‘Here we are, God doesn’t make mistakes’ was the thread which weaved through Sister Gemma Simmonds’ keynote speech on conversion and reconciliation at the diocese clergy conference.
Gemma Simmonds is a sister of the Congregation of Jesus and senior research fellow at the Margaret Beaufort Institute of Theology in Cambridge. Among many other roles, she is an international lecturer and speaker and a chair of trustees of the ecumenical Community of St. Anselm based at Lambeth Palace.
Her keynote speech began with the observation that her colleagues in Cambridge would be concerned she had travelled to the ‘dark side’ to speak at an Oxford conference. She reassured them she would be ‘exorcised’ before she returned home!
She spoke about the variety in life, how each of us are enough for God, and the pressure young people feel to make themselves worthy. Through the prism of shoes which popes have worn, Gemma examined the different approaches each of them took to their ministry from Pope John Paul II who wore Doc Marten boots and gave ‘the Soviet Union a kicking’ to Pope Benedict who wore more traditional small red shoes and had a traditional approach to his church leadership.
She added: “So our call to be pilgrims of hope, whether we wear the scuffed shoes of the street, or the white DMs of authority, or the red shoes of tradition, if we are good in our own feet, but as the Native American saying goes, be ready to walk a mile in another person's moccasins, to walk a mile in someone else's shoes, and to learn what it is to be a pilgrim of hope. That's what we're called to, that's what we're called for and into.”
Sharing a quote from Pope Francis where he said he preferred to see a church bruised from being in the streets rather than unhealthy from being confined, Gemma asked her audience to pause for a moment and think about what had struck them in what they had heard.
Gemma also left the clergy with a message of encouragement to ‘nourish yourselves’, using the pneumonic from Alcoholics Anonymous. Even though it may be counterintuitive to help yourself before others she urged the ministers not to get too HALT Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired.
She concluded: “The invitation to each one of us as a pilgrim of hope, the invitation to each one of us who has lived with the call that we have received, even though we may feel so unworthy of it and that we have so poorly fulfilled it, is that he is our anchor, and he is our hope.”
Watch Gemma's keynote speech, or read the transcript.