Death, be not proud

As a teenager, I used to earn a couple of Rand during school holidays, by playing the organ at the local crematorium. Yes, I admit, on the scale of things, it was a somewhat odd thing to do. I mean, after all,most of my friends were working as packers in the local Checkers. One or two of them had holiday jobs at the local movie house. Me? I played the organ for funerals.

It was pretty good money, for doing relatively little. I could virtually play “Abide with me” in my sleep. Handel’s Largo I could have done blindfolded and with someone tickling my feet. There were relatively few surprises. The Priest or Minister would usually be the only person singing along and the services were relatively short – never more than half an hour. So I could usually end up with six or seven services a day and pay was for each individual funeral – so I was pretty much in clover.

I took a book along to read during the sermons. I wore a sad expression on my face. That was all I needed to do. Except on one day.

On this day, the undertaker asked me if I wouldn’t mind helping carry one of the bodies into the chapel, because the trolley had broken, or something. I was sixteen. I was happy playing the organ and ignoring the coffin. I was not used to schlepping bodies around. But I agreed. He made it sound as though it was the most normal thing in the whole world – which, of course, for him, it was!

I was surprised by the weight of the body. How four of us battled to carry the coffin. And I was completely overwhelmed by something else, which I had really not been prepared for – the smell of death. Even with the overpowering scent of flowers on the coffin, it was there. It was unmistakeable.

The undertaker noticed my reaction. “Oh, sorry!” he said, “This one isn’t too fresh”. I reeled. I had not expected such a casual approach to the issue. “Yes!” sniggered one of the others, “Maybe we need to get an air freshener or something. They are going to notice, for sure!”

Last Good Friday, I attended the service at my local parish church, St Michael’s Observatory. It was my first experience of a really high Catholic Good Friday service. My upbringing has been much more in the tradition of preaching on the seven last words from the cross – which, both when I was preaching on them and when I was listening to someone else doing the preaching, almost always left me feeling a little like it was me that was being crucified. So, the service at St Michael’s was, in some aspects, completely new.

It began on entry into the church. From the doorway to the High Altar was a completely unexpected riot of colour! Rose petals had been scattered thickly in the aisle. (I subsequently discovered that this is normal practise where there is a procession of the Blessed Sacrament – it is nothing I had ever seen before!)

But the effect was astonishing. This rampant shock of colour against the stark bleakness of the undressed stone church. And it is not only the sense of sight which is assaulted. It is also the sense of smell. The perfume of roses - heady, overwhelming, intoxicating. Almost too much to take in.

And the silence. Heavy. Solemn. Profound.

Suffice to say, it was one of the most moving and profound services I have ever experienced, in my life. The music, the words of the liturgy, the readings and the solemnity had me, at one point, in tears. (Now, believe me, that is no great feat – I cry in “Bambi” - but still… ).

I was moved, profoundly. And one of the memories which those scattered rose petals brought back to me was my first experience of carrying a coffin. Of flowers used to mask the smell of death. Of my first realization that one day, undertakers would, most likely, be carrying my body, in a coffin, too.

Good Friday brings us all, if we will let it do so, to that profound moment. The moment when our world goes dark and our senses are no more and our bodies are carried to their place of decay. At that point, we can if we choose to, smell the roses. Smell the roses.

Midnight Mass at St Michael and All Angels Observatory, 2009

There is something extremely peculiar about attending Mass on Christmas Eve. It has, of course, the strongest overtones of pagan ritual - which is historically what Christianity simply usurped. Dead of night. Phallic Christmas Trees. Should be the winter solstice, but we live in the south down here. Celebration of new birth etc

So, to see the priest bearing a tiny (what was it? porcelain? alabaster? plastic?) figurine of baby Jesus on a pillow, (looking from the distance I was at, for all the world like a foetus), it cannot fail to make one think about things like that.

As usual at St Michael's, the music was thrilling. I was glad to say the familiar and do the comforting. I breathed in the smoke and I knelt for the incarnation, as is my habit, Sunday by Sunday. And I faced, afresh, the strangeness - the real peculiarity of a human God. A God who might be, as one songwriter put it, "a stranger on a bus, trying to make his way home". The absurdity of the eternal constrained by the temporal.

And, from that temporal point of view, is it not sobering to see that, if you look around the country, that most babies were born on Christmas Day, in the poorest Provinces? In the Western Cape - there was one child born. We are outnumbered some 60 to 1 in some parts of the country - so great is the disparity. So great is the difference between us.

And then there is the great moment after the Mass, where the priest and sub-deacons kneel before the crib and adore the new-born child. All the lights of the church are turned off and we find ourselves in complete darkness, save for the glinting lights of the two Christmas trees which frame the high altar and the candles. And, of course, the light which shines from the Nativity scene. It is a brief moment, and then the carol "Silent Night" is sung, by all, and from memory.

For me, this is the song my father would sing to me as a child, by way of a lullaby, to get me to go to sleep. He would produce, from a drawer in his bedroom, an old and used Christmas card, on which the words of the carol were printed. And he would sing to me, in a voice sonorous and clear and comforting. My father singing me to sleep.

And of course, the Christ-child is the lullaby of the Eternal to this battered world of ours. When we hear it, we can, even if momentarily, let go of our fears and our struggles. We can find peace, if only for a moment. For the briefest of moments.

We can pause in wonder at the place where divinity empties itself into human form. And we can ponder what the point of it all might be. Because it is far from obvious. It is, in reality, anything but clear. The message of Christmas down the ages has been, that here, in this absurity, is where we find the best and the most comforting truth there is. Into our darkness, shines the light.

Children's Spirituality

Pic: Two dads on Joshua's collection day from the Princess Alice Adoption Home. Leon is holding Gabriel

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.