Tag: justice

The Gift of Religious Diversity

CMM, Cape Town / / Pentecost, Sunday Letter

Grace and peace to you and through you

One of the most beautiful things about Cape Town is the healthy religious diversity that flourishes among us. For some of us this religious diversity is planted within our own households. This is to be celebrated and cherished. To discover and learn from others what for them is sacred is a crucial part in honouring their humanity and loving them as our neighbour. This is especially so as we have just entered the month of Ramadan – a sacred time to Muslims of fasting for inner spiritual attunement.

At our Synod two weeks ago we were addressed by Mr Ebrahim Rhoda from the Strand Muslim community who shared with us a brief historical overview of the Strand Muslim community from between 1822 – 1966. In his talk he brought to our attention the relationship that early Methodists had with the early Muslim community. Some of the statements from the Methodist and other Christian clergy make you want to hide in shame. One missionary declared: “It has been my endeavour, within my humble sphere, to check this growing evil, but generally without success.” Another says, “With few exceptions they follow either a base, sinful course of life, or are ensnared by the awfully prevalent delusion of Mohammedanism.” From this we are reminded that we are often tempted to speak of another’s religion in the least charitable terms while taking a most generous view of our own. This is fueled by blind passion, hidden insecurity or both.

Rhoda also spoke of the great cooperation between Methodists and Muslims. One such story of collaboration resulted from a fishing disaster in which both Muslims and Methodists drowned. And from this we are reminded that shared suffering is often the knife that cuts through our shallow differences awakening us to our shared unity. Only when we know a person’s deepest hurt can we say that we know them.

There is a story of how Francis of Assisi (1181? – 1226) who rejected the call for war and instead during the Fifth Crusade went to meet Al-Kamil, a Kurdish ruler and Sultan of Egypt. His original intension was to convert the Sultan to Christianity but he left their time together with a profound sense that the Muslim Sultan was a person of God. Francis thereafter instructed his fellow monks to live at peace with Muslims with no need to convert them.

In these days where difference is often the basis for division may we learn to do difference differently. May difference be a lens through which we can learn and grow. And may we come to experience the mystery of how difference awakens us to our oneness at our depths.

In this may we hear Jesus say, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” and a minute later he says, “They who keep my commandments are those who love me.” [John 14: 15 & 21]

Grace, Alan

More expensive to be poor

CMM, Cape Town / / Easter, Sunday Letter

Occupying Woodstock Hospital

Picture: Ashraf Hendricks/GroundUp (Creative Commons License CC BY-ND 4.0) 

Grace and peace to you and through you

Over the past few weeks Reclaim the City has occupied the vacant Helen Bowden building and Woodstock Hospital as an act of peaceful civil disobedience. The purpose of Reclaim the City is to challenge and change the Apartheid spatial planning that continues to shape our lives through the development of affordable housing within the city of Cape Town.

Affordable housing in well-located areas are a necessity if we are ever going to seriously address the legacy of Apartheid politics and economics. This is true especially in Cape Town, which remains more segregated than other cities in South Africa.

For those working in low wage jobs to be living miles away in places like Blikkiesdorp and Wolwerivier, is to stretch their minimum wages beyond breaking point. They are not only far from their place of work but also good schools and reliable medical care.

This points to the double whammy of being poor: it is more expensive to be poor than to be rich. Those with the least amount of money live furthest away from work, which means that they spend more money on getting to work. The far distances affect the prices of just about everything they need to purchase to live. A loaf of bread in Blikkiesdorp is more expensive than in the city. Therefore the poor have less to save and as a result it is less likely for their situation to ever change. While the opposite is true for the wealthy! This stretches the inequalities of yesterday into the future.

In this situation it is difficult not to become hopeless. Hopelessness is the absence of any reason why tomorrow will be any better than today. And hopelessness ignored will end in rage! And then…

And the great owners, who must lose their land in an upheaval, the great owners with access to history, with eyes to read history and to know the great fact: when property accumulates in too few hands it is taken away.

And that companion fact: when a majority of the people are hungry and cold they will take by force what they need.

And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed.

The great owners ignored the three cries of history. The land fell into fewer hands, the number of the dispossessed increased, and every effort of the great owners was directed at repression. The money was spent for arms, for gas to protect the great holdings, and spies were sent to catch the murmuring of revolt so that it might be stamped out. The changing economy was ignored; and only means to destroy revolt were considered, while the causes of revolt went on.

The tractors which throw men out of work, the belt lines which carry loads, the machines which produce, all were increased; and more and more families scampered on the highways, looking for crumbs from the great holdings, lusting after the land beside the roads. The great owners formed associations for protection and they met to discuss ways to intimidate, to kill, to gas.

And always they were in fear of a principal–three hundred thousand–if they ever move under a leader–the end. Three hundred thousand, hungry and miserable; if they ever know themselves, the land will be theirs and all the gas, all the rifles in the world won’t stop them.

And the great owners, who had become through their holdings both more and less than men, ran to their destruction, and used every means that in the long run would destroy them. Every little means, every violence, every raid on a Hooverville, every deputy swaggering through a ragged camp put off the day a little and cemented the inevitability of the day.

~ John Steinbeck: Grapes of Wrath

Praying that our conscience be resurrected lest our crucifixion be inevitable.

Grace,
Alan

Suffering of the Ignored

CMM, Cape Town / / Sunday Letter, Third Sunday in Lent
Masiphumelele protesters blocked roads at the weekend, cutting the Cape Town Cycle Tour short.
(Photo: Ryan Johardien, GroundUp)

Grace and peace to you and through you

Last Sunday would have been the 40th Cape Argus Cycle Tour – but at about 6:55 am we were notified that wind had stopped play. There have been enough video clips of cyclists being blown over by the foreshore wind – making us gasp and laugh. A good advert if there ever was one for #WindPower.

An earlier message that most people have forgotten about or may not even have known of, came at 5:39 am: “The cycle tour will be diverted over Glencairn Express Way due to protest action en route. Distance now 78km.” Because of the wind as well as the devastating fire in Imizamo Yethu, Hout Bay, the protest action from some of the residents of Masiphumelele has fallen off the social radar. The unavailability of land, as well as a terrible lack of basic services is the root cause of the rock throwing anger that blocked the cycle route. People are angry because they have not been listened to or taken seriously for years and years. Not only is there enormous suffering which is mostly ignored, but life seems to carry on in a jolly-old-fashioned-way around them … in fact some people – like me – are out riding their bicycles in their very neighbourhood. Surely any reasonable person would snap under such contradictory conditions. As Parker Palmer says: “Violence is what happens when we don’t know what else to do with our suffering”.

Take this as a small taste of what life is going to be like in SA for the foreseeable future! The lives of the rich will be constantly disrupted because that is the only way the poor will secure a moment’s attention. And in this country there is no way to re-route every race or event to escape this … and nor should there be.

Saul Alinsky makes a challenging point in his famous book Rules for Radicals:

Concern for our private, material well-being with disregard for the well-being of others is immoral according to the precepts of our Judaeo-Christian civilization, but worse, it is stupidity worthy of the lower animals. …We now live in a world where no man [sic] can have a loaf of bread while his neighbour has none. If he does not share his bread, he dare not sleep, for his neighbour will kill him. To eat and sleep in safety man must do the right thing, if for seemingly the wrong reasons, and be in practice his brother’s keeper. I believe that man is about to learn that the most practical life is the moral life and that the moral life is the only road to survival. He is beginning to learn that he will either share part of his material wealth or lose all of it…

Let’s be clear that the suffering of the people of Masiphumelele is far more demanding of our attention than wind-swept-cyclists.

Grace,
Alan

Love God and Neighbour

Alan / / Ordinary Days of the Spirit, Sunday Letter

Grace and Peace to you …

Today marks the anniversary of the Marikana Killings. Yesterday, the church was open for people in the community who wanted to be together to remember and reflect on this day in the history of South Africa. Candles were lit in memory of each of the persons that were killed and the documentary telling the story of the events was viewed.

Today we will take time to hang a yellow banner calling the community to remember, reflect, and be a part of working for a community that lives for something different than the violence that occurred on that day.

The banners that hang at Central Methodist Mission are viewed on computer screens in other parts of the world. The message we send is a message to a world of people calling them to stand for a different way of living together as neighbours in this world. This will be the first banner I have witnessed being hung, but I have seen the pictures of them and they have strengthened me in my own life and ministry.

The call to love God & Neighbour can be interpreted for each of us in different ways, but in the midst of a time when people live with questions, fears, and doubt. I am thankful for this community and the witness we are to the world around us. As we depart from this place today, my hope is that each of us will continue to reflect on the ways in which we can be a sign and symbol of God’s love to each other and our neighbours around the world.

Question for reflection: Who are people around me that God might be asking me to take notice of in a different way? How might I live more fully into this commandment to love God and neighbour this week?

With you on the journey, Michelle

For Love of God & Neighbour

What does it mean to love God and love our neighbour? This is a question that has been asked over and over again by people of God in every generation. The greatest commandment calls us to this:

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
Matthew 22:37-40

As we struggle with this question in our individual lives, we must also struggle with it in our corporate lives together as well.

There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.
Edith Wharton

 

Fault Lines

Alan / / Ordinary Days of the Spirit, Sunday Letter

Grace and peace to you …

Seismologists are those who study the quakes that occur in the earth — earthquakes. There are many reasons for the occurrence of earthquakes, but one of them is movement along a fault line — or crack underneath the earth’s surface.

Seismologists work to predict earthquakes by tracing the activity of seismic waves or pings of energy that vibrate out as the plates begin to shift along a fault line or crack in the rocky ground beneath us. Throughout the course of human history, prophets have served in this same capacity for the people of God. The voices of the prophets name for us the places in our life together where there are cracks.

On August 9, 1956, 20,000 women marched in opposition to the pass laws in South Africa. They held in their hands over 100,000 signatures opposing this law that would give strength to the Apartheid System that was the fault line of the day — the crack that was killing true community. As the women protested, they sang a song and the words translated to, “Now you have touched the women, you have struck a rock.” This phrase now represents the courage and strength of women in South Africa. Today and tomorrow, South Africans will honour all women as we celebrate National Women’s Day.

There are fault lines beneath us in our life together still today. What might the women of 1956 have to say to the reality that 1 in 3 women worldwide will suffer some sort of violence in their lifetime and that more than 57% of the women who are murdered are murdered by a loved one? The women of 1956 demonstrated with their march the need for us to gather around the places where there are cracks in our life together as children of God. Injustices need to be named and work must be done to make right the fault lines that shift beneath our feet.

Question for reflection: Take some time to name the fault lines or cracks that exist in the world around us where injustice exists. What might you do to stand and name these injustices like the women of 1956 and many others throughout the course of history have?

With you on the journey, Michelle

By the grace of my higher power

Alan / / Prayers for Peace, Hope & Justice

The following powerful testimony was shared as the Candle for Peace, Hope and Justice on Sunday 19 July 2015:

My name is Fiona and I am a recovering addict. Years trapped in the cycle of addiction brought me to my knees. I had lost hope. Towards the end I couldn’t go a couple of hours without withdrawing and needing another hit. Fear was my constant companion. Given 6 months to live, I was dying. I attempted hypnotherapy, detoxes, psychiatry, medication and sheer will power. None of these had worked. The 12 steps tell me I am powerless over my addiction, that there is one power that can help me, and that power is God. This proved a challenge as I was a hardened atheist. Years of active addiction had crushed any faith I may have had as a child. The programme teaches me to have an open mind and I finally surrendered. I was asked, would I rather be right or happy? So I began to pray. Since embarking on my spiritual journey through the steps and by the grace of my higher power, I haven’t craved for over 3½ years. Especially given I struggle with anxiety and depression, this is nothing short of a miracle.

This doesn’t mean I have the whole God-thing waxed. When my head gets in the way, it doesn’t make any sense. I have no idea what God’s plan is for me. The spiritual principles of honesty, open-mindedness and willingness are cornerstones of the 12 steps. All I can do is do the next right thing, which is what I see as God’s will, and along with that comes a sense of serenity. I feel much like a baby learning to crawl. I wasn’t born with the handbook of life. I was incapable of living life on life’s terms. The programme gives me the support and guidance I need to take the next step.

I firmly believe I wouldn’t have gotten out alive without the help of a power greater than myself. I am under new management. This brings much relief and I no longer have to have all the answers. If I put one in front of the other, do the next right thing, life unfolds the way it’s supposed to. I am exactly where I need to be. Having said this, acceptance is often tough. Why am I an addict, why can’t I be normal? It doesn’t end when I put down the drugs. In fact, that’s when the hard work really begins. If I want to stay clean I will have to attend 12 step meetings and work a programme for the rest of my life. Addiction isn’t curable, but it can be arrested one day at a time.

Self-centeredness lies at the core of my addiction. So if there’s one thing I can gleam from being an addict, my higher power has brought me into recovery to help others. The primary purpose of the 12 steps is to help the still suffering addict. For me it gives meaning to my own suffering and ultimately strengthens my recovery. This keeps me going in dark times. It’s not all about me.

Without faith in a higher power, I get lost in the senselessness of it all. Coming to believe has given me hope where I was hopeless. I am learning to let go and let God, hand over what I cannot control. I’m coming to accept my flaws and strengths, I am only human, and that’s more than good enough for me. I now know who I am, and with a higher power working in my life, just for today, I don’t have to pick up.

Please join me in prayer …

God grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
Courage to change the things I can;
And wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
As it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right
If I surrender to His Will;
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life
And supremely happy with Him
Forever and ever in the next.

Amen.

Authentic Community

Alan / / Pentecost

Grace and Peace to you …

Today is Pentecost. The forming of authentic community was one of the miracles that took place that first Pentecost. The author of the Pentecostal story writes that every nation under heaven was present. The author’s exaggerated point is clear. No one was excluded. In fact the author does something even more imaginative. Out of the 16 nations that the author lists, some of them no longer existed at the time. They were literally extinct. Pentecost is therefore the forming of what is deemed ‘impossible community’. Yet this type of community where no one is excluded is the only community worth striving for because it is the only community that will save us in the end.

As deep and as difficult as the race issue is in South Africa I think class is our biggest challenge when it comes to forming truly diverse community. Having worked in many non-racial church communities, I am yet to find much evidence that the rich and poor can come together to form any sort of authentic community. It seems impossible.

In short, the rich fear the poor and therefore avoid the poor. Who am I talking about when I refer to the rich? I am speaking about myself and others like me. According to www.globalrichlist.com when I plug in my +R15 000 p.m. (R180 000 p.a.) net salary into their smart little app, I end up in the top 0.95% of the world, making me the 56,932,476th richest person on earth by income. It further tells me that I earn R93.75 per hour while the average labourer in Zimbabwe makes just R2.89 in the same time and that it will take the average labourer in Indonesia 44 years to earn what I do in a year. This means the next time I protest about the world’s wealthy 1% I should bring a mirror. [www.globalrichlist.com uses 2008 figures for their calculation so they may be a little out of date yet the point still stands.]

These sobering stats should give us a clue why the rich fear and avoid the poor. I fear and avoid the poor because I know that for authentic community to exist the inequality must end. And for the inequality to end means that I must change my lifestyle, which feels too much like loss, until of course my eyes are opened to the richness of a truly diverse community where no one is excluded.

Rich and poor forming authentic community may seem impossible but what really is impossible is the continued sustainability of the divide. If this divide is not addressed voluntarily then in the end it will be addressed violently. A nation that has bricks to build high walls to insulate the wealthy but not houses to shelter the poor will collapse because God will not be mocked.

Grace, Alan

Let’s change

Alan / / Easter, Sunday Letter

Grace and Peace to you

Tershia’s letter

The letter (picture above and text below) was sent to the media by Pam Jackson – Director of Ons Plek Projects for Female Street Children – a project of CMM. Her accompanying letter gave context to the impact of Xenophobia on the vulnerable girls “local and foreign” at Ons Plek. The young girls react and respond differently. For some there is real fear, flashbacks to their previous life, living in hope, but often disappointed, at risk of abuse of all kinds and struggling to see Christ in their lived experience. Threats even, from other girls of xenophobic bullying. And then the big fear. That violence will come into their very home.

The staff actively dealt with the issue. Tough discussion, with hard questions helped to ease the tension. Part of the process was letter-writing by all the girls. Tershia, a South African, expresses her feelings of the pain of rejection. Her letter is addressed to our President and her appeal is clear. Read it carefully. Think of all the vulnerable children of foreigners in our homes, shelters, schools, Sunday schools, sports clubs, on our streets … wherever.

Have we as adults engaged on the issue of xenophobia in a meaningful way? Have I?

We all need to look deeper at our own bias, prejudice and yes, our xenophobic attitudes and tendencies.

We read in 1 John 4 :” There is no fear in love, for perfect love casts out fear … Those who say, I love God and hate their brother or sister are liars, for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.”

With Tershia will we “keep on praying and doing my bit to help those who feel hopeless”?

Peace, Gilbert

Tershia’s letter

Dear President

It is so sad to see innocent people die.  People in south Africa are very selfish. They don’t care about how others feel of killing their families and as well they loved one’s. To watch news everyday and watching people die or physical abuse its so hurting. We as South Africans should understand that we are Africans and should treat each other with equal rights and they should feel welcome here in our countrie. One biggest commandment that God said was we should love one another and also accept each others difference’s. I will keep on praying and doing my bit to help those who feel hopeless. You the president you in charge of this country stand up for the righteousness and speak up for the hopless. LETS CHANGE SOUTH AFRICA TO A BETTER COUNTRY. We really love our brothers and sisters and don’t want them to get hurt just because of jealousy.

From Ons Plek Girls – Tershia

NO XeNOphobia

Alan / / Easter, Sunday Letter

Grace and peace to you …

On 18 May 2008 Alan wrote the following letter to the Calvary Methodist Church congregation during his time of ministry in Midrand:

“Dear Friends

The violence this past week towards foreigners in Alexandra has been terribly frightening and casts a worrying cloud over the peaceable future of so many of our communities.

The Oxford Dictionary defines Xenophobia to be the ‘morbid dislike for foreigners’. The extent of xenophobia that seems to plague so many of us – yes us – is alarming. At present there seems to be a morbid dislike for Zimbabweans – ‘coming to take our jobs, our women, our opportunities, cause trouble and commit crime – they should go back to where they came from’. Well that is the sort of stuff I have heard – yes personally heard – and it frightens me.

It frightens me because it seems that we have forgotten that we are all family – the human family. That the Apartheid between nations is an Apartheid system that will also one day crumble – because Jesus has prayed that we all be One like he and his Father are One – and nothing is going to stand against that prayer forever. It frightens me because it seems we have forgotten that our deepest identity does not come from which country (piece of God’s earth) we have been born in, but rather from the image of God that is carved at the core of each of us. It frightens me because making foreigners into scapegoats for our problems never helps us solve our problems. It frightens me because it seems we have forgotten so soon how our neighbours assisted many of our people who were once in exile – assisting with jobs and education and opportunities to develop in order to have skills that will one day be fruitfully employed when they return.

May God cleanse our thoughts and mouths of the morbid dislike of foreigners. Alan.”

_________________

Although it appears as if little has changed since 2008, there are those who are brave and saying NO to XeNOphobia and continue to welcome the foreigner among them! Please continue to pray for courage and God’s grace to help us embrace the Holy Trinity – the widow, the orphan and the foreigner – among us and stop our ‘morbid dislike of foreigners’.

Peace, Alan!

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they know
the unutterable beauty of simple things.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they have dared
to risk their hearts by giving of their love.

Blessed are the meek, for the gentle earth shall
embrace them and hallow them as its own.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for
righteousness, for they shall know the taste
of noble thoughts and deeds.

Blessed are the merciful, for in return theirs is
the gift of giving.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall be
at one with themselves and the universe.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for theirs is a kinship
with everything that is holy.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for
righteousness’ sake, for the truth will set them free.

~ F. Forrester Church

News24 26 April 2015: Alan Storey ~ Xenophobia: Sodom and South Africa

Kingdom of God living

Alan / / Easter, Sunday Letter

This “Sprite” car was parked outside CMM the other day.
Back in the day Adam and Eve had to deal with a “talking snake”
while today we have “talking cars and talking sugar drinks” telling us who we should obey.

Grace and peace to you

The single biggest stumbling block preventing us from experiencing resurrection life is our reluctance to die. And not just to die, but to be crucified. And not just to be crucified, but to be crucified as a result of living lives of grace, truth, justice and mercy. And not just the result of living lives of grace, truth, justice and mercy, but living lives of grace, truth, justice and mercy for ALL, especially those on the margins of society. Jesus called this kind of living — Kingdom of God living. This type of living honours the real reality of God’s creation.

And here is the promise of the Gospel: When we live Kingdom of God lives. When we live according to the real reality of the world. When we live lives of grace, truth, justice and mercy (as revealed in the ways of Jesus) we will disrupt the false realities/kingdoms of this world that entrench privilege for the few and pain for the many.

This disruption will not be welcomed by the privileged and they will use everything in their power to first co-opt the disrupters and if that doesn’t work they will seek to destroy the disrupters — in other words crucifixion.

What will look like defeat and failure on the part of the disrupters will in actual fact be the seeds that must die before they can sprout forth new life — new life that breaks through the false realities of oppression and exclusion. This is resurrection life.

Resurrection life is miraculous not because it is continuous after death, but because it is transformative of the false realities that rely on death and perpetuate death to survive in the world.

While writing the above I couldn’t bring myself to identify with the privileged. I preferred to see myself as anything but… Yet I know at a level that I am not comfortable writing about that I am one of the privileged.

It takes courage for the marginalised to be a disrupter but it takes a miracle for the privileged to be a disrupter. In fact for the privileged it is impossible… but with God all things are possible.

Grace in disruption, Alan

I believe …

I believe in God, the source of all life, wholeness, and love.

I believe that God is revealed in Jesus Christ.

I believe that in his life, Jesus reveals God in grace, mercy, forgiveness, and justice.

I believe that in his death, Jesus reveals God’s determined presence in the world even in the face of hatred, violence, and pain.

I believe that in his resurrection, Jesus reveals God calling us to abundant life both now and forever; life beyond our fearful and fragile imaginations.

I believe that God lives among us, within us, and through us by the power of the Holy Spirit.

I believe that God moves us to be together in communities of faith, hope, and love.

I believe these things not out of certainty but out of faith; as one who trusts in the reality of God revealed in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. Amen.

~ Dan Sire

Thirst

Another morning and I wake with thirst for the goodness I do not have. I walk out to the pond and all the way God has given us such beautiful lessons. Oh Lord, I was never a quick scholar but sulked and hunched over my books past the hour and the bell; grant me, in your mercy, a little more time. Love for the earth and love for you are having such a long conversation in my heart. Who knows what will finally happen or where I will be sent, yet already I have given a great many things away, expecting to be told to pack nothing, except the prayers which, with this thirst, I am slowly learning.

~ Mary Oliver