Sorry for the absence...

I keep thinking that I should be writing something here from time to time, but I am in such a bad place that I don't know if that would be helpful. I'm drowning in mediocrity. Flying 4 or 5 times a year despite my awareness of greenhouse gas emissions. So I look out the plane window and see the brownish exhaust fumes of other planes. Denial only takes you so far. But then if I don't fly I never see my family. And adding an Australian patner, and countless trips to OZ into that mix will make it all better, I'm sure.

Since H. and I have merged expenses, I'm not as good with stewardship of my resources as I used to be. I used to care a lot more about the carbon footprint of the stuff I bought, and generally about redistributing resources. Now I'm roped in with H.'s spending patterns and I'm appalled that our charitable giving in the last few months is maybe five percent of our wine-drinking budget. And still, while visiting friends of ours I longed for their careless existence, in a huge pristine flat furnished entirely at IKEA with not a grain of fairtrade coffee in it.

I hate this mediocrity. Right now I just hate everything and everyone. If I hear another lamo sermon by another self-satisfied preacher I am going to scream. I loathe the churches we've got, these cultured social clubs that just don't give a rats about the rest of the world population. Or actually they do sometimes talk about it a little bit.

And nobody's got a clue about how to conciliate climate, the economy, and the exploitation component of it. Just in the UK, how on earth is a charity supposed to help ex-offenders find a job if there's close to 10% unemployment. And most of us who are in employment derive our income from the capitalist beast, directly or indirectly, so Copenhagen stood less than a snowball's chance in hell anyway.

And if I'm honest, the only feeling I feel towards God is hate as well. For being so intangible and as good as absent. I've given up praying because by the looks of it it makes no difference. I just feel worse, worse for addressing a cosmic someone who won't give me the time of day. I'm thinking the "personal relationship with Jesus" is well overrated. What I have is a confusing, emotionally exhausting relationship with some entity that, to me, feels like nothing at all.

The presentation of the virgin by Tintoretto

Pretty awesome painting, methinks (click for larger picture):

Am I entitled to my culture?

This blogs contains a few posts that celebrate life in the mainstream. I always thought that the mainstream was suffused with beauty and love. For this reason I was loath to entirely dismiss it, and to try to reconstruct a worldview and set of practices that have no place for it. And yet, my life and my thinking have taken me so far from the French mainstream that I find myself longing for it, wasting time on forums which give me access to the normalcy of others, while I feel forever unable to relate.

So, for a while, I read the writings of all the other outsiders, Albert Camus or Simone Weil, but at other times I wish I could just unreflexively be a West European. It's a balancing game, being who you are while being who you are called to be. Can we love where we're from?

Web poetry

Alice blogs from a place in France where my grandparents used to live. This post of hers is so poetic that I can't help but want to "save" it in my little corner of the web:

Pourtant elles étaient là ces secondes de vie
la dernière fois que j'ai porté mon enfant sur la hanche
la dernière fois que sa main s'est glissée dans la mienne
ces instants où je m'asseyais à la table avec confiance
alors que j'étais pour toujours ton enfant
le temps de ta joue encore douce
avant le temps des larmes et du bord de la tombe
je les cherche et crois les saisir mais elles me glissent des mains
petits poissons d'argent le long d'un fil qui me brûle les doigts

Life in the maintream: Octobre

I'm careful not to be "radical" all the time, because I don't want to end up hard-hearted and judgemental. Fortunately, there is always so much to love to life in the maintream:

Le vent fera craquer les branches
La brume viendra dans sa robe blanche
Y aura des feuilles partout
Couchées sur les cailloux
Octobre tiendra sa revanche

Le soleil sortira à peine
Nos corps se cacheront sous des bouts de laine
Perdue dans tes foulards
Tu croiseras le soir
Octobre endormi aux fontaines

Il y aura certainement,
Sur les tables en fer blanc
Quelques vases vides et qui traînent
Et des nuages pris aux antennes

Je t'offrirai des fleurs
Et des nappes en couleurs
Pour ne pas qu'Octobre nous prenne

On ira tout en haut des collines
Regarder tout ce qu'Octobre illumine
Mes mains sur tes cheveux
Des écharpes pour deux
Devant le monde qui s'incline

Certainement appuyés sur des bancs
Il y aura quelques hommes qui se souviennent
Et des nuages pris aux antennes

Je t'offrirai des fleurs
Et des nappes en couleurs
Pour ne pas qu'Octobre nous prenne

Et sans doute on verra apparaître
Quelques dessins sur la buée des fenêtres
Vous, vous jouerez dehors
Comme les enfants du nord
Octobre restera peut-être.

Vous, vous jouerez dehors
Comme les enfants du nord
Octobre restera peut-être.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHNrIiuTbiM

Leeds

I’ve been thinking about blogging about this for a little while, but it took some time to settle in and I’m still not sure what it’s going to lead to. In a way it’s still premature to blog, as I’m just confused.

When I passed my viva in May I was quite anxious as to what I was going to do next. I applied for a number of jobs, not as many as I should have, ten maybe, although I was happy to let everyone believe that I’d been way more active than I really had been in this respect. But the vulnerability of not having a job got me thinking a lot about all those around the world who shared this with me, and in somewhat more dire circumstances.

I became a lot less judgemental about people who took jobs at big supermarket chains, and wondered if it was true that many in the developing work actually do want the exploitative jobs they have, because they’re better than none at all. The constant talk of economic downturn and the lack of response I was getting from the places I applied to was on the whole depressing, and made me feel totally irrelevant with my ivory tower Ph.D. in social science.

I developed a bit of a thick skin, thinking that sending in applications was very much like sending resumes into the stratosphere. Once you sent it, you stop thinking about it, and you write the next one, maybe at some point you’ll hear back from the stratosphere, but don’t count on it. I told myself and everyone around me in the same situation that we could hope for 5 little bites out of every 100 applications and a “little bite” was not a job yet. Then, on my 11th application, I got an interview. Two hours after the interview, I got the job.

I had planned to spend some time in France with my family around that time, but I shortened the holiday and started on the 18th of August. I was eager to start as, for some reason, my new colleagues reminded me of my Durham bunch of Quakers, very socially and environmentally aware, they were the type of folks I hung out with in my free time anyway. This new job was going to be a big fired-up-coffee-time-after-quaker-worship affair and I was looking forward to it.

The job is at an infrastructure organisation, i.e. an organisation designed to be available for and assist voluntary sector organisations in their everyday activities. So I get to meet lots and lots of voluntary sector organisations and social enterprises. I’m also meant to be useful to them, which means picking up a lot of the information, knowledge, skills and red tape which they might need. The job includes setting up social enterprise fairs, volunteering fairs, and picking up the brains of random people and activists for a database of third sector intelligence. I’ve met the some of the most touching, exciting, dedicated people of this fair island just by turning up to work. And I’m picking up some serious compassionate practical wisdom eight hours per day. It’s like I’m being force-fed the stuff.

The job is also in Leeds. I’d picked up in countless conversations that Leeds was one of the most activist cities in the country, very unlike Durham, but I’d never actually been there. The place is very vibrant but also in many ways very fucked up, it has the best and the worst of Britain, all of it very much in your face, so you can’t pretend that either don’t exist.

I didn’t even do that well in the interview. But I fell into this thing I needed so much, when I was too lazy and clueless to go seek it out. I feel like I’ve been pushed out of my inertia, which I loathed with all my heart but was too discouraged to address. You want to mix with the best do-gooders under the British rain? There you are, enjoy the ride.

Rue du Pont Louis Philippe

I should remove my blog from google. I already feel for the random web surfer googling "Rue du Pont Louis Philippe" and landing on my bizarre musings, but anyway...

Rue du Pont Louis Philippe is one of my favourite streets in Paris. Not far from it, on the Rue des Barres, there's a cool little tea-shop, l'Ebouillante, where I go back every time and where I've got memories of some fantastic brunches surrounded by friends, and of rainy afternoons reading Zola.

On the Rue du Pont Louis Philippe, there is also a small craft shop, kept by a monastic order. The way it works is that Paris has got so many churches by square mile that some of them have been "given" to monastic orders for them to bring life to the building with whatever it is that they do. So the St Gervais church is run by the Fraternites de Jerusalem. From what I gather, they're a pretty benign bunch, a far cry from the acerbic conservative catholicism that regularly invades the streets of Paris.

I spent a few days there in January and the communaute's shop had some beautiful santon-like statues. The most impressive one, however, was a shepherd, about 50 cm high, which they had displayed right at the centre of their vindow shop, with almost nothing surrounding it. It was so stunning it beckoned you to stop, and for a moment it filled me with longing. For all I know it could have been a solemn shepherd carrying a sheep, but it could also have been a visual depiction of the parable of the lost sheep. There was such tenderness in that little statue that I could never forget it, and it propped up in a number of conversations, notably with my dad.

I walked past that shop-window again in August with H., the santon had been replaced by an angel (which looked almost as good) but the shop itself was closed. Then last week, while visiting my best friend and looking for a present, I walked back there, hoping to get one of those if I could. To my delight the shepherd which had been displayed in the window several months before was still there, tucked away in a corner. Trembling with excitement, it took me about 30 seconds to purchase it. My best friend and I were both quite excited because we both found the statue stunning. And, because she's nice and because it's true, she said it reminded her of my lovely fiance, who is also full of that same tenderness.

A day later, H. unpacked it, and loved it. But strangely I found it less jaw-droppingly stunning in H.'s living room than I had when it was at the centre of a shop window on the Rue du Pont Louis Philippe. And I felt a bit strange for having brought it into private ownership, it seemed to belong on the Rue du Pont Louis Philippe where it had literally glowed. In H.'s living room it was just a pretty statue, which looked a little sterner, and a little bored. I'm sure shop lighting had a bit to do with it.

Then I thought about all the other passer-bys on that street, who maybe had once interacted with the statue of a good shepherd who would leave behind ninety-nine sheeps to go look out for a lost one. Jesus for once not depicted dying on a cross, but tenderly caring for the oddball sheep. I thought about Rue du Pont Louis Philippe, a street which had been the centre of the jewish community, and from whose flats children and adults had been sent out to die, less than seventy years ago. The Rue du Pont Louis Philippe, in whose letterboxes came the last postcards of young dads who knew that they would never see their families again, and who hoped against hope, and prayed to God, for their wife and children to live.

The Rue du Pont Louis Philippe finally, now at the centre of the fashionable gay district, a pretty posh street, but I could imagine quite a few sad souls, me included, walking past on some nondescript days, wondering if God's tenderness was for them also.

I wasn't the worst person to take the little statue out of the Rue du Pont Louis Philippe. For one, it was no longer on display in that window. It might be produced as part of a series and there might be several more of it. And then of course I gave it to an Anglican priest. I wonder if someone will interact with it again. I'm really not into auras and things like that, and it's embarassing to write this, but that little statue seems to say, sadly almost, "I was the good shepherd statue of the Rue du Pont Louis Philippe". And this gives art, and material culture, a whole new angle.

(grrrr... I'm ambivalent about this post. I don't like writing cute reflexions that end up sounding like Zondervan fodder, but I'm unwilling to take the post off, because it's got something in it that is quite important and that I like, though I don't really know what it is. I wish I could postface it with Hemingway's scathing observations of the way in which the rich and comfortable kill art. It's at the end of A Moveable Feast. But I don't have the text with me and it's not available online.)

Late capitalist "harvest festival"

1. A capitalist venture is viable if it costs you less to make your product than to sell it.

2. A capitalist venture is viable if you are able to sell products that are either of better quality, altogether cheaper or for some other reason more desirable than those your competitors are making.

3. The curent order rewards individuals primarily for making their workforce available or for investing their assets. In some countries, the system will also reward individuals who are unable to find work or who do not have assets. This is by no means a universal provision, and countless individuals are unable to find work and do not have assets. To these individuals, employment in slave-like conditions is arguably more desirable than no employment at all, though not desirable in absolute terms.

4. Manufacturing of hard commodities is mostly done in countries able to offer cheap labour. CEOs of western companies who wish to uphold the welfare of their western workforce (SIEMENS is a case in point) neverthless delocalise some of their production to countries where labour is cheaper in order to remain competitive and able to sell their products and services globally.

5. Using the phrase of Charles Leadbeater, a sizeable portion of Westerners are "living on thin air", by largely working in the service and knowledge economy.

6. Even in the knowledge economy, productivity is essential, thus employees work long hours with excessive dedication as the need to be competitive is pressed on them by management. Many young and committed professionals are tempted to throw in the towel under the pressure.

7. In a recession, a number of sincere theologians advocate investing instead of giving. The argument is that many jobs, and the welfare of those who hold them, are dependent of a non-essential economy of luxury. This "non-essential economy of luxury" is the first to suffer in a recession as people scale back their expenses. According to them, it follows that the right thing to do is to invest in these businesses who struggle to sell their services and, in these economic circumstances, do not have easy access to credit

(cf. http://www.dur.ac.uk/StChads/docs/golden-cassidy.pdf ).

8. We are in a world full of abundance, yet the way in which we make this abundance available is seriously flawed. We simply cannot continue to reward only those individuals who have assets or who are able to find employment, because this leaves a huge number of people out and it is not getting better.

Perfect contrition vs. perfect despair

At some point in the past year, I really thought that God was asking me to walk away from my Ph.D. thesis, burn all my bridges professionally and start anew somewhere in India. It would have been a ballsy thing to do, because failing to submit would have had very serious repercussions for my department - basically, the department cannot receive funding for two years if more than 40% of funded candidates do not submit, and we were already fairly close to those 40%. I would have been blacklisted forever if I did that, but in my mind it was a bit of an Abraham and Isaac moment.

I ended up not walking away from my Ph.D. and passing my defense a few months later. I was never really sure that this was a real call from God, but I wasn't entirely sure that it wasn't. I tried to discern whether I should have taken this seriously, but deep down I knew I probably wouldn't have done it anyway. At some point I sort-of-prayed that I could not even repent it, since I had no intention of altering my trajectory, or "converting".

I was walking from one place to the other chewing things around in my mind, and I thought that St Peter would probably have given anything to undo his denial, he would have cut off a limb for a chance to undo it, surely he must have had perfect contrition... But we are forced to observe that he did not alter his trajectory when the cock crowed, he did not run after the maid, saying "umm, sorry, I made a mistake, I do know this guy after all", Peter did not have perfect contrition, he weeped out of perfect despair.

I realise that I'm on shaky grounds here. There is undeniably infinite value in "perfect contrition" which is a Roman Catholic concept which states that basically you really should resolve to never sin again, and do everything you can to undo the sin as soon as you can when this is possible. But by the time Peter was forgiven he probably still didn't have perfect contrition, and he had no idea whether, given the chance, he would have the courage not to deny his Lord again. My guess is that he lived with perfect despair for a while. A man in perfect despair who loved Jesus and knew himself to be loved, not insignificantly. A man who was given the power to forgive or retain sins. The one stone on which the church was built.

H. and I got engaged last night. I sort of envy the unchurched types for whom the pre-wedding period is also a church-going high and a spirirtual awakening. For Revd H. and I, church-going is about as exotic as your own backgarden. I guess we get a lifetime of a church-going high!

Tom Wright's overconfidence is rubbing me the wrong way

This guy clearly thinks that he's personally got a direct access to God's own mind and has an unparalleled personal grasp of the One and Only Correct Understanding of the One and Only Biblical Narrative. It drives me nuts.

Here is his latest appearance in the British media.

Life in the mainstream: Office at night

I love this painting by Edward Hopper. The guy is a genius at depicting 20th century urban loneliness and the people's humanity nevertheless springing out, vulnerable and beautiful. And I like the bizarre atmosphere of an office at night, when you're working with someone you don't really know all that well, the camaraderie that emerges as we offer each other a cup of tea.

I should really stop posting quotes

... but I like collecting them. So here comes the next one:

"Dwellers live in a stable place and feel secure within its territory; for them the sacred is fixed and spirituality is cultivated though habitual practive within the familiar world of a particular tradition. Not that they are untouched by social change, but they are relatively well anchore amid the flux. By contrast seekers explore new vistas and negotiate among alternative, and at time confusing, systems of belief and practice; for them the sacred is fluid and portable, and spirituality is likened unto a process or state of becoming. The language of the journey fits their experience"

Jackson Carroll and Wade Clark Roof "Bridging divided worlds: Generational cultures in congregations"

Mystical Disney Song

Look at this stuff
Isn't it neat?
Wouldn't you think my collection's complete?
Wouldn't you think I'm the girl
The girl who has everything?
Look at this trove
Treasures untold
How many wonders can one cavern hold?
Looking around here you think
Sure, she's got everything
I've got gadgets and gizmos a-plenty
I've got whozits and whatzits galore
You want thingamabobs?
I've got twenty!
But who cares?
No big deal
I want more

I wanna be where the people are
I wanna see, wanna see them dancin'
Walking around on those - what do you call 'em?
Oh - feet!

Flippin' your fins, you don't get too far
Legs are required for jumping, dancing
Strolling along down a - what's that word again?
Street

Up where they walk, up where they run
Up where they stay all day in the sun
Wanderin' free - wish I could be
Part of that world

What would I give if I could live out of these waters?
What would I pay to spend a day warm on the sand?
Bet'cha on land they understand
That they don't reprimand their daughters
Proper women sick of swimmin'
Ready to stand

And ready to know what the people know
Ask 'em my questions and get some answers
What's a fire and why does it - what's the word?
Burn?

When's it my turn?
Wouldn't I love, love to explore that world up above?
Out of the sea
Wish I could be
Part of that world

"Part of your world" The Little Mermaid.

I wish I wasn't so busy

... doing corrections and all sorts of other pressing stuff, because that book sure looks good: A Post-Capitalist Politics, and I'd rather be reading it.

And yet another quote of the day

"You eventually learn that true priorities are like arms, if you think you have more than a couple, you're either lying or crazy."

Hotdogsladies

Another quote of the day (or more lazy blogging)

To the Christian, love is the works of love. To say that love is a feeling or anything of the kind is really an un-Christian conception of love. That is the aesthetic definition and therefore fits the erotic and everything of that nature. But to the Christian, love is the works of love. Christ's love was not an inner feeling, a full heart and what-not: it was the work of love which was his life.

Søren Kierkegaard

Quote of the day

"The fact is, the views men (sic) take of the atonement are largely determined by their fundamental feelings of need - by what men most long to be saved from."

B.B. Warfield

Which oppressor would you confront?

A couple of days ago, I engaged with a friend's post about the uses of nonviolence and violence when confronting tangible evil. Faced with the ineffectiveness of non-violent means, he ends up asking himself whether it is better to ask for God's forgiveness for allowing the poor to be crushed while doing nothing about it, or wether we should do something about it, maybe use violence even, and beg God's forgiveness for using violence against those who crush the lives of the poor (which I undertand to be the option chosen by the likes of Klaus Von Stauffenberg and Dietrich Bonheoffer when confronting the n*zi regime).

The original post was a bit too general, and it was hard to pinpoint what type of an oppressor we would be dealing with. A n*zi leader, a local pimp, a "capitalist pig"? So I'm guessing that each reader just undertood the post in relation to the form of oppression which they are most aware of. In my case, it is the systemic oppression of globalised capitalism which most captures my imagination. I read "oppressor" and the first thing I think about when I think of nasty b*stards crushing the poor are fat capitalists, so my comments related to the very tangible exploitation of young Jasmine, who works in a jeans factory in China, and whose experience is depicted in the documentary China Blue. I could not stop thinking about it because Jasmine is really grateful for her job, and yet her job is massively exploitative. The kind of exploitation that makes you want to confront the nasty b*stard who makes her live in these conditions for a ludicrously small salary. So which oppressor should I confront:

- Jasmine’s dad, who got around to having a second baby, in the hope of having a boy, but Jasmine was a girl. She grew up trying to make up for that and earning some hard currency in the big city was one way in which she could do that.

- Jasmine’s direct manager, who implements the drastic productivity expectations of her workplace.

- Jasmine’s employer, who is trying to stay in business by agreeing to his client’s ridiculously cheap prices (less than four dollars a piece for a set of jeans AND jacket) and never misses a deadline, even if it means pushing his workers to exhaustion, on the fear of losing his clients.

- Jasmine’s employer’s client. An Indian guy who lives in the UK and buys clothes which he ten sells to retailers. He’s trying to deliver goods reliably and still make a margin to keep himself in business.

- The retailer of jeans made by Jasmine, who would also argue that he’s trying to make a margin and stay in business in tough economic times, when everybody else is selling similar goods cheaper.

- The girl who works at the retailer of jeans made by Jasmine who needs a job (and pays taxes).

- The buyer of jeans made by Jasmine who likes fashion, preferably cheap, and at the end of the day keeps that particular industry going.

- The person who refuses to buy jeans made by Jasmine and threatens her livelihood without doing anything postive about her situation.

- The person who works in a relatively ethical field, funded either by taxes or donations, and who still ultimately benefits from the system.

Who’s the nasty oppressor, I wonder? I’d say track the one with the most unreasonable margins, and encourage them to redistribute these in terms of better resources and quality of life for Jasmine. But then compared to Jasmine's wages, all of the above make unreasonable margins, and all should redistribute some of it towards her well-being.

It just gets me thinking of Clause IV. You know, the clause that got slashed when Labour became New Labour, and lefties started to largely disinvest the party-political processes to do whatever it is they do outside of it*. It used to be printed on all membership cards. Clause IV read:

"To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry, and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible on the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best attainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service."

*Some of it is eminiently worthwhile, don't get me wrong. It is a mistake, a cop-out , and a wate of our time to wait on political parties to bring about the tangible solidarity which is our God-ordered responsibility. We're better of developing versions of it on the ground. But it might also be a mistake to abandon the party entirely to forces that move it away from solidarity.

Abide with us, for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent

Painting by Vasiliy Polenov, click for larger picture

Life in the maintream: empty nest

Schoolbag in hand, she leaves home in the early morning
Waving goodbye with an absent-minded smile
I watch her go with a surge of that well-known sadness
And I have to sit down for a while

The feeling that I'm losing her forever
And without really entering her world
I'm glad whenever I can share her laughter
That funny little girl

Slipping through my fingers all the time
I try to capture every minute
The feeling in it
Slipping through my fingers all the time
Do I really see whats in her mind
Each time I think I'm close to knowing
She keeps on growing
Slipping through my fingers all the time

Sleep in our eyes, her and me at the breakfast table
Barely awake, I let precious time go by
Then when shes gone theres that odd melancholy feeling
And a sense of guilt I can't deny

What happened to the wonderful adventures
The places I had planned for us to go
(slipping through my fingers all the time)
Well, some of that we did but most we didn't
And why I just don't know

Slipping through my fingers all the time
I try to capture every minute
The feeling in it
Slipping through my fingers all the time
Do I really see whats in her mind
Each time I think I'm close to knowing
She keeps on growing
Slipping through my fingers all the time

Sometimes I wish that I could freeze the picture
And save it from the funny tricks of time
Slipping through my fingers...
Slipping through my fingers all the time

Music & Lyrics: ABBA

In some corner of England

Our q**ker congregation has a process called "afterthoughts". After the meeting, people stand up and share whatever they want to share with the congregation, when somehow they don't feel like it's actual ministry straight from the Holy Spirit (in which case you share right in the middle worship, and feel free to quake, too). So the other day, I had actually been to volunteer with my friend, and had been very impressed. This is the best run drop-in I have ever seen! It's held in the hall of a catholic church. It's attended by hundreds of folks who look forward to it every week.

The volunteers lay up an enormous banquet made of whatever the surrounding shops give us for free + we have a budget to complete with things that people like (pizza, mostly) + the little old ladies always bring lovingly crafted cakes and extra delicacies (like expensive sweets and chocolate), with the result that our banquet table looks better than a freaking wedding.

In the room, there are games of pool and table-tennis and the catholic church lends its kids' games (they've got lots, and the kids love it). Various services have been invited to set up a table in the room too. So there's the association that teaches computing skills in one corner, they set up five laptops with free internet access. There is the National Health Service in another corner, there to inform people about their right to FREE health care at the point of need, no matter who they are and how to get that. There is the employment service (JobCentrePlus, that sends specially trained staff to help refugees enter employment). There is a specialist for asylum seeking applications (she deals with Section Four, which is a sum of money you can claim while applying for asylum) and various other associations. Because there are almost too many volunteers, we make tea and coffee for about ten minutes, and then go about in the room to have a piece of cake (and ward off the marriage proposals).

On the human side, I was really impressed with my friend. You know, I had been rash to judge her as a posh lady who had trvalled around the world doing good to poor people with her husband. I didn't think she'd be all that great (in my simple mind posh and older = not good). And she's A-MA-ZING. On the whole she's got a very small pension, which is half what my Ph.D. was. Turns out she gives a huge part of it away to people at the drop in who have no resources at all. She pretends it's from us (the q**ker congregation) while in fact, I'd be surprised if we gave more than ten quid on any given Sunday -members give to their own preferred charity, or even to the q**kers, in private). Of all the volunteers, she is the one who knows everyone by name, and knows their story too.

Quite a lot of the people who attend have escaped brutal wars. One woman in particular has been raped and has lost most of her family in the Somalian conflict. When she arrived she was very very broken. But her kid loves playing with the other kids, and so she keeps coming. As I was there, she asked my friend whether she would take her and the kid to Newcastle to do kids activities, and to have tea and cakes somewhere. My friend volunteered her whole saturday and started making plans. It's inspiring to see how much the woman wants that kid to be happy. The kid is a drop-dead beautiful little girl. Yay for human love!

So the other day in afterthoughts, I popped up and said all this. I said you know those five quid you leave in the collection box every week or so. We always support the same charity and isn't it boring after a while? Well I'll tell you what happens to them. They will be given directly to someone for them to buy food, toiletries, and charity-shop clothes. I talked about the drop-in and how it worked, just generally, for two or three minutes.

Five minutes later, the collection box was full of banknotes, and two women -shy ones who could use some company- were going to start volunteering there the next week. My friend wiped away a tear: "you know they're tired of me telling them the same thing every week. You said it in such a fresh way...".

All hyped up in Lefty theory

For two years in a row, during Easter time, I thought I recognised in Easter Homilies and Easter messages the traces of conversations I've had with the priests who delivered them. So tonight the conversation with H. went along those lines:

D. Hey H., that guy from your diocese is pretty hooked on Liberationist theology, see all this talk of preferential option, of alternative community, that's amazing coming from him, in his freaking Easter message!

H. I'm sure he did not write it.

D. Yeah well, he signed it. And I like whoever wrote it.

I'm excited because that's what I'm on about right? I tell anyone who will listen about the stuff. And I'm enthusiastic enough to make the stuff pretty intriguing. I witness folks picking it up and, in no time, they start talking around like they've spent the last five years in Guatemala. Oh well, Liberation theology IS intriguing, it's pretty compelling and I think it's got a healthy dose of sheer TRUTH to it, so let the people rejoice!

"There goes my little Chardonnay Socialist", H says. H is not getting into any theory and it's not for lack of trying on my part. He's in the business of keeping the church alive and solvent in his diocese, and of getting drunk with guys who never thought they'd catch themselves liking a priest. And that's it thank you very much.

He says his first mission is to be who he is, and to be openly Christian. That's what he's done even before getting ordained, he was "the one that went to church on sundays". I tried that too. With the result of having friends ask me if I'd go to church with them. I said no way, repent or go to hell, that's what I said, but I did it lovingly :-).

I don't know why I'm not keen on people taking up the liberationist agenda (and this includes me) and then racking their brains about what they can do for "the poor" when the answer is often not much. Sure, we can give more time and money, we can individually and collectively be more welcoming of others. We can choose to be located in a spot where we will meet a lot less privilege than we are used to encountering.

But once we're there and we're doing that, the recipe is the same as elsewhere. Keep the rumour of God present among God's people, get in the way of oppression and abuse when you can, love everyone the best you can and hope for the resurrection. There's a time for getting all hyped up with theory, and there's a time when theory -while still painfully relevant- becomes the paradigmatic background of what you do, not the foreground.

Satt und Selig

Satt und selig is the name of a restaurant in Berlin (Spandau), situated opposite a rather large, beautiful church. The name is derives from a German saying and means full (as if: full after a good meal) and blessed. This name has annoyed me for a while. Or rather it didn’t. It was just that it triggered some reaction, both positive and negative and I could not pinpoint what they were.

Simone Weil, who herself never took part in communion (she felt unworthy or something), noticed the blessedness of those who did, expressed in beatific smiles of which the concerned were not always aware. I’ve noticed that a few times too. Furthermore, I’ve observed this in Germany but I’m sure it is the case everywhere; the regular churchgoers follow mass with a meal, at the Biergarten or at home, and a relaxed afternoon. By all definitions they (we) are satt und selig.

This is further complemented by keeping up with church seasons and feasts and giving the home a distinctively churchy atmosphere. I’m not above any of this, and I have been known to pass a couple of holy cards to friends before the birth of a child which was making them anxious, or to hide an icon in a bouquet of flowers if I thought this would be welcome, or sticking a resolute Easter flag in my mum’s kitchen while she was mourning for the death of her last parent and going through a bit of a churchy phase anyway. In H.’s terms, it’s keeping the rumour of a Loving God alive in an overly secularised society, not in itself the worst thing you could do.

I can’t help the joy. I can’t help the healing. That’s just what church does to me and to people (hopefully). But I wonder if I’m overdoing it. It’s easy to fall into complacency from this perspective. We become the happy-go-lucky Christians full of their blessed certainties and lose the ability to feel for those who are not inhabiting these certainties in quite the same ways. And as much joy as we derive from the Easter period, what I really wish I could gain was empowerment to inhabit hurt also. A joy that is so certain that it doesn’t need to be felt. A joy that is so great that it loathes sin somehow.

Maybe I’m a bit of a sicko, but I think I get why some saints sometimes inflicted physical pain on themselves (WHICH I DO NOT ADVOCATE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES FOR ME OR FOR ANYONE). Somehow they were grieved by their propensity to sin, and they were trying to get out of it. It’s hard to be grieved by sin when you’re just plain happy. And I think that it is also hard to be truly compassionate. I cannot count the time when I’ve exited church on a Sunday, in squeaky clean clothes and surrounded by good friends who love me and whom I love, only to become painfully aware of the street life around the church.

And so my stand on satt und selig? I don’t know what it is. Not in itself bad, surely. But can you be too strong, can you be too secure? One of H.’s teachers once told him the following: “you know, the congregation does not want you to be busy doing things. But when their life falls apart you’ve got to be compassionate and a solid presence. The way to do this is to be grounded in prayer, not frantic parish improvement”.

Now, just what is the relationship between the blessedness of being who we are as Christians and the ability to journey into hurt interests me. The more I enter the Christian life, the more solid I become, and this scares me. I never wanted to be solid. I wanted to be vulnerable. By becoming all satt und selig I’m losing some of the rawness which I actually like but I’m gaining a strength and stability which I (and others) can draw on.

Having all. I’m just too happy because I have all. To be of infinite worth to God (as is each and every human being) and to know it. Bliss. Maybe the progression is to start by having all and self-empty until the “all” is barely visible and hardly ever felt, but it is there nevertheless like an Ariadne’s thread. Self-empty until even the Ariadne thread breaks. Until I'm lost again.

Yee Haw: Canadian diocese to begin same-sex blessings

Full story here.

The need for a mentor

The other day, I was in Paris buying liturgical gear for H. He loves the stuff and it makes for great pressents. I was there happily spending an hour or so deciding which stole and thuribles I was going to get. The upstairs level part of the shop is mostly for the general public (pictures, candles and the like) while the downstairs level has got all the priestly stuff. The Italian-speaking nuns were very friendly during that time, but when I went back upstairs to get some incense, another nun appeared, who was just as friendly as the other, but seemed pretty clever on top of it all, and one of those instant judge of character.

Now it became clear that my presence in there, on my own, picking stoles as if they were flower arrangements, chatting away with the attendent nuns about how that one was too flowery and that one was too sober and that one looked cheap and that one was too modern, was a bit unusual. That fact sunk in further when a cyclist walked in and immediately adopted an overly deferential tone to ask one of the nuns for directions. Oh God, I thought, those Parisian catholics are all dead solemn. I look like an elephant in a china store. Or like a carefree young woman in a liturgical shop, indeed.

I could tell the nun from upstairs was quite curious to engage me. "You bought a lot of things today" she finally tried. Uh... oh... I'm totally busted buying stuff for my schismatic boyfriend, let's make a quick exit, I thought. "Yes" I said, sheepishly, and exit I did, fast. It was nothing. But a couple of days later I found myself longing for something like her seemingly wise presence.

I remembered my first ventures into idealistic do-gooding. Joining all the humanitarian societies on campus, and oscillating between the all-night phone counselling, twice weekly afternoons at the homeless shelter, running the Amnesty International campus branch and going to all the political talks, lying on a bed for hours with a newly-diagnosed HIV-positive friend talking and listening to The Piano, writing to a Californian death Row inmate while, on top of it all, my parents were getting a divorce. I don't think I was bad at any of it... but eventually I crashed, and abruptly gave almost all of it up (fortunately, as I've written elsewhere, the death row inmate was writing to many people at the same time, as for my friend, we're still friends of course and he's one of the best, most promising, prize-winning young scientists in the UK).

I remember my recently submitted doctoral thesis, in which I'd been longing for mentoring and got almost none. Noncommittal comments yes. Mean looks for missed deadlines yes. Drunken nights at the pub yes. But mentoring, no.

As I approach my thirties, I find myself chatting to my priestly boyfriend and he's got no mentor either. Sure, I mean, there are people that we call our mentors because it sounds good, on formal acknowledgements and the like. We're doing fine for thirty-year olds. I mean, he's an awesome listener and a very good priest. I've acquired a gentle touch which people around me seem to like. But we're young. There is so much wisdom we don't have.

I'm a bit ashamed to say, but the verses I love most in the Bible are Proverbs 8: 32-36, which refer to wisdom:

"And now, O sons, listen to me: blessed are those who keep my ways. Hear instruction and be wise, and do not neglect it. Blessed is the one who listens to me, watching daily at my gates, waiting beside my doors. For whoever finds me finds life and obtains favor from the LORD, but he who fails to find me injures himself; all who hate me love death."

Definitely not the most famous or beautiful verses around, but I just love them. In very vain terms, one of the things that pleased me most ever was to see one of my online comments referred to as the wisest thing said on a particular topic. That was three years ago and I'm still massively pleased. But now I'm getting rambly. I always want more wisdom than I've got and I wish I had a mentor. Until I find one, maybe I'll read pastoral letters. But I would love a mentor who loved me.

Friendly young (female) volunteers

Having recently submitted my doctoral thesis for examination (not passed... indeed passing might be delayed by another year or two given the number of typos and approximative statements in the damn thing), I find myself with too much time on my hand, which is a NICE feeling after all this madness.

So I caught up with one of my quaker friends who works with mostly Kurdish and African asylum seekers in a major town nearby, saying I'd love to spend some time helping out while I'm exploring my options. The first thing she said was: I'm worried about a friendly young woman like you. See... many of the asylum seekers are single men, they are very likely to want to go out with you. That would be the answer to everything: the desire to get started in life, the end of crippling loneliness, permission to remain in the EU. Also, you've never lived in a Muslim country, you wouldn't understand the culture, you could really hurt them through your cultural attitudes. In short, you're definitley not my favourite type of volunteer but think about it. Then if you still want to, you can give it a go.

I was glad that someone had pinpointed this phenomenon, which I had observed many times over, and which totally destroyed many of my attempts to reach out towards vulnerable young men, and indeed made the whole situation far worse than if I hadn't initiated any contacts at all. I was also pleased that she didn't dimiss me out of hand. She just said: you're the wrong demographics, I'd rather have retired old ladies, but sure, if you want to be there next Wednesday, that would be great.

Roman Catholic Ecumenism?

I never went through RCIA, because I feel into it when I was little (as Obelix would have it). But browsing through the catechists' manual, the following fact jumped out of the page. The fisrt of the suggested hymn on the lesson relating to faith is... A Mighty Fortress is Our God. And for some reason that means a hell of a lot to me.

Book Review: Le Roi des Derniers Jours by Barret and Gurgand

My step brother brought me a case of books from a library which was closing down next to where he lives. Most of the books are very high-brow, prize-winning literary oeuvres, all of them practically new. Either the librarian was a bit ambitious for a small Alsacian town, or else my step brother thinks very highly of my literary ability and pre-selected all the ones that sounded clever enough, leaving the rest behind.

That's how I came to read Le Roi des Derniers Jours and it was absolutely impossible to put down. I'd been wanting to learn about Anabaptism for a while, because I'd gathered here and there that my own sympathies often lie with it. Le Roi des Derniers Jours is a mix of fragments of Anabaptist theology and a war story that can compete with Thucidides' Pelopponesian war.

It all starts pretty good: the Anabatist preachers take Luther's reformation a bit further and insist on a new form of worship and communal life, redistributing wealth and so on. They're pretty fired up and convince enough people that they eventually form a majority in the city of Munster, in which they try to re-create the apostolic way of life.

This "dangerous heresy" is opposed by the local Roman Catholic bishop who fears that it might spread further and who is prepared to everything to contain it.

For their part, the Anabaptists are so convinced that their doctrine is right that they are prepared to recant if anyone can convince them that they are wrong theologically, but would rather die than give it up because of sheer cowardice.

Munster becomes assieged. Inside; they're busy re-creating the new Jerusalem. Not all of it is rosy: some of their ideas are pretty fucked-up and they're pretty tough on sin. Still on the whole, they sound genuine. Outside, the bishop just wants to bring them back to the Roman fold.

It all goes very very wrong. Inside Munster, the beautiful ideals are increasingly laced with despotism in a completely confusing way (one minute you're completely taken by the beautifully equalitarian sermons, the next you think they're a bunch of self-aggrandizing fucked-up loonies).

Also, the anabaptists are pretty certain that God Godself will intervene to save them, turning stones into bread and that kind of jazz, which -suprise- does not happen.

Finally, assieged Munster is so destitute that a lot of the Anabaptists are leaving the city. At first this was not permitted, and the leaders tried their hardest to keep their sisters and brothers from giving up the faith, but towards the end they can' t cope with this weak contingent, and let them go if they choose too.

This means that starving crowds are arriving into the Roman bishop's army, and he doesn't know what to do with them, because the leavers might still be secretely sympathetic to Munster and would spread "the heresy" the minute they entered new towns. But he can't quite kill starving women and children. So he sends the leavers back into already destitute Munster, who is less than enthusiastic about having the traitors back.

But because everybody in the region knows that Munster is starving, some knights desert the bishops' ranks beacuse they think he's being inhumane, thereby remaining within the Roman fold but disobeying a bishop. On the ground some of the bishop's soldiers take the leavers in anyway, or enable them to go through the ranks unhindered.

What makes this book particularly fascinating is that nearly ALL of these folks are inspired by the message of Christ, at least as they understand it. The Anabaptists for sure... Then the bishop who actually tries his best to get all the Munster folks into confessionals and back into the Roman church, the knights who desert or undermine the bishop because they think he's being cruel, the soldiers on the ground, and all the captured Anabaptists who die as martyrs for their faith.

This book really got my head spinning. I almost feel like doing a Ph.D. in reformation studies (umm... okay, maybe not a Ph.D. you'd think I'd learned my lesson by now). It got me thinking about God, God's way with the world, idealism, life in community, Catholicism, the spirit of the reformation and the contribution anabaptism like nothing else had done before. Definitely worth a read.

The haunting passages are back...

I haven't been blogging for a while because I'm not at home and I don't have regular access to the internet. But I've got lots to blog about, when I get round to it, including (1) a strange half-awake dream, (2) a realisation that a friend deeply needed the experirence of wholseomeness and that I'd been focusing way too much on the duty side of things, and (3) a colleague of H. who explained his preaching routine to me and who deliberately toned down the exhortations because he was wearing out his parish (basically he spends one week teaching, two weeks reflecting on real life issues, and one week exhoruitng the parish to do something with their faith).

But anyways... there I go opening the catechism of the catholic church at a random page. Art 909 pretty much sprang out:

"Moreover, by uniting their forces let the laity so remedy the institutions and conditions of the world when the latter are an inducement to sin, that these may be conformed to the norms of justice, favouring rather than hindering the practice of virtue. By so doing they will impregnate culture and human works with a moral value."

Why should the rats have all the fun?

I'm a bit evangelistic about... Regena Thomashauer (whose message I adapt as I go because diamonds are not my best friends). Seriously... cheesy or not, that woman is inspired. So let me quote from her last newsletter:

"I recently read about this fascinating study that was conducted around 20 years ago called Rat Park. The researcher surmised that most of the studies done on addictions were incomplete because they didn't take into account the quality of the lifestyles the rats were living. So he had one group of rats in their small isolated cages, while he built a rat nirvana, dubbed "Rat Park," for the other rats. It was spacious; it had many common areas, places to play, mate and have fun. Rat boyfriends, Rat girlfriends, Rat childcare, Rat exercise, Rat catered meals, Rat cheerleading, and Rat support. We are talking ideal rat conditions. Think Canyon Rat Ranch, 24/7. Both sets of rats were given access to both plain tap water and water laced with morphine. What do you think happened?

Yup. The rats in isolated cages became hooked on the morphine. Chose it almost every time.The rats in Rat Park? Went for the tap water. That's right. Even when they laced the morphine water with sugar to make it sweet (and let me tell you-rats love sweet stuff!) they went for it once in a while, but for the most part they drank the plain tap water.

But how does this apply to us as women, Mama? Think about it. Many of us have put ourselves in our very own isolated cages. Having been raised to "do it ourselves." Whether it's earning our own money or raising our children alone, or moving to a new city without knowing anybody, or getting into a routine of working long hours and going home so exhausted we don't want to pick up the phone or connect with anyone. Well, my loves, maybe we CAN do it alone, but it's not really the way a woman is designed.

Like our little rat friends, we thrive in community. Actually, we thrive in community when it is loving, supportive, and uplifting. If you're lucky enough to have that in your life, congratulations. It's certainly not the norm. I had a taste of it in college, living with my girlfriends, always together, part of each other's everyday lives, every decision, every celebration, every challenge. And after graduation? Isolation. And so began my pursuit of creating a human woman nirvana in this crazy day, and this crazy age. I mean, c'mon. What option did I have? We are designed for pleasure. If we aren't living a fulfilled life, we're gonna get our pleasure somehow. Unfortunately, overeating, overspending, antidepressants, and alcohol are poor substitutes for what we truly are searching for: careers we are passionate about, bodies we love and appreciate, a legendary love affair, time to create, a thriving bank account, a healthy, hot sensual life, and connection with our children [or add your own drem]. So, what's the solution? Community. And Pleasure."