Expand the common good

Listening to Nicola Bullard and Vandana Shiva in conversation at the final thematic session of the Global Network Congress was fascinating. Both insisted that transformation isn't about the big idea, the era of the meta project is over. Bullard said that one of the most important things she had learned was that being involved in the process was important. Getting involved in those processes often means that many small changes begin to take place. Part of the work of critical involvement is then about patience and trusting the process. It is much more important to get workable local projects going, to use horizontal networks as a way of encouraging people to reconnect with reality again, this is also where our creative action and creative thinking can be worked through.
Shiva spoke movingly about the importance of local identity and the need to revalue the local after all of the delocalisation that has been taking place. Both insisted that the addicts of the current economic model have no new ideas and that this is a good time to to start promoting news ideas.
They ended with the idea of trying to expand the common good. The only way to counter the fragmentation of life is to reclaim the commons, those things such as air, water, land, seeds, healthcare, which belong to all of us together. This is a bit like the creative commons form of copyright but more about a creative way of resisting patenting and commercialising the whole of the basis for life by using our common creativity and energy, by identifying and affirming what it is we hold in common.

Gardening is the way forwards ...

Volltaire is the one who said "il faut cultiver son jardin" - he meant it of course as much philosophically as practically, though he did drain the marches and plant vineyards and gardens around the château in Ferney. The philosophical finding expression in the practical.
Asked where she saw hope for transformation underway today Vandana Shiva replied that she found great hope for transformation in biodiveristy itself. "Things will emerge even if you do not have a meta pr ject. Even five years ago who would have predicted how many people throughout the world would be turning to gardening. Everyone used to say Oh I don't have time to garden. It's a key way of reconnecting ourselves spiritually with the earth, of grounding ourselves. We also learn to grow our own food."
I like gardening as a model for transformation - mind you my own is in a rather slow process of being transformed. Not quite sure what that says about finding new economic models. When I get back to Ferney i shall have to listen to Voltaire a bit more and cultivate my inner and outer garden a bit more.

What kind of chicken are you?

I had my first experience of the world café methodology this morning and enjoyed it - although when you're interpreting it's not always easy to get a sense for things. It seemed to go well and there are a lots of interesting things to read on the cards that have been put up with ideas and comments. The Kirchentag will be using this methodology for the first time this year at the forum on Israel and Palestine. It will be interesting to hear how it works.
Martin Robra ended a session this afternoon by asking the panellists what story they would give to a young person from Germany wishing to transform the way things currently are.
Vandana Shiva said she would tell a young person in Germany today a story that a young man from Germany told her at the Kirchentag about 15 years ago. He was unemployed at that time, on the scrap heap literally and figuratively, so he had started collecting rubbish and taking it away to make compost out of it and recycle it in other ways. Shiva was herself already very involved in campaigning to protect biodiversity and stop life itself becoming a commodity. At one point in their conversion the young German man suddenly said to her "Now I get it. You are an organic chicken and you can already eat organic food, but you are trying to stop them put you into the battery chicken farm. Me I've been thrown out of the battery chicken farm and told I'll never be able to feed myself. What I think is that the two of us should meet at the gates to the battery farm and work at changing things."

World Cafe methodology

I had my first experience of the world café methodology this morning and enjoyed it - although when you're interpreting it's not always easy to get a sense for things. It seemed to go well and there are a lots of interesting things to read on the cards that have been put up with ideas and comments. The Kirchentag will be using this methodology for the first time this year at the forum on Israel and Palestine. It will be interesting to hear how it works.

We condemn the poor to capitalism and only offer the rich socialism

Welf Werner Professor of international economics at Bremen's Jacob's University was invited to speak at this morning's sessions of the Kirchentag's Global Network Congress meeting on "The most pressing global challenges and possible solutions".
The five challenges he offered and attempted solutions for in order were:
1) Climate change and environmental resources
2) Poverty
3) Economic crisis
4) Economic globalisation
5) The crisis in values and community
Werner is not only an economist but also an economic historian and set his reflections within the wide sweep of the past 200 years.
While warning that economists are open to deluding themselves he neverthelss made tentative proposals for solutions, speaking in particular about Amartya Sen's capability approach.
Any economic and social solutions we propose have to be tested against whether they foster people's capability to access education, health, food, water etc. It is in this area that values and community are of key importance.
One of the problems with the US economic model that is being sold worldwide is that it condemns the poor to live under capitalism - no universal health care or education provision, the individual has to foot the bill. Meanwhile the rich live under socialism - bankers' mistakes are being paid for out of taxes on everyone, they don't have to take responsibility for their errors and the state bails them out. The poor have to pay the price for getting ill, the rich don't even pay for their mistakes.
Responding to Werner's analysis Nicola Bullard addeed that resisting the individualisation of risk, for health, housing, water, sanitation eetc, was a key area to work on. She also insisted that it was important for NGOs to put issues of power and politics much more clearly onto their agendas. The financial institutions are not neutral entities but places of power and there is a need to use the current crisis to reinvigorate our democracies.

Mortal where are you? Mensch wo bist du?

So I got given my Kirchentag's scarf yesterday. It's long and pale blue and has two cloud like bubbles saying on one "Mensch wo bist bist du?" and on the other "Hier bin ich!" (I have a photo of it but cannot upload it - same old, same old banning problem!!)
"Mensch" is a really wonderful word but tricky to translate, sometimes I just think we should translate it by the Yiddish mensch but that is a bit of a cop out! So do you use people, person, human being, humanity, men and women - what do you do? In the case of the Kirchantag theme in English what was finally opted for was a return to the King James translation of the Bible - not one I usually recommend - and the word "mortal". In many ways "Adam" in Genesis also means Mensch.
You can see that this is an ongoing issue in German to English translation by comparing older and more recent translations of Bonhoeffer's poem "Christians and Unbelievers" which begins "Menschen ...". One well-known translation begin:

Men go to God when they are sore bestead,
Pray to him for succour, for his peace, for bread,

It scans very nicely but it's not right. If my memory serves me right there is a very good new translation of the poem by Alan Gaunt in Rejoice and Sing perhaps Dr B can add it to the comments. The French of course have no such quibbles and just settle straight away on "les hommes vont à Dieu ..."
Mortal where are? Still trying to work out whether God really did create them male and female?

Anyway, as my recent reading of Grace Jantzen has been encouraging me to think less in terms of being mortal and more in terms of being natal, I'm having to change tack again here at the Kirchentag. In many ways though the approach to mortal humanity being promoted here is much more Jantzenian (I admit I enjoyed writing that) than using the word mortal may show. Much of our discussion at the Global Network Congress is about trying to find creative ways through impasses at global and local levels, tapping into our energies and possibilities to give birth to a new future.

Christen und Heiden - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Menschen gehen zu Gott in ihrer Not,
flehen um Hilfe, bitten um Glück und Brot,
um Errettung aus Krankheit, Schuld und Tod.
So tun sie alle, alle, Christen und Heiden.

Menschen gehen zu Gott in Seiner Not,
finden ihn arm, geschmäht, ohne Obdach und Brot,
sehn ihn verschlungen von Sünde,
Schwachheit und Tod.

Gott geht zu allen Menschen in ihrer Not,
sättigt den Leib und die Seele mit Seinem Brot,
stirbt für Christen und Heiden den Kreuzestod
und vergibt ihnen beiden.

The stranzblog is banned

Since arriving at my rather upmarket German hotel I have not been able to get through to the Stranzblog. Instead whenever I try to got to my blog I get this message:

Banned site. You are seeing this error because what you attempted to access appears to contain, or is labeled as containing, material that has been deemed inappropriate.

Fortunately technical assistance back in Ferney Voltaire has suggested a work around which means I can still get to the back end but not see the published blog. I also don't seem to be able to upload photos. Maybe it's just a plot by the hotel to make me pay for a better internet connection, anyway it is very irritating and will mean that tehre are even more typos than usual. Sorry abotu that folks.

An inspiring evening with Vandana Shiva - "you don't find hope by sitting in a chair"

For the third time the Kirchentag is holding a Global Network Congress bringing together some of the German speakers and specialists with many of the speakers from elsewhere in the world. It's a privileged time for networking and also for going into some issues in greater depth. This year's meeting is a little smaller than the two previous meetings, but still very diverse. Because there are slightly fewer of us we've been able to use less formal methodoligies and have a good question and answer session with our main speaker.

Vandana Shiva is a passionate and engaged speaker - not always easy to interpret as she assumes we have the same level of knowledge she has of the abuses of the free market in world trade. I do not always find it easy to remember much of what I've interpreted - you can't listen, take notes and speak in another language at the same time, well I can't anyway. Vandana Shiva is an eco feminist and I was very struck by the lack of mightiness in the alternative models she tried to offer us this evening. She used organic and nurturing images, encouraging drawing on inner creative strength as a source of hope in the same way that a mother will nearly always make sure that their child has something to eat. Much of her campaigning has been against the obscenity of multi-nationals buying the patents to seeds - one example she gave was how cotton seed used to cost about 7 rupees a kilo before the seed patent was bought by Monsanto and went up to 1700 rupees a kilo. In less than a generation cotton farmers went from being rich to being poor. She spoke of the finding creative commons ways of owning patents to seeds, so that local communities can continue to be sustainable. She actually called this kind of local community building being itself a seed that can give others hope. She ended by quoting Gandhi's model of oceanic circles

But it will be an oceanic circle whose centre will be the individual always ready to perish for the village, the latter ready to perish for the circle of villages, till at last the whole becomes one life composed of individuals, never aggressive in their arrogance, but ever humble, sharing the majesty of the oceanic circle of which they are integral units.

This way of thinking about things very much chimed with the "natal theology" by Grace Jantzen that I am reading at the moment, it was helpful for me to hear these more practical and less philosphical applications of the same underlying idea.
Read more about Soil not Oil.

World record attempt to tweet the Bible

At the German Protestant Kirchentag the participants are going to be encouraged to tweet the whole Bible during the three to four days of the meeting.

Yes it's official you can follow me on twitter

Sorry folks I have given in and am giving Twitter a go. I shall try and tweet in English and German this week from the Kirchentag in Bremen where there will be a world record attempt to tweet the whole Bible in German. Now in german I think that is zwitschern.
We'll see what else I manage to write. I'll be on my way to the bus stop by the time this gets posted, maybe I'll even manage to tweet from the train as there are now internet hotspots on parts of the German system. We'll see!

Interesting article on social trust and immaterial values

There is an interesting article on a Dutch website here, it's about religion and development. I like the idea of giving hands and feet to immaterial values ...

Social trust is found where people trust the good intentions of others and are confident that others can carry out their intentions within their social and institutional contexts. The importance of social trust for relationships and effective cooperation in development contexts needs no argument. But how do we ‘give hands and feet’ to this essential, but immaterial value?

The issue of trust and other intangibles in organisations is something I'm trying to build into my paper for the Craighead Institute. It's not all that easy to get your head around but as I watch a tidal wave of trust wash away swathes of British politicians it's easier to understand just how important the immaterial is to every organisation.

Finally the beginnings of another conversation about Walter Benjamin

We have been waiting for another conversation about Walter Benjamin for over 25 years so Friday's Le Monde des Livres has given us much food for future conversation with an article entitled "WB, un rebelle en exil" reviewing both Bruno Tackels' Walter Benjamin. Une vie dans les textes and Antonia Birnbaum's Bonheur Justice Walter Benjamin.

The reviewer senses that "rather than interpreting Benjamin's writing through his life Tackels shows how his work was in many ways Benjamin's way of questioning his own existence."

It is a beautifully written review

[Les deux livres] nous permettent de mieux prendre la mesure d'une pensée aussi intempestive qu'inépuisable, qui irrigue - par des canaux parfois secrets - le plus vif de notre modernité.

and one word in particular from the review of Antonia Birnbaum's book sticks with me. Her book is based on a "shard" - une écharde - of an idea in Benjamin's doctoral thesis. One idea, two words, leading to a whole book. I think that is wonderful. It reminded me of Simone Sinn's preaching on Maundy Thursday on the idea of fragments, somehow I am finding great consolation in the philosophical, theological and linguistic potential of shards and fragments.
Now as for that conversation about Walter Benjamin, I rather feel we were too busy reading, writing, translating and packing to talk much about him - we really must set a date for a café des philosophes!

Words, words, words ...

Not stories, not even parables just words, opening up new worlds, new thoughts, new paths ...
absconce, décombre, cauchemardesque
I love words.

Churches and Christians prepare ecumenically for European elections

Various religious and church groups are trying to work ecumenically to put concerns on the agenda of the upcoming European elections. Ecumenical Voices' publication pictured here is available in three languages. The website has useful links to Climate Change and Environment, Peace and Development, Migrant and Refugee Protection, Poverty and Social Exclusion.

Meanwhile Ensemble pour L'Europe - Together for Europe have been organising meetings and events in various countries in the run up to the elections. Réforme, La Croix and other Christian media in France helped sponsor a day conference in Paris yesterday. The meeting brought together more than 25 Christian communities and movements from France and is linked in to a wider European movement of more than 150 communities and organisations.

Poetry, waste, war and leadership ...

I have just been watching a programme by Jeremy Paxman about Wilfred Owen, the English First World War poet. My mother taught Owen's poetry at school while I was growing up. It was interesting to learn that Owen's poetry only really became part of common cultural heritage in the 1960s.
Listening to the well known lines from Owen's poetry, and the less well-known lines from his letters home, I reflected on how horrifically wasteful humanity is of human beings. Yet in the crucible of desperate, vile battle poetry can sometimes flourish, even if it can take us decades to appreciate and recognise green shoots of pure genius sprouting in the terror of the battlefields.
Watching Annie Leonard's "the story of stuff" last night, I was moved in a similar way to how poetry sometimes moves me, as she described how wasteful of human beings, their lives, their dignity, their dreams and aspirations the systems are which underpin our ridiculous push to consume, buy, own and possess. I began to understand that in some ways today's consumerism is the underlying conflict which those of us fortunate to not live in present day warzones live with.
Churches too can be terribly wasteful, treating employees as commodities, putting up with the "collateral damage" of ministerial stress and congregational distress. Nine years on the ministries commission of my church have shown me how wasteful churches can be of talent, relationships, possibilities for renewal, chances for reconciliation ...
The question for church leaders from elders to archbishops, from patriarchs to sacristans is how to lead with humility and integrity, and yet also be decisive. So many of our leadership models come from the commercial warzone, are these appropriate models for the church? As the church in Europe at least becomes far less maintstream, more minority and counter-cultural will we not also need models of leadership which can inspire us and yet perhaps not necessarily offer us impossible ideals of perfection and effeciency? These issues around models of leadership and what alternatives may be vialble interest me as I work on the paper for my course in Rome.
Meanwhile I have not yet read Stephen Cottrell's Hit the Ground Kneeling nor have I looked much at the poetics of management. It strikes me though that poetics and creative theory may have more to teach us in developing new management models. As we try to be some of the green shoots of hope, creativity and beauty amidst the ongoing attrition of consumerism, perhaps the discipline, metre, craftedness and creativity of poetry may help to free up ways of perceiving what some of those models could be. Poetics may also be the way to help integrate spirituality and leadership while practising integrity and showing humility.

Looking back to Basel 1989 at Holy Disorder

Dr B has been writing about the many anniversaries marked this year in Germany. He's also written in more detail about the 20th anniversary of the 1st European Ecumenical Assembly held in Basel from 15-21st May 1989

In no church assembly before or since Basel has the ecumenical agenda been so affected by and linked to the dynamic of political changes in Europe," said Joachim Garstecki, a Catholic theologian who served as an advisor on peace issues to East Germany's Protestant churches, and who traveled with the 24 activists to the Swiss city (see Episcopal Life's pick up of an ENI story).

Do you have too much stuff?

We've been watching The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard. I really recommend it. It lasts about 20 minutes and gets the message across about trying to build an alternative to our unhappy consumer obsessed culture.

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.