Metropolitan Religion Study Group

I'm just back from the second meeting of this grandly titled group. Participants were once again from a wide variety of backgrounds and with a wide variety of aims - so it's not yet obvious whether or not it will gel. However it did make me consider what my own interest is - something about the influences on my own and others' faith(s) & spirituatlity(ies) & the influence of my own and others' faith(s) and spirituality(ies).

I'm also left wondering if we should be talking about metropolis in singular or plural - would it be truer to say Birmingham? - after all that is what we were all talking about & to generalise to all metropolises (leaving aside the question of whether or not Birmingham ranks as one) neither helpful nor accurate - as we could say about many generalisations - though that's not to say that there would be no parallels in other places - but the extent and particularity of these would be very different in New York and Delhi.

Jacky

Is work a four letter word?

I have been reflecting on what work is. (My helpful family suggest that it is a four letter word, but I'm not so sure.)

Yesterday I had a day off. In the morning I went orienteering - ie running through muddy woods - and enjoyed what many of you wouldn't want to do, however much it paid. Then in the afternoon I finished our tax returns - definitely not my favourite way of spending time - I'd much rather be working - if that means doing what I get paid for- which is why we're so close to the deadline. I can always find something else more important or at least more urgent to do than tax.

And where does the importance/value of what we are doing come in - or for that matter the amount of effort it entails - which of course may be very different for different people. And then what about money and all those folk who were preaching this morning and not being paid for it. Or how about those church members who don't see how coming to a coffee morning can be working?

And how about those things that some of us love, some hate and others are indifferent to eg cooking (haggis tonight as it's Burns' night) . Or the fact that we do many things to different standards - is a cordon bleu meal of more value than one which simply fills you up? And does that influence whether or not we can entitle it work?

Is blogging work?

Jacky

A woman preaches the first sermon President Obama listens to

Don't know whether you have seen that a woman, Rev Dr Sharon Watkins, preached at the first service Obama attended as president. Watkins is general minister of the Disciples in the USA. You can read the text of the sermon here and listen to it here. She's the first woman to preach at an official inaugural event.

Thinking about women preaching reminded me of Susan Durber's book Preaching like a Woman. I enjoyed it a great deal and wondered whether some of you had read it as well.
What's it like for us to preach like a woman? A huge privilege and yet also sometimes a burden perhaps.
So who would you like to preach a sermon for? Anyone in particular you'd like to listen to you and what might your text be?
If there is anyone out there reading the blog maybe we can begin a discussion in the comments about how we go about preparing for preaching and worship. Go on dare to leave a comment and tell a friend about the blog as well!

Christ at Martha's and Mary's in Bethany

Gwen Smithies prepared and gave each of us small "treasure boxes" at the women in ministries meeting. They contained various things to help us with our scrapbooking enterprises and also for each of us a postcard of a painting inspired by a biblical narrative.
We met in twos to discuss our pictures to tell the story told in them. Mine was the adoration of the shepherds. Telling the story of the pictures was an exercise in observation and imagination, in looking and seeing. I realise now with hindsight that groping for the story in the pictures was also an exercise in living with ambiguity; the pictures often told a different story from the ones we remembered and offered a different perspective. I really appreciated how the seminar encouraged us to think about ambiguity rather than easy answers, encouraging us to narrate the Bible's stories as a method for living with ambiguity.
The other person in my pair had this wonderful painting of Jesus at Martha and Mary's house in Bethany by Vermeer. This painting which I don't rememeber having seen before had quite an impact on me. The way that all of the light and energy of the moment of the conversation seems to be between Jesus and Martha. Fascinating too that the table dressed in altar-like white has bread that Martha has brought - she does rather seem to be presiding over it.
It is decades since Dorothee Sölle remarked how important it is for women to hold Martha and Mary together as biblical role models for ourselves, yet I wondered how we also internalise damaging narratives - putting ourselves down if we stop "doing" and try "being" - putting ourselves down if we try to do too much. Looking at the light and energy in this interpretation by Vermeer helped me reflect on and progress in Sölle's direction a bit.
Meanwhile others in our group did some brilliant scrapbooking around the narrative this picture tells. Now that reminds me I must send my fellow posters details about how to post stuff here so we can get to see some of the pictures taken in Windermere.

Advent reflections from Manchester on Vision4Life

Sarah Brewerton shared the Advent resource that she and others in the churches in Chorlton coordinated by getting people to write a reflection for each day. It was then distributed in the local community during Advent. You can download the whole booklet here from the Vision4Life website. A really great idea resource and also a brilliant idea for local community work.

Gathering memories as living stones

Towards the end of our last morning at the women in ministries meeting we gathered in the garden room of the Windermere Centre to bring together some of our rememberings. We picked up stones and laid them down again, confessed and sang and rose as a forgiven people; we exchanged thoughts and insights and memories, sharing words and silence; we connected and communed with God and one another.
In remembrance of Christ we shared bread and wine, as God's living stones we lit candles and prayed. And we sang and were blessed and later made our way homewards, taking remembered stories back with us into our communities where day by day we seek to weave a narrative that is bread and not stone.

Some publications by Janet Lees to help us remember the Bible

I Thought I would begin to post the rest of the reading list that Janet gave us while we were meeting beginning with things Janet has published herself on pedagogy and using the the remembered Bible in community work. As I'm about to take a plane back to Geneva the links here are not all they could be but ast least you,ve got the details here of some of Janet's publications. The rest of the book list will go up over the next few days. Enjoy reading! love Jane.

Lees, J (2007a). Word of Mouth: using the remembered Bible for building community. Glasgow: Wild Goose Publications.

Lees, J (2007). Remembering the bible as a critical pedagogy of the oppressed. In GO West (ed) Reading Other-wise: Socially Engaged Biblical Scholars Reading with their Local Communities. Atlanta: Society for Biblical Literature.

Lees, J (2007). Enabling the body. In H Avalos; SJ Melcher and J Schipper (eds). This Abled Body: Rethinking the Bible and Disability Studies. Atlanta: Society for the Study of Biblical Literature.

Lees, J and Horwath, J (2008). ‘Religious Parents… Just Want the Best for
Their Kids’: Young People’s Perspectives on the Influence of Religious Beliefs on Parenting. Children and Society (in press)

Lisa Isherwood's Cosmic Walk

Some of the readings Kate Gray used for her morning's meditation were from the Cosmic Walk by Lisa Isherwood who is Professor of Feminist Liberation Theologies at the University of Winchester and is editor of The Feminist Theology journal; she is also Vice President of the European Society of Women in Theological Research. She is the author of more than 15 books including most recently, The Fat Jesus.

Learning by heart is not the same as remembering

On our last morning in Windermere we tried to draw the different strands of individual, communal and biblical narrative together. We looked at the beautiful and powerful scrapbooking pages various members of our group had made and the way that this seemingly simple form could help us do some of the teasing out and weaving together again of the strands of our narratives and the Bible's narratives.
One of the things we reflected on is that the remembered biblical narrative is not the same as a narrative learnt by rote or by heart - although of course the remembered text may be fed by those narraitves.
Of course it is possible to use remembered biblical narratives to compare later with the written text - or one of the written texts but it's also important to do this in such a way that it doesn't make anyone feel that their remembered narrative is in any way wrong. One of the most radical aspects to the pedagogy that Janet was sharing with us is her insistence that the remembered text is also authoritative.
I shall try and ponder this in a further post in coming days. In the meantime I have been thinking about how sometimes we learn quite destructive narratives by heart and never allow life giving narratives to really take hold of us. I've been wondering about this in terms of the biblical narrative as well - through the official church lectionaries and so on many people will only ever come into contact with those parts of the Bible that the church chooses to give value to for Sunday worship (reducing the Hebrew Scriptures to bits if Genesis, Isaiah, the Psalms and book of Jonah for instance!). In some ways the church and its tradition has conditioned our remembering by making those choices.

Written and posted by Jane.

God of an awful lot of adjectives

In case anyone's wondering, here is the list of adjectives (in semi-alphabetical order) Wendy White and Pat Oliver placed before the word 'God' for our prayerful consideration at Windermere:
ABRASIVE CREATING FEELING ABSORBING CREATIVE FIT ACCESSIBLE CUDDLY FLOWING ACCOMPANYING CYCLING FORGIVING ACHING DANCING FORMIDABLE AGELESS DAZZLING FUN-LOVING ALARMING DEAREST GARRULOUS ALMIGHTY DEBUNKING GENEROUS ANIMATING DELICIOUS GENTLE ARTISAN DEVOTED GOLFING ARTISTIC DIFFICULT GOSSAMER AWESOME DISABLED GOURMET BEAUTIFUL DISRUPTIVE GRACEFUL BLAZING DISTRACTING GRITTY BRACING DISTURBING GRUMPY BRIGHT DODGY GUIDING BROKEN DOWN TO EARTH HEALING BUSKING DRAMATIC HEARING CAPABLE DREAMING HIDDEN CARESSING DREAMY HOLY CARING DYNAMIC HOMELESS CELEBRATING ELATED HOSPITABLE CHALLENGING ELOQUENT HUNGRY CHANGELESS EMBRACING IDIOSYNCRATIC CHEERING ENERGISING IMMEASURABLE CHERISHING ENERGETIC IMMEDIATE COLOURFUL ENABLING IMPATIENT COMFORTING ENCHANTING IMPERFECT/PERFECT COMMUNAL ENGAGING IMPIOUS COMPANIONABLE ENRAPTURED IMPISH COMPLEX ENTERTAINING IMPUDENT CONSTANT EUPHORIC INCLUSIVE COOL EXPECTANT INFATUATED CRAFTING EXPERIMENTING INFORMING CRAZY FACETED INSPIRING SENSUAL SHOCKING INTERFERING SHINING SHOPPING INTOXICATING QUESTIONING PLAYFUL INTRUDING RAGING POLITICAL INVITING RECYCLING PONDEROUS INVOLVED REFLECTIVE PRACTICAL IRREPRESSABLE REJECTED PREGNANT JEALOUS RESPECTFUL PROACTIVE JOY-GIVING RESTLESS PROGRESSIVE JOYFUL ROGUISH PROMPTING JUST ROMANTIC PROTECTING KINDLING SACRAMENTAL PROVOCATIVE LAUGHING SCARY PUKKA LIBERATING SEDUCTIVE PUZZLING LISTENING SILENT QUIRKY LONGING SORTED TOPSY-TURVY LOVING SPIRITED TOUCHING MELODIOUS STROPPY TOUCHY-FEELY MISUNDERSTOOD STUBBORN TRAVELLING MODEST SUNNY TOUGH MORPHING SUPPORTIVE UNATTRACTIVE MOTHERING SURPRISING UNCOMPROMISING MURMURING SYPATHETIC UNFAIR MUSICAL TACTILE UNFASHIONABLE MYSTERIOUS TEASING UNIQUE NETWORKING TECHNICAL UNRESTING NOURISHING TEMPTING UNTOUCHABLE NURTURING TIMELESS WEEPING OBSTINATE THOUGHTFUL WELCOMING OUTRAGEOUS WILD OVERWHELMING WISE PAINED WORKING PAINTING VERNACULAR PARTICIPATING PASSIONATE PERSONAL PESTERING VERSATILE VULNERABLE
Any other suggestions while we're at it?