The Bremen Bod Blog

‘A pilgrim is not a wanderer.’   Psalm 119:10 I must confess to not being especially taken with Disney’s most recent Star Wars spin-off show ‘Ahsoka’, I much preferred the previous series ‘Andor’ which was a little grittier and had some quite interesting things to say about the real world. For example, in episode 6, we are introduced to an indigenous tribe of people called the Dhani who live on the rugged planet of Aldhani. We see the Dhani trekking up the mountains, making a long and arduous pilgrimage to an ancient stone structure to watch a spectacular yearly celestial event, much like the Northern Lights here in Scotland. The planet Aldhani is occupied by the Empire who seek to make the pilgrimage as difficult as possible for the oppressed Dhani people. We are told how the number of pilgrims is only 60 but before the Empire arrived, the ritual would have attracted 15,000. Indeed, we don’t have search very far to find parallels, where regimes are making life miserable fo

  More than a few of us Scottish Christian Socialists and Scottish Christians on the Left are profoundly influenced by the philosophy of a contemporary political thinker and Labour peer called Maurice Glasman. Maurice is the founder of the political tendency known as Blue Labour, which is in part, inspired by Bundism. The Jewish Labour Bund was a secular Jewish Socialist movement found in Lithuania, Poland and Russia in the 1890's, based on the principles of solidarity, mutualism, autonomy and local democracy. Maurice also often speaks about the politics of his father who was a Labour Zionist and his mother who came from a working class family in Stamford Hill and was a lifelong Labour supporter. Likewise, Christian Socialists with a special interest in civil society cannot think or talk about cooperatives without any reference to the impact of the Jewish Labour Movement. Just as I’ve learned a great deal from Maurice, so too have I been fortunate enough to learn from leade

Today’s Gospel acclamation (6th Sunday of Easter) is ‘If anyone loves me he will keep my commandments’ John 14:15-24. I cannot help but hear those words from the Gospels, without thinking about the evocative and compelling film ‘Women Talking’ which I watched recently. If you haven’t seen it, ‘Women Talking’ is based on a shocking true story and is adapted from the book by the brilliant Miriam Toews, which tells the story of a group of women in a strict Mennonite colony in Bolivia who have been have been systematically drugged and violently sexually abused by the men of the community for years. The movie mostly takes place in hayloft where the women must decide what to do - Do they leave the colony with their children and start a new life away from the men? Do they stay and fight for justice and change the community? Or do they forgive the perpetrators who left the women waking up every morning feeling drowsy and nauseous, with ripped clothes, covered in blood, bruises and rope m

  Back in August last year, we learned the sad news that Tom Cornell, the well known veteran Catholic Peace Fellowship founder, had passed away. During his long years of activism,  Tom had been a member of the executive staff of Fellowship of Reconciliation and he was also on the executive committee of  Pax Christi  USA .   Tom was probably best known as a Catholic Worker and the editor of the Catholic Worker newspaper and for me, he leaves us two highly relevant lessons for our contemporary situation today, particularly in relation to what form our solidarity with movements such as BLM should take.   Deacon Tom Cornell once said - “The Civil Rights movement came to a head in 1965 and we had been involved in that consistently, all the way through but never in leadership positions, that would be inappropriate for white people, but when black people asked us and invited us, we go, we go all out!”   For me, this is the template for solidarity with movements such as BLM today,

  ‘In the beginning was the fear of the immigrant He's made his way down to the dark riverside He made his home there by the dark riverside The city sprang from the dark river Thames They made their home there down by the riverside The city sprang up from the dark mud of the Thames ’   The Liberty Of Norton Folgate by Madness   I’ve been spending both long and short periods of time in London for over 40 years, since I was five years old and each time I’m in the city for work or to visit friends and family, the place seems to change, sometimes in small ways and sometimes with seismic shifts. This is especially true of my beloved East End, not least in the stark difference between West Ham’s futuristic London stadium and the club’s old gaff at Upton Park, of blessed memory.   Indeed, since the recent London Olympics, parts of Whitechapel, Silvertown, Limehouse, Poplar, Bethnal Green, Stratford, Canary Wharf and Deptford are almost unrecognisable. A short trip along