It is pointless yet it is essential - it is all we can do - we prayed

At lunchtime today we did it.
There was some chatter as we gathered in the chapel and then the gong began to sound and our conversation dimmed.
We came together to pray and it became quiet.
We read and prayed terrible words from the book of Lamentations and from Jonah and Psalm 46 and Mark's gospel.
And yet there was still numbness, the images and scale of the devastation haunt us, too much to comprehend, too much to bear ... are we supposed to make sense of this?
And so we offer words and silence, we sing and light small candles ... and we know it is not enough, how could it ever be.
As the candles had been lit and many were leaving as the gong finished sounding at the end, a colleague remained standing and began singing his prayer aloud in Greek. I only really understood the word "tsunami" in what he sang and yet his prayer was deeply meaningful and profoundly moving to me. Often when I pray in my own language I will understand less than than even one word.
So we left the chapel, the uncomfortable lamentations and sense of powerlessness, and we moved back to our conversations, concerns and work
Of course it is pointless to pray. Of course it is essential to pray.
Together we offer our powerlessness in words and silence and trust that God in all his vulnerability may hear such prayers as ours.

Prayers for the Peoples

Wednesday 16 March 2011,

Remembering Japan, Libya, Bahrain and the world

The gong sounds

From Psalm 130

Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.

Lord, hear my voice: Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications.

Silence

How lonely sits the city

that once was full of people!

How like a widow she has become,

she that was great among the nations!

She that was a princess among the provinces

has become a vassal. (Lamentations 1:1)

Song: 156 “O Lord, hear my prayer”

Blessed is our God now and for ever and unto the ages of ages.

Amen

A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping.

Rachel is weeping for her children;

she refuses to be comforted for her children,

because they are no more. (Jer 31:15)

Silence

For these things I weep;

my eyes flow with tears;

for a comforter is far from me,

one to revive my courage;

my children are desolate,

for the enemy has prevailed. (Lamentations 1:16)

Song: 156 “Gott, hör mein Gebet”

Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God, saying,

I called to the Lord out of my distress and he answered me;

out of the belly of destruction I cried, and you heard my voice.

You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me;

all your waves and your billows passed over me.

Then I said, I am driven away from your sight!

The waters closed in over me; the deep surrounded me;

weeds were wrapped around my head at the roots of the mountains.

I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever;

yet you brought me up from the Pit, O Lord my God.

As my life was ebbing away, I remembered the Lord,

and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple.

Those who worship vain idols forsake their true loyalty.

But I will bring my prayers before you in thanksgiving:

Deliverance belongs to the Lord.

(From Jonah 2)

Silence

My eyes are spent with weeping;

my stomach churns;

my bile is poured out on the ground

because of the destruction of my people,

because infants and babes faint

in the streets of the city. (Lamentations 2:11)

Song: 156 “Entends ma prière”

Peter, James, John and Andrew asked him privately,

“Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign?”

“Many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’

For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom;

There will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines.

This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.

"But about that day and hour, no one knows,

neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.

"Beware. Keep alert. For you do not know when the time will come."

(From Mark 13: 3-4,6,8,32-33)

Remember this, O Lord,

Remember this, O Lord,

Do not let the downtrodden be put to shame.

Do not let the downtrodden be put to shame.

Rise up, O God.

Rise up, O God.

Silence

They cry to their mothers,

“Where is bread and wine?”

as they faint like the wounded

in the streets of the city,

as their life is poured out

on their mothers’ bosom.

(Lamentations 2:12)

Sing: 156 “O Lord, hear my prayer”

Prayers for people affected by the Japanese tragedy

Lord God of mercy and compassion:

Hear our prayer of incomprehension and confession.

The crust of your fragile world needs to split and shift if it is to last from generation to generation.

We confess we find disaster hard to understand and accept.

Immense waves sweep towns to dust and rubble.

We confess that the human tragedy is hard for us to bear.

Nuclear pollution threatens.

We confess our thoughtless use of energy.

Silence

Lord God of mercy and compassion:

Hear our prayer of incomprehension and confession.

Hear us, O Lord, as we join in prayer for all those caught up in the past week’s events in Japan.

Grant them the time and energy to mourn...

Grant them healing...

Grant them hope...

Grant them the courage to rebuild their lives...

Grant them, and us, the determination to reach out to one another in love.

Prayers for the people of Libya, Bahrain and all regions of the earth

Lord God of mercy and compassion:

Hear our prayer of incomprehension and confession.

Millions of people search and toil for the barest minimum to survive.

We confess that it is easier to think that we are not part of the solution.

Violence is chosen when people demand change and democracy.

We confess that our desire for peace is not matched by our peacemaking.

Silence

We pray for all those caught up in the turmoil of North Africa and the Middle East.

May your will be done on earth, O Lord, and your kingdom come in righteousness...

May justice and peace be revealed in the daily lives of nations and peoples...

And may the voice of the Prince of Peace be heard in every land.

Prayers for the enemy (from the Eastern Orthodox tradition)

O Christ, Our God, who prayed for those who crucified You,

and asked us, your servants, to pray for our enemies;

forgive those who hate and oppress us and, through Your Grace and love for humanity,

change their lives from doing wrong and wickedness

to love for their neighbours and life filled with goodness:

that none of them may perish because of us but rather they and we together

be saved through penitence; we pray You, Lord, hear us and have mercy.

Silence

We are longing for the day when the prophecy of Micah will come true, when "they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks, nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore."

The Lord’s Prayer (in our various languages)

Affirmation

The cross is the way of the lost.

The cross is the staff of the lame.

The cross is the guide of the blind.

The cross is the strength of the weak.

The cross is the hope of the hopeless.

The cross is the freedom of the slaves.

The cross is the water of the seeds.

The cross is the consolation of the bonded labourers.

The cross is the source of those who seek water.

The cross is the cloth of the naked.

The cross is the healing of the broken.

The cross is the peace of the church.

(St. Yared, Ethiopia)

The gong sounds

You are invited to leave the chapel in silence…

Photos by Nikos Kosmidis

And this is the prayer that was sung in Greek

My singing was a part of the Trisagion Prayers for the Departed we offer in the Orthodox Tradition in such occasions. I just felt the need to say some words of prayer for their souls. Here is the English translation of what you heard:
“Among the spirits of the righteous made perfect, give rest, O Savior, to the soul of Your servants. Preserve them in a life of blessedness which is from You, O Lover of mankind.
Within Your peace, O Lord, where all Your saints repose, give rest also to the souls of Your servants, for You alone are immortal.
Glory to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. You are our God who descended into Hades and loosened the bonds of those who were in chains. Grant rest also, O Savior, to the souls of Your servants.”

Revenge, justice and nature bites back ...

I believe in justice and in judgement, I believe in righteousness.
I also believe in mercy and love and care and gentleness.
I do not however believe in retribution. Oh yes of course I do sometimes feel Schadenfreude - and rather enjoy it - but somehow deep down "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" leaves a world unable to see or to eat.

Many moons ago someone I did not much like experienced a difficult personal crisis. I often think about that event when I hear or read the phrase "When bad things happen to good people". I had not particularly wished that individual well and I felt very challenged by what happened to them. So how do we cope, pray, react when bad things happen to bad people, or just to people we do not much like?

Perhaps in the end it is just about trying to follow the line set by Desmond Tutu that we are all "Made for Goodness" - we need to believe this about others but we also need to believe it about ourselves. We too are made for goodness.

The earthquake and ensuing Tsunami in Japan are almost beyond our ability to find a framework for understanding. I do not think that it is nature's revenge to create nuclear pollution - neither nature nor God chose to build nuclear power plants in the country that is one of the most earthquake prone in the world. "Rational" scientists and politicians doubtless chose to do that The "rational" electorate no doubt wanted relatively cheap and "clean" electricity.
I cannot be pleased at the prospect of nuclear pollution. If it serves perhaps as a wake up call (did Chernobyl?) then I wonder for quite how long it may be effective.

At the moment the people of Japan need not theories of retribution but clear solidarity and practical compassion. Later, when there is time for calmer analysis, I would hope that the (sometimes) corrupt way that decision-making and political power operated might also give way to forms which involve all the people much more. In the aftermath of disaster it is not only the physical that needs to be rebuilt, political cultures and structures also need to be rebuilt. In the process it is good to be guided by Tutu's phrase and believe that all of us are made for goodness. Perhaps though it's also a good idea to also keep the phrase from Matthew's gospel in mind , to "be as wise as serpents and as harmless as doves".

Bread not stone, stone not bread ... the Bible speaks to itself and challenges us

Yesterday morning Peter Prove preached a thought provoking sermon. I suggested two texts from Matthew's gospel as we were preparing the service - Christ's first temptation in Matthew 4 to turn stone into bread and then the passage later in Matthew 7 where Christ says which of you would give your child a stone when asked for bread?
What fascinated me about the way that Peter reflected on these passages is how brilliantly the Bible speaks to itself, and how challenging it is to have as inspiration a book of life which says seemingly contradictory things. What was particularly strange for me is that I had chosen these passages because they seemed to me to be part of the same continuum and ongoing discussion. I had never really thought about the passages as opposing one another. In his sermon Peter linked the two sayings:

In the first reading, Jesus – famished after 40 days and 40 nights of fasting – is tempted by the devil: "If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread." But even in the extremity of his physical hunger, Jesus rebuffs this temptation with the words from Scripture: “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God." But of course Jesus’ point is not – and cannot be – that food is not necessary.
His words in the second reading strike a different note. “Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone? Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!”
Bread and fish. Not stones or snakes…

The Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance ,which Peter is director of, is running a Lenten campaign on food justice as part of its Fast for Life and Food for Life campaigns. I was struck by the idea about where is it in our world today, in our individual lives that we are trying to turn stones into bread? Treating people and the earth in a way that does not listen to God's word of life, that does not proceed from God's lips? Yesterday morning Peter posed the question like this:

In what ways are we today tempted to unlearn this lesson, and to try to turn stones into bread? Could it be that our artificial fertilizers, nutritional supplements, genetically-modified organisms and other technological fixes all in some way represent our prideful response to the tempter’s ruse? And that in our headlong rush towards agrofuel at the expense of food production, we are succumbing to the opposite but equal temptation – to turn bread into stone?

Sixteen years ago I preached with a view in the Temple in Divonne les Bains. I turned up with a stone in my hand to begin my sermon (on the woman taken in adultery ...), later I placed the stone on communion table next to the bread and wine. "Bread not stone" has long, long been one of my favourite refrains - even before I had read Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza - yet thinking once more about these texts makes me wonder whether my focus on bread not stone made me less able to see where sometimes the most life-giving thing is to trust in the word rather than break your teeth on stone.
I'll post a link to Peter's sermon once it goes online, you can find EAA's daily devotions for Lent here, and for now I'll end with his words:

In this Lenten season, what fast shall we choose? And what shall we offer the hungry
children: bread, or stones?

Some news of later this year ...

Some people are friends on facebook, some folk read my blog, others follow on twitter, some folk are well, just friends.
Anyway, incase you didn't already know, here is the news. Later this year the stranzblog will be moving to Paris. Not until October and it looks as if there will be quite a lot of traffic between Ferney Voltaire and a northern Paris suburb in the first instance.
I have been appointed the ecumenical officer of the French Protestant Federation, in the first instance for 2 years as I work on projects around inter-religious dialogue and intercultural ministry with the 20 plus member churches who are part of the Federation. I am both very happy and quite terrified but as you can imagine I have lots of crazy ideas about how to go about the job as well.
In the meantime however I am looking forward to the next six months before leaving Geneva. To the Peace Convocation in Jamaica, the Kirchentag in Dresden and much else besides. Lots to do and then at some point I suppose there will be quite a bit of packing, though there again perhaps not so much ... Dr B also has a new job ... in Geneva. People smile when I tell them this and say "Oh that's very modern to do marriage that commuting way these days". As we head towards our 20th anniversary I realise that commuting was where we started out, between London, Brussels, Strasbourg and Dunkerque. Things do come full circle.

Bitter sweet with Seven Weeks for Water

This week's Seven Weeks for Water has just been posted and includes a trailer from the documentary film "Sweet Crude" by Sandy Cioffi. The focus is water and oil, specifically in relation to the Niger Delta.

Rev. Canon Dr. Ezekiel Olusegun Babatunde, from Immanuel College of Theology and director of the Institute of Church and Society of the Christian Council of Nigeria, has written this week's biblical reflection on Transforming the bitter water waters of Marah. Remembering the Exodus story of Moses making the bitter water sweet, Babatunde looks at the desperate need for transformation in the Niger Delta where oil spills are common place and water is turned bitter with pollution. Here's a taster:

Today, in the Niger Delta area people are also thirsty, searching for clean water in order to survive, similar to the Israelites in Exodus. Their situation is “bitter” – despite an abundance of water around them, they have no water to drink. Searching for clean and drinkable water is a herculean task particularly for women and children who often walk more than three kilometers to get water for their families. Like many other blessed nations situated in sub-Saharan Africa, Nigeria has abundant natural resources, particularly oil, which has made it attractive to multinationals scrambling for its resources. Three decades of oil exploitation have caused ecological devastation in the region. Water provided by various rivers in the area has been polluted, making it undrinkable. ... The Niger delta seems to be indeed a place of bitterness. Yet its inhabitants have not lost their hope and faith. ... The Nigerian people need such leaders, leaders who can liberate them, who can bring justice to the innocent men, women and children who have been mistreated, and to those to whom access to good drinkable water and a good life have been denied. Leaders who will, like Moses, not only purify water but heal the people and restore their trust.

You can find further background to the situation in the Niger Delta here and an article on the dilemma of restorative justice in that situation.
Meanwhile to be part of transforming bitterness to sweetness you can join the oil fast, or sign Operation Noah’s oil resolution asking for the world’s biggest oil producers Royal Dutch Shell and British Petroleum to be removed from the Stoxx Europe Christian Index. You can also pray for "Just Water" and use the EWN-WSCF prayer resource “Just Water” for the Universal Day of Prayer for Students (21 March) and World Water Day (22 March) to pray for justice and peace for all people.It's just one week away.

Photo: Daniel Zimmel

Pondering earthquakes and seismic change with Julian of Norwich ...

I have just finished putting together a liturgy for common prayer tomorrow morning - it is Lent, we will be praying for the people of Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, focusing on the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance's Fast for Life campaign. We will of course also be praying for the people of Japan. What to say?
I have framed what I have put together tomorrow with verses from Psalm 46 and Psalm 90

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumults.

I learnt today that the quake has shaken the earth slightly off its axis, moved Japan by a couple of metres. Enormous seismic change. I heard about the psychological support and counselling being prepared and offered to people caught up in this desperate trauma and tragedy. And I watched yet more pictures of the destruction and heard the worrying reports of a second nuclear power plant at risk ...
Psalm 90 says: "For a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past, or like a watch in the night."
If there were no earthquakes, no volcanoes our fragile small plant would not have survived even this far - nor would it have been such a green and fruitful planet. What seems merely like brutal meaningless arbitrary tragedy is perhaps rather more part of our beautiful planet's correction mechanisms. A big earthquake now or the whole earth exploding long term? Not much of a choice. Yet this shifting and quaking in the earth's crust is hard for humans to comprehend or accept. How can counselling, psychoanalysis or therapy offer credible frameworks for massive change on this scale? In the end though each of us is just one, limited human life trying to make sense, trying to make our way through, trying to show solidarity, to understand. So hard for us to have the long view, to think of the needs of our planet in 10,000 or a million years ... by then we will be less than dust.
And yet alongside the dust motif of Psalm 90 I want also to hold out the promise of Isaiah 43
Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine ...
Because you are precious in my sight, and honoured, and I love you.
We are nothing but dust and faded grass, and yet we a very deeply not nothing, but intimitely loved and named by God.

As I pondered the fragile restless crust of the earth, the terrible tragedy of huge irrevocable change, I thought about Julian of Norwich and her visions and understanding. Tonight, as often, I returned to her vision of God holding "a tiny thing", all that has been created, like a hazlenut in his hand. In the face of trauma and pain, offering love is perhaps the only viable and sustainable option. So somehow I hold on to faith, almost wordlessly.

At the same time, our Lord showed me in a spiritual manner, how intimately he loves us. I saw that he is everything that is good and supports us. He clothes us in his love, envelops us and embraces us. He wraps us round in his tender love and he will never abandon us. As I understand it, he is everything that is good. He also showed me a tiny thing lying in the palm of my hand, the size of a hazelnut. I looked at this with the eye of my soul and thought, "What is this?" And is this is the answer that came to me. "It is all that is made" I was amazed that it managed to survive. It was so small that I thought it might disintegrate. And in my mind I heard this answer, "It lives on and will live on because God loves it." So everything owes its existence to the love of God. The first is God made it; the second is God loves it; and the third is God preserves it.

Holy irritant or fresh water?

Really please to see that bloggers like "Holy Irritant" have got inspired by this year's Seven Weeks for Water on Water, Conflict and Just Peace. Of course I think that Holy Irritant is a great name for a blog. Tony Robertson whose blog it is writes:

Water was one of life's gifts we took for granted.
A lifetime of travel has made me more aware of the fragile gift of water. I have seen the destruction of the OK Tedi River system in PNG. I have lived in Queensland with the experience of drought and most recently the impact of flooding.

Meanwhile although we have been enjoying the extraordinarily mild and clear late winter and early spring weather around Geneva of late, news here is of an exceptionally dry winter and of water tables only one quarter full as we begin spring and summer.

Fast for Life?

Anyone looking at my ever expanding wasteline (I cannot believe I just typed that like that rather than like this: waistline: ed) hardly needs to be told that I am not very talented at fasting.
Today is Ash Wednesday, a holy day in the western Christian calendar, Lent begins, absitinence, fasting, giving things up, praying more, being better, discipline ... hmm the pressure mounts, I think I may be developing a spiritual overload headache induced by guilt.

The Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance launched its Fast for Life campaign today. Those of us who gathered in the chapel at the ecumenical centre at midday donated the cost of lunch to the local Salvation Army, as a small contribution to feeding Geneva's poorest.

Given my own complex, difficult and sinful relationship with food, I find this time of the Christian year particularly challenging spiritually. Will I ever get past my guilt, accept something like forgiveness and move towards true transformation? Notice how even here I only evoke rather than really address the issue. Perhaps food is an issue I should preach a sermon about in order to be more honest about the meaning of food and its weight in my life and spirituality ... as well as on my hips! Still not sure what text I would choose for such a sermon, after all the Bible is full of stories of food, feasting and fasting let me know if you have an idea.
Such thoughts bring my rather neatly to the EAA sermon competition on food for life - there're still a couple of weeks left to submit your sermons, closing date March 30!
So what have you got to say about Food for life, what do you think God might have to say about food for life?

And while you're thinking about that here are some more action ideas from the EAA website
Join by taking either individual or collective action:
i) Fast from food as a symbolic gesture in solidarity with people living with hunger.
ii) Fast from fossil fuels by parking your car and walk, ride a bike, or take public transport to help reduce greenhouse gases.
iii) Fast from over-consumption by leaving your wallet at home and commit to ‘buy nothing ‘on 9 March.
iv) Organize a worship service on Ash Wednesday to reflect on the inequalities that allow for hunger and over-consumption in this world.
v) Share your resources on food consumption, reflections and prayers on Facebook on the Food for Life Campaign – Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance page
vi) Sign a letter to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in support of the land and water rights of vulnerable communities

Drink a toast to yourself and to all the other women surrounding you

International Women's Day was busy and fun around the ecumenical centre. Elaine Neuenfeldt led morning prayers and told us the story of the women from a village in Mauritania, several of them grandmothers, who trained to become solar engineers. It is a wonderful story of education and empowerment. Why train women rather than men? Because the women will remain in the communities and train others, meaning that the knowledge and transformation are shared and passed on from one generation to the next. To change the village educate a girl or a grandmother. Men would be more likely to leave the village and try to earn money with the new found knowledge.

Then at midday a great impromptu library lunch was held with Father Daniel Groody from Notre Dame University, his theme was migration as a theological method - I'll come back to some of the reflections and discussion around the observations he shared in a later post. For now suffice us to say that it made for a really invigorating lunchbreak with good theological and intellectual stimulation.

In the late afternoon and early evening the World YWCA hosted a wonderful laid back and welcoming reception to celebrate the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day. It was the first time this year that I went out in the afternoon without my coat on, the sun was shining, the spring flowers covered the grass in front of the World YWCA building in a profusion of pink and it was quite simply a glorious sunny time. Here was an opportunity to network, to chat, to laugh, all presided over with enormous grace, good humour and aplomb by Nyaradzayi Gumbonzvanda the YW's general secretary. At one stage she got us to go around the room and simply say our names and one word which describes us - the words were many and the one chosen most often (by myself and by Nyaradzayi as well!) was "passion". A good word with which to enter Lent!
Nyaradzayi also got us to toast ourselves, to affirm ourselves as unique women and to toast the women on either side of us. It was time out, time to celebrate women's achievements over the past 100 years, time to look forward to what still needs to be done. It was also time to share stories of our work and lives- from the recent UN Status of Women meeting, to receive gentle greetings from around the world "this is my first international women's day outside my own country", to affirm inter-generational learning, to smile and share news and gossip. It was WONDERFUL!
And then I spent the evening with three very beautiful, very intelligent, very lovely female friends and got home not too long after midnight ...

Remembering the Bible in stolen early morning time

All last week at morning prayer we remembered the Bible. From Tuesday to Friday we had no Bible reading but rather we worked with the stories of the Bible that we actually already know in our hearts and heads, written with the words of our memories, with our feelings and more besides.

After we had done a bit of remembering we went off and looked at one or other of the wonderful textiles hanging in the chapel as part of our Stitching Peace exhibition.
We began with the calming of the storm and Christ walking on the water, we ended with the woman who annointed Jesus with perfume "In memory of her". We also remembered the 10 plagues of Israel and the healing of the woman bent double.

It was interesting that we never really did get around to trying to list the 10 plagues but instead we got "side-tracked" by one person saying, "the thing that always struck me was Pharaoh's stubborness". We were looking at an "arpillera" made at the time of the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile and very present in our minds were the images and news from Libya. The plagues the people suffer as the result of one person's intransigence - how much time does it take to understand, what kind of macho posturing is this that takes no account of the human cost of confrontation?

It was wonderful to remember the Bible, it felt like stolen time somehow - early in the morning subversive prayer. It was fun and good and powerful - and interestingly days later now I can still remember all of the readings. If we had read the passages I suspect that might not be the case.

Adamah - the land we come from

The first biblical reflection on Seven Weeks for Water this year comes from Ani Ghazaryan who has been working with the WCC as an intern for the past year. Ani is working on a doctorate in biblical studies at the University of Lausanne but has been working with the climate and economic justice teams at the WCC. She reflects on the link between land and water, water and justice, land and justice.
At the same time the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance has also made a great campaigning contribution to Seven Weeks this year and is encouraging people to sign a letter to the food and Agricutlure Organization (FAO) in support of the food and water rights of vulnerable populations. So do sign the letter and also look at the resources EAA are putting together as part of their fast for life campaign.
Sign up here to get the Seven Weeks for Water updates.

Meanwhile here's a taste of Ani's reflection:

Despite the deep relationship of humankind to the earth, today, humankind overexploits the land and water for our own interests, forgetting that we were called to take care of the Earth, God’s creation. Our greediness is such that we covet ever more without thinking about the Earth and the needs of vulnerable people.

The Tenth commandment of God commends us to not covet our neighbour’s property (Exodus 20:17). However, today many companies and governments invest in land resources for large-scale industrial agriculture in very poor countries – in a way which often affects the livelihoods of local communities, such as peasant farmers, pastoralists, or Indigenous Peoples. For these people the link to the land, including its rivers, lakes, and springs, is strong and vital.

How can we ignore the fact that millions of people are already suffering and dying because of the greediness of others? How should we address issues which are linked to the unjust sharing of land and water, such as land and water “grabbing”? How is it possible to come from the land, to be adamah and then to become a land grabber? To deprive people of the land from which they come - and to which we all will return eventually?

In praise of Mariella Frostrup freshening up the feminist agenda

Sometimes I get bored with calling myself a feminist. It seems sort of tired and old fashioned, yet it is very much part of who I am and what makes me tick. I admit I have sort of given up smiling every time I get comments such as "when are we going to have an international men's day". It is not in fashion to be seen to be championing women's issues or rights. It is interesting that people are quick to moan about what is termed "political correctness"and slow to be challeneged by the clear inequality so many women have to live with day in day out, year in year out, generation in generation out.
So today I felt energised and encouraged when reading Mariella Frostrup's excellent essay in the Observer.
Encouraged because this is a woman who puts the case erruditely and passionately:

In the western world the greatest triumph of spin in the last century is reflected in attitudes to feminism. Our struggle for emancipation and equality has been surreptitiously rewritten as a harpy bra-burning contest while elsewhere, in less affluent parts of the world, the response is altogether different. From Mozambique to Chad, South Africa and Liberia, Sierra Leone to Burkina Faso, feminism is the buzzword for a generation of women determined to change the course of the future for themselves and their families. At female gatherings all over sub-Saharan Africa you'll find enthusiasm and eager signatories to the cause.

...

I visited Internally Displaced Peoples camps in Chad where women refugees from Darfur were being raped daily when they ventured out to gather firewood so they could cook for their children. In Mozambique I cried frustrated tears as the 12 women farmers gathered around me raised their hands in shame and in unison to indicate that every one of them was a victim of domestic violence, a crime they were campaigning to have outlawed. And yes, this was only last year.

Frostup has also transformed her anger and sense of helplessness by founding GREAT the Gender Rights and Equality Action Trust

this is not a women's issue any longer; this is a human issue. There's a new wave of support sweeping from the developed to the developing world through women joining forces and rolling up their sleeves to lend a hand. Weareequals.org is a coalition of NGOs large and small, which have joined forces to pursue gender equality as a tool for economic empowerment. Countries where girls are educated and women play their part in government are places where peace reigns and economies begin to flourish, and women are more interested in ending wars than starting them – there are endless statistics that prove this to be the reality.

Some of the statistics in Frostrup's article about the reality of women's lives globally even shocked me. Frostrup was born in Norway but has spent much of her life in the UK and what I like abotu her essay is the way she links the global statistics to local statistics in the UK and other affluent countries:

Two-thirds of children denied school are girls, 64% of the world's illiterate adults are women, 41m girls are still denied a primary education, 75% of civilians killed in war are women and children, causing Major-General Patrick Cammaert, the former UN peacekeeping commander in the Democratic Republic of Congo, to declare in 2008: "It is now more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier in modern conflict."
These are staggering statistics, and yet not powerful enough to make arguing for women's rights a respectable pursuit, rather than the aggressive histrionics of popular perception. International Women's Day, the one day a year when we're encouraged to celebrate what we've achieved and highlight what still needs to be done, conjures less bile than the F word, but also more apathy. When women are allowed to vote, work, choose when to have babies and dress in whatever fashion pleases them, what on earth do they need their own day for as well?
The fact that 700,000 people will experience domestic violence in the UK, and 90% of them are white British females, that there are sex slaves imported daily to this country who live lives of abject terror, that equal pay is still not a reality nearly four decades after the act enshrining it was passed, that the conviction rate in rape cases still hovers around 6.5%, that only 12% of the UK's boardroom seats (as compared to Norway's 32%) are occupied by women, are just a small smattering of reasons why women's rights should remain a priority

So on March 8 this year, which will mark the 100th anniversary of international women's day, how will you be celebrating women's achievements? How will you be contributing to helping women and men lift themselves out of violence, poverty and powerlessness? Time to feel encouraged to feel that we can make a difference. Thank you Mariella for finding words, passion and commitment. Thank you for making me feel less tired and old fashioned when I say I'm a feminist and for renewing my energy, just what I needed to start this week which I shall enjoy celebrating with my sisters.

Seven Weeks for Water is back and it's making a splash for just peace!

River transport in a quilombo, Brazil. © Carlos Penteado/Comissão Pró-Indio

Sign up for this year's great set of Lenten meditations and reflections from Seven Weeks for Water. This year they are all about Water and Just Peace and they're available in French, German and Spanish as well as English. Do let the Ecumenical Water Network if you're translating the material into other langauges.

Don't miss any of the Seven Weeks for Water in 2011, subscribe now to the email notifications. You can already download the World Water Day tool kit with ideas and resources for activities around World Water Day on 22nd March, or the order of Communion for Maundy Thursday.

The importance of access to water was recently affirmed by the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches (WCC). The WCC governing body issued a statement during its meeting in February calling for the implementation of the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right.

Biblical reflections are being posted week by week on www.oikoumene.org/7-weeks-for-water along with complementary links and ideas for activities for individuals and congregations. Among them are reflections on Exodus and conflicts around water and oil by the Rev. Canon Dr Ezekiel Babatunde, director of the Institute of Church and Society of the Christian Council of Nigeria, on water conflict in the Holy Land by Fr Afrayem Elorshalimy from the Coptic Orthodox Church and on the role of faith for communities who defend their means of subsistence by José Pilar Alvarez from the Lutheran Church of Guatemala.

In memory of her ... loose threads sewn up ...

Something shocking and beautiful and wonderful happened to me today. I came home from work and Dr B mentioned in passing that there was a package waiting for me - I assumed this meant I had to go to the post office and pick something up later in the week. Then as I went into the kitchen I came across a small box and saw it came from Deborah Stockdale in Ireland. (Deborah is the artist who made "journey to peace" for the WCC and which is part of our stiching peace exhibition - it is stunning, but more of that soon!)

So I unwrapped the small box and inside found the stunning quilt you can see in the photo here - actually it is much more stunning than this mobile phone photo taken late in the evening allows for. I have already christened this piece "In memory of her ..."
Nine years ago I went to a quilting shop with a friend and bought the material you can see in this quilt. I had never made a quilt in my life (I still have not) but I spent money - quite alot of money - buying the lovely material. I knew I needed rainbow colours for the idea I had and I felt fairly sure I ought to be able to design something that would just about work and make a Huguenot cross out of patchwork, the rainbow colours being the symbol of God's covenant.
On Mondays in early 2002 I would go round to my friend's house and make desultory attempts to sew - mainly she would sew and I would chat and admire her creations. Her name was Rowena Reamonn, she was a brilliant artist in patchwork, embroidery and quilting.
That winter and early spring she was preparing to die, giving away quilting books, handing over things and fabrics, asking me to take her funeral. And as part of that I picked up needle and thread while she was alive, but really I just listened and laughed and heard her anger. She was about 18 months older than I am now.
I took her funeral on my first official day of work at the World Council of Churches ... as we hung the Stitching Peace exhibition I realised that the last time quilts had hung in the Centre was probably at her funeral. The gospel text she chose was the woman who anoints Jesus with perfume - of whom the Christ says "in memory of her ..." (pace Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza)
For Stitching Peace we needed fabric and an activity for the launch so I searched out material from the bottom of the deep drawers in my grandparent's bookcase. I had no real idea what was still there but I knew there was part of the fabric and quilt we had pinned together at Rowena's funeral and that I had a lot of material from abandoned dress-making and other projects. I bundled it all together and with Deborah discovered that part of it had even begun to be sewn together by me. Deborah took these bits back to Ireland with her - I didn't realise she had discovered the whole quilt I had actually cut out and stuffed in a bag!
I felt extraordinarily blessed today, to see something that I had imagined almost a decade ago, looking just like I had hoped, yet more so, more beautiful, more finished and so vivid.

I have been weeping too much in recent months and weeks, the reasons are too boring to mention - other people's pain is so often like that: depression, rage, incompression, grief, lack of self worth ... yet tonight I shed tears of joy and incomprehension. Feeling utterly blessed that someone I hardly know could do something so wonderfully generous as give her time for me and do this. It is SO lovely and something I shall treasure always and today I realised powerfully that this was exactly the right time for it to be finished.
Threads are being tied up.
In memory of her ...
Gratitude, colour, thread and tears ...
And for me an experience of pure grace.

Stitching Peace collage

Some images from our wonderful Stitching Peace exhibtion

Remembering the Bible - stubbornly

The Ecumenical Centre chapel is housing the wonderful Stitching Peace exhibition until March 18 - here is a picture of the amazing Roberta Bacic who curated the exhibition for the WCC, showing some of the young stewards from central committee around the exhibtion. I'll be writing more about that in coming weeks.

Each morning this week we have remembered a Bible text at morning prayer and then gone and visited one of the pieces of textile art hanging in the chapel.
Yesterday morning we remembered the plagues of Israel and then went and looked at an arpillera which showed how a village responded when under Pinochet the water to the houses was cut off - by coming together and making sure their village looked well kept for despite the terribly added pressure of not having water.
As we tried together to remember the plagues one person said that the thing that she was thinking most about was the stubbornness of Pharaoh. Insistent at holding on to power. In the end only able to forge fowards to destruction of himself and his army because of that - how much pain and suffering could have been avoided if he had allowed compassion and understanding into his heart. We never did manage to remember together the ten plagues of Israel but somehow we did remember this essence of the story ...

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.

Soooooo, we go back to the blog

So for the first time since I started blogging over three years ago I have managed not to blog for a whole month - admittedly the shortest month of the year. This is about to change. There have been both good and bad reasons for the silence and I'll be able to talk about more of that in days to come.
Anyway I have found my blog voice again and I did wonder if that would happen.

Our lives our moving out of transition and into, well, transition ... To say that it has not been an easy time would be an understatement but something new does seem to be taking shape and it may even be quite exciting.
In the meantime February was very busy with WCC central committee and more particularly with the putting in place of the wonderful Stitching Peace exhibition which looks totally wonderful in the Ecumenical Centre chapel at the moment. In May it will move to Kingston Jamaica for the International Ecumenical Peace Convocation, and there it will have sewing groups as part of the exhibition.
Anyway, you have been warned I am about to return to the blog. We'll see whether I manage of not.