Lama's log

I have had a real mixed month. October has come and gone in a blur of challenge and sadness. Right at the end of it though I attended my first BU Council exec meeting for women's justice.

I need to confess as I think I have done previously that I have been a reluctant advocate for the cause. This is for many reasons. In the end though, women, especially women in the church, get stood on and it's wrong, so off I went.

In as much as the group were trying to put women's voices and concerns on the agenda across the spectrum of the BU it was good. On a personal level and at the risk of already compounding a wobbly debut, it was markedly evident that I am not even on the same planet as the others in the room, let alone on the same agenda.

I don't understand a main aim of a justice committee as one which is to preserve the interests of the BU and the BU itself. That seems to me to be crazy. So, if speaking up for women's rights, gay rights, or any other form of rights clashes with the timescale of thought for the union then that's a shame but that's all it is. There was a lot of talk at the meeting of waiting for kairos moments, of comparison to the slave trade apology. But before we go down that root let's be honest, when the apology for the slave trade came up it wasn't because the union thought it a kairos time and was committed to this agenda, it was because we had missed the boat big style and many of the black churches were far from happy about it. We are also left where many of the ministers and members in our churches have no commitment to the apology and real work needs to be done for the apology to be lived and felt.

It was patiently pointed out to me that I was speaking to a man who wanted unity and inclusion and that that being his desire you had to wait until you had reached a majority view before you went forward and spoke your agenda, otherwise you simply wouldn't have a union. Well, I don't buy it. I understand, grace, openness and a desire for unity, but I don't understand it as an objective over and above that of seeking Jesus and living Gospel. I understand putting in work, patience and dialogue, I don't understand perpetuating oppression in order to keep the Temple, sorry, the Union functioning.

I was not on any other wavelength other than my own. It was nice to get back to Wakefield and discuss the possibility of refusing a wage in order to re-look at the theology and commitment to community and stipend with Andy. It was nice to get back and feel the commitment of a people together under a shadow of death. I could see Jesus in that. I'm not too sure how I go about supporting a union though who wants to self perpetuate more that it wants the agenda of the least to be voiced.