between deserts not main courses. It's a phrase that comes to my mind when I look at the yoghurt counter in the supermarket - just how many yoghurts does it take to make human beings happy?

Let the train take the strain ...

I'm travelling to Britain this week where I am attending a gathering on Women in Ministry at the Windemere Centre in the Lake District in northwest England. I'm sad to say that I shall fly to and from Geneva.
After the meeting I'm going down to my home town of Redditch just south of Birmingham. My travel agent (aka Dr B) now has several handfuls of hair less than he did before after trying to book the relatively straightforward train journey from Windemere to Redditch, via Birmingham. On Thursday evening he checked the prices and found an advance purchase ticket costs 29 pounds, while a turn-up-as-you-go full fare ticket costs a whopping 57 pounds (at today's crazy exchange rates that's 64 euros - in more normal times maybe 80 euros, more than the fullfare buy-on-the-day 75 euro ticket for the 624 kilometre journey from Geneva to Paris on a TGV) - When he came to book the ticket yesterday, the cheap ticket was gone and the full fare ticket the only option (apart from an "off peak" ticket, which is supposedly cheaper than an "anytime" ticket but in fact costs an extra 12 pounds or so). However, by splitting the journey up into its three component parts, and by buying separate advance tickets, he got back to the original 29 pound offer - the reason it seems is that the advance tickets are tied to individual train operators and the supply of advance tickets that cover more than one train operator are more limited than those for the separate journey).
This prompted Dr B (who does have, it must be said, some trainspotting tendancies) to do some more research. He found, for example, that the unrestricted fare (no advance tickets available) for the 06.05 from Liverpool to London (345 kilometres) is £115, but if you buy three separate tickets between intermediate stations, the price comes down to 97.50 (without even needing to get off the train). On the route from Newcastle to London, a ticket that can be used on any offpeak train costs 104 pounds while the system offers an advance purchase ticket for an offpeak train at 105 pounds. This chaos is caused by the utterly disastrous Tory railway privatisation.
The UK department of transport claims that "European standard fares, used by the majority of passengers, are sometimes misleadingly contrasted with the highest UK open fares which are used by only 10-15% of passengers on a typical inter-city route. The remaining 85% of passengers pay the same or less than in comparable parts of Europe". However, the transport department is now switching the comparison by comparing restricted cheaper tickets with European standard tickets, when like-for-like would be to compare restricted tickets with restricted tickets - and in any case, ignores the fact that the reason why the majority of UK rail travellers use discount tickets is because the standard prices are so high!! The UK transport department signs off with glee, "Most European countries have a less differentiated fares' structure, but are now beginning to follow the UK’s lead." If this is the result of competition, then let us be preserved from the opening of competition on international rail services in Europe in 2010. Meanwhile, Chiltern Railways, which operates in the part of the country I come from, effectively passed into German state ownership after Deutche Bahn bought its parent company. Perhaps this will be a good things. In the same week that we've been trying to book my UK tickets we've also booked a Deutsche Bahn through (though restricted) train ticket first class from Geneva to Bremen, a return for just 168 euros and that's 787 kilometres each way.

The mystery worshipper is desperately needed - in Berlin

I was so looking forward to Christmas in Germany - the beautiful music, going to church, seeing friends, Christmas markets, being in the city of my dreams ... and it was wonderful, all of it.
Though I didn't expect to hear bad sermons - the first so joyless that it drove us to go to church again at midnight on Christmas Eve, where the sermon was better and involved the organ playing the heartbeat of God at the beginning and end very effectively. Then on Christmas morning we tried again - oh dear, more lengthy pseudo-intellectual joylessness - thankfully punctuated by perfect and glorious organ playing, but hey in the end I'm here for the word ...
Both Dr B and I had some theological issues with one aspect of the good midnight sermon but it was at least "preached" and gave food for thought about faith, life, God and values.
In the end a slip in theology but preached as if you want to communicate something you believe is worth sharing, wins hands down over the "I will show you how much I know in a disdainful voice for 25 minutes" approach. The services were perfectly executed but became in the end a triumph of form over content, quite a tragedy as most of the people there will have been in church for their annual Christmas fix.
Now I must do some research to see if something like Ship of Fools exists in Germany, one or two of the churches could really do with some systematic visiting by the mystery worshipper. Narrenschiff anyone?
Perhaps I should add that my own preaching is not always brilliant so I tend to be a fairly tolerant listener to sermons by others - I know how much work it is to prepare and preach them. I miss the discipline of the weekly sermon grind and I have sometimes had to get up very early on Christmas morning to write another sermon - having preached two a day for the previous week or so, I'm sure not all of them were great, but I hope they communicated some passion for the Good News.
I came away from our rather sobering German Christmas experience thinking about how possibly the insitence on getting the liturgy to perfectly dovetail means that everything is rather too orderly and perfect. Fortunately I have also heard some brilliant and simply good sermons in Germany in the past, and I am sure that many were also preached this Christmas.
However, if you like me had a bad sermon experience at Christmas then I really recommend Kim Fabricius' Christmas offering posted on Faith and Theology, you can read it here and here's the penultimate paragraph:
As for me, today I bring you good news about the God disclosed in this child, who happens to be the Word made flesh, the “little Word,” as St. Bernard called him. He has no time for religious fuss, he gives no points for moral rectitude, he is oblivious to all our other divisive cultural constructions, and he would not know theological correctness if it pulled down his nappy and smacked him on the bum. All – all – are welcome at the manger. He simply wants you to come as you are and to be there with him. All very natural, because although there is another world, you will find it nowhere else but hidden in this one.

I also highly recommend his Propositions on Christian Theology - a Pilgrim Walks the Plank, which was my Christmas gift. Preaching is about walking the plank and daring to communicate. In his 9.5 propositions on preaching Kim does say that lousy preaching is "alas, not a status confessionis" - ah well that's me put in my place - the bit about the sermon I am listening to "being my own obituary" also brought me up short. Perhaps my jottings on joyless sermons only say something about me and not about the preaching I listened to ...

Unedifying church campaign

One constant in Germany is that on the afternoon and evening of December 24th Protestants go to church - to get their yearly fix of some well-known Christmas carols. In some places people actually have to queue to get in.
This year in Berlin the Protestant and Catholic churches unashamedly used the Christmas influx to encourage people to sign a petition asking for a referendum on the right to choose freely between the teaching of ethics or of religion in Berlin-Brandenburg schools. In several places we got given the Christmas card pictured here with the call for a free vote in the star above the manger. I'm not very impressed but then that's probably because I've become infected by France's "Laicité".
If there is a referendum and if (very big if) it got through then Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Muslims would all be able to choose religious education or ethics as a regular school subject. Interestingly this tolerant attitude towards religious education also being open to Muslims is not so evident in German states where churches already have the right to teach children in state schools and education facilities - although one excuse that is given for this is that many Islamic congregations are not organised in asociations.
For me the real problem is that the church relies on the right to teach children and young people in schools - and gets state money to do this - and this keeps the numbers of young people asking for confirmation artificially high. This teaching has something to do with faith but less to do with a community of faith. Meanwhile at one of the Christmas eve services we attended the children who were playing around at the front of the church were more or less sent out by the preacher. Perhaps it's about time to learn to connect with young people and children rather than make out the church is some poor victim in this situation in Berlin.

Don't you just love the global capitalist perspective

I'm sure you will be delighted to know that both Societe Generale and Credit Agricole said they had ''negligible'' exposure of below 10 million euros each in relation to the Madoff scandal.
Words fail me.
I'll try to work out whether I can afford to pay for my morning coffee tomorrow.
Meanwhile in Zimbabwe people are dying of cholera you may have heard about it.