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

A WIND THAT BLOWS WHERE IT WILL

A WIND THAT BLOWS WHERE IT WILL

The hut was stiflingly hot.  It had only a 3 foot high entrance and people kept crowding round it in curiosity. The year was 1880, ten years before the settlers raised their flag in what was to become Salisbury. The three Jesuits had reached Tshamatshama, King Umzila’s capital near Chipinge in SE Zimbabwe. Many favourable reports had reached them while they were still in Bulawayo describing this as a good place to start a mission. The first part of their journey went well but after they crossed the Sabi River there was no road and the people were hostile. They had to cut their way through the bush sometimes travelling at the speed of two miles a day.

Eventually they left their wagon and team of oxen and proceeded on foot. But malaria wore them down and by the time they reached Umzila’s Fr Augustus Law was very ill. Bro Joseph Hedley, also ill, stayed with him with two Matable helpers while the third, Br Frans de Sadeleer, went back to try to bring up the abandoned wagon. Br Frans later wrote, ‘two snakes, a three foot long cobra and a smaller one, lived in their cabin… they fulfilled the role played by our cats in Europe and kept at bay the mice and rats visible everywhere’. As they lay on the floor the two sick men encouraged one another with the memory of the Passion. On 15 October Fr Law said his last Mass held upright by twine tied by Br Hedley. He wrote a note for his companions in Bulawayo, ‘If I die please write a note to my Father; Hon W. T. Law. Hampton Court Palace, London’.  For the next month he lingered between life and death finally slipping away on 25 November. Hedley did not die but lived for another 53 years.

This is how the Zambezi Mission of the Jesuits began in the late nineteenth century: in misery and failure. The story at Umzila’s was repeated among the Tonga and Lozi and even in Bulawayo Lobengula would not allow them to teach, leave alone to preach. Yet ‘failure’ is an imprecise word. Ten men died of malaria or accidents and no permanent mission was founded, except for Empandeni towards the end of the decade. But the seed that dies had been sown and in the decades that followed the gospel found a welcoming ear in all parts of the country.

This Sunday the Church celebrates Pentecost in memory of the fulfilment of Jesus’ words, ‘I will be with you always till the end of time’. He is with us through his creative Spirit, ‘a wind sweeping over the waters of the deep’ (Genesis). We are invited at Pentecost to penetrate deeply to see how this Spirit works in creation. If we could see our ‘failures’ and ‘weakness’ in the light of God we might discover the ‘work’ that God is doing even though to us it may seem failure. The Athenians laughed when they heard of a crucified man rising from the dead (Acts 17:32). But in laughing it off they missed something.       

31 May 2020      Pentecost         Acts 2:1-11              1 Cor 12:3…13           John 20:19-23

OXYGEN WAS ONCE A POISONOUS GAS

OXYGEN WAS ONCE A POISONOUS GAS

A friend wrote to me this week excited by a find he had made in the leisure time granted to us by Covid 19. It was a BBC radio conversation[1] about plants and specifically about photosynthesis.  ‘Did you know’, he wrote, ‘that when life first appeared on earth (perhaps 300 billion years ago), there was no oxygen?  It was plants that learned how to make nourishment for themselves out of water, carbon and sunlight, and oxygen was a toxic waste product which killed off many other kinds of life.  Obviously only plants which also developed an immunity to this new poisonous gas, oxygen, survived; but photosynthesis worked so well that they took over practically the whole of the earth and the seas. Plants transformed the atmosphere, and so almost all the life-forms on earth.  From the point of view of the evolutionary losers, the Oxygen Event was the first and biggest climate-change disaster in the history of the world.  But from those plants developed (virtually) everything that we have now, for all of us depend, directly or indirectly on plants for food and respiration’. 

We pause for thought. Oxygen was once a ‘poisonous gas’, the result of plants struggling, and succeeding, to find food to survive. The process - we learnt in form two but perhaps did not get excited about it - was photosynthesis and it gradually transformed our atmosphere and enabled life as we know it. Phew!

There is a question we read on Ascension Day which must have jarred with Jesus even though he knew how slow witted his disciples were. After all he had said and done and all he had endured and suffered, they returned one more time to what should have been by then a worn out subject: ‘Lord, has the time come? Are you going to restore the kingdom of Israel?’ Patiently, he replies, ‘It is not for you to know the times or periods … but … you will be my witnesses … to the ends of the earth.’ He said that two thousand years ago and we have made a good deal of progress since. But, like photosynthesis, the transformation takes time - not 300 billion years – but lots of it all the same. Covid 19 reminds us that something toxic can transform our planet but, unlike with photosynthesis, this time round we are in control. This time we are in the driving seat about what kind of transformation we want. There are many poems and reflections swirling round the net about this. One poem begins:

The earth whispered but you did not hear.

The earth spoke but you did not listen

The earth screamed but you turned her off ...

You can imagine how it continues but it makes it clear it is in our hands – both the problem and the solution.

The Ascension is essentially a feast of the rising of humanity, a rising so that we reach the fulfilment of all that is deepest within us. 

24 May 2020      Ascension Day         Acts 1:1-11     Eph. 1:17-23               Matt 28:16-20

 

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[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b0435jyv