The tension of the in-between

Some of the people I know are out protesting today..... and I want to be with them..... but instead I'm at home preparing for our service tomorrow about the Beatitudes, which in many ways are exactly what those who are protesting are protesting for - a way of living and moving forward in our chaotic political world that recognises that those who are most broken are those who need lifting up rather than a way of living that, in an effort to put an end to the Brexit chaos, leaves those who are most broken even more uncertain of what the future will look like. 

I stand with the protesters in mind even if I'm not there in body. I want to feel like I'm doing something. I want to feel like I can be one small cog in the machine that helps this country move forward in a better way - a different way - the way that lifts up the poor and the mourning, the peacemakers and the persecuted...... but I feel helpless right now. 

I worry about what will happen as a result of a no deal Brexit. I worry that the community I live in will feel the effects so hard it will be bigger than a punch in the guts. I worry that we have spent so much time laughing at what we thought was a bumbling buffoon from Eton that we have missed the intelligence of our new Prime Minister carving this path we are hurtling down at the moment. I worry for those I encounter every week who are broken and don't have much right now, for whom the uncertainty of the consequences of a no deal Brexit is another thing that has to be faced in a world that hasn't been very helpful so far.... 

How can we stand up for justice as we head down this path? How can we be more than that feeling of helplessness and despair that rises up every time we watch the news? 

The Northumbria Community Meditation of the day for today could not have come at more of a right time. William Brodrick, monk-author writes that (click on link for whole quote):

We have to be candles,

burning between,

hope and despair,

faith and doubt,

life and death,

all the opposites....

I'm not sure I'm going to ever completely understand how we have got to the place we are today. I'm not going to know what the consequences are until the things actually happen. I want to be shouting with the protesters, making my discontented voice heard. 

What I do know, is that I need to live in the tension that leaves space for lament and presents hope that this is not it. I believe that whatever happens in the coming weeks and months, there is and will be a way out - through changed behaviour, through sacrificial love, through continually drumming in protest against what almost seems inevitable, through laying down what we have so that others can have more, through prayer and lament and most of all through the deep deep love of Jesus who shows and tells us that there is more than this, different to this, a new way that brings hope where there is despair, faith where there is doubt and life where there is death.... and if, as we live in the tension between, we can show even just a little bit of that love - if we can begin to live in the way that Jesus sets out in the Sermon on the Mount, if we can continue to be encouraged to stand up and say this is not right .... we might, just might begin to turn the way it's all heading upside down. 

I cannot tell how silently he suffered
As with His peace He graced the place of tears,
Or how his heart upon the Cross was broken,
The crown of pain to three and thirty years. 
But this I know, He heals the broken hearted,
And stays our sin, and calms our lurking fear,
And lifts the burden from the heavy laden,
For yet the Saviour, Saviour of the world, is here. 

(v2 from the hymn 'I Cannot Tell')

That wall we all rejected.....

And slowly it builds
Brick by brick
That wall we all rejected

And the rhetoric filters through
The drive by threat
They're taking our jobs, our houses

Go home, you're not welcome here

Standing back we listen
We shake our fist
And we go on as it all dies down

And the rhetoric filters through
The chaos of the camps
They threaten our drivers, it's not safe

Go back, you're not welcome here

Standing back we watch
We send our cast offs
And go by as they're all moved on

And the rhetoric filters through
Bring back  our control
Close the doors, put the biggest bolts on.

The door is closed, you're not welcome here

Standing back we hear
As experts cry out
And we go on as it all rolls on

And the rhetoric filters through
Our exit door is open
Now go - the entrance door is tight shut

Even you are not welcome any more

Standing back we hear cries
As blame is dished out
And those we live beside leave in fear

And slowly it builds
Brick by Brick 
That wall we rejected - it's here

As we look out from the UK, we so often see what we hear is proposed to happen across the Atlantic and we despair and shout out and say that 'it wouldn't happen here'. However, as we have seen this week as voices rise up over the injustice over the Windrush deportation crisis we've got to test our own motives, test our own hearts.... and choose to stand up and stop these growing barriers before they become seemingly impenetrable and our society has lost his ability to welcome at all. This article from the Baptist Times talks about why we should be angry over the Windrush Crisis and what to do about it.  

The prophet Amos says these words from God to the people of Israel, challenging their focus:

"I hate, I despise your religious festivals; and your assemblies are a stench to me..... Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. BUT let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never failing stream"  Amos 5:21, 23-24

Stand up for justice. Stand up because God....

Carry on Crunching

I went to uni in Leeds and had the privilege(!) of being in Bodington Hall. This meant being part of a community of students in a studenty enclave with its own shop and bar and culture just north of Leeds ring road four miles away from campus. This meant that to make a 9am lecture I had to set off stupidly early because the road from Bodington to the Parkinson steps was the notorious traffic jam that is Otley Road. I lived in Bodington for two years and for the last six months I gave up on the bus and walked..... Bodington is sadly no more and I think the morning bus journey may have something to do with it. 

That early start is not good for not-a-morning person like me and I rarely managed breakfast before I got on, so on my last minute dash to calculus lectures as I arrived I would nip into the maths coffee bar and buy a bag of salt and vinegar McCoys and a Diet Coke. Then sitting by the door in one of the Roger Stevens building lecture halls I would try and eat my (man) crisps without making a sound. A technique that involved breaking down the big crisps and sucking the flavour off as they melted in your mouth. 

How I would have loved to be able to buy quiet crisps.

Now, nearly two decades later, my dream has come true. My sixth or seventh favourite type of crisps, Doritos (but only the really hot ones please for me), it was announced this week are releasing quiet crisps, especially for ladies like me who struggle with the crunch of the crisp and the cheesy fingers that Dorito loving men value and celebrate so unshamedly as they crunch and savour those crisps that have been letting women down for so long. 

Lady crisps. For ladies. The right size to fit in our delicate hands and our hand bags and the right level of noise to make us inconspicuous and able to fade into the background as the men eat the proper crisps in the proper way. Real men eat real crisps. 

@Sarcasticluther shared this on twitter last week. It reminds us what true ladies are like. If this was written today it would have 'eats lady crisps' on the bottom.

A page from the workbook used in the Christian Charm classes I took when I was 12.
Feel free and score this little gem for yourselves. But be honest. pic.twitter.com/iWQ1wwJZ03

— Nadia Bolz-Weber (@Sarcasticluther) January 26, 2018

The thing that riles me about lady crisps are the same things that rile me about this list and the same things that cause me to explode when I get called a lady-vicar and cause me to sound like a steam train when I  read or hear things that refer to ministers as solely male (and she, and she, and she....)..... it puts us in a subset that is to be seen and not heard. Or not even seen.... 

Women are the quiet coach on the train, the ones in the corner taking minutes, the ones who are only there to make up the numbers, the ones who have no opinion of their own, the ones who cannot teach men, the ones who must listen to what their husband says before they can vote, the ones who don't need equal pay, the ones who are told they are making a fuss when they work up the confidence to declare #metoo when they are very aware that they will be shot down within minutes. 

It's 100 years today since some women in the UK finally got the vote. It was a significant victory in a long and ongoing battle for women to be seen as humans with their own voice and opinions. I can't imagine what life was like for those women, I know that life is so much better now, and I am grateful for all that they did. 

Those women were heard when they disrupted - when they began to stop people from continuing with the status quo. They were seen by many as troublemakers and criminals. They were sent to prison for their actions.... yet they kept on. Where they felt like nobodies they stood up and screamed at the top of their voices - no, this is not good enough - I am somebody and my voice matters. 

Whenever I hit a barrier. Whenever I am told that I should not because I am female. Whenever I am spoken over, written out, ignored.... I think back to people like the suffragettes, like the women who paved the way to enable me to be ordained, like those who have fought for equal rights, for justice.... and I will not become a nobody, because I know that my voice, my vote, my call is something that is given to me because I am me - a human being, made uniquely beautiful, uniquely strong, made in the image of God. 

By all means, leader of Doritos, make quiet crisps, but make them for lecture halls and libraries and theatre shows (there is definitely a need there!) but not for those quiet delicate ladies that some people, still, 100 years after women's voices were valued in such an important way, think we should be. Because we're not and we will keep on standing up and fighting for justice, just as our ancestors did, and just as our descendants will, so long as inequality exists.