Ruins and High Kirks and Eid lights, oh my!

My time in Coventry is almost at an end, and I've yet to post a single thing about this extraordinary experience. It has been a wonderful adventure, but the work has kept me busier than I expected as I've read through files and archives of all that's happened with reconciliation ministry here at the cathedral as far back as the bombing on 14 November 1940. In the next couple of days, I will try to synthesize what I've learned from my reading as well as interviews with staff to come up with some kind of business plan (or at least a strategic framework) for the Community of the Cross of Nails moving forward.

Here are just a few highlights:

Just days before the bombing during that night in 1940, Provost (Dean) Richard Howard had included as part of his Remembrance Day prayers this bold petition:

Let us pray for our enemies:
Lord of boundless love, who in thine hour of agony
didst pray for those who nailed thee to the Cross,
we beseech thee for our enemies
that thou wouldest turn their hearts and incline them to mercy.
So that when this hour of conflict is passed
they and we may be united in the bonds of Christian love
and work together as friends
the advancement of thy kingdom by the power of thy Son,
Jesus Christ our Lord.

This didn't win him too many friends. However, he followed that with this Christmas message just over one month later:

What we want to tell the world is this:
that with Christ born again in our hearts today,
we are trying, hard as it may be, to banish all thoughts of revenge;
we are bracing ourselves to finish the tremendous job
of saving the world from tyranny and cruelty;
we are going to try to make a kinder, simpler –
a more Christ-Child-like sort of world in the days beyond this strife.

Tradition has it that the day after the destruction, Howard took a piece of charred wood and scrawled on the wall of the apse the words "Father, forgive." Not "forgive them" as Jesus said on the cross, but just "forgive," meaning "forgive all of us." In 1948, the words were carved into that wall as a permanent reminder of our call to forgive as well as to pray for our own forgiveness.

This message is what drew me to this place, a profound and prophetic message of radical reconciliation, acknowledgement of our own sins, that log in our own eye, in our efforts to build a more just world. That is why the Litany of Reconciliation, drafted in 1959, is based on the Seven Deadly Sins - we must recognize our own sinfulness and our own responsibility for the evil that plagues the world before we can hope to be messengers of peace and reconciliation.

All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

The hatred which divides nation from nation, race from race, class from class,
Father forgive.
The covetous desires of people and nations to possess what is not their own,
Father forgive.
The greed which exploits the work of human hands and lays waste the earth,
Father forgive.
Our envy of the welfare and happiness of others,
Father forgive.
Our indifference to the plight of the imprisoned, the homeless, the refugee,
Father forgive.
The lust which dishonours the bodies of men, women and children,

Father forgive.
The pride which leads us to trust in ourselves and not in God,
Father forgive.

Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.

To gather with a group of faithful pilgrims on a Friday at noon to pray the
litany in the ruins of the cathedral and to celebrate the Eucharist is a
powerful and humbling reminder of all the forces in our world that bend toward
destruction and our calling to proclaim a different message, one of love and
peace, forgiveness and reconciliation. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
For Tim, undoubtedly a highlight of this trip was a weekend "dash to the kirk" as it was put by David Porter, Canon for Reconciliation Ministry at Coventry Cathedral. David is greatly amused at how we Americans will think nothing of hopping into a car and driving for six hours for a weekend excursion. However, we had vowed to get to Scotland on this visit, and to Scotland we went. I know that Tim and I constantly tease each other about our competing Reformed and Anglican traditions, but it was quite moving for me to see how meaningful it was for him to worship in the same church, St. Giles Cathedral, in which John Knox, the founder of Scottish Presbyterianism, served for a dozen or so years. I do fear, however, that Tim's visit to the High Kirk may have further hardened his resolve to remain true to his Presbyterian roots and hence weakened my influence to claim him for the Episcopal Church.

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This past Monday evening, several of the reconciliation team made our way to the largest mosque in Coventry to witness the lighting of the Eid lights. This was something new to me, but, as it was explained, it is something as akin to our lighting our Christmas lights during Advent in preparation for the actual celebration of the Nativity. Eid, the three-day celebration at the end of the month of Ramadan, is not until next week, but the lights are a way of marking the approach of these celebratory and holy days for Muslims. Following the flipping of the switch by the Lord Mayor of Coventry (which was nothing more than symbolic as the real lighting was effected by a representative from the electric company with a screwdriver and an open panel on a light pole!), we were invited into the Muslim Community Resource Center for a wonderful meal to break the day's fast. After a brief presentation, the imam indicated that sunset had arrived, so all the Muslims went downstairs to say their prayers while the rest of us began to eat the food that was set before us. Our friends later returned and eagerly heaped their plates with food, having not eaten since before sunrise that morning. The hospitality we were shown was humbling. I, along with one of the reconciliation interns, was treated as an honored guest as an American. I so enjoyed talking with these new-found friends about my distress at the fear and hatred demonstrated by so many Americans toward Muslims, wishing that everyone of us could sit down and break bread. Reconciliation is about relationship, and there is no more powerful symbol of that than the sharing of a meal. Even Jesus knew that.
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I have only a couple of days remaining here which I will spend writing up my findings into some sort of report for David Porter. Whether or not I have anything new and useful to say, I do not know. My promise to him when discussing the possibility of my doing some consulting work here was that I would provide the Community of the Cross of Nails whatever organizational expertise I have to offer in exchange for learning everything I can about what it is that they do here. While I hope that CCN can benefit from my time here, I already know who has received the greatest gift during this fortnight in Coventry.