A Lecture in the Leech Hall...

Phoenix or Dying Swan? Learning to Cope with Failure in Ecumenical Relations was the title of the Cundy Lecture that I attended yesterday evening (29/5/2013) at the Leech Hall, St John's College. Dr David Wilkinson, the principal of Cranmer Hall, took us on a journey looking at what Ecumenical Relations (ER) in Britain were, are now and could potentially be. He (a Methodist) often alluded to his appointment as the principal of Cranmer Hall (an Anglican training institution) and the collaboration of the Wesley Centre and Cranmer Hall as microcosms of Ecumenical Relations in Britain. He also suggested that the current climate of ER in general is perhaps more akin to winter than to spring where people engaged in ER are discouraged and weary. But is ER a Phoenix or a Dying Swan? Rising out of the ashes or diminishing ?
A lot of grounds were covered in the hour long lecture. I will touch on two things that struck me. First, two pictures were used to symbolise a Phoenix and a Dying Swan. For a Phoenix, Wilkinson used Dumbledore's Fawkes whose tears heal wounds: perhaps ER will rise again and bring healing to the body of Christ. For a Dying Swan, Wilkinson used a picture of David Luiz, called a dying swan by Sir Alex Ferguson. He was caught smilling when he was supposed to be writhing in pain because of his injury; his act successfully got his opponent sent off. I was struck most by the second picture. Do we feign failure to force others off the playing field because deep inside we feel we will gain if something failed?

Secondly, Wilkinson pointed out that there need to be more openness to what the Spirit of God is doing in others. There need to be more listening to one another's narrative of what God in Christ is creatively doing in our midst; and not only more listening to one another but also more affirmation and celebration of one another's narrative of God in Christ. To do so we need to exercise less suspicion and more trust of one another. This sounds wonderful but the implications are challenging. For me, it means openness to Christian traditions about which I am cynical and from which I have moved away.