DISCOVERING THE GIFT

DISCOVERING THE GIFT

No one is thinking of Christmas but with the birth of John the Baptist (24 June) a marker is put down that we are once again on the way to that celebration. John announces the coming of the Messiah, among other ways, in how he searches for his own voice. Why did he spend all that time in the desert dressed in camel hair and eating locusts and wild honey? He was ‘a voice’ but he had to discover what kind of voice. The result was volcanic: ‘you brood of vipers. Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?’ Do we think that John just woke up one morning and started speaking like that?  That he was inspired from day one? No, there was a long preparation in which he searched for what he was called to do.

And so it is with us as we live day by day in a Zimbabwe, a country which seems to be going nowhere. What am I to do? What is the gift I have to offer to my country?  We are patient.  We are good at waiting. But are we also searching for our gift? And should we not ask for courage to offer our gift once we know it?

I suspect the name Jacqueline Mary du Pré will not be known to many. She was born in 1945 and died of multiple sclerosis in 1987.  When she was four she heard a cello being played on the radio and told her mother, ‘I want one of those’.  Her mother responded and she started to master the art of playing that large string instrument that looks like a massive violin. Within a short time it became clear she was highly gifted and went on to be regarded as one of the greatest cellists of all time. From the age of 16 till she was 28 she travelled the world giving concerts and delighting audiences. Then her illness struck and she entered a painful decline and lost all ability to play. She died fourteen years later, aged 42.

If you google her you won’t find much on those last 14 years. Yet they were an integral part of her story, just as John’s squalid death in Herod’s prison was an integral part of his. Often we do not know what to say about suffering. We like ecstasy but not agony! We want success but we do not really buy into what is often tagged on to success; diminishment, rejection and death.  We fear these consequences and so we do not try to discover our gift. The risk is too great.

Can we break through these awful fears we have? Or do we remain under the judgement of the poet?

We are the hollow men …

Our dried voices, when we whisper together

Are quiet and meaningless

As wind in dry grass … (T.S.Eliot)   

28 June 2020       Sunday 13 A      2 Kings 4:8…16     Romans 6:3…11      Matt 10:37-42

THE SOUNDS OF SILENCE

THE SOUNDS OF SILENCE

The woods near where I live were thick, the home of deer and smaller animals when I first arrived here.  Now the woods have thinned as people come from near and far for firewood – often their only means of cooking.  The deer are long since gone and in their place are gatherings of people chanting prayers, singing and drumming. I have discovered a way of walking through these woods without disturbing anyone but I occasionally stop to greet and the chat for a moment.

‘Why do you come here to pray?’ ‘It is a quiet place’, they reply. Even though they create a holy noise of their own they prefer this place of withdrawal to the commotion in the suburbs. Without knowing it they are following a long tradition in Christianity – and other religions – of fleeing the noise of daily life to seek God in the desert. They do not go alone but in a group and when they arrive they pitch their tent, cook their food and pray loudly.

If there seems to be a contradiction in seeking quiet in order to make noise it is beside the point. What motivates them is to seek God in their own way and pray for all their needs, the most recent being deliverance from Covid 19. Just today, we had a reading from the First Book of Kings, chapter 19, in which Elijah went into a cave for the night.  He meets the Lord there, not in a mighty wind nor an earthquake nor in the fire but in ‘a gentle breeze’.  Another version calls it ‘a small voice’, yet another ‘a light murmuring sound’ and still another – the one I prefer – ‘a sound of silence’.  

            ‘Have you not heard his silent steps? He comes, comes, ever comes.

Every moment in every age, every day and every night he comes, comes, ever comes.

Many a song have I sung in many a mood of mind, but all their notes have always proclaimed, ‘He comes, comes, ever comes’.

In the fragrant days of sunny April through the forest path he comes, comes, ever comes.

In the rainy gloom of July nights on the thundering chariot of clouds he comes, comes, ever comes

In sorrow after sorrow it is his steps that press upon my heart, and it is the golden touch of his feet that makes my joy to shine.

Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali, XLV

As I left the wood towards evening I met a new group coming in carrying food and blankets.  They too will pray and sing into the night.  And when they are tired they will lie down under the stars, happy to have come to search for the One who comes. 

21 June 2020               Sunday 12 A

Jer 20:10-13                Romans 5:12-15                      Matt 10:26-33

THIS TIME IT’S DIFFERENT

THIS TIME IT’S DIFFERENT

THIS IS NOT A MOMENT; IT’S A MOVEMENT. So read one of the placards in the on-going protests in the US over the death of George Floyd. Floyd is fast becoming another symbol like Rosa Parks who, in the 1960s, refused to give up her seat in a bus to a white person and sparked the Civil Rights Movement. There have been many black deaths at the hands of white police since but there is a consensus that this time it is different. The deeply felt indignity and insecurity that black Americans feel every day found, in this raw incident captured on camera, the spark that brought them, and many others in solidarity with them, out on the streets in cities all over the States and in countries around the world.

It happened in Minneapolis and it now seems possible that, starting in that city, the police all over America will be radically reformed to take into account the sentiments expressed so forcibly during these days of protest. Black Americans have found their voice in a new way and white Americans, and other people generally, have come out in solidarity with them. The time will come when we will stop talking about white and black and there will be just Americans; then the scar of slavery and superiority will finally be healed.

‘I have not come to abolish but to fulfil’.  Human beings have come up with all sorts of laws and customs to regulate society – some good, some bad. But the good laws have outlived the bad and keep pushing their way to the front. After the Second World War the United Nations came up with Universal Declaration of Human Rights on 10 December 1948 and the document was translated into 500 languages. It set out, for the first time, universal standards expressing the dignity and aspirations of all people.  It is an inspiring document but it needs fulfilment.  This is the hard bit. This is where we are now.

If we take the long view we can see the struggle of humanity from its earliest days of self-consciousness to improve how we relate to one another. We have made great progress! You do not have to be an historian to know this.  Even in Zimbabwe, despite all our present grievances, there is a freedom and respect for one another that was not there before independence in 1980. And, going further back, to the days of Lobengula, life was cheap and people could be slain for what today would be minor offences.

And so now modern technology, in the form of the an eight minute clip, has brought us to a new stage of growth and it feels different this time. ‘I am with you always’, says Jesus, ‘fulfilling, not destroying, all the work of men and women over the earth’.

14 June 2020               Corpus Christi             Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ

Deut 8:2 …16             1 Cor 10:16-17            John 6:51-58   

https://theirishblessing.com/ 

‘I CAN’T BREATHE’

‘I CAN’T BREATHE’

Last week we saw a man in America being killed on camera. A white officer of the Minneapolis police knelt on the neck of black man he was arresting and ignored his cry, ‘I can’t breathe’. The man died. The result was like pressing a button to cause an explosion.  All over America people took to the streets in fury.  Many demonstrations were peaceful but some were violent and property was looted or destroyed or burnt. Covid 19 was forgotten.

There was fury and frustration because this was only the latest in a long list of killings of black people by white police. It all happened ten days ago but the demonstrations of anger show no signs of abating. Suddenly it became clear that it was not just one man who could not breathe with his lungs; it was millions of people who could not breathe with their spirit.  White America had its knee on black America ever since the days of slavery.  While it paid lip service to equality since the time Lincoln abolished slavery in the 1860s and Johnson encased civil liberties in law in the 1960s, it had never really changed its way of thinking.  Blacks felt it.  They knew the United States was their country but they also knew they did not fully belong. They were like deer in the forest always alert to where insult or danger lurked.  They could not presume, as whites did, that their country worked for them.

So the cry ‘I can’t breathe’ has come to stand for a lot more than respiration. It has focused our attention on an imbedded wrong and opened our minds to our own attitudes.  When the Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, was asked to comment on what was happening in the United States, he paused for a long time. He made no judgement and cast no blame. He simply said, ‘we Canadians have to look hard at our own country, at where racism is widely present’.

It is easy to judge America. Their racism is so open, blunt and flagrant. But what of our own hidden failure to welcome every person whoever they might be? Can we breathe that free air? Pentecost is the celebration of the Breath of God which first hovered over the waters (Genesis 1) and then came to rest of the disciples of Jesus (Acts 1) in the new creation. We are taking a long time to draw in that breath and we cannot exhale it to others until we first inhale it. Trinity Sunday is the final act of the Church’s year when we celebrate the one act of God: in creation, salvation and respiration.            

7 June 2020     Trinity Sunday            Ex 34:4…9           2 Cor 13:11-13       John 3:16-18