On the Eastern and Southern borders of this continent, multitudes wait. Rejected, desecrated, desperate and dying. Our brothers and sisters wait.
In Spain, we see attempted quashing of a people movement that will not be silenced, that will not stand by whilst there are millions of empty homes and people continuing to be evicted from their properties. They will not keep quiet, whilst corruption is rife in the corridors of power and the finance remains in the hands of the few.
In Greece, we have seen the humiliation of a people, maligned by the elite, because they were the first to fall. But a movement is growing that will not be stopped because they know that a different story is theirs.
In France, the stirring in the streets of hope for an altogether different future. Mainly unreported, dismissed as insignificant. But a song is rising that will be sung throughout the land.
In the UK, a defunct, discredited, dishonourable and dishonest political and economic elite, holds onto power and drives through reforms, based on a ideology so out of touch with reality, that cripple and maim whole swathes of society. The education and health systems demonstrate the starkness of biopower.
It is time for a revolution.
Revolutions do not have to be bloody or violent. In fact, if we were to have such a type of revolution across Europe right now, it would be the antithesis of what is needed. For too long, the power held at the centre has been used to dominate and control, to crush and to violate. But no more. The centre cannot hold.
But how? How in the face of such opposition? How when the powerful seem so strong? And what kind of revolution is possible if it is not violent or bloody?
We must call time on this utter corruption together. Change is possible. We can live differently. The well-being of everybody is a dream held in the heart of God. Peace can be the status quo. Love will win.
The revolution must start with us. There is a great singer-songwriter called David Benjamin Blower. He has written an amazing song called “Repentance is the Revolution”. Repentance means to utterly change the way you view the world, to see differently and live in line with your new sight. A new Europe is only possible, if we repent, if we ourselves are willing to change and be changed. We are changed when we encounter the face of God in someone utterly different to ourselves (especially the poor and marginalised) and learn to love them with all our hearts. We will learn the ways of peace and walk in them. Our weapons will be tools for building the future and our war cry will be a song.
Our processes will change our culture. We will say goodbye to top down hierarchy and find more relational ways to make decisions that matter. We will host and hold spaces that create environments for catalytic change.
Our values will shape us. The values of this movement will be that we love unconditionally and have grateful attitudes even when unfair and unpredictable things happen. We will seek first to understand and listen with kind eyes. We will act gently, walk with humility and integrity. We will leak joy. We will encourage and forgive others. We will speak truth with compassion and release healing and hope. We will do our best, remembering that failure is our friend that can teach us many lessons. We will be faithful to our promises because we are children of God, who co-creates the future with us.
We are hearing a lot about ‘sovereignty’ these days, especially in the current debate about Europe. We are particularly told by the ‘brexit’ campaign that leaving Europe will give us our ‘Sovereignty’ back as a nation. We will be able to make our own laws and do things the way we want them to be done. And yet sovereignty usually means the empowerment of the few, something that absolutely must change.
The cross is not about the need of an angry Sovereign God to be appeased, but rather the love of God utterly dismantling humanity’s understanding of what it means to be sovereign. So much therefore for ‘Sovereign decisions’ that disregard the need of our fellow humans. So much for the desire to be self-ruling and governing.
self on the cross. Not just our own ‘Sovereign’ ways of behaving with a capital S, the thoughts and actions that demonstrate our own need to be in charge, but the things we do as humanity collectively that bring such destruction to ourselves, our relationships and the world we live in. We wrote many things down on scraps of paper and pinned them to a wooden cross (words like selfishness, greed, the arms trade, nuclear weapons, starvation in a world of plenty etc). And then we burnt the whole thing, representing to us the way that his love consumes and overcomes all of these things. It is finished. That old understanding of Sovereignty is done with. True sovereignty is to walk in the way of uncontrolling love (Jay Thomas Oord) and has nothing to do with violence, debt, control, power games or self-preservation.
wish to do so collectively, we could perhaps think more carefully about what will happen when we act in a ‘sovereign’ dimension toward others….As english people, we are going to struggle with our own sense of sovereignty, because we have had the biggest empire in the world and have a long history of grand monarchy. At Easter, we could do worse than to reflect on the humility and grace of the cross and allow our hunger for autocracy to be utterly undone.
reimaginingthefuture 