Untity, justice or both?

After a day full of impressions I am back at the hotel. Well, it has been a fantastic first day at the Pre-assembly of Women and Men. I am not sure how many participants we are. Some say 700. And then there are also a few other pre-assemblies. But of course there will be more people when the assembly starts on Wednesday!

I guess we are more than 60 men in the pre-assembly. In the historic men’s meeting close to 30 came. Which I think was a good result. A number of men remained in the women’s assembly.

Using the "fish bowl" method with only a few men in the middle, 

was helpful to get closer to our feelings.

We had a few good presentations with discussions thereafter. Time was of course limited and we started late. The reason for this, I think, was partly the problem of finding the room where we were. It was on another floor, in a corridor not easy to find. Anyhow, we managed to start ten minutes late and do what we had decided to do.

Our last session dealt with a statement on us as men and our relation to gender justice. My impression was that we all agreed in principle but the problem was about strategy. Should we state exactly our opinions or try to be diplomatic? I have much to learn here. If we come out with a statement, which is too provocative, the churches which don’t allow women to be part of the leadership won’t even listen. So, the argument was to rather form a platform for further discussion. The mere fact that we as men come with a statement is prophetic as it is. Others felt that we should be more outspoken. There were many reasons also for this standpoint.

A draft committee is working tonight or tomorrow morning and during coffee break we’ll come together and hopefully we come to a consensus!  After our short coffee break we have a jointed session with the women were we had hoped to present a statement. If we have no statement to offer we will have to say that and continue to work with the statement later on.

The person who is going to report back might be me! I would love to read a statement, even if it was short and tentative. But I will be prepared for a situation where that does not happen, and have something else to communicate.

It is now a bit late. I think I will just post some photos in the blog post and say good night. (Which to most of my readers will be good afternoon!)

In the opening session Korean women and men were dancing together. 

The beautiful pole was not foreign to a Swede, who is used to midsummer poles.