In the ruins: the beginnings of a conversation

 

On 10th June, I had a wonderful conversation, in public, with Bishop Guli Francis-Dehqani, as part of a day-conference organised by Reconciliation Initiatives: 'Being Missional Today: Disruption, Liminality, Reconciliation'. The setting was daunting: on the chancel steps of the vast space that is Coventry Cathedral, overlooked (and very much humbled) by the giant tapestry of 'Christ in Glory'. One of the many joys of the conversation was that, while it took much prior thought, we didn't plan it in advance. We agreed to be as honest as we could, and to embrace the possibility that it might go in directions that we had not anticipated. Which, indeed, it did. You can watch our initial conversation here (in many ways it's quite gentle - the Q&A with the wider gathering, later on, was more 'sparky' - but that wasn't recorded!). What I offer here, then, is some of the things I thought I might say, if our conversation took us there...

Where do we start? 

Perhaps by acknowledging the vulnerability of dialogue itself. The risk of clunkiness. The intentional resistance to things being too 'sewn up'. Stepping back from the conventional lecture mode of 'authoritative delivery'.

Perhaps also by acknowledging the particularity of the bodies we speak out of. And, for me, the particularity of a place within which I've been rooted and grounded now for 15 years. And a sense, as I come to a public conversation like this, of wondering how I do justice to the wisdom and stories of a particular community (many of whom have become friends and teachers to me over the years), and the particularity of its more-than-human ecosystem: its built environment, the M6 motorway, the Common land at the heart of my parish, the two rivers (the Tame and the Cole) that frame it. All these I carry not just in my head and on my lips, but somehow in my body too. All of these, somehow, I want to speak through me.

I wonder too how we might do justice to our wider context. The big picture. The multiple fallings-apart of our world: ecological breakdown; genocide in Gaza; dismantling of democratic government in the USA. And here in the UK: hostile borders; the rise of the Far Right; deepening inequality (in the name of economic 'growth'); anti-trans rhetoric and policies, reinforcing gender binaries against the far more complex reality; the combination of assisted dying legislation alongside savage cuts in disability support... And then the Church: anxious about survival: numbers, money, unity, theological purity. Resources and money being hoarded and siphoned off by the powerful. Unquestioning faith in 'new initiatives and programmes', 'vision and strategy', 'more effective processes'. And institutionally racist, classist and ableist, with legally enshrined sexism and homophobia held up as 'flourishing' and 'faithfulness'. How do we justice to all of this? How can we name what these dynamics are doing to us right now? How they are shaping and moving our bodies and souls?

I want to name the way so much of our collective life is shaped by anxious responses; collective, physiological responses in the face of threat or trauma. Fight, flight, freeze, fawn, force.. alongside other F words that might spring to mind... The urge to try and 'take back control'. A necessary survival response in moments of real threat and danger, but profoundly self-destructive when our bodies get 'stuck' in that response for the longer-term.

I want to name the way our ecclesial divisions are rooted, deep down, in profoundly different theologies: of church, of salvation, of God. And that we very rarely get anywhere near talking about these together. Perhaps we don't know how to. Perhaps we're scared that if we do, things really will fall apart. As if they're not already.

I want to name the ways in which we seem to find ourselves coming up against what theologian Constance FitzGerald called 'collective impasse'. When rational and strategic responses just don't seem to be making any difference. When the stories we've been in the habit of telling ourselves no longer seem to be working. FitzGerald, a Carmelite, identifies this collective impasse as 'the dark night of the soul'. And suggests that we need to learn how to dwell there. To slowly discover an imagination that has been nurtured in the dark.

What, then, if we choose to not try and 'manage' the multiple fallings-apart, but to face them, with courageous honesty? That's the invitation I hear in the conference theme, 'Disruption, Liminality, Reconciliation'. Although I'm nervous about it too. It still sounds a bit too easy. A bit too quick. As if 'disruption' is like the trains - an annoying but fairly temporary blip in service. As if reconciliation (a bit like 'unity') is something that's within reach, an initiative we can take, a project we can manage, rather than something that is only, really, in the wild hands of God. 

I want to talk instead about 'dead ends' and 'dark nights' and 'decomposition'. To give more weight to death and stopping and finality and not-coming-through-this-in-any-recognisable-form. To wonder out loud about what needs to die (racism and hetero-patriarchy in the CofE, to name but two). To explore the kind of radical 'Wintering' that writer Katherine May testifies to in her book of that name, and which I've experienced first-hand in the aftermath of my daughter's traumatic, life-threatening accident. A long, dark season of dormancy, when things like 'growth' and 'fruiting' are far beyond our present sensing.

If I'd fully appreciated the context of the Coventry Cathedral conversation, I would have talked about ruins. I would have recalled Dougald Hine's four tasks for the work we need to do in the ruins:

1. salvage what we can, that's worth saving;

2. grieve what we cannot save, but need to remember;

3. leave behind what was not as good as we once thought it was;

4. recover and re-weave some of the 'threads' we've dropped along the way.

I like these a lot, because they're nuanced enough to call us to the patient work of discernment. But they're bold enough to not let us get away with imagining that we're not living among the ruins. A patient honesty is what we need right now.

Our conversation came back round to wondering how we might nurture such spaces - 'small circles of radical presence' - for patient honesty, for discernment, for 'staying with the trouble' (as Donna Haraway put it). How we might inhabit and open up spaces for 'non-anxious presence'. In the Q&A later on, we were gently corrected: 'non-anxious' is both unrealistic, and also devalues the experience and wisdom of those who live with anxiety as a regular part of their lives. Perhaps better, it was suggested, we need to nurture spaces where we aren't driven by our anxieties, where our vision is not narrowed by them - but where we can pay attention to the messages they are trying to give us. And to the forces that are causing or exacerbating them. 'Compost heap communities', I've sometimes named them, where we can tend and attend to what is decomposing around us and within us.

The time went too quickly, as in all good conversations it does. We barely scratched the surface of the challenges, and the possibilities. I didn't feel I did do justice to the community and the place I'm rooted in. On the piece of paper that sat on my lap, I had a list of things that we've been learning to practise in Hodge Hill over the last 15 years: practical wisdom embodied in our place that might just have something to offer the wider church. But we mostly didn't touch on those. And I've not done here, either. That's for the next blog post...