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.

A DESERT PSALM

From the deserts of our empty lives
We cry to you, O Lord.
As owls hooting in the wilderness
We search the horizon for succour;
In the drought of our loss
We find only jagged stones
And burning sand -
Where are you God?
Only our voices echoing on the wind
Disturb the thundering silence.

Then gently on the breeze
The scent of jasmin
And through the stillness of the sun’s last rays
The sky turns pink then purple;
till in the deep dark of night the air comes heavy,
Burdened with oppressive heat
and sultry indignation:
And then as love gives birth again,
The first sweet drops of rain
To slake our croaking thirst.

So, hidden, are you there?
In shadows, is it you who reaches out
Inviting us to breakfast on the sand?
No recognition yet,
Just arms out-held;
And trembling, we come close
As you receive our pain
And tears, and make
Our place your own.

And at that breakfast feast
So well prepared
Are all your friends
Across the ages of the past,
And the moments of our lives;
And they are there
And we are there
With you, together,
At the rising of the sun.

In memory of The Revd Stuart Huyton, priest and pilgrim.
December 2012

ON MARKING OUT THE LINE

If God was up above and looking down
As I do now upon a land bereft,
The heavens would surely quake in sheer
Revolt, and rain their thunderbolts upon
The human minds that think so ill of others
That they count each heart and home as
Nectar for the unquenched thirsting of
Their guns: the western landscape far below
Sees Aleppo, Homms, Damascus, tortured
In the burning midday sun. While to the East,
Across the desert ridge, the charred remains,
And broken hearts of Mosul, Kirkuk, Baghdad.
Such is the mystery, of history the complicity, as I
Fly on, protected in a flimsy pencil tube
Of western economic arrogance – left to ponder
On the cause of war, and my colluding
Silence. If God were really up above, and looking on
Perhaps a cosmic rage at human arrogance and
Pride would end it all, and dark and cold would
Creep across this spangled space until its galaxies of
Tears spun into nothingness. Better then the
Holy One should choose to make nativity within
This shattered land, and call it home, and reach
With trembling tentacles of love across the ruins of
the cities, and the pain-charred hills, until the
dawning of another day, until the burgeoning
Labour-pains of spring.


High-flying the border between Syria and Iraq, at 37000’
June 2012

MARY COBWEB QUEEN

Visiting a parish in the Philippines, I find myself in the heart of the carving industry of the country, in a small village by a lake. The church is adorned with garish religious artefacts; the community hums as festival processions move up and down. But as I visit a woodcarver parishioner, amongst the half-finished or broken pieces on the shelf, I chance upon a deeper reality….



MARY COBWEB QUEEN

High on a dust-laden shelf
And covered in cobwebs,
Perilously leaning as if to ensure
The job below is cut to perfection,
Sits Mary, mother of shadows,
A not quite finished Queen of Heaven.

Here in Paete, Laguna,
Some hours to the south of Manila,
She dwells in a woodcarver’s basement,
Her home among the offcut shavings of
A carpenter’s shop, a familiar place:
Among the forgotten; where she belongs.

Quietly she watches as hand and eye
In perfect synergy with blade and wood
Now ply their craft, of long-learned
Generations: she the mother of the one
Whose destiny was shaped in wood;
She whose heart was broken by a tree.

Throughout the town the saints are
On parade: perspiring bands blast,
Children run behind the carnival,
While townsfolk shuffle to
The memories of aeon-chiselled truths
Now long assigned to tribal fantasy.

But Mary, shrouded in the dust of
Decades, bides her time, and as in
Years gone by, she stays at home.
Hers to weep at this abuse of icons;
Hers to ponder hope and desolation both,
Within her sacred, bleeding, wooden heart.


Paete, Laguna, Philippines,
March 2012

NO EASING RAIN

Among the reeds, birds flutter:
Open their defiance of the call
To midday rest; heat presses in
On every side; storm clouds gather
Bringing pressure on the sultry air
To bursting point. But nothing comes.

Droplets of rain, longed for over days
and months of anguished waiting
By parched and cracking earth,
Deny their gift, and like their wearied
Suppliants, prayer-denied, they wait
And wait some more.

Afar the jagged screeching of the
meadow-strimmers: they bow their
High-pitched tune, in vain awaiting
A bass-line rumble from the skies.
Beneath a tree, two young men sense
the scent of dusted rain, and wait.

So all is to hand: the stage is set,
The players in their places:
The lights are dimmed across the
Laden sky but only silence echoes back
the expectation of the storm;
till barren, it is gone: and so the curtain falls.


Awaiting the rains that never came
to a thirsty land,
Sidwashini,
Swaziland
February 2012