My weekend reading has included Church Re-Imagined by Doug Pagitt who tells the story of the “Solomon’s Porch Community” in Minnesota. I like what he says – he speaks out against the idea of the programme church. He says, “from the beginning of Solomon’s Porch we have referred to our time together on Sundays as a gathering, not services. It’s a little thing, but it reminds usthat we are here to live life together, not simply to have our individual needs serviced.” Yes to that – we are gathering communities. Each Sunday they share the Eucharist; Doug says, “for us the communion has moved beyond ritual to necessity”. Amen and…
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Child Theology
In these past months, the IBTS morning prayer services have welcomed a king, a dancing ballerina and various pieces of farm equipment and motor vehicles. These came on the backs of and in the hands of three children (under 5 yrs) who have become a valued part of the IBTS community. They bring their parents along to morning community coffee break and remind all of us that there are many adventures to be had all around the seminary campus, if we take time to enjoy them.
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A new climate for theology
IBTS Environment Month is drawing to a close, the last activity being this week’s time for campus cleaning which we have (tongue-in-cheek) termed ‘subotnik,’ alluding to the legacy of the communist times when people were ‘forcefully volunteering’ to work (for free) for the betterment of the environment. The term, I think, is unknown in the English-speaking word except as a surname, but here’s an interesting description in German. Well, we hope that our volunteering here won’t be forced! The idea is that the time offered for cleaning will be the folk’s free contribution of their work hours which we can then direct to some good purpose (via Christian Aid) for…
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Crumbs of hope
The following entry has been written by Nancy Lively, who together with her husband Bill works in the Library and also teaches our CAT students English (progress already visible!). Nancy and Bill have been coming to IBTS as volunteers for a number of years already and have become very dear friends of this place. Here we were seated on a very nice, brand new train heading home to IBTS from a beautiful day in a medieval town in the Czech Republic. Then the conductor made a rather long, very interesting announcement (which I told Bill sounded like – “You are all going to have to get off the train.”), the…
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Prayers from Noah’s Ark
In our morning prayers this week, alongside following the Lectionary, we’re reading from Prayers from the Ark, written by Carmen Bernos de Gasztold in the Benedictine Abbey of Saint Louis do Temple in France during and after WWII. I came across her writings some years ago in Lithuanian, my native language, and was absolutely delighted to find it, in its English translation, in our own library, feeling a deep gratitude to whoever placed it there in 1968! The Prayers portray various animals (or ourselves?..) and their common preoccupations. As we are somewhat ‘cat-oriented’ here at IBTS, here’s The Prayer of the Cat: Lord, I am the cat. It is not,…