Winter Wonderland

Well the snow has finally arrived! It started yesterday afternoon while I was in social ethics and continued through the night and now it looks like this outside:

There is a white blanket that has covered the world we know and made it into an ice garden of muffled sounds crunching under foot. It’s amazing how peaceful falling snow can make one feel. It was quite hard to concentrate in class yesterday as the snow trickled down from the heavens.

There are some students that have never experienced snow. They’ve seen it in the movies, but this white blanket we find ourselves in is quite foreign to them. Avril from Australia is one of those people and she and Siaquoia from Liberia have been having lots of fun in the snow.

Some of us decided to take a walk this morning and enjoy the crisp air and take in the untainted snow before it disappears. We found the ecumenical snow man that Siaquoia and Ernesto from the Philippines made last night. There were no coals or carrots available so they used rocks and a bit of orange peel. Very fitting.

Those of us taking the walk tried to make a snow man of our own, but the snow is too dry and we were not able to pack it into balls; it must have been more rain than snow yesterday because I think the other snow man turned out quite well, even with a lopsided head.

After a nice walk, taking time to have a snow ball fight and make snow angels we made it back to Petite Bossey with little more than wet boots from stepping in a puddle that wasn’t quite frozen, we are buckling down to finish papers that are due on Friday and study for next weeks exams. Our time is slowly slipping away, as time always does, and I am enjoying this last month of my stay here at Bossey and feeling nostalgic about our beginnings.  These people and this place will always hold a special place in my heart.  We will never again be in this community as it is, but it will continue to change us as we return to our homes.

The snow should last through the weekend, but it will probably melt next week. Too bad, I rather like this white stuff, feels like Switzerland.

Avril and Nora playing in the snow and me making a snow angel.

Victor (Nigeria), Anna (UK), Linda (UK), Leonard (Burkina Fosso), Avril (Australia), Nora (Germany), Gerard (Burkina Fosso)

European Tour

I am now back at Bossey after a three week trek across Europe.  Now this may sound glamorous and exciting (at points yes it could be described as that) but it was also exhausting and I am glad to be back in my room and not living out of a suit case.

I began my adventure in Rome with my family.  This stop included climbing the endless steps to the cupola of St. Peter’s cathedral, wandering about mouth agape in the Sistine Chapel, and attending a service held by the pope (he was about the size of an action figure from where we sat.)  Next we traveled to Florence where we once again climbed endless stairs this time up to the top of the Duomo.  This was actually more impressive than St. Peter’s and we were able to enjoy the view more completely because there were significantly fewer people willing to make the trek up.  We saw the David and spent some time wandering through the market, as well as enjoying wonderful Italian meals that met my older brother’s very high expectations.  To end our little tour, we barely caught the train that delivered us to Zurich six hours later where we spent Christmas eve exploring the Swiss city and ending with a Christmas eve service at the Reformed French church and meat fondue up on a mountain.  The service was great and it was nice to be able to worship with my family and celebrate the reason for the season.

My family left early Christmas day to catch their flights back to Dallas and I took another train to Paris.  It was by far my worst Christmas ever.  Christmas is a time to be with family, worshiping and celebrating the culmination of Advent, but instead my family had left and I was on a train to a city where I knew no one and was not exactly sure what was waiting at the end of the trip.  I arrived in Paris around 10:30 pm and instead of lugging my luggage on the foreign metro system, I took a taxi and was dropped in front of my hotel.  The hotel was awful.  The pictures that I viewed when making my selection on line were very generous in their representation of the “living” space and when I entered my room I couldn’t help but cry.  Exhaustion over took me and I called home and went to bed.  The next morning I awoke nearly frozen and when I went to take a shower in the dark dank closet of a bathroom, there was no hot water.  I was meeting my friend from Bossey, Avril who was visiting friends in Paris, so I got dressed and went down stairs where I complained at the desk and waited for Avril and her friends so that we could go to Chartres.  The man at the desk informed me that it was an old hotel (NO really?! I couldn’t tell!) and that I needed to let the water run because it was coming up from the basement.  I informed him that I had done that, but apparently 10 minutes was not sufficient and that I needed to wait 15 to 20 minutes (can we say wasteful!)  I left annoyed, but hopeful that I would enjoy my day of sight seeing and come back to hot water.  Avril, her friend Heidi from Australia, and I took the train to Chartres and spent the day wandering about the cathedral and although I attempted to take pictures, it was much too dark and I was unable to get a good shot of the beautiful stain glass windows.  Unfortunately I did not have hot water and promptly checked out the following morning and walked up the street to another hotel that was much more expensive, but provided a warm place to sleep for one night.  Having Avril and Heidi in Paris was a blessing and we spent the week sight seeing and I was welcomed into the home of their friends Peter and Moreg.  They were wonderful people and I was able to find another hotel and spend the remaining 3 days in Paris with a warm bed and a hot shower.  Highlights of the Paris tour, included the Louvre, Muse d’Orsey, the Cloony museum, and Notre Dame where I once again waited in a long line to trek up numerous steps to catch a tower view of the city.

I flew to London on New Year’s eve and arrived at Anna’s house with about an hour to rest and then off to dinner and New Year’s celebrations.  I spent the evening with Anna, her husband Nigel and his mother Jill.  The meal and company made up for the terrible service at dinner and we headed out in attempts to see the fire work spectacular that was to take place along the river Thames.  We ran into a sea of people and worked our way down to the center of a mass where we were close enough to hear the fire works, but were unable to see them due to an inconveniently placed building.  Needless to say it was quite a mess and we finally worked our way back to their home around 3:30 am.  I got about 4 hours of sleep and was up early the next morning packing and heading out to meet another friend at the air port.  The rest of the week went smoothly.  We toured the city seeing many museums and major monuments and I thoroughly enjoyed being able to communicate with complete strangers in a polite and eloquent manner.

A great part of the richness of my Bossey experience has been worshiping in other ways.  While in London I attended an Epiphany service at St. Paul’s  on Saturday night.  It was a communion service (which was good for the soul because communion services have been few and far between here at Bossey.)  I had a great sense of awe and reverence as I sat in the great cathedral felt at home which is something that I have come to treasure in the state of unrest that is my current life.  My soul was filled with a sense of warmth that drifted up towards the apex of the dome and settled in the haze of incense and wonder that covered all that worshiped below.  That experience was the highlight of my European tour and a perfect ending to a rather hectic holiday.

I saw many cathedrals as I wound my way through many countries, but I think the best way to see a cathedral and appreciate its splendor is to find a time to sit and worship and celebrate the unending presence of God in our midst.

May this new year bring hope and renewal to all God’s people.

‘Tis the Season

Well it’s that time of year again and with that statement I wonder what that means. If I were in the US, I would be buying presents for my family and friends, writing final papers, going to parties and church gatherings, lighting advent candles, and feeling overwhelmed by all of it. So I wonder why I put myself through that year after year and it’s sad to me how I miss the point.

When I was about 8 or 9, our church handed out these little pins that said “Jesus is the reason for the season” so that we could all wear those pins and remember why we celebrated Christmas. I didn’t really think about it much growing up and until this year I’ve not fully appreciated the message. There was even a time when I thought it was lame, but thinking about it now and reflecting on that message, I’ve come to appreciate it’s significance and truth. Christmas is about celebrating the ultimate gift. It’s about gathering with loved ones, whether family, friends, or your community, and celebrating the light of Christ that shines in us all. It’s about sharing that light and giving, not buying and consuming, but giving.

It’s actually nice being here during this time of year. I miss my family and to be honest I miss the feeling I get when driving through looking at Christmas lights, but I don’t miss is the stress and consumerism that accompanies this time of year. I haven’t watched TV since September and I have no idea what are the “must have” toys, nor have I set foot in a mall. Now don’t get me wrong, I love giving gifts and also receiving them as much as the next person, but this experience at Bossey has allowed me to step back and reflect on what is truly important.

I’m actually receiving more this year than I ever have. Most of my family is flying all the way over here to spend Christmas with me (I’m sure the location perk is nice for them as well.) I will be flying to Italy early, early on Monday morning and we will spend a few days in Rome, then head to Florence, and then depart from Zurich on Christmas day. They’ll be heading back to Dallas and I’ll be taking a train to Paris where I’ll spend a week exploring the city and working on papers. After that I’ll be heading to London to spend a week with friends. I am truly blessed and could not ask for more.

With these blessings, I think of all the people that will remain at Bossey for the holiday. They must stay because they cannot afford to travel home or abroad, or they are unable to receive a visa to enter a bordering country (France is literally within walking distance and it is impossible for some of the students here to cross the border.) I know many of them are suffering and missing their loved ones, feeling the burden of being so far away. With this I move back to the Advent pin. If Jesus is the reason for the season, how might I share the warm feelings and love I feel by the blessings of seeing my loved ones over Christmas? Anna from the UK came up with a way that we might share some of our blessings.

On Monday night Anna, Aimee, Nora, Linda, and I gathered in Nora’s tiny apartment and made Christmas cookies while stuffing stockings for the students that will be staying at Bossey over the break. It was great to be surrounded by the smell of cinnamon and baking cookies while wrapping small gifts like chap stick and tea bags into actual socks. In the end the socks were stuffed and a name was attached to each one so that the students that are staying here will have that time of opening and sharing as a small token of our Christmas wishes for them. The gifts are nothing grand, rather useful supplies mixed in with candy and a few sparklers, but we hope these small things will brighten their time here and it was a nice way for us to give a little to or Bossey brothers and sisters. We’re all in this together and anyway that we can help one another and grow makes this experience that much more worth while and important.

I hope I remember this feeling next year, the feeling of truly giving and in turn truly receiving.

Merry Christmas everyone!

One Church?

Edward from the Anglican Church in Ghana raised an interesting point last week in our plenary session on Faith and Order. “To know where we’re going we must know where we’ve been. The church was one and it divided. If we see that decision as a good thing in our history, why are we trying to change it?”

This is my theory and I know there is more to it than this, but I believe this was part of the divisions that occurred and I’d be interested to hear other thoughts on this theory. I believe the division is tied to culture. As the church grew, tradition was integrated into the culture and therefore changed. (This goes along with what our missiology class has been discussing.) For religion to be poignant, it must connect to people and for that to happen people must integrate their cultural understanding, the world they know, into their belief system. We are products of our cultures and cannot fully separate from that understanding; we can to some extent choose to set it aside once we are aware of how out culture impacts our actions, but we cannot fully separate from it.

As we become part of a Global culture we begin to loose part of what divides us but along with that we also lose our diversity, so what is the answer? As the world is, I don’t see one church united under Christ; rather, what I see is one church united under Christ in all it’s diversity and I believe the ecumenical movement is succeeding in that way. We are not to the point where we will accept each other in full communion, which is unfortunate and painful at times, but we are working and dialoging about what that means and how we might continue to work as one body for peace and justice. The human race is vastly diverse and each person has individual spiritual needs and with that, I see that there will always be a need for different traditions to nourish the diverse spiritual needs of the global community and offer various ways in which to worship God.

Ecumenical Encounters

So this is the second post of today, but I thought I should fill everyone in due to the fact that it’s been several weeks since my last post at Halloween.

The past few days have been quite interesting. I’ve found myself involved in interesting ecumenical discussion, sometimes heated debates, without looking to engage in that type of discussion. I guess that comes with the context in which I find myself and if I am to participate in the community I will inevitably enter into a conversation about faith, tradition, and culture. It is quite interesting and I have enjoyed engaging with my colleagues.

I’m on the library committee and I have library duty on Wednesday nights. I was in the library on Wednesday, reading for class instead of surfing the web, and Sung a Presbyterian from South Korea walked by, said hi and sat down at the study desk facing mine. From there we started talking about the program and he opened up and told me that he’s been a bit depressed and disconnected from the community so far and he’s just now making a conscious effort to open up and interact with everyone. I was surprised to hear this because he had always been very warm in his greetings to everyone and seemed to be very open and friendly. He said that much of the problem was that he felt “like a child” because during the intensive English course during the summer, everyone was on an equal level, but when the native English speakers arrived he felt that he could not communicate with us and therefore withdrew from the community as a whole. He is now realizing that we all have something to contribute and that he wants to learn from us and in turn teach us about his culture and context. I think both of us were surprised by his candor in talking to me, but it was a great conversation and something from which we both benefited.

Last night I had another interesting ecumenical encounter. I arrived to dinner about 5 minutes before they closed the kitchen. We were having beginning French at 7:15 so I had about 20 minutes to get my food, eat and make it to French. Most everyone had eaten and had gone back to Petite Bossey, but there was one table where people were gathered so I took the last remaining seat and began eating my dinner and listening to the conversation. Well I soon found myself in participating in a heated debate about women in ministry. At the beginning I sat back and listened because there appeared to be some miscommunication due to the language barrier, so I was trying to figure out what people were saying so as to clarify the situation. Naomi from the Church of Christ in Nigeria was arguing with Andre, an Orthodox from Russia/Ukraine, about the ordination of women in the Orthodox church. They were having one conversation and trying to talk over each other and then Cosmin from the Romanian Orthodox church interjected his two cents and on it went. I sat back at one point and smiled to myself because I saw it as a joke that started with what do 4 Orthodox men, a Liberian Lutheran, a Nigerian Christian, a Filipino Baptist, and a Disciple have in common…not a whole lot that I can see and then I had to laugh because honestly the things that divide us are so few, yet so fundamental to our traditions. Anyway back to the debate…

Now I came in and the conversation had, from what I could tell, been going on for a while. Naomi was arguing with Andre because Andre had said that he didn’t think women would ever be ordained in the Orthodox church and his basis for that was because there was no need for it and there was no scriptural basis for it. I mentioned Peobie and Priscilla and he said that they were not ministers but rather deacons and therefore that was not basis for the ordination of women. Before I was able to refute by saying that neither is there Biblical basis for the use of incense and icons in worship, Andre was drawn back into an argument with Naomi and Cosmin. From what I can gather I think the issue was not so much the ordination of women but rather that the Orthodox church’s doctrine is sent and unchangeable and Naomi had serious issues with that. The ordination of women was just an example of that. At this point I’m having a hard time deciphering what was said and what issue was being debated, and in the end the conversation was cut short by the arrival of the French teacher, but I’m sure it will come up again and I hope the group involved in the discussion will be larger and more diverse.

Today at lunch I sat down to eat with Samuel, a Catholic from India, Rafat a Presbyterian from Egypt, and Sung from South Korea. We mainly talked about our respective Missiology research paper topics, but Sung and I began talking about our churches and it seems that the Presbyterian church in South Korea is much like the Disciples church in structure, and I thought that it would be interesting to bring Aimee from the Presbyterian church in the U.S. into the conversation to see if and how the cultural differences tend to shape the polity of a denomination more so than the denominational affiliation.

The past few days have been engaging and interesting and I’m curious to see if the trend continues over the next couple of days. I’m planning to go to Geneva tomorrow with Aimee and Avril and then attend the Lutheran church in Geneva on Sunday, so who knows what other ecumenical encounters might come my way.

As a side note, I want to thank those of you that have left comments and have sent emails. I also want to apologize if I have not responded. Know that I appreciate your comments and your thoughts and prayers, even if I find it hard to respond to each comment individually. Thank you and many blessings!

Also the picture below is from the Scottish festival that Aimee, Anna, Avril, and I went to last weekend. (and just to add a random bit of information…out of the 10 women in the program, 5 have names that start with the letter A; Aimee, Anett, Anna, Avril, and Angelina…interesting no?)

Bible Study

Every week on Tuesday morning we have a student led Bible study. Last week Nora (the vicar from Germany) and I led a Bible study on John 21:15-18 where Jesus asks Peter “do you love me?” three times and then says “feed my sheep.” It went well and I am glad that Nora and I were able to led that for the group.

This week Samuel (Quaker from Kenya) and Gerald (Evangelical from Burkina Faso) led the Bible study and chose to look at 1 Timothy 2:11-15 where Paul, or someone writing in the name of Paul, is is writing to the church in Ephesus about women being silent in the church. Well, I’m sure you can imagine how apprehensive we were when we read the text, all of us wondering, “okay where are they going to take this.” And so the Bible study began…

Gerald started by taking a deeper look at some of the key words in the text. He explained that the word teachhas four meanings. It could mean giving instruction, or evangelizing, or formulating the doctrine of the church, or speaking with authority. He followed that explanation with the question of whether or not Paul meant that statement in an absolute or relative way, meaning are we to take that statement literally or are we to take it in the context of the letter and within the entire New Testament context? He went on to say that if we believe it is a categorical order then we put Paul in contradiction with himself and gave Titus 2:3 and 1 Corinthians 14:37 as examples of using teach and to prophesi as interchangeable concepts. (I was a little unclear on this point, but it could have been the language barrier. His first language is french.) He continued by telling us that the word used in the Timothy text was not the Greek word exousia that is often the word that is translated into English as authority, but rather another word was used which means to dominate and to behave like a boss. From this it was my understanding that what Gerald was trying to say is that Paul meant that women should not dominate over men and behave like a boss, which given the context of when the letter was written and what we know of the cultural hierarchy of men over women, that is a better interpretation of this text.

His next point was the use of the word woman in this text; is it referring to married women with children or single women? He pointed out that the words women and men could also mean wife and husband, therefore saying that a wife should not order her husband. Again looking at the text this would fit the understandings of the time. Gerald said that it could be that Paul is against women leading as pastors in the church, but that God can make exceptions for some women. After he finished his presentation on the text the floor was opened up for discussion.

Samuel posed the question, “how do you understand Paul?” Kim who is a Presbyterian from Korea said that verses 11-15 in the context of chapter 2 is talking about the institution of worship, meaning how worship was to be conducted.

Simon who is from the Pentecostal church in Nigeria surprised my by his comment.  I was expecting a more fundamental approach to this scripture do to the fact that women in his church are not allowed to wear pants due to the scripture that states women are not to wear the clothes of men (this is a completely different issue and I could go on and on about that, but I’m currently just trying to finish this post.)  Simon mentioned 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 where “women should be silent in the churches…” and said that Paul was referring to the contexts of the churches, i.e. the church in Corinth and Ephesus.  He went on to say that he believed that whatever a man can do for God a woman can do for God, which I appreciated and was pleasantly surprised to hear.

Next Anna from the Church of England in the UK piped up reminding everyone that in Timothy, Paul says there are problems in teachings and we don’t know what Timothy wrote; we only have half of the story. (Good point, well done Anna.)

Johanes who is an Orthodox monk from Greece said that the man is the head and the woman is the body and the head must love the body and collaborate with the body.  Men and women are equal in the church and all function in the body of Christ.  Now I’m not at all on board with the way he presented this, but taking his context into consideration I can appreciate what I think he was trying to say, i.e. we are all the body of Christ and none should be excluded from that body.

Linda from the Chruch of England in the UK was the next to speak and she said that the context is Christains moving away from Judaism and referenced the verse that mentions that women should not go to worship with their hair braided or wear pearls, etc. but we now go to church in our “Sunday” best, meaning that we must look at this text in its context.  I don’t agree with the idea that the churches saw themselves as Christians and were moving away from Judaism; I believe they still considered themselves to be part of the Jewish tradition and through Christ all could be part of the covenant God formed with Israel.  I do agree with her point about looking at the text in its context and then trying to understand what issue Paul was addressing.

Although our Bible studies are student led, the Biblical Hermeneutics professor, Father Gervarsis, who is a Catholic from India, participates and will help students prepare if they ask.  He was the final person to speak and he said that when Samuel and Gerard came to him with their scripture selection he couldn’t sleep because he thought there would be fighting among the students.  He affirmed that we needed to look at the Bible as a whole and not take sections out of context.  Rather when we are exegeting a text, we must look at it in the context of the entire Biblical narrative.  He went on to say that Paul was a human and aware of the problems in the churches and was writing to deal with that context.  He was a product of his Roman society where women were meek and submissive and that was the morality of the time.  This text was enforcing that Christian worship must be conducted in the proper way.  He also pointed out that Paul’s reference to the creation story in Genesis where “Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor (v.14)” is incorrect; the statement that the woman deceived is not exactly true.  What it says is the man took from the woman and ate without protesting.  The man is blamed for the sin in Genesis 3:17.  Father Gervarsis’ point was that Paul was trying to defend a cultural conservatism with the Hebrew Text.  Paul wanted to conserve the cultural practice of women being silent and modest.  He closed the session by saying there is always a need for renewal and repentance; that is a very Biblical concept.

All in all it was a very interesting and engaging Bible study and I’m glad that Samuel and Gerald chose that text.

Sharing our cultures

It is Halloween and to share a bit of American culture Aimee and I decided to offer a pumpkin carving. We had two pumpkins and not many participants joined in the gruesome custom of carving the insides out of a poor defenseless pumpkin, but the few that did stay had a lot of fun and enjoyed this strange part of American culture.

Halloween was not a holiday that we celebrated in my family after I was about 10, but Aimee and her family have the tradition of pumpkin carving every year and therefore, we decided to offer it as a cultural experience. We will be having cultural nights throughout our time here, but the U.S.A. is in a group with the the one man from Haiti and the one woman from Australia. We were all sort of put into the left over group because we only have time for four cultural evenings (Africa, Europe, Asia, and the rest) so Aimee and I thought we would offer this as a small bit, albeit not the best part, of American culture. Personally I’d like to have chips and caso with fajitas topped off with a bit of line dancing, but I think that would be a cultural evening for Aimee as well. All in all it was a lot of fun and the people that participated enjoyed it and were glad that we shared a bit of our crazy American customs with them.

Female Ecumenical Bonding

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A week or so ago we had our first gathering at Elizabeth Reiser’s house.  Because we have no female on the faculty (we’re hoping that will change with the newly hired faculty) Elisabeth kindly offered her home to us so that we might gather as women and get to know each other.  It was a lovely evening of conversation, tea, wine, and chocolate, of course.

Tonight we decided to do something less formal and had an ecumenical “girls” night of face masks, painting of nails and other various “girly” things.  It was a lot of fun and we had some interesting conversations.

Naomi from Nigeria just joined us this week.  She missed the  2 week orientation and therefore is unsure about how things work and what she needs to do.  Naomi, Aimee (from the U.S.), and I went to Nyon today in order to help Naomi get the things she needed.  She missed the group trip to Geneva that gave us all a somewhat guided tour of the bus/train system, so we showed her where the shops were and how to navigate the system.  She and I will be heading to Geneva tomorrow to attend the Lutheran church and hear the female minister from Brazil.

When asked flat out if she is a pastor, Naomi said no, but upon deeper inspection we found out that although she is not ordained, she is considered a non-ordained minister in her denomination.  She preaches and teaches, but she is not allowed to perform marriage ceremonies nor is she allowed to serve communion.  We asked her if she would like to be ordained and she said yes, but that it is not possible at this time.  She said that it is a struggle in her denomination at this time, but that she is being given more and more recognition as time passes.  She turns 46 tomorrow and has been what we in the DOC would consider a minister for several years.  She is working in the system to change the hearts and minds of those around her and is making progress.  In the beginning she was only allowed to teach women’s groups.  Now she preaches on a regular basis along with her teaching.  She is an amazing woman and I have much to learn from her.  I pray that I will have the patience and understanding to learn from Naomi and all the other fascinating people that surround me.

Academic Program

Well I am very excited because we have finally been given more detailed information on the academic program and will be beginning next week. These last 2 weeks have been long and at times daunting, but they have been very informative.

We are given a choice between 4 modules/classes (social ethics, Biblical hermeneutics, ecumenical theology, and missiology and evangelism.) My first choice is to take social ethics, one of the main reasons being that Dr. Korad Reiser (the former general secretary of the WCC) is teaching it. My second choice was not such a clear choice. I originally wanted to take the theology class, but there is no professor at this point.

On Monday and Tuesday of next week, the students will be participating in the choosing process in that we will listen to the 3 candidates for the theology position and then give our feedback on who we find to be the best candidate. Our opinions, along with other opinions from representatives from various organizations will be taken into consideration when choosing the professor. There are actually two positions open, but only the theology positions effects this year. The social ethics position is also being filled because Konrad will only be here for this year (lucky us!)

In the end I chose the missiology and evangelism class as my second choice and theology as my third choice because we don’t know how the theology class will be structured and I think it will be inconsistent because if one of the candidates that lives outside of Switzerland is chosen, then that person must go home and pack their things and wait for a work permit before they can begin teaching. That means that another teacher will begin the class and the newly hired teacher will finish it. I’d rather not deal with that if I don’t have to.

As for my reasoning for choosing the missiology class over Biblical hermeneutics, I have a feeling the Biblical class will be a repeat of Intro. to HB and NT and therefor I decided to choose missiology and evangelism. Also missiology is taught by Andre Karamaga from Rwanda who leads the Africa desk at the WCC. He is mentioned in this artcle about this article on World Mission and Evangelism: http://www.presbyterian.org.nz/3617.0.html

We will not find out for sure what modules we will be taking until Monday, but I think I have a good chance of getting my top two.

As for other interesting things that have been going on…we went to Geneva on Wednesday to tour the WCC and the University of Geneva. There are pictures from the WCC below as well as a picture of our class in front of the Reformation Wall. It was nice to get away from Bossey for a day and we were able to sign out of dinner at Bossey and have dinner in Geneva. I had dinner at a lovely Italian restaurant in the old town with Nora, our Lutheran vicar from Germany, Kirsie, a blue angel from Finland, (yes her name is one letter different from mine which causes confusion especially since we have rooms right next to each other,) Avril from the United Church in Australia, as well as Linda and Anna both from the Church of England in the UK. It was a nice day out, but it was also expensive so I’ll not be doing that very often. I think I’ll stick to 8 franc panninis from the street vendor the next trip I make to Geneva.

ecumenism

Friday Oct. 6, 2006

As we left our morning session on the Reformed churches and were heading to lunch, Gerald from Hatti made the observation that what was said on Tuesday was true, what was said on Wednesday was true, what was said on Thursday was true, and what was said today was true. I would have to say that that’s an ecumenical statement if there is one. The fundamental qualities of our faiths are one church one body in Christ, yet we remain divided and it’s ironic that in this place where I am worlds apart from my neighbor, I find that we are not so different and it is our differences that make the community rich and full. It seems that in the states we judge one another by denomination and make assumptions about each other before we’ve even begun to know one another. Here in this diverse place, we know so little about one another, there is nothing to judge, little to assume and we are all new in ecumenism.