Double entendres

I'm doing a very very short talk at church on Sunday night. It's on the theme of love because it's near Valentine's day. Given the theme, the day, and the fact that it's informal worship, I have this fear that I'll accidentally say some kind of hideous double-entendre. One badly constructed throw-away comment, and it could descend into a ribald discussion of the ordinand's love life. And then someone will record it on their mobile... and send it to my principal... and then I'll get expelled for inappropriateness in the pulpit...

Kallistos Ware

"Each of us from the moment of his or her birth exists in an environment in which it is easy to do evil and hard to do good.... If I know somebody very well, in ten minutes, if I set my mind to it, I could perhaps say to them things so cruel, so destructive, that they would never forget them for the rest of their life. But could I in ten minutes say things so beautiful, so creative, that they would never forget them?"

Bishop Kallistos Ware

Dominant discourses...

... or, rose coloured spectacles. I appear to be ranting about this on a depressingly regular basis. We're encouraged to hear - in fact actively seek out - minority voices in research and academic work. But how do we pay attention to minority voices when we're so grounded in the dominant perspective that we don't even notice it's only a perspective?

The Living Library

The living library - from http://www.mhhe.heacademy.ac.uk/news-and-events/latest-news/the-living-library-/ and http://living-library.org/living-library-at-norwich-mental-health-week.1.html

The idea of the "living library" originated in Scandinavia. "Readers" come to the library to borrow real people in the same way that they would normally borrow books. They can then take them away to a corner for a fifteen minute chat in the course of which they can ask all the questions, and hear real live answers. The idea is being used in the UK as part of a campaign run by mental health charity Rethink, along with youth volunteering campaign Agents4Change, which aims to tackle stigmas, stereotypes and prejudices. How might it be adapted in a higher education teaching context? Further details.
Listen again to the Learning Curve report on this initiative here.

Images of God and caricatures

This subject seems to have pursued me from Taize to Durham, via Surrey. There are a whole load of inter-related questions, like: how do we identify our images of God? How accurate are they? How might you suggest to someone that their image of God isn't very helpful? In Taize we were asked to think about our caricatures of God, which seemed a bit strange to start with, until we thought about what caricatures are - taking one aspect of something and making it the main feature. They contain a partial truth and partially reflect reality, but the emphasis is off. We all do it, I think, but sometimes those caricatures become limiting and unhelpful, or, probably worse, we think they're the whole of the picture and start imposing them on other people.

In a lecture here it was suggested that someone who has a negative image of God - e.g. that s/he is punitive, judgemental etc shouldn't be encouraged to 'open themselves' to God in prayer. In fact they should be encouraged to distance themselves from that God, and then there is an on-going process to help people reconfigure their image of God. We weren't told how... It makes sense though, although I got the feeling that some people were a bit doubtful about the suggestion that someone *shouldn't* be encouraged to pray... Suspect that bit didn't come across exactly how it was meant.

Image of prayer

At communion tonight the guy giving the sermon used an image that I want to record here so I don't forget it - but it's too late right now to do much thinking about it. He was talking about the first part of Colossians and interpreted it to say that Christians should have a different identity, a different outlook, and a different lifestyle. In the outlook section he described different ways of receiving gifts - there's the child-like so-excited-I just-have-to-rip-the-paper-off-and-ooh-look-someone-else-with-another-present kind of approach. But there's also the, probably just as excited but more reflective, way of opening gifts - taking time, shaking it, feeling it, gradually taking the paper off, and then finally standing and looking and appreciating the gift approach - a kind of experience of awe and wonder that someone has taken the time and effort to give this gift to *you*. And that second experience is very close to prayer....

Learning style and worship

We did a session today on learning style. I came out as strongly visual and fairly strongly kinaesthetic - so I need to look at things and move around a bit when learning? I'm sure there's a bit more to it than that... maybe we get on to it another time. But what was more interesting was a couple of throwaway comments that the facilitator made linking learning style with worship/church. I always knew that I have trouble listening to sermons - I'm not sure they sink in for many people, but for me they *really* don't make an impact. I'd learn much more if they just gave me the text of the sermon to read and then discuss. I had to fill out a sheet today about preaching, and one of the questions was 'what good sermons/preachers' have you heard. I discovered that I could remember approximately 2.7 sermons, which is a bit unfortunate considering that I must have listened to at least a million sermons (+/- one or two) in the last 20 years. I have however had many good worship experiences interrupted by a tedious sermon! This is doubly unfortunate since I'm going to be doing the preaching myself very soon...

Leaving and leaving you - Sophie Hannah

When I leave your postcode and your commuting station,
When I left undone all the things we planned to do
You may feel you have been left by association
But there is leaving and leaving you.

When I leave your town and the club that you belong to,
When I leave without much warning or much regret,
Remember, there's doing wrong and there's doing wrong to
You, which I'll never do and I haven't yet,

And when I have gone, remember that in weighing
Everything up, from love to a cheaper rent,
You were all the reasons I thought of staying,
And none of the reasons why I went

And although I leave your sight and I leave your setting,
And our separation is soon to be a fact,
Though you stand beside what I'm leaving and forgetting,
I'm not leaving you, not if motive makes the act.

Tough love

Someone pointed out to me that parents might love their adult children without accepting their lifestyle. Fair point, and that kind of idea was in my mind when I was writing the last post, it just never quite made it on to the page. Some of the parents in the film said exactly that. Perhaps this kind of thing would be an explanation for the 'separating father from son' type imagery?

My only additional thoughts would be that often, although by no means always, this idea of not accepting the 'gay' lifestyle works better if it is implicitly assumed that being gay is in fact a sort of choice, or at least can be changed. (And of course the idea that being in an active gay relationship is wrong, but I'm not trying to leap into that debate here.) I suspect, though, this idea that orientation is chosen, or is always the result of some kind of trauma, is going out of fashion, although perhaps not in the US Bible belt if the film is anything to go by. Which leaves us in the position of telling gay christians that they are not at fault for who they are, but that they must resign themselves to permanent celibacy. Not just that they have to stay single until they meet someone they can marry, but that (unless there is a change in their orientation), they will definitely be single, and therefore missing out on that form of intimacy, for the whole of their lives.

Well, you could say that that that's just how it is, and not exclusive to gay people, and I guess that's true. You could also point to problems with our society or culture that prioritise individual romantic/sexual relationships and devalue other forms of relationship or fulfilment, and I think that's also true. But I suspect this conclusion (permanent celibacy) is easier to come to if a) you prioritise rationality/reason/logic over experience and emotion (as modern conservative evangelicalism tends to do) and b) if it doesn't really affect you. If the conclusion is 'correct', on one level it doesn't matter who makes it. But on another level, it does feel as though it matters when heterosexual married christians are coming to these conclusions on behalf of gay christians.

Bishop Gene Robinson and love

I read this in the bible last night (Matthew 10:34-39):

"Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn 'a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law— your enemies will be the members of your own household.'
"Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves a son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it."

Or in a more up to date version:

"Don't think I've come to make life cozy. I've come to cut—make a sharp knife-cut between son and father, daughter and mother, bride and mother-in-law—cut through these cozy domestic arrangements and free you for God. Well-meaning family members can be your worst enemies. If you prefer father or mother over me, you don't deserve me. If you prefer son or daughter over me, you don't deserve me.
"If you don't go all the way with me, through thick and thin, you don't deserve me. If your first concern is to look after yourself, you'll never find yourself. But if you forget about yourself and look to me, you'll find both yourself and me."

It's written as if Jesus is being quoted, so we are supposed to assume these are the actual words of Jesus. What's he on about? These verses are familiar to me, because my church background has, at times, been big on sacrifice and taking up your cross. In other church contexts this kind of thing is rarely mentioned, but for me it's always been talked about and we've tried to work out how this would play out day to day. (At one point I designed a 'comfort-o-matic' cross for a friend, which came complete with padded arm rests and a red wine holder.) In some ways that suits me, because I'm a bit of an old testament kind of girl - and I've always been fascinated by the celtic saints who left everything to sail off into the sunset, and then did mad things like stand in the sea up to their necks all night praying (I think it was to keep them awake??). And in a couple of months I'm finally going on my own celtic adventure as I move to Durham.

But last night these verses struck me a bit differently. I'd just come home from the screening of a documentary called 'the Bible tells me so', which interviewed christian families who had a gay son or daughter, and was followed by a Q&A session with Bishop Gene Robinson and Ian McKellan. Gene Robinson is the only bishop in the Anglican Communion to be in an open gay partnership, and one of the families in the documentary was his family. The documentary was - naturally - offering a particular point of view, and so all the families had started out with conservative christian views on sexuality, and most had changed their views as a result of their experiences. All of them loved their children, but most had acted initially in really unloving ways. Shamefully, a lot of the unloving behaviour came about because of what they'd been taught by their churches - not just that homosexuality is "an abomination" (this was repeated frequently), but also that it's a choice and people can choose to chage their sexuality. Whatever someone's theology, it was clear, if it wasn't already abundantly obvious, that churches and christians have been responsible for inflicting huge amounts of pain, and even inciting people to violence. The bible has and is being used in superficial, ignorant and irresponsible ways to sanction pre-existing prejudice.

This made me think more about the second bit of the quotation. Because I'm single, I've probably not paid much attention to this before. But there are a couple of thoughts here. It's actually a really difficult saying to understand, although the 'son against father' bit is a quotation from the old testament so would have meant more to the jewish hearers. Firstly, at what point does my personal sacrifice start to be a sacrifice for other people? If I think I'm asked to prioritise God/faith, that's one thing, but what about when my decisions have an impact on other people? What happens when my choices mean that other people are also being asked to make a sacrifice. This must be more critical when children/partners are involved, but happens in smaller ways too. And it was v clear from the documentary that the parents' choice to - as they saw it - follow Christ had negative effects on their children.

And following on from that, I wondered whether loving God should ever make us act in non-loving ways to the people around us? My gut feeling is that the 2 things are incompatible, and that part of loving God is loving other people. Presumably part of the problem is defining what counts as loving, and that it's possible to love someone without being 'nice' to them. I find a particular problem here with the christian teaching (hopefully mostly in the past?) which said that gay people shouldn't be accepted as they are (because then they wouldn't have any incentive to change) - and surely christian 'love' includes acceptance. This is what we say about God's love, which we try to reflect - that s/he loves us unconditionally. So any behaviour based on non-acceptance can't, by definition, be loving?

Old people and rudeness

My nan is in hospital. Despite this, she found the energy to be amusingly rude to my mum. We were both sitting by her bedside and my nan tearfully said "oh you should go home, you don't want to spend all your time sitting up here." We both protested (a little too successfully I think) as she perked up considerably and said cheerfully to my mum "well I don't suppose you do much in the evenings anyway" then indicated me and said "she's got a life, but you haven't!"

Grown up points

Went to see a comedy performance a couple of weeks ago. The person introduced the idea of working out how many grown up points you have - e.g. living in your own flat and paying bills by direct debit = grown up points, awarding yourself grown up points = no grown up points! The thing is, I kind of do that too, and I don't come out of it very well... A few months ago I went to an interview and the person showing me round was asking how easy it would be for me to relocate. She didn't call them that, but really she was asking about my grown up point score. The conversation went something like this:

So, do you have children?
No...
A partner?
No...
Mortgage/property?
No...
How about your job?
I'm a full-time student, it'll finish in a few months...
Car?
No, I don't drive...
[The poor woman was looking desperate by now...]
Pets?
Errr, no..... but I do have some houseplants!!

Scenes from Galapagos 3

Ok, this is really very odd. On the boat I slept in the bottom bunk, and on the first day we agreed that I'd sleep at the other end of the bed to the way it had been made up, to make it easier for S to get into the top bunk. First night, went to bed, lifted up the pillow, and underneath was a handwritten note that said "Beware of the pig". Ok.... I left it on the side and went to bed, so it was the first thing S saw when she got up in the morning... She politely decided not to mention it... Much debate over the week as to how it got there and why, and I still have no idea really. None of the possibilities seem very plausible, unless I was unknowingly travelling with someone who has a REALLY surreal sense of humour.

Scenes from Galapagos 2

2 of the people in our group were vegetarian. Unfortunately, they didn't seem to like vegetables very much either, and almost every [vegetarian] meal was greeted with the phrase "It just shows a lack of imagination". After 2.5 weeks, so did that comment, and I think I know more about their food preferences than I do my closest friends. Just to share the joy, here's a list of the things they wouldn't eat:

1. Meat. Obviously. One of them didn't like the taste, and one of them once had a hallucination about boiled chicken....
2. Fish. Well actually they sometimes eat fish, but only when they're in the mood. The mood never descended, even when we were on a boat being given fish every day. This was followed up by a comment about fish eating vegetarians not really being vegetarians, unlike them. Right.
3. Eggs. Eggs in things good, eggs by themselves bad.
4. Milk & yoghurt. See above.
5. White things. One of them really did announce that they didn't like to eat white things, although she was possibly referring to white sauces/creamy things. Except for ice cream, which is both white and creamy, but cold. So that's ok.
6. Some vegetables, served in place of the meat/fish. They were worried that they might get a protein deficiency, and thought that the chef could have shown some imagination and served soya or tofu.
7. Soya. Arrived the following night, but was rejected because it was one of those fake meat products. (See point 1).

Scenes from Galapagos 1

V (deaf, 84 yrs old): Mmm, this dinner is nice. [without drawing breath] S, how tall are you?
S: Er, 5'2" I think.
V: My daughter is 5' when stretched, and this wide [holds out index finger and thumb in a loop].
S (who missed the hand gesture): She's how wide?
V: Why? Well she's just built that way, that's why.
S: No, how wide?
V: Why what?

Intervened at this point to avoid death by dinner conversation....

I'd also like to make it clear that even though I might look like I'm 5'4", I am in fact 5'9 when STRETCHED.

Hi honey, I'm home

Got back yesterday from Ecuador. What can I say, it rocked! I've set up a different non-anonymous blog for sharing photos and a bit of blather about it, but some of the funniest moments will have to go anonymously on here. If anyone's still reading this blog after I've neglected it for so long and wants to see the photos, email me and I'll send you a link.

We're all going on a....

... spring holiday! I'm shortly off on holiday to Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands. Hoping that it lives up to expectations, since it feels like I've been planning this trip for years. Flying in to Quito, the capital, then up to the cloudforest for a couple of days, back down through Quito for a flight to the amazon rainforest, 5 days in an indigenously owned lodge in the rainforest, back to Quito for a couple of days, and then 8 days sailing round Galapagos. Preparations have mostly consisted of running round Millets throwing random items into a basket and frantically searching for my mysteriously vanished spare camera battery - possibly would've been more useful to learn some spanish/become an expert on amazonian wildlife but I've been a bit distracted by my need to systematically review 40,000 potentially relevant abstracts before I went. Tried to read Darwin's Beagle diary but it was the unedited version and rambled on for pages and pages about his preparations for the voyage, Southampton, the size of his cabin, what he ate for breakfast etc. He should've published a blog...

Seeing is believing?

Annie Dillard: “Seeing, is of course very much a matter of verbalization. Unless I call my attention to what passes before my eyes, I simply won’t see it.”

Prisoners of hope

Recently I've been thinking about the phrase 'prisoners of hope' (it comes from Zechariah, a slightly obscure book in the Old Testament). What would it mean to be a prisoner of hope? Came across an interesting article on a similar subject, bits of it are copied below:

http://www.rzim.org/resources/jttran.php?seqid=89

Lewis characterizes Sehnsucht as an “intense longing” 3 for union with beauty and transcendence through a desired object—such as a “far-off country”—which is partly realized in the incarnation of hope and especially, Joy. Such an experience, though, leaves one trembling with an acute awareness that one is ultimately separated from the object for which one longs. This sense of separation leads Lewis to reason, “The human soul was made to enjoy some object that is never fully given—nay, cannot even be imagined—in our present mode of subject and spatio-temporal experience.” 4

Just a few days after my Ash Wednesday dream, and yes, after reading Jesus’ pointed reply to the blind men, I had another dream: A troubled young woman failed her exam and went to seek help from her professor. The teacher responded with kindness and then asked her a question, but I awoke before she answered. The question? “What is it that you want?”
In Lewis’ allegory The Pilgrim’s Regress and Augustine’s biography Confessions, the authors depict the power of longing, both for God and for God-substitutes—those things they sought to fill the void that they would discover only God could fill. Augustine and Lewis recognized that our longings can lead us to God. Conversely, our blindness to them actually directs us away from God, for if we cannot see what it is we seek, how will we know if we’ve stumbled upon it? Indeed, “What we do not long for,” observes Augustine, “can be the object neither of our hope nor of our despair.”

It has been my experience that for the follower of Christ, our blindness to what it is that we want, and ultimately, what it is that satisfies, is rooted either in fear or in submerging our persistent longings under the temporarily tranquil waters of “godly contentment.” I do not mean to suggest that contentment is not possible or even desirable, for the Scriptures, and particularly the Psalms, offer us a view of rest. One thinks, of course, of Psalm 23: “The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want…. He leads me beside still waters,” where the Hebrew reads literally, “beside waters of rest.” Yet only two chapters later, David is pursued by his enemies and cries out, “The troubles of my heart have multiplied.” So though we may find rest beside tranquil waters, they are “streams in the desert,” and their source flows from a far-off country. 5 ....

And so it is that we are pilgrims in Narnia, prisoners of hope 13 spying dreams of dawn in a far-off country, and its Light pierces us even in the Shadowlands. Like those before us, we are given signposts as reminders along the way and invitations to rest beside still waters, or to wrestle with God till daybreak. So who of us, half-hearted creatures though we often be, would hunger for anything less?

Lazarus

And an even longer gap this time! Life's still complicated, and my to-do list is still smirking at me. I've tried putting it on the naughty step, but it doesn't seem to help. And I'm still grumpy - and it's very possible that I've been so for the last 3 months!

This week is Holy Week - the run up to Easter - so I've been at more services and church events than usual. On Monday night we had the story of Lazarus, who Jesus brought back to life after he'd been dead several days. Momentarily leaving aside the - humungous (sp?) - doubts and questions that this raises, I wondered what Lazarus' attitude to death would have been after that. Would he be really blase about it - "oh yeah, I die all the time, it's no big deal" - or afraid, or looking forward to it, or what? I guess quite a lot depends on what, if anything, happened during those days he was physically dead, and, as with so many things, the bible doesn't say much about that.