Coffee Theology

Been thinking some more about enemies following Bishop Nikolai's prayer from yesterday.  Who is my enemy? Someone I find it hard to get on with?  We all know that just because someone is 'not my kind of person' that doesn't mean they're a bad person. Someone who criticises me?  My more task-focused friends tell me that criticism can be a good thing as it helps us to know how we can improve.  I accept this rationally, while emotionally I find it hard to embrace criticism as a good thing! Someone who opposes me?  But we have a political system based on opposing parties who hold each other to account.  Opponents help each other to think their views through with rigour.  Occasionally, an MP crosses the floor, convinced that it is actually their opponent who has got it right.  Opponents can disagree while respecting each other. Someone who hates me?  Some of us care a lot what others think of us.  I wish I cared less.  Can it ever be a g...

Great contemplative service this evening focusing on the theme 'love your enemy'.  Steve shared with us this prayer, written by Serbian Bishop Nikolai Velimirovic, who was arrested for speaking out against Nazism and imprisoned in Dachau.  I'm not sure I could pray this prayer, but it's given me a lot to think about: Bless my enemies, O Lord.  Even I bless them and do not curse them.   Enemies have driven me into your embrace more than friends have.  Friends have bound me to earth; enemies have loosed me from earth and have demolished all my aspirations in the world.  Enemies have made me a stranger in worldly realms and an extraneous inhabitant of the world. Just as a hunted animal finds safer shelter than an unhunted animal does, so have I, persecuted by enemies, found the safest sanctuary, having ensconced myself beneath Your tabernacle, where neither friends nor enemies can slay my soul. Bless my enemies, O Lord.  Even I bless and do not curse them...

Having had a lovely few days' holiday, I got sick and I've spent much of the last two days in bed (apologies for the lack of new posts).  Being ill in bed presents a great opportunity for rereading Harry Potter, however, and I realised that I've so far left out one of the best bits. 'Expecto patronum' is a spell Harry learns early on to defend himself against the dementors.  Dementors are nasty creatures which feed off human misery and fear.  If you get too near a dementor, first you feel cold and clammy, and then you feel more and more anxious and depressed as you start to dwell on all your worst memories and deepest fears.  But Harry learns how to summon a patronus, a sort of guardian made of positive energy, which usually takes the form of an animal.  A patronus can shield you from any number of dementors, provided you can summon it, and you do this by focusing on a single happy memory.  Although the patronus is a fictional creature which guards against ...

Out of curiosity, I picked up some catholic leaflets in a church we visited today.  I was hoping to come up with some great inter-denominational insight for this blog, but instead I came across a catholic baptismal rule I'd never heard before.  Apparently a baby who is to be baptised a Catholic can't have a name which is 'unchristian'.  Hmm.  In the past, apparently, you had to have a saint's name (at least as a middle name), but now you're OK as long as the name is not 'foreign to Christian sentiment'.  So what kind of name would that be?   I came across a website which gave the example 'Lucifer' as a name which is unchristian and which strongly suggests the child will not be brought up Catholic.  Well that makes sense.  It also suggested the names Hitler and Stalin as other 'unchristian' names.  Interesting.  While I would in no way want to defend either Hilter or Stalin, are these names 'unchristian'?  There could be thousands ...

I'm in Paris with my retired French teacher mother, who is a big fan of Jean-Paul Sartre.  Sartre famously wrote 'hell is other people'.  I certainly got an insight into this yesterday when hubby and I queued for 75 minutes to get into the Musee D'Orsay in the rain, a wait which was exacerbated by some sort of strike.  You visit France often enough and you get to know the word for 'strike'.  Once inside the museum, which is fabulous and actually is worth a 75 minute wait, we made a beeline for the coffee bar, along with the 700 other people who had been queuing for over an hour in the rain.  Then I visited the facilities - for another predictable queue outside the ladies' toilets.  So many of us, all clamouring for our needs to be met.  L'enfer, c'est les autres! Mum insists, however, that this is a misunderstanding of Sartre's original meaning.  Apparently what he was trying to say was not that being around other people was hellish in itself, bu...

Another visit to a magnificent church today, this time the Sacre Coeur in Montmartre.  Once again, we walked around the inside while mass was being celebrated with a faithful few in a side chapel.  I wanted to take a photo of the votive candles, but photography was not allowed, so I was a good girl and followed the rules.  For 10 euros you can light a candle so large it would probably burn all day. There is something beautifully symbolic about the lighting of a candle, especially in a dark church.  Light in darkness; smoke rising to heaven; the fragility of the small flame representing one human being's hopes, desires, memories, griefs.   Ten euros does seem a bit steep though...

I'm having a few days' holiday in Paris, which is tres bien indeed.  This afternoon we went into Notre Dame, and realised once we got inside that there was a service going on.  Hundreds of tourists walked the one-way route around the inside of the magnificent cathedral while a priest gave a sermon to a large crowd of congregants.  It felt quite bizarre, observing a service of worship from the sidelines.  We were surprised they let the tourists in during vespers.  An evangelistic impulse, I wonder, or merely pragmatism? This banner was hanging to the left of the altar.  The title reads: 'Come, he is calling you!', and at the bottom there is a quotation from someone whose name I couldn't really read, which goes something like this: 'Listen for the Lord speaking in your life; be attentive to the needs of those around you.'  Inspiring stuff.