Some of you will have the press coverage of Susan’s service of blessing and affirmation. Susan is a trans woman who worships with us at MCC Newcastle. Now she has completed her transition, she wanted a service to celebrate this and she renewed her baptismal vows as Susan. It was a powerful moment. You can read Susan’s story online here. 
 
Names are often very important to us. For people who go through the transition process, it is an opportunity to claim a new aspect of who they are – to publicly announce who they intend to be from this point forward. Often we have
special or nicknames for people who are important to us. At the moment I am on a watercolour painting course and there is another Cecilia in the room. It is so rare for both of us to meet another woman with the same name and we are both getting quite a bit of childish glee from saying our own name out loud and have it refer to the other person.

In the Hebrew tradition, it was thought if you knew someone’s name, you had power over them. When Moses encounters God through the burning bush, he asks who is
talking with him. God replies “I am that I am”. Down through time, people have tried to describe God, to give God a name that reflects the Divine one that they encounter.

One of the exercises that we do very early on in the “Creating a Life that Matters” course is to examine the names that we have been taught for God – to dismiss the
ones that we do not recognise and to claim ones that describe that God that we know and love. This is often a useful activity, as it helps course participants to really be thoughtful about how they see God and what old images or labels of God they need to get rid of.

Scripture has many different names for God – as the people who wrote them tried to capture the essence of the Divine. Perhaps this week, it is something we could try – thinking up new names for the One who loves us.

What’s in a name?

Often something very powerful.

 God bless,

Cecilia
 

As many  of you know, I am passionate about giftedness. I believe that the Holy Spirit  works through every single person and every person has particular spiritual  gifts. These are often the things that we do so easily and intuitively that we  don’t even consider them to be gifts, or even to be
particularly special. They  are so normal for us, we assume everyone else must be able to do the same things  we do and respond to the world in the same way.
  
The vote  at the Anglican Synod which narrowly rejected the proposal to allow women to  become bishops has angered and dismayed folk both inside and outside the Church  of England. It also plays to the notion that God calls by gender, rather than by  giftedness. In the same way, some of us have been told that God saves by  sexuality, rather than by grace. We know that the God we serve is beyond human  ways of dividing up people into “worthy” and “unworthy”. Jesus chose the most  unlikely group of people to share in his ministry and went out of his way to  spend time with individuals that society had placed on the margins.
  
Whenever we meet prejudice and ignorance, we need to challenge it. This might be by specific actions, such as signing the petition against the proposed anti LGBT legislation in Uganda (click here to sign). It may  be by how we promote other ways of doing and being. I wear a red ribbon every  day, as a gentle reminder to anyone who notices it that AIDS has not gone away.  
  
World AIDS Day is on Saturday 1st December. More than 90,000 people are currently living with HIV in the UK and globally an estimated 33.3 million people have HIV. More than 25 million people between 1981 and 2007 have died from the virus,  making it one of the most destructive pandemics in history.
  
At MCC  Newcastle, we join in the WAD events each year and also have our own WAD service. Having a vibrant Christian presence at these events reminds people that  God does not punish people through illness, any more than God saves by sexuality  or calls by gender.

 Wear your red ribbon this week – it makes a difference.

 God bless,
  
Cecilia