A Prayer for Earth Week

Life-giving God, our hearts overflow with gratitude in response to your overflowing generosity. Over millions of years, you worked with loving patience to bring together in perfect proportion all the ingredients necessary for there to be life on this tiny planet we call earth. With perfect precision everything connects together for the good of the whole. In perfect balance every part gives of itself and receives for itself. With breath-like-rhythm, giving and receiving … receiving and giving … nourishing and being nourished…loving and being loved.

No part of your creation stands on its own, for you have not created anything that is self-sufficient in and of itself. Everything is humbly interdependent on everything else. Humble interdependence is the very fabric of creation. No wonder the web of life threatens to unravel, when this humble interdependence is rebelled against and broken.

Life-giving God we confess that we have rebelled against the humble interdependence of your creation and of our being. We have done so in ignorance and arrogance. We have done so unaware of the infinite knock-on effects of our actions. We have done so believing it is our privileged right as so-called “superior” beings to play by different rules. We have done so stubbornly refusing to listen to the mystics and prophets who called us to honour the perfect oneness of your creation. We think we are exempt from the perfect rhythm of giving and receiving … so we take more than we give. We take more than we need and more than what we can ever return and replace. Not content with living from the balance of the present, we consume from the future … and we rob the future of life.

And now the deathly consequences of our stubbornness are already being felt – the natural world dominos into deathly extinction – but many of us continue to live in denial. While others of us feel powerless to make the changes that are now urgently necessary: they feel too big, and we feel too small. And besides we have become dependent on the very things we need to change, for our survival. Some of us even campaign for change to happen, but we secretly hope that change will take place without us ourselves having to actually change.

We ignorantly thought it would be impossible to use up all the ingredients for life on earth – but our unlimited greed is fast revealing the limits of your creation when forced out of it replenishing rhythm. Your creation that promises there to be more than enough if only we do not take more than we need. We not only take more than we need but we envy those who have taken the most – we read their books and listen to their podcasts to learn their secrets of “success”. As of old, we choose Barabbas and crucify Jesus. We worship the killers of life and crucify the life saviours of the world. Life saviours who invite us to walk more gently, justly and humbly … or simply to walk more and drive less.

We confess, we are fools – we contaminate the soil in which our food grows – we poison the water we drink – we pollute the air we breathe. Thinking only of today we destroy tomorrow … which soon becomes today. Truly we have unpicked the fabric of humble interdependence and even done so with pride, believing falsely that so-called self-sufficiency is the highest virtue.

Life-giving God, it has only taken us a few hundred years for us to threaten and destroy what has existed for millions of years – making us the most destructive animal that has ever lived on earth. And yet you continue to follow us with goodness and mercy. Your grace is embodied in your creation, responding with mercy the instant we stop and turn from our abusive ways. Your creation imitates your own heart of forgiveness and resurrection power by restoring to life that which was dead … that which we have killed. We have seen this with our own eyes during the forced standstill brought about by Covid that revealed to us that the instant the natural world is left alone it returns with abundant beauty.

By your mercy help us to honour the humble interdependence you have created us for. Amen.

In grace,
Alan

To forgive is to resurrect

Friends,

This past Sunday we noted that forgiveness is nothing less than an act of resurrection. In short: To forgive is to resurrect. We noted how the story of the forgiven prodigal is framed as a resurrection story: “My child was lost and is found, was dead and is now alive”. To say that we believe in the resurrection while withholding forgiveness is equivalent to saying we love God while hating our sisters and brothers. This makes us liars. [1 John 4:20]

Forgiveness is not only a gift of new life to the forgiven, but also a gift of new life to the forgiver. To forgive another is to be resurrected from our own death that results from us not loving. As we read in 1 John 3:14 “We know that we have passed from death to life because we love one another. Whoever does not love abides in death.” Still further, to forgive someone is to resurrect them from the death of being “dead to us”. Our act of forgiveness brings them alive to us. Alive so we can be for them and no longer against them or indifferent towards them.

These were just two pieces of the forgiveness-jigsaw-puzzle that we mentioned last Sunday. We did not complete the puzzle, I am not sure one ever can, but our hope was to find and place enough pieces of the puzzle to give us a sense of what forgiveness is.

I ran out of time last Sunday to link the Acts 4:32-35 reading to the theme of Forgiveness and Resurrection. This link is crucial if forgiveness is going to be known at societal level. And what society is without sin? The recurring sin of society is the exploitative and exclusive debt economy that eventually makes slaves of the majority of people to sustain a small elite.

Forgiveness as resurrection is made real within society through the implementation of Jubilee. Jubilee is the “every-fifty-years-forgiveness-of-debt” policy. Financial debt. We would prefer forgiveness to leave our finances alone. No wonder we have changed the word “debt” in the Lord’s prayer, to the more general, “trespasses” or “sins”. “Forgive us our debt as we forgive those in our debt”.

Jubilee is a forgiveness-financial-policy of debt cancellation. To the extent that we practice Jubilee is to the extent that we will come alive as a society. If we don’t do so – we abide in death. And this death will eventually swallow us all up. Once again, the first letter of John asks the pointed question: “How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?” [1 John 3:17]. This question is even sharper for us who live in the most unequal country in the world and therefore the country that has the greatest need for Jubilee economics.

The difference of course between forgiving others who have hurt us and practicing forgiveness as Jubilee in a society, is that when we practice Jubilee and cancel the debts of others we do so as those who need forgiveness. We need forgiveness because (even unwittingly) we have benefitted from systems that carry the favour of some at the deathly expense of the many. It matters not whether we like or dislike the systems that benefit us or not. The reading from 1 John 3:17 does not ask us if we designed the system or not. It does not care how hard we have worked for what we have. John simply says that if we have and withhold what we have, while others do not have, then we can’t say that the love of God is in us. As Rabbi Abraham Heschel says: “Some are guilty, but all are responsible”. Practicing Jubilee is “the all” taking responsibility.

A Universal Basic Income Grant is one way in which we can practice Jubilee. It is probably the very least of ways. We could call it “Jubilee lite”. I believe that South Africa’s resurrection depends on it.

There is a lot of information about a Universal Basic Income Grant on the net. Here is an introduction via The Daily Maverick podcast called: Don’t Shoot the Messenger, by Rebecca Davis.

In grace,
Alan

 

The Coming Plague

May, 17 2020 Alan Storey: With Gentleness and Reverence [Acts 17:22-31; Psalm 66:8-20; 1 Peter 3:13-22; John 14:15-21]

 

Dear friends,

Last year I attended a seminar by Laurie Garrett, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and public health expert. Hearing from Garrett about the human impact on the environment and the resulting emergence of new and mutating deadly viruses was frighteningly enlightening. As early as 1995, Laurie Garrett’s book, The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance pointed to the present we are now living.

Before I share a passage from Garrett’s book, the thing that struck me from her seminar was the sad pattern of human response to plagues:

1] Garrett stated that religious bigotry and religious exceptionalism accompanied plagues throughout history. We only have to think of HIV. Religious bigotry creates division: “us versus them”; “clean versus unclean”; “protected versus punished”. Religious exceptionalism encourages non-compliance of health precautions and reckless complacency towards the disease. The pandemic is spiritualised, for example, Covid-19 is seen as a demon, not a disease; a test of faith, not science.

2] Blaming the victim also stains the history of plagues. Today we note an increase in the stigmatisation of those who test positive for the coronavirus. This is very concerning. Blaming and banishing the victim creates a context of fear that ultimately discourages people to be tested and to seek care. https://www.iol.co.za/capeargus/news/call-to-stop-covid-19-stigma-as-it-often-causes-people-to-avoid-care-47923253

In response to this sad human pattern, we ask: “What does the Lord require of us in response to Covid-19?” Answer: What the Lord has always required of us. Namely, “To do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with God” [Micah 6:8]. I invite you to allow this single sentence to take hold of you. Take time to reflect on what, justice, mercy and humility mean in our pandemic present. We will re-visit this question over and over again.

I now share with you an extract from Garrett’s fascinating and detailed book, in which she introduces us to the human lung and viruses and the 1970s oil crisis and globalisation via the airline industry. Her gift is seeing connections where none may even look. It is the gift of a prophet. Another name for prophet is a ‘seer’. A seer of the past and present with such truthful clarity that she enables us to see a bit of tomorrow…

The human lung, as an ecosphere, was designed to take in 20,000 liters of air each day, or roughly 60 pounds. Its surface was highly variegated, comprised of hundreds of millions of tiny branches, at the ends of which were the minute bronchioles that actively absorbed oxygen molecules. The actual surface area of the human lung was, therefore, about 150 square meters, or “about the size of an Olympic tennis court,” as Harvard Medical School pulmonary expert Joseph Brain put it.

Less than 0.64 micron, or just under one one-hundred-thousandth of an inch, was all the distance that separated the air environment in the lungs from the human bloodstream. All a microbe had to do to gain entry to the human bloodstream was get past that 0.64 micron of protection. Viruses accomplished the task by accumulating inside epithelial cells in the airways and creating enough local damage to open up a hole of less than a millionth of an inch in diameter.

Some viruses, such as those that caused common colds, were so well adapted to the human lung that they had special proteins on their surfaces which locked on to the epithelial cells. Larger microbes, such as the tuberculosis bacteria, gained entry via the immune system’s macrophages. They were specially adapted to recognize and lock on to the large macrophages that were distributed throughout pulmonary tissue. Though it was the job of macrophages to seek out and destroy such invaders, many microbes had adapted ways to fool the cells into ingesting them. Once inside the macrophages, the microbes got a free ride into the blood or the lymphatic system, enabling them to reach destinations all over the human body.

The best way to protect the lungs was to provide them with 20,000 liters per day of fresh, clean, oxygen-rich air. The air flushed out the system. Dirty air—that which contained pollutant particles, dust, or microbes —assaulted the delicate alveoli and bronchioles, and there was a synergism of action. People who, for example, smoked cigarettes or worked in coal mines were more susceptible to all respiratory infectious diseases: colds, flu, tuberculosis, pneumonia, and bronchitis.

Because of its confined internal atmosphere, the vehicle responsible for the great globalization of humanity—the jet airplane—could be a source of microbial transmission. Everybody on board an airplane shared the same air. It was, therefore, easy for one ailing passenger or crew member to pass a respiratory microbe on to many, if not all, on board. The longer the flight, and the fewer the number of air exchanges in which outside air was flushed through the cabin, the greater the risk.

In 1977, for example, fifty-four passengers were grounded together for three hours while their plane underwent repairs in Alaska. None of the passengers left the aircraft, and to save fuel the air conditioning was switched off. For three hours the fifty-four passengers breathed the same air over and over again. One woman had influenza: over the following week 72 percent of her fellow passengers came down with the flu; genetically identical strains were found in everyone.

Following the worldwide oil crisis of the 1970s, the airlines industry looked for ways to reduce fuel use. An obvious place to start was with air circulation, since it cost a great deal of fuel to draw icy air in from outside the aircraft, adjust its temperature to a comfortable 65°—70°F, and maintain cabin pressure. Prior to 1985 commercial aircraft performed that function every three minutes, which meant most passengers and crew breathed fresh air throughout their flight. But virtually all aircraft built after 1985 were specifically designed to circulate air less frequently; a mix of old and fresh air circulated once every seven minutes, and total flushing of the aircraft could take up to thirty minutes. Flight crews increasingly complained of dizziness, flu, colds, headaches, and nausea. Studies of aircraft cabins revealed excessive levels of carbon dioxide—up to 50 percent above U.S. legal standards. Air quality for fully booked airliners failed to meet any basic standards for U.S. workplaces.

In 1992 and 1993 the CDC investigated four instances of apparent transmission of tuberculosis aboard aircraft. In one case, a flight attendant passed TB on to twenty-three crew members over the course of several flights. Similar concerns regarding confined spaces were raised about institutional settings, such as prisons and dormitories, where often excessive numbers of people were co-housed in energy-efficient settings.

In preparation for the June 1992 United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the World Health Organization reviewed available data on expected health effects of global warming and pollution. WHO concluded that evidence of increased human susceptibility to infectious diseases, due to UV-B immune system damage and pollutant impacts on the lungs and immune system, was compelling. The agency was similarly impressed with estimates of current and projected changes in the ecology of disease vectors, particularly insects.

It wasn’t necessary, of course, for the earth to undergo a 1°—5°C temperature shift in order for diseases to emerge. As events since 1960 had demonstrated, other, quite contemporary factors were at play. The ecological relationship between Homo Sapiens and microbes had been out of balance for a long time. The “disease cowboys”—scientists like Karl Johnson, Pierre Sureau, Joe McCormick, Peter Piot, and Pat Webb—had long ago witnessed the results of human incursion into new niches or alteration of old niches. Perhaps entomologist E. O. Wilson, when asked, “How many disease-carrying reservoir and vector species await discovery in the earth’s rain forests?” best summed up the predicament: “That is unknown and unknowable. The scale of the unknown is simply too vast to even permit speculation.”

Thanks to changes in Homo Sapiens activities, in the ways in which the human species lived and worked on the planet at the end of the twentieth century, microbes no longer remained confined to remote ecospheres or rare reservoir species: for them, the earth had truly become a Global Village.

Between 1950 and 1990 the number of passengers aboard international commercial air flights soared from 2 million to 280 million. Domestic passengers flying within the United States reached 424 million in 1990. Infected human beings were moving rapidly about the planet, and the number of air passengers was expected to double by the year 2000, approaching 600 million on international flights.

Garrett, Laurie. The Coming Plague (pp. 569-571). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

You can find her book: https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Plague-Emerging-Diseases-Balance-ebook/dp/B005FGR6RO Or follow her: Twitter: @Laurie_Garrett.

Please email welcome@cmm.org.za if you would like the zoom invitation for the post-sermon connection and chat on Sunday at 11h11.

Grace,
Alan

I am the way, not the route

May, 10 2020 Alan Storey: I am the way, not the route [Acts 7:55-60; Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16; 1 Peter 2:2-10; John 14:1-14]

Hi everyone,

It was lovely to see so many of your faces on Thursday evening during our Zoom test / connect. It felt Easter-ish: Facial recognition resurrects relationships! To hear familiar voices and laughter is life-giving.

A group call with so many people can be quite chaotic. But as the angels say: “Be not afraid” for there is beauty in the chaos, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory. As we keep open to learning how to be with each other in this new way, let’s double up on patience, kindness and a sense of humour. When in doubt, breathe and smile. We are not all the same. What energises one, drains the next. As we are attentive to our different experiences, may we feel free to express our learnings, ideas and suggestions so that we all take responsibility for the space we share. The feedback, since Thursday has already been helpful. Thank you.

It would be rather entertaining (and concerning) were someone to get out of a swimming pool and walk on dry ground while continuing to wave breaststroke arms. In other words, a new medium invites a new way. Similarly, it is not possible nor wise to try and replicate the actual with the virtual. This means there are going to be some things we simply miss as they are irreplaceable because they are bound within a particular medium.

Learning what we miss can also be a gift. I have realised over the last few weeks that preaching is a particular medium that cannot (certainly not for me) be replicated by a podcast. I was always taught that true preaching is relational, but I have only now come to see that to be true. Missing the congregation has revealed this to me. If I am honest, podcasts feel kind of dead. (Please stop reading and take a moment to pray for the resurrection of dead podcasts … and a particular struggling podcaster.)

I have also missed liturgy, prayer, readings and song in their own right, but also in the way in which they support and stretch the sermon. Sunday services are more than the sum of their parts. A sermon is a thread, while Sunday services are a tapestry. I miss this greater sense of wholeness. The different voices from different perspectives addressing life as we know it from the uniqueness of our hearts, hands and voices.

In the light of all of this we are going to try something new this Sunday. At 11:11 we will have a conversation (on Zoom). The springboard for our conversation will be the Sunday readings and reflection. Please email Adrienne at welcome@cmm.org.za for the Zoom link if you would like to be part of this. We will stick to 50 minutes max (like therapy – except it will not be therapy!). In our quest to be a questioning community, this Sunday we will simply ask the question: “What questions arise for us from the readings and reflection?” Instead of brainstorming answers, we will brainstorm questions.

One of the concerns about all this online stuff is how exclusive and excluding it can be. It is dependent on having access to data and internet access as well as the technology in the first place. We know therefore that many at CMM are excluded from this form of gathering. This is a concern. I am not exactly sure what the answer is but would like us to be mindful of it. If you can help bridge the gap with those who you know from CMM who are not online, please do. Any suggestions?

On Thursday I shared a bit about the present state of the sanctuary (stripped bare) and the new opportunities it presents for us, especially in relation to a different form of seating that will allow greater flexibility for the use of the sanctuary and to make it more functional in the service of the community. This discussion is important not only regarding the historical nature of the building, but because it raises questions about who we are, and who we are called to be as followers of Jesus.

Yet the challenge is, this window of opportunity coincides with restricted interaction and limited channels of communication. We would like as many people as possible to be part of these conversations. I therefore appeal to you, if you have thoughts and questions about this, please contact me. We want to make this journey together.

I am mindful that as a community we moved straight from housing refugees for 5 months to Covid-19 lockdown. In other words, from one challenge to another even greater challenge without time to process the first. This is not healthy. We have much to learn from the last 6-7 months as a community. We need to be deliberate about coming back to it when we are able to do so.

Lastly, a big thank you to those who continue to generously support the ministries of CMM as well as Stepping Stones Children’s Centre.

Grace,
Alan

 

The Shepherd Politics of Abundant Life

May, 03 2020 Alan Storey: The Shepherd Politics of Abundant Life. [Psalm 23; Ezekiel 34Acts 2:42-47; John 10:1-11. Also in PDF format.

 

Grace and peace to you,

Lock-down tiredness and other puzzlements and paradoxes …

Days during lockdown kind of roll into each other without any difference or distinction. It doesn’t seem to make the slightest difference whether the day is a Tuesday or a Saturday. There is movement but no progress. As if Sisyphus got hold of the calendar. I wonder if this is one of the reasons why many people have felt so tired during Lock-down? A tiredness that seems out of place because there is no glaringly obvious reason for the exhaustion. Some of us can’t point to anything we have done to make ourselves tired, yet tired we feel.

I wonder if the exhaustion results from absorbing the suffering and struggle around the world and throughout the country without being able to do too much about it. Feeling like an insignificant drop in the ocean. We have constant input about what is happening all over but like the Dead Sea very little outflow, so for most of the time we are just left to hold it. It feels like a dead weight. We might name this dead weight “Overwhelm”. And if we put “Overwhelm” down because it is too heavy then another weight steps in to replace it called “Guilt”. After all, how can we be chilling while others are crying? The knowledge of the vastly different social conditions of Lock-down weigh heavily and yet does not stop us from moaning about the trivial.

Some of us wish we could just stop eating while others wish for food to eat. Some of us share space with the one we love while others with the one we resent or fear.

Waiting on tender hooks is tiring. Waiting for the Tsunami of death to knock us off our feet as it has done in other countries. Some have already been swallowed up by the economic Tsunami – having lost their business and means of income and sit frozen in trauma. For these it’s the ‘cure’ that has taken their life rather than the disease.

Meetings via ZOOM are also said to be a reason for tiredness, because you literally have people “in your face”. https://www.mnn.com/health/fitness-well-being/stories/zoom-fatigue-video-conferencing?utm_source=TreeHugger+Newsletters&utm_campaign=150c8b8395-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_11_16_2018_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_32de41485d-150c8b8395-243784813

For some of us the peace and quiet is driving us bats, while others covet a single second of silence because we have children climbing up the walls. The desire for connection with people does not correlate into having the energy to make a phone call.

You have probably got your own Lock-down puzzlements and paradoxes. My invitation to you is that you honour your puzzlements and paradoxes without censor or judgement. Be attentive to them all. To deny our own experience is no less violent than to dismiss the experience of others. When in doubt, go with ‘both / and’ rather than ‘either /or’.

Grace,
Alan

Notices

  • We would like to have a “test” CMM gathering via ZOOM (Not more than 30 minutes. Hopefully not too exhausting!) at 8pm on Thursday evening 7th May. If you would like to participate please send your email address to Adrienne: welcome@cmm.org.za It will be good to check in with each other.
  • Thank you to those of you seeking to support Stepping Stones Children’s Centre. Here are the bank details:
    Stepping Stones Children’s Centre
    NEDBANK
    St. George’s
    Branch Code 100 909
    Account Number 1028 204 973

 

Promises for the Resurrection Journey

Grace and peace to you all,

African Harrier-Hawk

One of the joys during lockdown is to have seen an African Harrier-Hawk fly up and down Church Street on three separate occasions. When one is only used to seeing pigeons in the city, the wingspan of a hawk is very impressive. While perched on the roof top of Deluxe Coffee it ate its prey, which I guess is some consolation for the Coffee shop being closed.

Some of you have asked about the state of the Sanctuary. The work of restoring the Sanctuary is starting slowly. We will communicate with you in the near future about what needs to be done and what we will need in order to do it. After the clean-up and stripping bare of the Sanctuary, that was enabled by a generous donation, we presently have electricians working on the electrics to make sure that it’s all in safe working order as well as plumbers enabling the bathrooms to once again be functional. This is all we are really able to do at the moment due to the lockdown and our budget.

Restoring the Sanctuary is going to be a big task. It will also take money. We are, however, very mindful of the fact that the Covid-19 Lockdown has not only reduced many people’s financial means to contribute to our situation, but created widespread and urgent human need that demands the generosity and priority of us all. In the very least I want to encourage you to keep paying people in your employ. There are also many online opportunities to support food distribution and not least to contribute to the national Solidarity Fund (which to date has received over 75 000 individual contributions). Think too of those small businesses that lost all income the instant the lockdown occurred. Think of a hairdresser for example. Perhaps you can pay your hairdresser in advance to enable them to pay their bills in the meantime. We all need to generously trust and be creative, doing to others as we would love them to do to us.

At CMM we continue to commit to paying people in our employ (permanent and casual, working and not working) as well as a commitment to the staff of Stepping Stones Children’s Centre as the need arises. We have entered into compassionate rental agreements with our tenants with the hope of enabling them to see this difficult period through. We are not sure where all this will take us, but we are committed to continue to care for those dependent on us as comprehensibly as we can. Thank you to all of you for your continued support and generosity that enable us to take these steps.

According the President’s address to us all on Thursday 23rd April, we will not be gathering as a community any time soon. Lockdown eases only slightly from the 1st May. We are in the process of exploring fresh ways to connect as a community.

Please do communicate with Sharon, Adrienne or me, if you are going into hospital over this time. Even though we are still not allowed to visit, it can be a source of strength to know that others know where you are and are with you in prayer.

Grace, Alan

Today you can either listen to the reflection – click on the heading below:

Promises for the Resurrection Journey on the road back to Jerusalem

OR spend time reading it – click on PDF.

 

[Luke 24:13-35]