HAMBA KAHLE, TAT'MKHULU

Deep rumbling thunder echoes round

The southern Malagasi hills as ancient

And primordial earth calls back Madiba 

For its own. Rains of blessing tumble 

Down in thankfulness for such a life: 

What hammer on a broken rock or surging 

Wave upon a prison shore could break a spirit 

So imbued with human dignity and hope?

Then overwhelming storm erupts

And hurls to earth its terror-laden bolts

That split and crackle unpredictable

Against a blackened sky: as did

The racist terror of a state gone mad

In search of unattainable security.

So did a people rise in stark revolt

And rising, with Madiba, paid their price.

Now nature's synergy of opposites

Conspires to breathe a cataclysmic

Shuddered breath, to open

Cosmic gates of love, and welcome 

Home this champion of a better way,

A way that will not offer hate for hate,

But rather bears the pain, and through it

Finds humanity's redemption path.

On hearing the news of Mandela's death,

In Madagascar, December 2013

All Saints Tide

A soft votive lamp
With flickering flame awaits
The breaking of bread

History murmurs
Whispered memories of saints
Robed in plaintive chant

Hints of costly love
Heavy hang on incensed air
As a low bell tolls

All Saints Woodham
November 2013

Pray for Kenya and Pakistan

Following the brutal violence in Nairobi and in Peshawar last weekend...



God of our tears and desolation,
You know in your own broken body
The savage pain of senseless violence.
In your dying and rising love
We hold before you the peoples
Of Kenya and of Pakistan:
Embrace them with your comfort,
Encourage them with hope;
And strengthen us to walk with them
The painful, costly road to peace.



28th September 2013

A Prayer for Syria, and more

God of all love and compassion,
We hold before you the holy and historic lands
Of the Middle East, where continents,
Cultures, faiths and peoples meet
With trepidation and with hope.
Grant to those who suffer, comfort and courage
To all who lead, wisdom and restraint,
And to us all a passion to work
For that deeper peace and justice
That is your eternal longing
For your whole Creation.
Amen

OF TIDES AND TIMES

Deep stillness as the morning tide recedes:
Gently rippled water silently gives way
To furrowed sand and shallow pool.
Small boats, denied their raison d'être,
Surrender to the dying of the sea
And take their rest, now flotsam
On the shore: conspirators with nature,
They bide their time, still-beached as crocodiles.
And time there is, around the clock face
Of this fragile isle where wind and sun
In turn mark out the fleeting moments
Of our passing stay, inviting us to
Deeply breathe the ocean's oxygen.
Such azure restoration of the soul
Brings from the Deep, deep peace.


Rodrigues Island,
Indian Ocean
August 2013

A Prayer for Nelson Mandela

God of our dreams and our destinies,
You call out leaders for your people,
Equal to the hour:
As Madiba shouldered the burdens of a nation
On the long and painful road to freedom,
So now may you walk with him as he journeys
To a deeper freedom, and to that lasting peace
You long for all your peoples.

ROCKS AND ROLLS

Rocks of ages gone, once singularly
Crushed by sweat and anguished
Sparse-rewarded toil, lie now in endless
Rows that pave the way once just
A muddied track: across the dyke,
Above the fields of inundated rice there
Moves a rag-tag band of old and young,
Of cattle, ducks and geese, and
Carts piled high with market fare;
And quatre-a-quatres*, of course,
Cocooning Tana's** wealthier elite,
While whisking them to town oblivious of the
Scents and stench of urban village life.
So when these cobbled rocks reflect,
they offer back not heat alone, nor noise
Nor rough-edged passage - nothing more -
but rather find their deep ancestral voice
That cries "It is enough! For justice
Now let Madagascar strive!"

Antananarivo
Madagascar,
April 2013

*The colloquial phrase for a 4x4 vehicle,
the equivalent of a “Chelsea Tractor”
** The local name for Antananarivo

EASTER'S EVE

Fading, the dying embers of the vigil fire,
As faltering a muttered reading of the Markan
Text precedes with trepidation the
Lighting of the Paschal candle: Christus resurrexit!
And so this flickering flame is borne aloft,
is carried through the darkened church, while
Tapers everywhere cascade their light
Proclaiming mystery and joy in counterpoint.

African rhythms pounding jubilation
Fill the air. uKrestu uwuka! Let the song be sung
And let the story resonate throughout the night!
For in the midst of poverty, of sickness,
And despair, a hope is born again, and found in
Broken bread and wine outpoured:
Uplifted faces, life's journey writ in furrows,
Reach out for sacramental hope -

And are not disappointed. For here the mystery
Of dying love meets anguished aspiration,
And memory, so often bitter recollection,
Encounters healing, life and hope in resurrection love.
And in the deepest darkness, going home,
The Milky Way erupts in exaltation, irradiating
Light and joy, and depth unfathomable, while
Toads and crickets offer harmonies of praise!

The Easter Vigil at Malosa
Diocese of Upper Shire,
Malawi,
March 2013

MALAWI ANTIPHON

Did you hear the single cicada's solemn screech,
She, gently exploring the earth, then
Gingerly leaping ahead?

Or did you hear the far-off scything
Of the grass, and sense the tiredness
In a wearied woman's hours of toil?

Did the sound of myriad little birds
Impinge your consciousness and by
Their different songs bring joy untold?

And did you feel the anger just beneath
The roadside peddler of his tourist crafts
When you perhaps, and I, declined to buy?

And did you know that this was Holy Week,
The week a peasant carpenter was stretched
To die, a simple irritant upon imperial power?

Dance to Malawi's ghetto sound, if dance you can,
Rage at injustice, however rage you may,
And dream of hope, if dreams can speak -

Then turn your words to work.


Chilema, Malosa,
Malawi
Easter 2013

International Women’s Day

     – a retrospective from 1990….

 

     On a free afternoon, I walk along the once famous tourist beaches

     of Maputo, watching the breakers rolling in from the Indian Ocean,
     and looking for shells. There are none. Only broken and crushed
     fragments of crustacean life - piled up in mounds that make the
     shore-line. And as I walk I am thinking of the people I have been
     meeting in the village churches round about: they are mainly women
     and children, with a few old men. Many of the menfolk are away,
     either fighting, or working in South Africa, or are never to
     return. And the women are the unsung heroines of Africa. Holding
     whole families together, making a home out of sticks and reeds,
     plastic and rusting iron, struggling even to survive - and yet they
     laugh, and dance and sing, and even worship. And so these "women of
     war" become the cornerstones of the new world that is being born.
 

     WOMEN OF WAR

     Shattered in the storms

     Of war not theirs
     To own or understand, and trembling
     Shadows of the world they left behind,
     Coral-rich and deep and still

     Mothers of Pearl now

     Broken shells washed up
     Upon the shore, the flotsam
     Of the nation's dream,
     The homeless hungry poor.

     Who but the broken shells

     Glinting in shafts of sunlight flecked
     With courage in the wind-whipped spray,
     Who but they, bonded
     Together in dunes of solidarity
     Hold back the raging sea?

                            Maputo, July 90.

 

A Sermon honouring Thomas Bray

Bray Day Eucharist 2013 – The Sermon
Lk 17 11-16 – the Healing of the ten lepers

The Gospel reading, the story in Luke of the healing of the ten lepers, takes us into Border country - the territories between Jerusalem to the South and Galilee to the north - the dangerous short cut through the mountains, rather than the safe highway along the Jordan valley to the East.
And we as historic Mission Agencies, SPCK and Us, might say that we too find ourselves in border country - not always of our choosing - but where, perhaps surprisingly, we find God most at work.
Liturgically in recent days we have been through a process of preparation and reflection during the period between Candlemass and Lent. A few days Between the proclamation/manifestation of Epiphany - and, approaching and entering Lent, a time of reflection between faith / hope - and anxiety / questions. It's a kind of "middle space".

What does this middle space have to offer us by way of insights into Mission?

For Us, we stand between a re-launch of the Society, and the hoped-for new energy and life that it will bring to our ministry and mission; and between the design and then the delivery of exciting new programmes with our British and international Partners.

For SPCK, in a longer time-frame, you stand between the turmoil of complex litigation, and the opportunities of building a new future and direction, embracing new media and reaching new audiences at home and abroad.

For both our organisations, we stand at a point in our common histories, between the days of the stable state and the stability of institutional and charitable life on the one hand; and on the other, a growing culture of the privatisation of faith, the growth of secularisation, and the consequential spawning of new ways of association, of conscientising and of action.

This is border country writ large. The place of opportunity and threat in equal part. But it was the way Jesus chose to walk, with quiet determination. So to the text (Lk 17:11-16)

On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, they called out, saying, ‘Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!’ When he saw them, he said to them, ‘Go and show yourselves to the priests.’ And as they went, they were made clean. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan.

Let's explore some of the content of the story:
Keeping their distance - the lepers were forced apart initially by sickness, but then more by a fearful, excluding community bent on its own survival.
Lord, Have mercy! - in spite of rejection, they were ready to receive help in order to find new life
Go and show - the healing was needed by the wider community who alienated the lepers. But the lepers’ willingness to go to the priests opened the door to their re-integration into society.
As they went ( not after or before!).... They were made clean
One turned back....liberation for him was recognising he was already acceptable to God. Before going to priests! ... He gave thanks.... And he was a Samaritan. Why mention this?
It was not because of stereotypes but to indicate that the lepers had already formed a new community of the marginalised. Jew and Samaritan together. Job done. They were worlds ahead of those they went back to. Now they had a gospel to proclaim! No wonder the 9 were breathless to get on, leave alone to come back to say thanks!

So what do we learn? Becoming the new c'tty is the key to building new c'tty. As Agencies, we have to become what we proclaim, in order to live with integrity with our Partners.
What if – for a moment – what if Us/SPCK are the leper c'tty, not those who walk safely, and sometimes smugly, with Jesus? (The conventional reading of the text!)
We are, for sure, in need of healing
How do we become the new community in order to enable others to grow into theirs?

Perhaps there is a healing paradigm here for us all:

• Are we ready, and humble enough, to ask for help?
• Are we willing to obey?
• Are we, in our own organisations, able to recognise in the otherness of each person, and each Partner, the gifts that God wants to give to enable us all to become whole?
• Can we find in our own vulnerability a way into receiving the healing grace of God?
• Are we willing to relearn and re-engage society? (Go to the priests.... Who are they today? The lepers had been away for a long time and no doubt life had moved on in their absence)
• Are we able to give thanks? And able not to demand that others give thanks to, and appreciate, us? (So often apparent in paternalistic approaches to mission and development)

This last – a culture of thankfulness – allows the cataracts of our single-sightedness to fall away, to place God back in the centre of our personal and common life, and to reach out to the future with humility, courage and hope.
“Go on your way!” says Jesus - and with echoes of the full/abundant life of Jn 10:10 – “Your faith has made you well (and truly) well.”
Amen.