Lambeth Blog 5

Tuesday in Canterbury.

The sun is shining from a clear blue sky and so my friends from warmer climes are feeling much happier. Please pray that the weather will stay good especially for Thursday when we go to London to Walk for Witness to the Millenium Development Goals and visit the Queen for tea.

Tanzania

Real work is well under way now. I even missed my lovely Compline last night.....I needed to go to my bed! Monday saw the Spices discussing Marriage. Not sure how much that was reflected in the afternoon session on TRAUMA I was involved with! Leave that to your own imagination. Lily from Taiwan and Tomea from Pretoria reflected for us in the morning session on their lives as wives of Bishops. Tomea said : "My ministry is to my husband and for me personally marriage is a life of compromise and sacrifice. " I couldn't help but think maybe that's true for all of us, Bishop or not. Did you realise that Taiwan is only 4% Christian. Must be difficult.

At "Working with Trauma" in the afternoon I heard stories from Frances, Liberia; Pacifique, Congo; Clavera, Burundi and Elizabeth, Sierra Leone. Please pray for these women and others here who have experienced the effects of war and genocide on women and their families. We cried together with women from other parts of the world hearing these stories for the first time, we prayed and sang. We were late for everything else! "Be still and know that I am God".

In between as I walk around the campus I meet people I have seen in other places and some I only know from letters and emails. A long conversation with Maria Okifri from Ghana. There are others from West Africa, from Tanzania, from Malawi, from Kenya; all from places that the press are saying are not represented. Sadly the only person I have seen from Rwanda is Bishop Venuste who used to be in Butare. I think he has moved now. No one so far from Nigeria. It is such a sadness, for me personally, that these my friends are not here because they think differently about some relatively insignificant issues.

Maria Okifri from Ghana

I had supper with a nun I last saw on a beach in the Solomon Islands where we danced to loud music on hot sand to make money for an MU hostel there for abused women and children. It was good to see her here as part of the chaplaincy team along with several Melanesian Brothers.

Rosemary Kempsall

The Plenary in the Big Top last night was very refreshing: an American called Brian McLaren speaking on "Changing Context: Mission to people outside the Church". He has written good books I am told. One thing he said:" We took Christianity as missionaries to places where we tried to make the people like us............we should have been making them like Christ".

There are two and a half thousand people here! Off to queue for lunch, or maybe I would be better to miss a meal!