I will never forget the moment, some 10 years ago now, when our Muslim social worker asked my partner and me the casual question - "And what religion will you bring the child up in". We were in the process of adopting our eldest child. We had not even met him yet. We were going through what seemed like a rather long process of being prepared for parenthood.
Being amongst the first Gay male couples to adopt a child in this country - the territory was rather new - for the social worker as well. They wanted us to "practise" for a while - and so for several miserable weekends, we were asked to go to the adoption home and feed the children. Dear Lord! It was a nightmare. I think they thought if we could survive that, we could survive anything - (I know that thought crossed my mind several times). But having passed the test, we were now looking at the nitty gritty of adoption. Who was likely to be the primary parent? Who was likely to provide the discipline? Etcetera, etcetera.
The innocent question about religion caused a three week break in the process, while we discussed the matter. Backwards and forwards it went. My partner, Leon, loathed the Church. The Church had almost proved his mental undoing, in its lack of care for him; in its homophobia; in its dreadful hypocrisy and alienation of Gay and Lesbian people. He was very uncertain indeed. On the other hand, he was pretty much at sea from a religious perspective. A kind of wannabe "spiritual" type, with not a great deal of focus, or specific practise to offer.
I, on the other hand, had been a priest - had studied and taught Theology for gazillions of years and had left the Church the moment the struggle was over. What was the answer to the Muslim social worker’s question? The truth is, it was an inoffensive question. She wasn’t expecting any particular answer. We could have said “None!” and we would just have moved on in the conversation. But we decided to interrogate the matter with what was, for both of us, surprising intensity.
We discussed the nature of faith. We discussed the practise of belief. We discussed our own journeys – the positives and the negatives. And we came to a decision – strange in the eyes of many and peculiar, sometimes, even in our own judgement. We decided that we should raise the children in the context of the Christian faith –despite our own serious misgivings.
And so that is what brought me back to the Church. A baby. The absolute epitome of human frailty and human need. A baby, with a newly minted laugh and eyes so clear, you could see eternity in them. A baby that came into our lives, to change them forever.
We called him Gabriel – and it is his job to put the angel on the top of the Christmas tree every year. We called him Gabriel, the harbinger of good news. We called him Gabriel, because that was the first name we agreed upon while flipping listlessly through a bible one Sunday in Church, during a boring sermon.
And tomorrow, Gabriel will be serving at the High Mass on Christmas Day, dressed in a cassock and surplice and looking utterly angelic, smothered in incense and feeling the surge of the Haydn “Jugendmesse” and the swirl of hieratic language. Of course he may, one day reject it all. That will be his choice and that will be his unquestionable right. But when and if he does so, it will be from the position of an insider. He will know the stories that form such a massive part of our philosophy and our culture, for good or for ill. He will understand why some people pray to a God and have hope for the future and show love to their neighbour. And, hopefully, if he does reject it all, he will be a better person for having taken what is good in religion and making it his own.
Of course, there are dangers. It is also possible that he will imbibe the bewildering levels of prejudice; the terrible bigotry and the hatred, which is also part of religion. It is possible that he will start to see himself as superior to other people. It is possible that his brain will start to ossify and become closed to science, and change, and possibility. That is also a feature of religion. But it is bad religion – and I hope that he will be enabled to see that and to reject it.
In the meantime, I will thrill at the sight of the child I have been entrusted with, dressed like an angel, doing his service with a diligence and dedication that really inspires me, when together we pause at the crib of another baby. A child who, it is said, can lead the lion and the lamb to find peace with each other. That is an ideal I want for Gabriel. That is a vision I want for myself.
Showing posts with label High Church. Show all posts
Showing posts with label High Church. Show all posts
Friday, December 24, 2010
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Sunday school
St Michaels and All Angels Church, Observatory, Cape TownSometimes I wonder about Sunday school. I take my kids to church most Sundays. They lounge about on the pews, completely disengaged from the service - which is, after all in Cranmer's English. They play with their collection money. They drop it on the floor. They lose it. They play with the hassocks. They pile them up and stand on them. Or they pile them up and then they sit on them. They fall off of them. They make others in the pew, who might want to use them, beg for them. They pile them in the space between the next pew and the seat, so you have to clamber over them to get into the pew. They read the hymn books upside down. They drop the hymn books. The spread themselves out luxuriously on the pews. They kick each other and then they fight.
All the while, I am talking to them in that strict parental whisper which all parents would recognise immediately. It is done either without moving the lips, through clenched teeth. Or, mouthing the threat with exaggerated lip movements and no sound at all. It usually works for about 3 seconds.
The fact is, they are fairly bored in church. However, on Sunday, I watched the younger one listening fairly intently to the soloists at the Haydn "Heiligmesse". He was listening. Of that I am sure.
They don't object to going to church. I see they are bribed with sweets in the Sunday school, where they run to, gleefully, after the reading of the Gospel - and I sigh a sigh of great relief and relax into the rest of the service.
"Is God's name "Allah"? asked my eldest child, some time after moving to Cape Town. "Yes!" I answered brightly. And Christians call him or her ..." (at this point I paused, flayling about wildly ...) "God"! - I came up with.
Last Sunday I watched Sunday school in action. It was the festival of Christ the King, so they made crowns to wear on their heads. They were asked what kind of a crown Jesus wore, even though he was the King of the whole world? Answer? - a crown of thorns.
She took it forward and asked the children what they wanted to do with their lives, because anyone could be a leader. I thought that was quite sweet and noted that my one child aspires to be a school principal.
The Sunday school teacher seems a lovely woman. She is kind, dedicated and constant. But would she say that God's name is Allah? I doubt it, somehow. And how do I explain to my children that the model of kingship is obsolete, wanting and should be confined to the waste-bins of human governance experience - within the context of a celebration of Christ the King?
Monday, August 17, 2009
Mary and the language of symbol
So, this past Sunday was the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin. I took a non churchy friend of mine with me, because the service promised to be fairly spectacular. It's an ultra High kind of church, and this kind of feast day lends itself to an explosion of ceremony.
We had the usual bells, whistles, incense enough to choke on, white vestments. Did we stop there? No - we had a full orchestral Mass with 4 soloists singing the Haydn Missa in honorem Beatissimae Virginis Mariae, commonly known as the Grosse Orgelmesse. This was all followed by a fundraising lunch in the hall. (They don't do things in small measures in my church, I can tell you.)
But when my friend asked me, innocently, what it was we were celebrating - I had to pause for a moment or two. "The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary" - I answered brightly. She looked at me quizzically, waiting for the punch-line. "Er...", I stumbled on, "that is about when the Blessed Virgin Mary was assumed into heaven."
"Assumed"? she asked - "Who assumed? Did someone assume that is where she went?" Mercifully, at that point the priest started speaking - uncharacteristically, at the beginning of the service to say that one of the orchestra had an "episode" - (I think was the word he used) - and that explained the ambulance outside.
In his sermon, the priest started by drawing attention to the sheer oddity of the feast:
"When was the last time you saw a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon beneath her feet and on her head a crown of twelve stars? Not even in the Cape Quarter at New Year would you see such a sight, unless you were high on something. Yet this woman is the person whom we encounter in the Introit proper of today’s mass, which is quoting from the Revelation of St John the Divine: A woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and on her head a crown of twelve stars. With this language, strange and unworldly, we enter into the world of the apocalyptic.
An apocalyptic world view pushes us to edge of the symbolic world, a world where image defines a deeper reality and where flights of fantasy take us into a new world. It is a world of hopes, deeper than the power of the human imagination..."
Yes, indeed. This is the world of fantasy. It cannot be literal. It cannot be real. It is as camp as a row of pink tents! The word Apocalypsis in the Greek, means the act of revelation - but really, we have lost that ability, that apocalyptic ability these days. And it all just comes out weird, strange, extraordinary and... well ... colourful, to say the least!
Does that, or should that stop sensible people from going to Church? I am sure it is a barrier to some - and so be it. The stuff my children understand, like Bakugans - the strange things my six year old demanded for his birthday - is pretty opaque to me, I promise you. They inhabit, in many ways, as different a universe to mine, as mine is to that which clothes the Blessed Virgin Mary in moons and stars. It is just bits of a lost language. It meant something important once, and all we can get of it now, is a kind of feint residue - an echo - a mist.
Undoubtledly, motherhood is a powerful image. But we denude it of its essential value, if we simply accord it to all mothers. There are, after all, terrible mothers - mothers who don't give a damn; mothers who should be in jail; mothers who damage and hurt and destroy. Not all mothers are good.
We had the usual bells, whistles, incense enough to choke on, white vestments. Did we stop there? No - we had a full orchestral Mass with 4 soloists singing the Haydn Missa in honorem Beatissimae Virginis Mariae, commonly known as the Grosse Orgelmesse. This was all followed by a fundraising lunch in the hall. (They don't do things in small measures in my church, I can tell you.)
But when my friend asked me, innocently, what it was we were celebrating - I had to pause for a moment or two. "The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary" - I answered brightly. She looked at me quizzically, waiting for the punch-line. "Er...", I stumbled on, "that is about when the Blessed Virgin Mary was assumed into heaven."
"Assumed"? she asked - "Who assumed? Did someone assume that is where she went?" Mercifully, at that point the priest started speaking - uncharacteristically, at the beginning of the service to say that one of the orchestra had an "episode" - (I think was the word he used) - and that explained the ambulance outside.
In his sermon, the priest started by drawing attention to the sheer oddity of the feast:
"When was the last time you saw a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon beneath her feet and on her head a crown of twelve stars? Not even in the Cape Quarter at New Year would you see such a sight, unless you were high on something. Yet this woman is the person whom we encounter in the Introit proper of today’s mass, which is quoting from the Revelation of St John the Divine: A woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and on her head a crown of twelve stars. With this language, strange and unworldly, we enter into the world of the apocalyptic.
An apocalyptic world view pushes us to edge of the symbolic world, a world where image defines a deeper reality and where flights of fantasy take us into a new world. It is a world of hopes, deeper than the power of the human imagination..."
Yes, indeed. This is the world of fantasy. It cannot be literal. It cannot be real. It is as camp as a row of pink tents! The word Apocalypsis in the Greek, means the act of revelation - but really, we have lost that ability, that apocalyptic ability these days. And it all just comes out weird, strange, extraordinary and... well ... colourful, to say the least!
Does that, or should that stop sensible people from going to Church? I am sure it is a barrier to some - and so be it. The stuff my children understand, like Bakugans - the strange things my six year old demanded for his birthday - is pretty opaque to me, I promise you. They inhabit, in many ways, as different a universe to mine, as mine is to that which clothes the Blessed Virgin Mary in moons and stars. It is just bits of a lost language. It meant something important once, and all we can get of it now, is a kind of feint residue - an echo - a mist.
Undoubtledly, motherhood is a powerful image. But we denude it of its essential value, if we simply accord it to all mothers. There are, after all, terrible mothers - mothers who don't give a damn; mothers who should be in jail; mothers who damage and hurt and destroy. Not all mothers are good.
The symbol of Mary points all of us - in the strange, curious imagery and iconography to another form - a perfect form, a form, if you like, taken appropriately into "heaven" (which is, of course, yet another symbol).
For Gay and Lesbian Christians, the symbol of Mary is one for those of us who are outsiders in a patriarchal (and heteronormative) church, where the phallus holds eternal sway. It speaks to the downtrodden, to the milked, to the millions of women in the world who are controlled by men - and by inference the millions of us who are controlled by heterosexuals. It is a powerful symbol. because it says - this is a picture of what could be, what should be.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Children's Spirituality
Pic: Two dads on Joshua's collection day from the Princess Alice Adoption Home. Leon is holding Gabriel
We both balked and the matter required intensive discussion and thought. At the time, I had not seen the inside of a church for a good 12 years –( well I suppose I had, dragged kicking and screaming into one or two weddings, or sneaking into the back row of a funeral or two – but nothing more). Leon, my partner, on the other hand, was so damaged by his experience of the church, growing up as a gay person in a church environment - which hated, despised and rejected what he knew he was - that he wanted to stay as far away from anything even sounding like the “C” word, for the rest of his life.
So we discussed the matter. We debated the matter. We pondered. For weeks! And finally, we decided that the issue which the social worker was asking us about, was actually that of culture. We are two white men. The child which we were getting, was black. We are a same-sex couple. Then, it was fairly uncommon for people like us to be adopting children. What “culture” would we be bringing this child up in?
I said to Leon, “Look, I know what my culture is. It is High Church Anglicanism. That’s what I have grown up in. That is what I know. That is where I learned my values, and those values are what I continue to value”. The debate went on. I had, after all, shaken the dust of the church off my feet and was not missing it in the least. But I knew, without any doubt that I wanted the church to be part of my raising of my children. I wanted them to know faith. I wanted them to experience mystery. I wanted them to become acquainted with the long traditions of Anglican experience. I wanted them to know what had shaped me and moulded me and what had established the value system I held. Leon agreed and further agreed to support me in enabling this to happen – which meant that – without much relish, but with no disapproval, he would also come regularly to church and be with the family.
An atheist friend of mine was talking to me about this issue one day and said this. She said that she had brought up her children as atheists and it was a decision she deeply regretted. She regretted it, because, she said, when they were frightened, or alone, or worried, or distraught, they had nowhere to go. They had nowhere to go for comfort. They had to face what they were facing alone. They had to face the void all on their own. She said if she had the chance to do it over again, she would not have brought them up as atheists. For me, that discussion was determinative.
The immediate difficulty would be finding a church. We were living outside Pretoria at the time, so I did some research on likely candidates, and found Christ Church Arcadia, with its priest Fr David Swanepoel. I phoned him and we had a very long conversation. I explained to him that I was a priest who hadn’t been to church for many years and hadn’t really missed it. I said I was in a same-sex relationship and that we had two trans-racially adopted sons. He paused briefly and then said this – He said, “Michael, I have no idea what my parish is going to make of two gay white boys with adopted black children, but why don’t you come along and see if you like us?
I found that extraordinarily enlightened. We went and we did like it. The congregation was fairly white, but not entirely. The theology seemed accommodating and reasonable and the music was spectacular – so we decided to join. Returning to church, for me, was like getting into a warm bath. The words rolled off my tongue. I could go back to that place in my being, which for me speaks of my essence – that place where I can find my language, my grammar, my words. That place from where the rest of me can be interpreted. As I said, my partner, Leon, finds it all rather less exalted in every way, but our agreement is that he will come with to support the decision. And that is what he does.
Fr David and his wife Margie are remarkable people. Initially, every Sunday they would both wait outside the front door, to welcome us at the church. In that way, they made it plain to the congregation, what we were welcome there. And consequently, the rest of the parish did welcome us warmly. Both our boys were baptised there and on their baptism certificates, the word “mother” is replaced by another “father” – so we both appear as the children’s parents and were both referred to as such during the service. All it took, was leadership. We worshipped regularly there for a number of years.
We moved to Cape Town to be close to Leon’s family. I have looked around for a church which is well mixed racially and which is accepting of gay people generally and would be of us in particular. The Cathedral was always an option, with its long and proud history of struggle and human rights but I was looking more for a parish church setting. I am happy to have found a home in St Michael’s and All Angels, Observatory. It is a parish with a bit of a history, but it has been extremely welcoming to us as a family and the boys feel very at home there now. In fact, to my mind, they are a bit too enthusiastic about going to Sunday School!
But I found this church after a lot of dithering and dathering. I visited many churches in the area, trying to make a good choice. One day Gabriel came home and asked me “Daddy, is God’s name Allah?” I paused for a moment and said “Well, yes, it is! God’s name is also - (and now I thought very hard indeed, and came up with...) God!” It was then that I decided that it was well nigh time for the children get back to church.
So, in a strange and roundabout way, my two children have also brought me back into the church. And I can see them more and more getting the point of it all – so very quickly. Soon, Gabriel will be making his first communion, because he has asked for it. And before I blink, they will be rebellious teenagers, and then they will make their own decisions. But I have no doubt, the groundwork will have been done. They will know faith, even if they want to reject it. And I hope in their life’s journey, that when they are frightened or lonely, they will, at the very least, have somewhere to go for comfort.
It was our Muslim social worker who asked us a question which was to set back the adoption process of our first child, Gabriel, by a good couple of weeks. She asked what religion we were intending to bring our child up in.
We both balked and the matter required intensive discussion and thought. At the time, I had not seen the inside of a church for a good 12 years –( well I suppose I had, dragged kicking and screaming into one or two weddings, or sneaking into the back row of a funeral or two – but nothing more). Leon, my partner, on the other hand, was so damaged by his experience of the church, growing up as a gay person in a church environment - which hated, despised and rejected what he knew he was - that he wanted to stay as far away from anything even sounding like the “C” word, for the rest of his life.
So we discussed the matter. We debated the matter. We pondered. For weeks! And finally, we decided that the issue which the social worker was asking us about, was actually that of culture. We are two white men. The child which we were getting, was black. We are a same-sex couple. Then, it was fairly uncommon for people like us to be adopting children. What “culture” would we be bringing this child up in?
I said to Leon, “Look, I know what my culture is. It is High Church Anglicanism. That’s what I have grown up in. That is what I know. That is where I learned my values, and those values are what I continue to value”. The debate went on. I had, after all, shaken the dust of the church off my feet and was not missing it in the least. But I knew, without any doubt that I wanted the church to be part of my raising of my children. I wanted them to know faith. I wanted them to experience mystery. I wanted them to become acquainted with the long traditions of Anglican experience. I wanted them to know what had shaped me and moulded me and what had established the value system I held. Leon agreed and further agreed to support me in enabling this to happen – which meant that – without much relish, but with no disapproval, he would also come regularly to church and be with the family.
An atheist friend of mine was talking to me about this issue one day and said this. She said that she had brought up her children as atheists and it was a decision she deeply regretted. She regretted it, because, she said, when they were frightened, or alone, or worried, or distraught, they had nowhere to go. They had nowhere to go for comfort. They had to face what they were facing alone. They had to face the void all on their own. She said if she had the chance to do it over again, she would not have brought them up as atheists. For me, that discussion was determinative.
The immediate difficulty would be finding a church. We were living outside Pretoria at the time, so I did some research on likely candidates, and found Christ Church Arcadia, with its priest Fr David Swanepoel. I phoned him and we had a very long conversation. I explained to him that I was a priest who hadn’t been to church for many years and hadn’t really missed it. I said I was in a same-sex relationship and that we had two trans-racially adopted sons. He paused briefly and then said this – He said, “Michael, I have no idea what my parish is going to make of two gay white boys with adopted black children, but why don’t you come along and see if you like us?
I found that extraordinarily enlightened. We went and we did like it. The congregation was fairly white, but not entirely. The theology seemed accommodating and reasonable and the music was spectacular – so we decided to join. Returning to church, for me, was like getting into a warm bath. The words rolled off my tongue. I could go back to that place in my being, which for me speaks of my essence – that place where I can find my language, my grammar, my words. That place from where the rest of me can be interpreted. As I said, my partner, Leon, finds it all rather less exalted in every way, but our agreement is that he will come with to support the decision. And that is what he does.
Fr David and his wife Margie are remarkable people. Initially, every Sunday they would both wait outside the front door, to welcome us at the church. In that way, they made it plain to the congregation, what we were welcome there. And consequently, the rest of the parish did welcome us warmly. Both our boys were baptised there and on their baptism certificates, the word “mother” is replaced by another “father” – so we both appear as the children’s parents and were both referred to as such during the service. All it took, was leadership. We worshipped regularly there for a number of years.
We moved to Cape Town to be close to Leon’s family. I have looked around for a church which is well mixed racially and which is accepting of gay people generally and would be of us in particular. The Cathedral was always an option, with its long and proud history of struggle and human rights but I was looking more for a parish church setting. I am happy to have found a home in St Michael’s and All Angels, Observatory. It is a parish with a bit of a history, but it has been extremely welcoming to us as a family and the boys feel very at home there now. In fact, to my mind, they are a bit too enthusiastic about going to Sunday School!
But I found this church after a lot of dithering and dathering. I visited many churches in the area, trying to make a good choice. One day Gabriel came home and asked me “Daddy, is God’s name Allah?” I paused for a moment and said “Well, yes, it is! God’s name is also - (and now I thought very hard indeed, and came up with...) God!” It was then that I decided that it was well nigh time for the children get back to church.
So, in a strange and roundabout way, my two children have also brought me back into the church. And I can see them more and more getting the point of it all – so very quickly. Soon, Gabriel will be making his first communion, because he has asked for it. And before I blink, they will be rebellious teenagers, and then they will make their own decisions. But I have no doubt, the groundwork will have been done. They will know faith, even if they want to reject it. And I hope in their life’s journey, that when they are frightened or lonely, they will, at the very least, have somewhere to go for comfort.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
In procession
The church I go to is extraordinarily High. I am talking way beyond the clouds, deep space High. I chose it because it was that. And honestly, I can't imagine what people who go to churches where the same preachy thing happens every week get out of it - with the best will in the world, I really can't. The thing about this place is that almost every week there is something new and, fairly often, both surprising and sometimes even spectacular.
My tradition started off sort of Broad church. Then it went Charismatic, with all the talking in tongues and hugging and kissing with arms aloft crap. Then it went High - with genuflections and incense and crossing oneself. Then, through force of circumstance rather than choice, Broad again. Then nothing at all, then High again. High, I say but certainly not as High as St Michael's Observatory.
So in many ways, I sit in some puzzlement and often in wonder. Today, it wasn't so much sitting, as walking. We had a procession with the Blessed Sacrament, through the streets of Observatory. Now, processions, I have done before, certainly on Palm Sunday. But in my limited experience, they have been somewhat stilted affairs trying to keep up with the choir singing "all Glory Laud and Honour" over and over again and holding a palm cross as elegantly as one can. And my experiences of ecclesiastical processions, prior to this have been either around the outside of the church, or even around the inside of the church! Sort of token things. A nod in the direction of what used to be, once upon a time.
This one was anything but that! Richard, the priest, announced that we would not be processing if it was raining - (which it has been the whole of yesterday and the night before). But it became clear towards the end of the service that there was no rain, and that a procession would take place because servers started rushing around with Humeral Veils and other accoutrement. The Blessed Sacrament, displayed in a fairly substantial Monstrance was taken in procession down the aisle. The congregation fell to its knees as it passed. Then, singing hymns, we all followed into the streets of Observatory. A police car with flashing blue lights ahead of the procession.
I noticed some people who live in the area, coming out to have a look at what was passing by. Dogs started barking. One rather cute student type, with no shirt on, came out onto his balcony, then rushed back inside only to appear moments later with a camera. Cars did U-turns and others, filled with the curious and the bewildered, passed us as best they could. There was a group of what looked like tourists, with really big cameras, who seemed to want to get us on camera as well. I felt a bit like one would, I suppose, if one were a participant in the Kaapse Klopse, or a military band, or a protest perhaps.
I started thinking of similar experiences I have had both as a participant and as a spectator. I remember the mighty marches we had in the late 1980s - as part of the "Standing for the Truth" Campaign, (which was really the United Democratic Front/ANC)- formed to pressurise the apartheid state. I remember the fact that it was a staggering 10 000 strong in Pietermaritzburg, at a time when protest actions of this sort were unheard of. I remember the Special Branch videoing the proceedings and frightened white people looking down at us from the safety of a high rise building.
I thought of other processions I went to see in Dorpspruit (also in Pietermaritzburg) on Good Friday, where the Hindu religious community did things which I had never seen in my life before. I saw a woman stare at the sun, in order to get herself to fall into a trance and then started dancing like a monkey. In honour, I understand, of the God Hanuman. I saw men have their backs pierced with meat hooks - no blood - and then pull a chariot with an effigy of the Goddess Draupadi on it - with her hair hanging down - symbolic, I understand, of her rape. I saw a man sticking a dagger right through his tongue, and a spike through both his cheeks - again no blood. I saw people walking across a burning pile of coals.
And so I started to compare what we were doing with the other kinds of processions I have been in. Certainly, the others were more outwardly dramatic. Then again, were they? For me, there was something in the way in which that congregation fell to its knees when the Blessed Sacrament passed them in the aisle, which made me start to wonder.
The sermon made reference to perhaps my all time favourite film - "Shadowlands" - with Anthony Hopkins playing the part of CS Lewis. Lewis was asked, in the film, why he kept on praying. He said, it had nothing to do with changing the situation. It had to do with the change the act of prayer brought about in him - or words to that effect.
Because, let's be honest here. Processing around a suburb of Cape Town carrying the Blessed Sacrament is a bit of an anachronism. It doesn't fit with the modern world at all. And the thin crowd of 50 or so people processing and singing hymns is, also, somewhat archaic. (I can't imagine what the bare-chested student is going to do with his picture of us. I can only wonder what the tourists will do with theirs.) I can only speculate at what effect it might be thought to have on the world.
So why does this church do it? To show off perhaps? Because we know how to do it? Because of the tradition? Because we are proud of this religion?
I think it is actually something far simpler and something easily aligned to the CS Lewis idea, I mentioned above. I think it is because those of us who do it, want the very best for our world. And because this strange and curious tradition (and others like it), effects some kind of positive change in the doer, rather than in the world-order. And maybe that is something really important.
My tradition started off sort of Broad church. Then it went Charismatic, with all the talking in tongues and hugging and kissing with arms aloft crap. Then it went High - with genuflections and incense and crossing oneself. Then, through force of circumstance rather than choice, Broad again. Then nothing at all, then High again. High, I say but certainly not as High as St Michael's Observatory.
So in many ways, I sit in some puzzlement and often in wonder. Today, it wasn't so much sitting, as walking. We had a procession with the Blessed Sacrament, through the streets of Observatory. Now, processions, I have done before, certainly on Palm Sunday. But in my limited experience, they have been somewhat stilted affairs trying to keep up with the choir singing "all Glory Laud and Honour" over and over again and holding a palm cross as elegantly as one can. And my experiences of ecclesiastical processions, prior to this have been either around the outside of the church, or even around the inside of the church! Sort of token things. A nod in the direction of what used to be, once upon a time.
This one was anything but that! Richard, the priest, announced that we would not be processing if it was raining - (which it has been the whole of yesterday and the night before). But it became clear towards the end of the service that there was no rain, and that a procession would take place because servers started rushing around with Humeral Veils and other accoutrement. The Blessed Sacrament, displayed in a fairly substantial Monstrance was taken in procession down the aisle. The congregation fell to its knees as it passed. Then, singing hymns, we all followed into the streets of Observatory. A police car with flashing blue lights ahead of the procession.
I noticed some people who live in the area, coming out to have a look at what was passing by. Dogs started barking. One rather cute student type, with no shirt on, came out onto his balcony, then rushed back inside only to appear moments later with a camera. Cars did U-turns and others, filled with the curious and the bewildered, passed us as best they could. There was a group of what looked like tourists, with really big cameras, who seemed to want to get us on camera as well. I felt a bit like one would, I suppose, if one were a participant in the Kaapse Klopse, or a military band, or a protest perhaps.
I started thinking of similar experiences I have had both as a participant and as a spectator. I remember the mighty marches we had in the late 1980s - as part of the "Standing for the Truth" Campaign, (which was really the United Democratic Front/ANC)- formed to pressurise the apartheid state. I remember the fact that it was a staggering 10 000 strong in Pietermaritzburg, at a time when protest actions of this sort were unheard of. I remember the Special Branch videoing the proceedings and frightened white people looking down at us from the safety of a high rise building.
I thought of other processions I went to see in Dorpspruit (also in Pietermaritzburg) on Good Friday, where the Hindu religious community did things which I had never seen in my life before. I saw a woman stare at the sun, in order to get herself to fall into a trance and then started dancing like a monkey. In honour, I understand, of the God Hanuman. I saw men have their backs pierced with meat hooks - no blood - and then pull a chariot with an effigy of the Goddess Draupadi on it - with her hair hanging down - symbolic, I understand, of her rape. I saw a man sticking a dagger right through his tongue, and a spike through both his cheeks - again no blood. I saw people walking across a burning pile of coals.
And so I started to compare what we were doing with the other kinds of processions I have been in. Certainly, the others were more outwardly dramatic. Then again, were they? For me, there was something in the way in which that congregation fell to its knees when the Blessed Sacrament passed them in the aisle, which made me start to wonder.
The sermon made reference to perhaps my all time favourite film - "Shadowlands" - with Anthony Hopkins playing the part of CS Lewis. Lewis was asked, in the film, why he kept on praying. He said, it had nothing to do with changing the situation. It had to do with the change the act of prayer brought about in him - or words to that effect.
Because, let's be honest here. Processing around a suburb of Cape Town carrying the Blessed Sacrament is a bit of an anachronism. It doesn't fit with the modern world at all. And the thin crowd of 50 or so people processing and singing hymns is, also, somewhat archaic. (I can't imagine what the bare-chested student is going to do with his picture of us. I can only wonder what the tourists will do with theirs.) I can only speculate at what effect it might be thought to have on the world.
So why does this church do it? To show off perhaps? Because we know how to do it? Because of the tradition? Because we are proud of this religion?
I think it is actually something far simpler and something easily aligned to the CS Lewis idea, I mentioned above. I think it is because those of us who do it, want the very best for our world. And because this strange and curious tradition (and others like it), effects some kind of positive change in the doer, rather than in the world-order. And maybe that is something really important.
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