More news from Brazil
I am now about halfway through my trip to Brazil and I find that I have been too busy to spend any real time on reflecting on all that has transpired over the last ten days. The Assembly began last Monday and I was right into my work as a a steward. This involves taking requests from journalists for interviews and attempting to track down the people that they would like to talk to in order to facilitate the process. This is made rather complicated by the fact that there are over 5,000 people at the assembly, and only the 700 or so delegates actually have anything close to assigned seats in the main plenary hall. Despite this, I have been able to solve most problems and am very much enjoying working with the people in the press office. Besides my main work, I have been helping with setting up and running the daily press conferences that take place at the Assembly.
The highlight of the last week was the visit of The Most Reverend Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, to the assembly. He was the keynote speaker at the plenary discussion about Christian identity and religious pluralism and, as is usual for him on any topic, challenged the debate in a new and fresh way. His full address can be found at this link, but the concluding paragraph speaks to his main point:
The question of Christian identity in a world of plural perspectives and convictions cannot be answered in clichés about the tolerant co-existence of different opinions. It is rather that the nature of our conviction as Christians puts us irrevocably in a certain place, which is both promising and deeply risky, the place where we are called to show utter commitment to the God who is revealed in Jesus and to all those to whom his invitation is addressed. Our very identity obliges us to active faithfulness of this double kind. We are not called to win competitions or arguments in favour of our ‘product’ in some religious marketplace. If we are, in the words of Olivier Clement, to take our dialogue beyond the encounter of ideologies, we have to be ready to witness, in life and word, to what is made possible by being in the place of Jesus the anointed – ‘our reasons for living, for loving less badly and dying less badly’ (Clement, Anachroniques, p.307). ‘Identify yourself!’ And we do so by giving prayerful thanks for our place and by living faithfully where God in Jesus has brought us to be, so that the world may see what is the depth and cost of God’s own fidelity to the world he has made.
Since I had been in Porto Alegre for a week already, I was unofficially co-opted by the staff from the Anglican Communion Office and Lambeth Palace to help facilitate the archbishop’s visit. This meant that I was able to spend most of the day with him, mostly by leading him as efficiently as possible from one event to another and trying to fend off the hordes of people who wanted to try and speak to him. There were also many small details to be worked out, and I was able to assist with that effort by working behind the scenes with stewards in other offices to make sure that everything went smoothly. I was greatly honored to be able to have lunch with His Grace and a small group of his staff, and was extremely touched when he presented me with a copy of his book The Dwelling of the Light: Praying with Icons of Christ as a personal token of remembrance and thank you for my help. His visit was extremely well recieved by both Anglicans and non-Anglicans at the Assembly, and everyone has said that his presence was, without a doubt, the high point of the gathering so far.
Last night I went to a traditional Brazilian resturant called a churrasco. They style of eating in much of Brazil is buffet style, but in this particular type of resturant, found mostly only in the southern state where I am, waiters supplement the buffet by walking around with large skewers of meat, in more than twenty-five different cuts, from four different animals. One eats and eats until full, and then they just bring more meat! The variety was amazing and all of the food was very well prepared, as has been just about everything that I have tried in Brazil so far.
This morning, I attended church services at the Anglican cathedral in Porto Alegre, where many Assembly participants were welcomed by the Most Reverend Orlando Santos de Oliveira, Primate of the Episcopal Anglican Church of Brazil, who celebrated the Eucharist at the service, along with a number of bishops from all over the Anglican Communion. Afterwards, I walked around downtown Porto Alegre with some other stewards and did a bit of shopping at the local outdoor markets.
Perhaps the most interesting thing for me about the Assembly so far has been the question of language. I was sorry when I arrived that I had not had any time to learn any Portuguese before I came but, when I arrived, I discovered that it would have been even more useful to brush up on my high school Spanish! There are many participants from Latin America, and many of them only speak Spanish. In additition, many Brazilians speak some Spanish or can at least get along in it. The two languages are not at all as similar as I had supposed, but my Spanish has improved a great deal over the time that I have been here.
That is basically all of the news for now, so I will write again when I have more time.
