Beneath the autumn sunshine

On Fridays I have the privilege of teaching an amazing group of students from Iran, Iraq, Yemen and Sudan.

Waking yesterday to bright sunshine and blue skies sparked the slightly crazy, last-minute idea to abandon existing plans (which may make it sound like I'm better prepared for my lessons than is often the case) and head out to the park instead.

The dreary grey outside the window this morning confirms it was a good call. The reactions of my students to being out in such a beautiful space, even more so.

Quite apart from a whole host of new vocabulary and expressions being learned, it generated opportunities for conversation and meaningful cultural exchange. Above all, perhaps, it provided the space and freedom to deepen friendships and to laugh together.

We ended the morning drinking tea while we each wrote "A Poem on a Post-It". This beautifully evocative poem (for which I can only take the credit for the final stanza) was the result.

The title of the poem, said with a smile by one student before she read her post-it poem to her peers, is, to me, an expression of their growing confidence as communicators. They laugh and call me an optimist for saying so, but my students are without doubt poets in their own right. They are able to beautifully express deep meaning in a language not their own.

Listen, and I will inspire you

As I explore places,

Confused and excited

Wondering about the meaning.

Chase the signs,

Looking for answers.

In the lake there are nice different things

I saw a duck swim and have two wings

I like the fountain with ripples for a feature

Near this is some evergreen and deciduous nature.

Green, brown mallard.

This fountain

Water ripples around

Inspired 

To make life nice

Water frequency

Harmony between swans' feathers and water's surface.

Sunshine reflects 

As diamonds on the surface.

A lake as the kingdom guarded by ducks and seagulls

There are lots of moorhens as the kings with crowns 

Settled on the lake like on their thrones.

We see many types of birds... 

Like us from our different countries.

 

After a while, lonely

It's nice to be in touch with them, so friendly

Try to keep your happiness

Maybe it will last

The frost was cold this morning and my thoughts were too full.

In the autumn open

I looked at the wiggle of the water and we paused for glitter gold reflection.

When we spoke about the word warm, 

I felt it.

Life is here and is going on despite all difficulties.

Ducks are swimming in their eternal house.

I am drowning in nature's beauties.

You can touch the soul of nature

Feel love and life.

You can feel life is going on: children, adults, pensioners,

Smile.

Laughter sparkles in the sunlight

Hidden here among deep roots 

Is the freedom 

To breathe.

(Written by Group 5 at Cannon Hill Park, November 2017)

Wearing white

In recent years I have always chosen to wear a white poppy in early November. On a good year, when it doesn't get destroyed by going through the washing machine, I am still wearing one by November 11th.

I wear a white poppy because it commemorates all the victims of war.

I know that those who wear a red poppy will have their own understanding of what it means to them, but the Royal British Legion who distribute them are very clear that it represents only British military deaths: no enemy combatants and no civilians. The failure to recognise those on the other side as equally victims of the systemic violence of war zones seems destined to continue a cycle of violent destruction. Whilst choosing not to remember the innocent civilians caught in the crossfire seems utterly absurd. As technology has advanced, warfare has become increasingly deadly, and it is most often civilians who have born the brunt: those who die, those who are injured, those who suffer as the result of destruction of infrastructure, and those who are displaced from their homes.

Wearing a white poppy is a way to mourn with and for all those who suffer as a result of armed conflict.

I also wear a white poppy because it carries with it an inherent commitment to challenge militarism and work for lasting peace.

In the total destruction of the western front, I can see how the survival of the apparently fragile poppies in the midst of a never-ending sea of mud and corpses served as a sign of hope: surrounded by destruction and death here was a bright glimmer of the possibility of new life. But while it may not always have been the case, the red poppy has, whether we like it or not, become a political symbol: it has become mixed up in questions of identity and patriotism; as well as with support for current military campaigns and the political ideology behind them.

Wearing a white poppy is a way to step outside any association with justifying ongoing military action and to commit to a search for peace.

It is only a symbol. But symbols are important. I will wear one again next year.

Reflecting on Communion (part 2)

As with my last one, this wasn't exactly written to be a blog post but hopefully it makes enough sense to be of interest to those who might be interested!

Reflections on Mark 14:12-26, the story of the Last Supper

The stories of the last supper are deeply familiar to many of us. Instead of looking here at the broad brushstrokes of the story: so familiar, so ingrained in our Christian tradition, I want to draw out and reflect on some of those little details which might just be more significant than they first appear and from them to raise some questions for us to consider together.

At the beginning of the gospel text we see Jesus sending off two disciples to prepare for the celebration of the Passover meal. Later in the passage he himself arrives it says, with the twelve, which suggests to me that these two forerunners were not among his closest friends but were others from his entourage. It makes it, I think, safe to assume, that the meal was shared with a wider community than just the twelve. It makes it, I think, important that we too think about how we invite those beyond our immediate friends to share our communion table.

Those two forerunners are sent to follow ‘a man carrying a water jug’ ... I don’t think they identified the right man by some kind of magic or mystery – a man carrying a water jug would have been an unusual sight in Jerusalem at that time. Water carrying was woman’s work. I don’t know what the significance of Jesus going to a home where a man was carrying water is, but I can’t help feeling there must be some meaning to this seemingly insignificant detail.

And so we come to the Passover meal, the Passover which is a family feast, but which Jesus celebrates in a borrowed room. Admittedly, we don’t know if this unnamed host was friend or stranger; but we do know that Jesus was not, in the traditional sense, the head of the household, the host; for all he takes on that role as the one who blesses and breaks the bread. I sometimes wonder whether the hosts themselves were present and if they were, what did they make of this turning around of the expectations, of this visitor placing himself in the father’s place?

As they eat together, Jesus speaks of the one who will betray him. He knows, too, undoubtedly, that the rest will abandon him and that for the last part of his journey he will tread a lonely road. But this, the one who will betray, and these, the ones who will not stay the course, are none the less invited not only to eat but “to dip bread into the bowl with me”. Do we too dare to invite those who we know will betray and abandon all that we stand for to serve and be served, to share the same meal from the same vessels?

And after bread there is wine. In the Passover meal wine is indeed drunk: four cups of it, each of which has a different symbolism. Blood, on the other hand, is very definitely not drunk, or indeed, in any way consumed. Quite the contrary: it is significant in the Passover story that the blood is poured out, daubed on door frames as a sign of God’s protection, but it is certainly not to be consumed: that is an important part of the whole Passover story. If, as is generally assumed, Jesus as well as taking the role of host, is taking upon himself the role of Passover lamb, the blood, surely, is the one part that should not be consumed, and yet these are his words “This is my blood of the covenant”: deeply powerful and, one can imagine, even offensive to his Jewish audience.  Deeply challenging, if we allow ourselves to really hear them from beyond the familiarity of ritual, even to us.

So what does it mean? Well, to be honest, I'm not sure I know. But perhaps it is the moment of a reuniting of the flesh and the blood of the lamb of the Passover story – the flesh which offered physical strength for the journey, the blood which offered God’s protection, brought into one in the person of Jesus. Or, perhaps it is that God’s protection: previously seen as an external reality from a distant “out there” sort of God is to be consumed and internalised in this new understanding of a now present “in here” sort of God. Perhaps it is something else, I suggest we should certainly think about it.

Whatever its symbolism, as Jesus drinks the wine at the meal table, he states that he will not drink of it again until “the day when I drink it anew in the kingdom of God.” According to the gospel accounts, that next sip of wine, that ‘drinking it anew’ happens not after the resurrection in some glorious new reality but on the cross as he suffers and as he dies. Is this then where we find the kingdom of God? Not in some beautiful, imagined future where all is well, but in this messy reality of daring to carry the power of love to its absolute limits, in the making visible of the extreme depths of pain of truly unconditional love? 

I want to leave you with a final question: If this, the cross, is heaven and this is where we find it; if this is the end of the last supper, of the Passover feast, of the communion table: what now for how we commemorate it today?