Coffee Theology

Wake up in Premier Inn somewhere around Peterborough. Drink first coffee in six weeks (inferior to Oasis coffee, natch, but still good). Drive to Spalding, attend baptism of a 10-year-old friend of mine.  Amazing. (She thinks I am awesome at Candy Crush, which isn't true, but nice to hear). Eat enormous pub meal. Drive three hours home to Southend. Print an entire ream of quiz sheets in church office (note to self: don't tell finance administrator how much colour copying you did). Run chocolate-themed quiz night in pub next door to church.   Annoy a team of ministers (including line manager) who play their joker on the 'Easter story' round, only  to discover that the questions have only the most tenuous links to Easter story.  (So as not to give the church teams an advantage.  Clearly.) Lose voice. Raise £200 for food bank and suspended meals. Collapse in bed. Remember I am supposed to be blogging today. A good day.

The SS hanged two Jewish men and a youth in front of the whole camp.  The men died quickly, but the death throes of the youth lasted for half an hour.  ‘Where is God?  Where is he?’ someone asked behind me.  As the youth still hung in torment in the noose after a long time, I heard the man call again, ‘Where is God now?’  And I heard a voice in myself answer: ‘Where is he?  He is here.  He is hanging there on the gallows.’ In his memoir, Night , Elie Wiesel describes his experiences in Auschwitz.  He writes: Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed… Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I for...

I'm now up to chapter 57 in Eat, pray, love  and I'm finally getting a feel for Liz Gilbert's understanding of her faith in God.  During her time in Rome she explored pleasure, specifically good food; at her ashram in India she is exploring devotion.  This is her view of religious practice: Every religion in the world operates on the same common understandings of what it means to be a good disciple - get up early and pray to your God, hone your virtues, be a good neighbour, respect yourself and others, master your cravings.  We all agree that it would be easier to sleep in, and many of us do, but for millennia there have been others who choose instead to get up before the sun and wash their faces and go to their prayers.  And then fiercely try to hold on to their devotional convictions throughout the lunacy of another day. She then goes on to comment on the nature of faith: If faith were rational, it wouldn't be - by definition - faith.  Faith is belie...

Our church sanctuary has been transformed overnight.  Instead of a conventional worship space with rows of comfortable chairs, the space is criss-crossed with anti-climb heras fencing and barbed wire.  Fixed to the fencing are beautiful black and white images of migrants from refugee camps in Calais and Lebanon.  The photographer has sought to re-create the stations of the cross through images of the people he met in these camps. The photographs were commissioned by Premier Christianity: www.premierchristianity.com  .  Their website explains: The Stations is an artistic re-interpretation of the traditional 'stations of the cross' through the images and stories of today's refugees. Creative director Marksteen Adamson met and made friends with many of the refugees he photographed in Lebanon, Calais and the UK. I've walked through the exhibition once and I'm planning to go again - there's just so much to take in.  This mo...

One of the things that has frustrated me about Eat, pray, love is that I have got nearly halfway through the book before there has been any mention of which religion Liz Gilbert is following.  She talks about yoga, ashrams and gurus, but a quick Google search tells me that these are not restricted to Hinduism.  I wonder whether the fact that there is no mention early on is the answer to my question; Gilbert, like many westerners exploring spirituality, does not feel the need to categorise her spiritual search in this way.  She is not subscribing to a religion but exploring spiritual practices.  She explains that, at the ashram in India which she visits for several weeks, there are Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, Christians and Muslims.  She would probably agree with the sentiment expressed by George Harrison, who embraced the Hare Krishna tradition: "It does not matter what you call Him, just as long as you call." I am finding Gilbert's descriptions of meditation q...

This is a selfie taken, I think, in Damascus.  I went on a month-long trip to Beirut, Lebanon to visit a wonderful missionary family in February 2008.  While I was there, I had the opportunity to go on a day trip to Damascus.  I am so grateful to have had this opportunity - who knows when tourists will return to beautiful Syria? Reading Eat, pray, love  has made me reflect on my own experiences of travelling solo.  The first time was probably when I was 20; I went travelling in China with a friend, but she had to leave a week early.  I spent a week in Beijing on my own.  I was nervous, but it was fantastic.  During that week I managed to leave a bag containing my debit card on a bus, leave my passport in a department store, and run out of Chinese currency, the nearest place I could change money being a bus ride away.  I had to look in every pocket for coins to scrape together for the bus fare.  But, you know, if I had been with someone e...

In her book Eat, pray, love , Liz Gilbert explains how her understanding of prayer is challenged.  During her gruelling divorce she prays often, but doesn't feel it right to ask God to change her situation. Her thinking is that, if she is going through difficult times, maybe God wants her to go through them, in order to learn something.  Praying for God to change the circumstances seems like a weakness of faith.  Instead, she prays that God would give her the strength to cope with whatever life throws at her. A friend tells Liz that this is stupid - that it is fine for her to ask God for specific things she needs.  Liz describes a bizarre conversation she has in the car with this friend, where Liz actually writes a 'petition' to God in her notebook, asking him to get her husband to sign the divorce papers.  The very painful process of separating from each other has dragged on for eighteen months by this point, and if the papers are not signed they will have...