The Cuban Biblical Network of the Council of Churches of Cuba’s Center for Studies is celebrating its 10th anniversary. The network serves a space for analysis of the Holy Scriptures from the perspective of a popular and contextualized re-reading of the Bible, according to the Cuban setting and with a broad ecumenical vision.
As part of the anniversary celebration, the network recently held a National Workshop on Popular and Community Reading of the Bible, in the so-called House of Affection (CESERSE) in Varadero, a beach resort city about 80 miles east of here.
A total of 27 participants, representing different Christian denominations, centers and regions of the whole country, gathered together to consider the theme “Crisis and Hope in the Popular Reading of the Bible.”
Focusing on John 9:1-12 ― about the man born blind who receives sight ― participants engaged in community reading of the passage and sought to identify crises in their lives and how the Bible story can lead to a vision of hope that a better world is possible.
“The opening and closing liturgical celebrations, as well as the different devotional moments, made for a lovely ecumenical communion, where we shared and celebrated life, and our diversity in God, with the warmth of the songs, prayers, symbols and the Word,” said Daylín Rufín, Coordinator of the Cuban Biblical Network, “when a new path to walk is not waited for, as our singer and songwriter Silvio Rodríguez would say, ‘in wine colored verse and life, joining the rest.’”
The Center for Studies of the Council of Churches of Cuba, through its Cuban Biblical Network, carries out an important work of bringing the Word near to the churches, from an ecumenical and community perspective that allows the socialization of the knowledge of the texts, so that the people become actors in the knowing of what is being told to them by all the wisdom enclosed within the most important book in the history of humanity.