A great quote

"We can safely abandon the doctrine of the eighties, namely that the rich were not working because they had too little money, the poor because they had too much." ~John Kenneth Galbraith

This made me laugh...

"Ce document évoque notamment, en termes très mesurés, une hospitalité eucharistique possible pour des anglicans en manque eucharistique et perdus dans la nature française" (from this website).

It works more or less like this (I think):

Encyclica Ut Unum Sint, point 46, states that: "It is a source of joy to note that Catholic ministers are able, in certain particular cases, to administer the sacraments of the Eucharist, Penance and Anointing of the Sick to Christians who are not in full communion with the Catholic Church but who greatly desire to receive these sacraments, freely request them and manifest the faith which the Catholic Church professes with regard to these sacraments".

The obvious "certain particular cases" are: danger of death, persecution, imprisonment etc.

But the 1983 Code of Canon Law states that episcopal conferences or diocesan bishops are able to identify additional situations of grave and pressing need (from this website)

And the French (RC) Episcopal Conference, stretching it a bit, gave official permission for Anglicans living in France to be able to avail themselves of any of the sacraments, should they be geographically far from an Anglican chaplaincy (from this website).

So if you're Anglican and you find yourself "perdu dans la nature", get in touch with the local papists!

Ummm, it looks like nobody gives a rat's about Eucharistic hospitality on the web! Fifteen minutes after publishing this post my very amateurish blog is already number five on Google for the search "hospitalite eucharistique". And this is actual formal terminology, not something I made up.

Half-awake post

Your proclamation springs from your life
Your life springs from your love
Your love springs from encounters with God

Therefore, keep praying
Keep loving
Keep doing
Keep proclaiming
in that order.

Proclaim less than you do
Do less than you love
and love less than your pray.

Open your eyes, go get coffee.

Quick notes

Je rêve son visage je décline son corps
Et puis je l'imagine habitant mon décor

These are the first lines form a very kitschy song, but they made me well up like nothing had in months, so I thought I'd record them here. I haven't been blogging much lately which is a shame because I've got plenty of ideas and then I end up forgetting about them:

"Authenticity" is H's favourite word. We used to talk past each other because he said my stuff was "not real". I retorted that if the tangible suffering of others is not real to us we have a bit of a problem. He liked my point - that one should care deeply about strangers- and I liked his. At some point I had refused to engage with people I did not immediately like, because I thought I was being unreal and that it was unhelpful. Then I took a new approach. And yet it is possible to go too far in the other direction. So "authenticity" might be a bit of a corker topic.

Some of my friends have dark "no go zones", zones in them which are raw and hurting, big areas of unhealed pain. Having been in counselling for a little while as an undergrad, I know of methods which bring these "no go zones" into healing and forgiveness. I used to think that people who had these zones were "non regenerated" in a way or another, and that they needed to confront that stuff. Then I noticed that the friends with the "no go zones" had a level of empathy which totally eludes me. Happiness is dangerous.

(One may say that -of course- these zones are "no go" for me, Dany, and that this just proves what a useless listener I am. Maybe that's true. But the status quo is that I am aware of them because my friends have cracked the shell in the first place and put their vulnerability in my -untrustworthy- hands. I treat them as "no go zones" and never mention them unless they do)

Sunday Blogging: a bit of Christian Charity

Do not, I repeat do not, laugh at the crazy wild-ass pentecostals.

Not entirely relevant...

But mainstream and cheesy, oh oui! Singing along this one also counts as a pride-busting spiritual exercise.

Fais-moi une place
Au fond d' ta bulle
Et si j' t'agace
Si j'suis trop nul
Je deviendrai
Tout pâle, tout muet, tout p'tit
Pour que tu m'oublies

Fais-moi une place
Au fond d' ton cœur
Pour que j' t'embrasse
Lorsque tu pleures
Je deviendrai
Tout fou, tout clown, gentil
Pour qu' tu souries

J' veux q' t'aies jamais mal
Q' t'aies jamais froid
Et tout m'est égal
Tout, à part toi
Je t'aime

Fais-moi une place
Dans ton av'nir
Pour que j'ressasse
Moins mes souvenirs
Je s'rais jamais
Eteint hautain lointain
Pour qu'tu sois bien

Fais-moi une place
Dans tes urgences
Dans tes audaces
Dans ta confiance
Je s'rai jamais
Distant, distrait, cruel
Pour q' tu sois belle

J' veux pas q' tu t'ennuies
J' veux pas q' t'aies peur
J' voudrais q' tu oublies
L' goût du malheur
Je t'aime

Une petite place
Ici, maintenant
Car le temps passe
À pas d' géant
Je me ferai
Tout neuf, tout beau, tout ça...
Pour être à toi

"Fais moi une place" by Julien Clerc.

Keeping busy on a Tuesday night

J. John is visiting the North East of England. He will be speaking for ten subsequent weeks in Gateshead and Stockton. I do not plan to attend. And yet maybe I should, because it is proving very popular, drawing crowds in the thousands, and certainly drawing the very crowds that would find our local bishop's sermon series pretty boring. Meanwhile, for some reason, these same crowds are not turning up to the cathedral's concerts of pre-reformation sixteenth century choral music, I just have to wonder why.

Still, I can't help but think that the J. John thingy only serves as an opportunity for parishionners to "finally do something exciting" on a Tuesday night. As time goes, I tend to trust less and less in the spoken word (fequently known as "bullshit"), and I am drawn again and again to quiet people-lover types who walk humbly with God.

The two are not incompatible. I am reminded of a ghetto preacher who justified his two-hours-long Sunday services by saying that his parishioners were made to feel like scum for most of the week. He needed at least two hours every Sunday to undo the damage, and to convince his congregation that they were precisely not "scum", but beloved children of God. -I think I got that story out of one of the Hauervas and Willimon books, but for a fine example of this kind of life-giving proclamation, do check this obscure individual-.

But really I'm not sure of what can be gotten out of two hours with J. John, beyond the warm glow of being a part of the right crowd, that is. Still, truth be told, I'm quite curious to find out. So maybe I'll dig out my notebook, digital recorder, and go interview some of the punters. And I'm definitely going to this cosy little event by the way, hopefully armed with some big bad smart-arsed questions. Do feel free to leave your own in the comments below and I'll try to quizz some answers out of the prelate. But I've got to be careful, because by the sounds of it he might be planning to attend J. John's too!