For all my ordained ministry I have been very much involved
in ecumenism. I suppose I have been lucky, for I have experienced at first hand
the vibrancy and excitement of working with others to establish something new
and to do it with people of very different traditions, whose very difference
brings new riches to the partnership. Difference becomes a blessing. What
unites us is not being the same, but bringing our difference to a common
creative vision. I once heard someone say that, in any organisation, what is
needed is both pioneers and settlers. The Wild West could only have been won by
pioneers, but then people needed to put down roots and settle. Both the pioneering
and the settling had their part to play. There would be nothing to settle
without the pioneering, yet people need to put down roots and establish systems
and conventions, if culture and society is to flourish.
I find this a helpful perspective. Yet, in terms of ecumenism,
we cannot just see this in linear terms of pioneering leading on to a calmer
time of settlement. My experience is that, ultimately, that never works. I
believe that the Church comes alive when its members are drawn together in a
common task which fires the imagination and releases creative energy. The best
of ecumenism comes when churches together are drawn into such a shared
endeavour. What epitomises such creativity is leadership (clergy and lay),
whose shared vision is both infectious and inspirational. That has been my
experience and that is why I am an enthusiastic ecumenist. It draws us into
that oneness that was Jesus’ prayer
for us and it is through such oneness
that the Spirit is known and the mission of the Church comes alive. Settling,
by which I mean putting down roots and establishing shared ways of doing
things, is an essential part of any such endeavour. It is about building for an
ongoing future. Yet, when that future arrives, it can found that the spirit has
gone out of what was once so life-giving. Those who had led the vision have
moved on and others have taken their place, others who were never part of that
vision. Ecumenism then becomes a matter of sitting around in committees and
keeping structures going. What once had been so creative, vibrant and energising
has now become time-consuming and something that eats up energy. We ought to
keep channels of communication open, but the life has gone out of that shared enterprise
we once found so exuberantly life-giving.
As I ponder how I might vote at the forthcoming referendum over
our future in Europe, I feel a number of emotions. I am confused by the wild
rhetoric of the two sides and their various hidden (or not so hidden) agendas.
I am angry at political leaders, who seemly are failing to set out the issues
in a calm and rational way that might help people to make this decision. I do
not feel that we are being well served by the manner of this ‘debate’. Indeed,
a good deal of wounding is going on, from which it may take our nation a long
time to recover. But then I wonder whether the confusion of these days is
simply a reflection of a society which has lost its way. The vision of what
Europe might be, with any sense of us being drawn into an enterprise which
gives purpose, or leads us into life-giving new possibilities, seems to have
given way to a edifice in which managing the structures have become the very
purpose of our shared life together. That has long ceased to be an attractive
and energising thing. Rather, the energy (and money) eaten up, by what is no
longer seen to be a worthwhile enterprise, has come to be resented. What is
missing is a shared vision of what is could mean to be European and the shared
leadership that could give form and direction to that vision. Calculating how to vote, by asking what we
might get out of this situation, is simply symptomatic of how far we are from
the kind of shared vision that would make the European project a dream that empowers
us and leads us to discover an exciting future.
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