Be Resurrected from Prejudice

Methodist Manse, Chamberlain Street, Woodstock

 

Friends,

On Tuesday evening we received the news that the Woodstock manse was on fire. A fire that seems to have started in the roof spread throughout the whole house and destroyed everything inside. We are very grateful that Rev. John Stewe and his family are safe, but they lost everything except the clothes that they were wearing at the time. We are not yet aware of the reason for the fire. The insurance company is being engaged. Thank you to everyone who have expressed generosity and care. Here are the account details for where you can make a donation to the Stewe family. Thank you.

MCSA Table Bay Circuit
First National Bank
Business Account 500 611 809 79
Reference: Stewe

This past week we have been meeting as the Synod of the Cape of Good Hope District. In these COVID pandemic days Synod is a hybrid affair. We met both in person and in localised “hubs” online. I say it every year, but I will say it again, that it is always a gift to be reminded that we are part of a big beautiful diverse family that is spread across almost all urban and rural areas of the Western and Northern Cape. Each context embodies vastly different gifts and struggles. For example, Bishop Yvette Moses reminded us that at this time the region of Namaqualand is served by one clergy person who must travel a few hundred kilometres between the churches that she serves. From the close urban environment of Cape Town CBD it is difficult to comprehend this. Bishop Yvette invited all clergy to make ourselves available to travel to Namaqualand for one weekend of service before the end of the year to assist our colleague. As a result I will be going to Spoegrivier (Google it) in September.

 It is our tradition on Synod Sunday to “exchange pulpits” and this morning I will be in Bellville.
For those of you at CMM today you have the wonderful privilege of getting to know
Rev. Vuyelwa Ntshinga from Durbanville Methodist Church.

Vuyelwa, I hope you enjoy the Heavenly Coffee.

 

Last week in our reflection on Acts 10 and 11, I said that it is easier to raise the dead than to resurrect people from their prejudice – especially prejudice that has been baptised by religion. I suggested this because the story of raising Dorcas in Acts 9 was stated rather matter of fact-like and without any explanation, but when it came to Peter facing up to his prejudice against “uncircumcised gentiles” a whole chapter is needed to get him to the truth that “I should not call anyone profane or unclean” and an understanding “that God shows no partiality”. And then a further 18 verses of Acts 11 are needed to explain and defend his gentile-loving-journey.

This past week we witnessed again the stubborn difficulty to be resurrected from prejudice. Theuns du Toit’s racist act of urinating on the desk and belongings of fellow student Babalo Ndwayana in the Huis Marais residence at Stellenbosch University, is shamefully sad, traumatising and enraging. This is yet another painful reminder that we still have a long walk to an anti-racist society. May the same Spirit that “told Peter to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us” (Acts 11:12) disturb and move us to this end.

With grace,
Alan

Missing Moments

 

EITZ Visual Artists

(corner Burg and Church Streets)

 

Friends,

It is amazing how the briefest of moments can determine the direction of our life. This can be true for good or for ill. Sometimes these brief moments are barely recognised as moments, yet their effect can last a life time. A child plays the piano. A parent listens. The child makes a mistake. The parent sighs. Between the notes, the child hears their parent’s sigh and out of the corner of their eye, the child notices their parent lower their head ever so slightly. This is interpreted by the child as disappointment and disapproval and perhaps embarrassment to listen any further. Afterwards, there is no discussion between the child and parent. No clarification. This is communication without conversation. Feelings are felt but not mentioned. All in all the sigh and the slight lowering of head took no more than a second, yet from that moment on, the child now middle aged, decided never to play the piano again. Just as big doors swing on little hinges, so our lives swing on the briefest of moments.

How terribly sad to be silenced by a sigh. How terribly disturbing that it is possible we may mute the music of another by the slight lowering of our head.

Sometimes our relationships with others are determined by moments that are missed moments. The moment that seems to have a sell-by-date embedded within it. The moment within a moment that somehow we feel has now passed, making whatever we had committed to do in the moment, no longer right or true or even possible. That what would have been appropriate is no longer so. And this scarcely conscious sense may end up determining a relationship forever.

The following is an extract from Kazuo Ishiguro’s book entitled, The Unconsoled. Ishiguro has an amazing ability to turn up the volume on our own internal dialogues so that we can hear ourselves.

“With that she had turned and disappeared out of the room. It had occurred to me to follow her through into the next room, visitors or no visitors, and bring her back for a talk. But in the end I had decided in favour of waiting where I was for her return. Sure enough, a few minutes later, Sophie had come back into the room, but something in her manner had prevented me from speaking and she had gone out again. In fact, although during the following half-hour Sophie had entered and left the room several more times, for all my resolve to make my feelings known to her, I had remained silent. Eventually, after a certain point, I had realised any chance to broach the topic without looking ridiculous had passed, and I had returned to my newspaper with a strong sense of hurt and frustration.”

One of the gifts of an author, in fact, one of the gifts of all artists, is that they help us to hear what we are deaf to and see what we are blind to. They bring to attention what we miss. Art is birthed in attentiveness. Artists gift us with the fruit of their attentiveness. Often they introduce us to ourselves as they help us to recognise ourselves and to know ourselves more truthfully. In this, artists help us to become more alive to life.

We would all become more alive to life were we to be more attentive to our living. Attentiveness however, requires stillness. And we live in an age of distraction that makes stillness an immense challenge. For this reason many have found the Examen Prayer that involves the daily practice of pause to be healing and helpful. The examen prayer invites us to pause and attentively examine or review our day. Without condemnation and without complacency, we are encouraged to compassionately reflect on our living. By grace we are invited to gently discern how we chose life or death in each moment and perhaps even the moments within each moment. The hope is that over time our lives may be less easily silenced and less prone to silence others.

With grace,
Alan

 

Mother Earth

 

Friends,

On this Mother’s Day, I share with you two reflections. Please see the website for the links to the two websites for further reading.

In grace, Alan

The first is an extract from A Rose for Your Pocket: An Appreciation of Motherhood by Thich Nhat Hanh:

“The thought “mother” cannot be separated from that of “love.” Love is sweet, tender, and delicious. Without love, a child cannot flower, an adult cannot mature. Without love, we weaken, wither. The day my mother died, I made this entry in my journal: “The greatest misfortune of my life has come!” Even an old person, when he loses his mother, doesn’t feel ready. He too has the impression that he is not yet ripe, that he is suddenly alone. He feels as abandoned and unhappy as a young orphan…

People in the countryside do not understand the complicated language of city people. When people from the city say that mother is “a treasure of love”, that is already too complex for them. Country people in Vietnam compare their mothers to the finest varieties of bananas or to honey, sweet rice, or sugar cane. They express their love in these simple and direct ways. For me, a mother is like a “ba huong” banana of the highest quality, like the best “nep mot” sweet rice, the most delicious “mia lau” sugar cane!

There are moments after a fever when you have a bitter, flat taste in your mouth, and nothing tastes good. Only when your mother comes and tucks you in, gently pulls the covers over your chin, puts her hand on your burning forehead – is it really a hand, or is it the silk of heaven? – and gently whispers, “My poor darling!” do you feel restored, surrounded with the sweetness of maternal love. Her love is so fragrant, like a banana, like sweet rice, like sugar cane…

Mother’s devotion is overflowing, like water from a mountain spring. Maternal love is our first taste of love, the origin of all feelings of love. Our mother is the teacher who first teaches us love, the most important subject in life. Without my mother I could never have known how to love. Thanks to her I can love my neighbours. Thanks to her I can love all living beings. Through her I acquired my first notions of understanding and compassion. Mother is the foundation of all love, and many religious traditions recognise this and pay deep honour to a maternal figure, the Virgin Mary, the goddess Kwan Yin. Hardly an infant has opened her mouth to cry without her mother already running to the cradle. Mother is a gentle and sweet spirit who makes unhappiness and worries disappear. When the word “mother” is uttered, already we feel our hearts overflowing with love. From love, the distance to belief and action is very short…

If I were to have any advice, it would be this: Tonight, when you return from school or work or, if you live far away, the next time you visit your mother, you may wish to go into her room and, with a calm and silent smile, sit down beside her. Without saying anything, make her stop working. Then, look at her for a long time, look at her deeply. Do this in order to see her, to realise that she is there, she is alive, beside you. Take her hand and ask her one short question to capture her attention, “Mother, do you know something?” She will be a little surprised and will probably smile when she asks you, “What, dear?” Keep looking into her eyes, smiling serenely, and say, “Do you know that I love you?” Ask this question without waiting for an answer. Even if you are thirty or forty years old, or older, ask her as the child of your mother. Your mother and you will be happy, conscious of living in eternal love. Then tomorrow, when she leaves you, you will have no regrets…”

The second is an extract from Humanity’s Attachment to Mother Earth by Oumar Konare, a former intern in the United Nations University Institute for Sustainability and Peace (UNU-ISP):

 “…Philosopher Mircea Eliade proposed a reflection about the “Mother Earth”. He compared Earth to the mother, on a symbolic level. Just like the mother, it is the first object of attachment that we encounter in the objective world. Earth holds us like a mother, it nurtures us like a mother does, providing food, chemicals, wood, and answering our every need in a seemingly omnipotent way, akin to the vision an infant has of its all-powerful mother until it has grown enough to fend for itself.

Moreover, clinical experience has demonstrated instances when patients separated from their homeland (immigrant workers, refugees, nomads) exhibit symptoms of depression and anxiety, echoing the situation of a child deprived of its mother’s care. The similarity comes from the feeling of abandonment from the loss of a familiar, known, secure, gratifying object.

Psychoanalyst Melanie Klein theorized, from her observation of babies, that an infant at some stage fears that it has “damaged” its mother by clinging to her and feeding off her, and this causes the child to enter a phase of depression subsequent to so much guilt. This guilt actually allows us to mature enough and form a psyche that can both withstand frustration and develop an ability to feel remorse.

This would mean that guilt and the ensuing need to “repair” are experienced at the very early moments of our life. While these theories are quite controversial, the central message is that humankind is capable of developing a stable psyche because of our very deep capacity to feel bad about our actions, and to delve into a more ”gentle” identity and accept to make amends by learning, by “being good”, and then by repairing the damage we have caused. As children, we thrive on a “good enough mother”, rather than an all-powerful mother, and the guilt from damaging the mother, by claiming too much from her — in another form of all-powerfulness — is one step towards socialization and the integration of norms and values.

In practice, it is often very apparent in adults how many of their everyday actions have a source in their early interactions with their mothers. In regards to Earth, this is something that is quite apparent too: we do feel deeply moved by the consequences of our use of Earth and our all-powerfulness towards her.

One main question remains though: are we moved enough by the plight of the planet to question ourselves, deal with depression and make amends at the same time? If we are not, we should think of ways to allow ourselves to be moved by those feelings so familiar and yet so terrifying because they force us to confront the possibility that we are in fact powerless and our ultimate fear of becoming victims of something we cannot control at all — the revenge of she who created and fed, and on whom we depend for everything…”

 

The Murdered Monks of Tibhirine

The Murdered Monks of Tibhirine
1996

 

Friends,

When it comes to Resurrection, words fail. Resurrection is simply too impossible and unimaginable for words to describe. When used to convince others of Resurrection, words sound like an “idle tale” (Luke 24:11). The only Resurrection currency that holds its value over time is a changed life. An empty tomb with leftover grave clothes is merely proof of an empty tomb with left over grave clothes. It is not proof of Resurrection. A changed life is the closest thing to “proof” of the Resurrection that there is.

For this reason, I shared the story of the monks at Tibhirine on Easter Sunday. A story I believe to hold Resurrection currency. I read to you the letter written by Trappist Father Christian-Marie de Cherge, one of seven monks slain in Algeria in 1996.  He wrote the letter sometime between December 1, 1993 and January 1, 1994 — between which dates members of the Armed Islamic Group first visited the monastery. It was marked to be opened at his death. The monk’s family sent the letter to France’s daily Catholic newspaper, La Croix, which published the text in full on May 28, 1996.

The deaths of the monks were blamed on Islamic jihadists, but suspicions linger that the Algerian government and possibly the French government too may have been involved. A Time magazine story in 2009 reported that testimony of a retired French general indicates the deaths may have been the result of an Algerian military operation gone awry. The bodies of the monks were never found.

Here is the letter:

“If it should happen one day—and it could be today—that I become a victim of the terrorism which now seems ready to encompass all the foreigners living in Algeria, I would like my community, my Church, my family, to remember that my life was given to God and to this country.

I ask them to accept that the One Master of all life was not a stranger to this brutal departure.

I ask them to pray for me: for how could I be found worthy of such an offering?

I ask them to be able to associate such a death with the many other deaths that were just as violent, but forgotten through indifference and anonymity.

My life has no more value than any other. Nor any less value. In any case, it has not the innocence of childhood.

I have lived long enough to know that I share in the evil which seems, alas, to prevail in the world, even in that which would strike me blindly.

I should like, when the time comes, to have a clear space which would allow me to beg forgiveness of God and of all my fellow human beings, and at the same time to forgive with all my heart the one who would strike me down.

I could not desire such a death. It seems to me important to state this.

I do not see, in fact, how I could rejoice if this people I love were to be accused indiscriminately of my murder. It would be to pay too dearly for what will, perhaps, be called “the grace of martyrdom,” to owe it to an Algerian, whoever he may be, especially if he says he is acting in fidelity to what he believes to be Islam.

I know the scorn with which Algerians as a whole can be regarded. I know also the caricature of Islam which a certain kind of Islamism encourages.

It is too easy to give oneself a good conscience by identifying this religious way with the fundamentalist ideologies of the extremists.

For me, Algeria and Islam are something different; they are a body and a soul.

I have proclaimed this often enough, I believe, in the sure knowledge of what I have received in Algeria, in the respect of believing Muslims—finding there so often that true strand of the Gospel I learned at my mother’s knee, my very first Church.

My death, clearly, will appear to justify those who hastily judged me naïve or idealistic: “Let him tell us now what he thinks of it!”

But these people must realize that my most avid curiosity will then be satisfied.

This is what I shall be able to do, if God wills—immerse my gaze in that of the Father, to contemplate with him his children of Islam just as he sees them, all shining with the glory of Christ, the fruit of his Passion, filled with the Gift of the Spirit, whose secret joy will always be to establish communion and to refashion the likeness, delighting in the differences.

For this life given up, totally mine and totally theirs, I thank God who seems to have wished it entirely for the sake of that joy in everything and in spite of everything.

In this “thank you,” which is said for everything in my life from now on, I certainly include you, friends of yesterday and today, and you my friends of this place, along with my mother and father, my brothers and sisters and their families—the hundredfold granted as was promised!

And you also, the friend of my final moment, who would not be aware of what you were doing. Yes, for you also I wish this “thank you”—and this adieu—to commend you to the God whose face I see in yours.

And may we find each other, happy “good thieves,” in Paradise, if it pleases God, the Father of us both. Amen”.

Abiding, Entangling Love

 

Friends,

In the introduction of his mesmerising book, Entangled Life: How Fungi make our worlds, change our minds, and shape our futures, Merlin Sheldrake writes:

I attended a conference in Panama on tropical microbes, and along with many other researchers spent three days becoming increasingly bewildered by the implications of our studies. Someone got up to talk about a group of plants that produce a certain group of chemicals in their leaves. Until then, the chemicals had been thought of as a defining characteristic of that group of plants. However, it transpired that the chemicals were actually made by fungi that lived in the leaves of the plant. Our idea of the plant had to be redrawn. Another researcher interjected, suggesting that it may not be the fungi living inside the leaf that produced these chemicals, but the bacteria living inside the fungus. Things continued along these lines. After two days, the notion of the individual had deepened and expanded beyond recognition. To talk about individuals made no sense any more. Biology – the study of living organisms – had transformed into ecology – the study of the relationships between living organisms. To compound matters, we understood very little. Graphs of microbial populations projected on a screen had large sections labelled ‘unknown’….

Many scientific concepts – from ‘time’ to ‘chemical bonds’ to ‘genes’ to ‘species’ – lack stable definitions but remain helpful categories to think with. From one perspective, ‘individual’ is no different: just another category to guide human thought and behaviour. Nonetheless, so much of daily life and experience – not to mention our philosophical, political and economic systems – depends on individuals that it can be hard to stand by and watch the concept dissolve. Where does this leave ‘us’? What about ‘them’? ‘Me’? ‘Mine’? ‘Everyone’? ‘Anyone’? …. It made my head spin to think of how many ideas had to be revisited, not least our culturally treasured notions of identity, autonomy and independence. It is in part this disconcerting feeling that makes the advances in the microbial sciences so exciting. Our microbial relationships are about as intimate as any can be. Learning more about these associations changes our experience of our own bodies and the places we inhabit. ‘We’ are ecosystems that span boundaries and transgress categories. Our selves emerge from a complex tangle of relationships only now becoming known.21

The study of relationships can be confusing. Almost all are ambiguous. Have leafcutter ants domesticated the fungus they depend on, or has the fungus domesticated the ants? Do plants farm the mycorrhizal fungi they live with, or do the fungi farm the plants? Which way does the arrow point? This uncertainty is healthy.

Reading these words made me think of our readings from the Gospel and Letter of John these past two weeks. They both refer to the wonder of indwelling the Divine and being indwelled by the Divine…“Abide in me as I abide in you…” [John 15]. “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” [1 John 4:16]. Talk about entangled life!

And then of course what if we take Jesus literally when his says: “Love your neighbour as yourself.” [Mark 12:31]. What if Jesus is not simply speaking about the extent of our loving but the extent of our actual selves? In other words, could Jesus be commanding us to expand our own sense of identity to include our neighbour? If so, then we are more than our skin can hold. If so, what happens to our neighbour happens to us for we all share entangled life. If so, then murder and war is suicide. If so, then an injustice to one is an injustice to all.

If so, what “concepts dissolve?” What “associations change?” “What culturally treasured notions do we need to revisit?”

A growing consciousness of our oneness with neighbour, the Divine, and the natural world lies at the foundation of the world’s salvation (healing and liberation). And obviously not simply a growing consciousness, but a way of life both personal and political, individual and systemic that abides in this consciousness and in which this consciousness abides.  I would call this consciousness of our oneness, Christ consciousness as Jesus prayed: “May they be one as we are one.” [John 17], but others may call it by other names. What we call it is less important than whether we live into and out of it.

If this makes our head spin – let us embrace our “disconcerting feelings” and rejoice that our many “unknowns” if nothing else, help us to walk our entangled life more humbly.

In grace,
Alan
Pronouns: he/him

Email welcome@cmm.org.za for the zoom link to the Sunday service.