Some days I wonder how the Piskie church will ever survive.
Other days, I am reminded of how deeply impressive so many of our people are. It’s always the quiet unassuming types you need to watch…
Category: church
feminism 150
Last year, I came home from Diocesan Synod and wrote a post called feminism 101. Well, it’s that time of year again.
Only this time it is more complicated (those of you au fait with American course titles will realize we’re in ‘first level – honours’ now.) This year at synod there was less overt sexism. There were even occasional nods at trying to avoid sexist language, and at one point a reminder that at Lambeth ‘bishops’ spouses’ would include men (sadly, right before said spouses were referred to as ladies, but that was just a slip, right?)
But what became clear was that while some people were trying to be careful with language, there was very little understanding of concept. So, here is this year’s post-synod lesson — and as always, you can assume that I am not commenting on anything unless it was ‘done’ by more than one person:
- it does no good using inclusive terms if you look at one of two particular women in the room each time you do so.
- sexist concepts are more offensive than sexist language
- be very careful of praising women (sorry, ‘ladies’) for being particularly or uniquely good at something. You risk devaluing both the men who are also good at it and the women who are not.
Now, a cry for help…
I have realised that feminist theory is one area of my knowledge that I find it hard to translate into appropriate terms for the congregation. It is hard to move from ‘for us men and for our salvation’ to Luce Irigaray, and my knowledge base is too limited.
So, a few of us are beginning to talk about creating a resource with the working title ‘feminism for congregations’. If you can help — by suggesting resources, methods, stories; or by taking part in the project — please get in touch. I don’t quite know when I will get around to this, and would be glad for someone else to take the helm, but we need to do something…
begin again…
I am a perpetual beginner. A generalist, an amateur. The sort of person who will learn to knit every stitch in the book, but will never complete a project beyond ‘cat-nip mouse’ (which was itself a creative exercise: I had no pattern, and it was the first time I’d decreased stitches to a point.) So, I find it hard to understand people who will not learn. Who resist tips and suggestions. Who resent being offered ways of improving.
Now, put like that, you may have sympathy. Who was I trying to ‘improve’ this time? But it wasn’t like that. Not really.
We had a rehearsal today for an ecumenical service. I’m not leading the service, and I wasn’t leading the rehearsal. It was led by a highly skilled well trained public speaker, and between us our job was to make sure that everyone knew what they would be doing in the service, and that they could be heard while doing it.
The readers were good. Some of them very good. One or two just OK. None terrible. But there were a few predictable problems: not quite loud enough (especially on a windy day), a bit too fast, not quite at home in the words. Things that can be fixed, things that one can learn to improve. And we had a voice coach there, for goodness sake. Expert resource…
At the end of the rehearsal, I offered a few general comments and suggestions, being very careful to comment on nothing that didn’t apply to more than one person. So, the advice went like this:
- There is nothing harder to overcome vocally than roaring wind. If the weather is like this next Friday, we will all have to work hard to be heard. You were all doing well — and under normal circumstances, it will be fine. But if it’s stormy, we’ll all need to be louder. Maybe (trained voice coach) can help us with a volume exercise before we leave today…
- One of the things I have been working on with my congregations is the question of who we are talking to in worship. Sometimes we’re talking to each other, sometimes a question is directed at particular people, sometimes our words are directed to God. It’s worth being aware that as we read — who are we talking to?
- Usually, when we speak, we are thinking at the same time (I hope!). Thinking naturally slows us down. But when we have a script, it is easy to speed up — to forget natural pauses. So, it’s worth thinking about how we can slow down, get closer to natural speech patterns.Two suggestions. (1) If I am nervous and afraid I will speed up, I use strategies to slow down. Sometimes I make it artificial: at the end of the paragraph, I count ‘one…two…’ to help me pause. Do the artificial thing a few times, and then it becomes natural. Anything to let the words breath.Or–(2) a couple of you have lists to read. Lists are hard. If we are creating a list on the spot, we tend to think about what we are putting in. We imagine the person sitting under a bridge, and we pray for the homeless. We remember the young woman who was going crazy because her baby wouldn’t stop crying, and we pray for new parents. If you picture the thing you’re talking or praying about, it will naturally slow you down.
Now, was any of that helpful? (or would it have been if you were a good-enough, but not trained reader?)
I don’t know. I hoped it would be. I think it was for some of them. But one person got really cross. She said (among other things) ‘we are not experts, we just do the best we can. We haven’t received training.’
Absolutely. That’s why we’re trying to offer you some…
But what she seemed to mean was ‘I don’t want to learn’.
And that I find hard to fathom.
So I wish I could learn how to deal with it, because it happens all too often, and I clearly still don’t know what to do.
too clever by half
The Archbishop of Canterbury has had a hard time today. Now, there have been plenty of days when I’d have liked to give him a hard time, but this was not one of them.
There are three reasons I do not want to pester him over what he said about Sharia law:
- I know very little about Sharia law
- I have not yet read all that said
- I have not yet had time to come to terms with why he said it.
Which I suspect puts me in a similar position to most of the country — in my knowledge base, if not in my reaction to the archbishop.
From what I have read, +Williams was making his usual fine distinctions: recognizing that aspects of Sharia law are already at work in Britain, suggesting that that is a reality we may need to live with, questioning whether therefore we should do so deliberately in terms of British law. More specifically, he was suggesting that there might be aspects of Sharia law which could be held within British law in the same way the law makes space for aspects of Jewish law, and even Church law.
That does not seem to me deeply offensive. Even if he is wrong, it does not seem offensive. He is simply asking for clear thought and debate.
The problem is, +Rowan Williams doesn’t talk in sound bites. His sentences are carefully weighed and balanced, with lots of clauses and qualifications along the way. Which means he is an easy target for the media.
And doesn’t the BBC love a battle? On their web-site they have excellent links explaining sharia law which put +Rowan William’s comments in perspective. But on the radio, they have given lots of time to people who seemed determined to misunderstand him, even quoting a listener who suggested that we should do what Williams suggested so that said listener could form his own religion and his own laws based on his own made up God (which shows just how little our culture understands about faith communities and the nature of truth claims).
We live in a very silly media culture and have a very clever (but not always savvy) Archbishop of Canterbury. Sometimes the two clash horribly.
See what Rowan Williams actually said here.
wonderful exchange 