Stephen Hayes's Blog, page 66

Redeeming the past: a journey from freedom fighter to healer

Redeeming the Past: My Journey from Freedom Fighter to Healer by Michael Lapsley

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Reviewing a book is always a subjective exercise, but even more so when you know the author. I first met Michael Lapsley in 1974, when he came with another member of the Society of the Sacred Mission to speak to our youth group in an Anglican parish in Durban North. He had only recently arrived in South Africa from New Zealand.

Our paths have crossed at fairly long intervals since then, partly because he was deported from South Africa and for long periods I did not have a passport, so when he was deported I did not expect that I would ever see him again. In 1977 I had a passport for a brief period, and we went to Swaziland on holiday, and he happened to be there too, also on holiday. But when he returned to South Africa he was in Cape Town and we were in Gauteng.

Nevertheless, we lived through the same period of South African history and so even though our paths crossed rarely, they were sometimes parallel. So there were several parts of the book where I felt as though I was reading something that I could have written. I cannot discuss all the thoughts that the book provoked in me in a single review, so I’ll probably write a couple of blog posts about some aspects of it later. For now I’ll concentrate on the core of the book, which is the healing of memories.

The book begins with the bomb that maimed Michael Lapsley in April 1990, which became the defining moment of his life, and changed the course of his life to a new ministry of healing of memories. And that is where our paths diverged, because I never experienced anything like that.

About 2/3 of the book is taken up with the healing of memories, and it made me think about it more, which no doubt is what was intended.

I had heard of the notion of the “healing of memories” before. When I was at college in Durham there was a book on Clinical theology by Frank Lake, which dealt with the topic, and became very popular. We had a fundi on the subject, Michael Hare-Duke, come to the college and tell us about it. It included the idea that the memories that needed to be healed went back to one’s birth and beyond. It all seemed somewhat remote to me.

At about the same time there was a Roman Catholic priest, Francis MacNutt, who became involved in the charismatic renewal, and taught about the healing of memories. But I never read his book and it still seemed remote from me.

And now Michael Lapsley comes with this book and tells how we have all been wounded by apartheid and the struggle against it, and especially by what we have done, what we have failed to do, and what has been done to us.

And that made me think a bit more about it. It was a lot closer to home than Frank Lake or Francis MacNutt. I can think of many things I have done that I wish I had not done, usually because they have hurt other people. Perhaps those are memories that need to be healed, but most of them have little to do with apartheid or the struggle against it; they are more the result of my own captivity to the passions: anger, pride, lust, greed, impatience, the need for self-justification etc. I find it harder to think of things I have failed to do, because those are things that do not exist and have never existed. In what circumstances would it have made a difference if I had done something different? I’m not sure; it becomes speculative.

What has been done to me?

Well no one has ever sent me a parcel bomb, or if they did, it must have gone astray in the post.

I did once have a phone call from a guy who said, “Hayes, you bloody commie, I’m going to slit your throat.” I said “Thank you,” brightly and cheerily, and he hung up.

I’ve been banned, I’ve been deported from Namibia, and I’ve been sacked from a few jobs, and had my passport confiscated or applications for a passport refused, I’ve been forced to leave my home more than once. But none of those caused direct physical injury, like Michael’s parcel bomb, or like many of the people described in the book as having been tortured, assassinated etc. So in all those things I haven’t had the kind of resentment about ill-treatment that would make me feel a need to be reconciled to anyone in particular.

The evil of apartheid, as Michael Lapsley points out in his book, was systemic. No one person was responsible for it. Our struggle was not against blood and flesh, but against the principalities, the authorities, the world powers of this present darkness.

Well, I did discover one thing. Mr Vorster signed a banning order for me on 11 January 1966. I never received it because I skipped the country before it could be delivered, and I only discovered it a few years ago, in my Department of Justice file in the archives, and discovered that it had Mr Vorster’s personal animosity behind it. But at the time I was not aware of the banning order, nor of the animus that lay behind it.

And a few months before, when talking to a friend who was preparing for baptism and had all sorts of questions about the Christian faith, she said, “We are supposed to thank God for everything, but how can you give thanks to God for Mr Vorster?” And I said, without thinking, “You can thank God for giving you Mr Vorster to love.” And then wondered where that had come from, and if I had really said it. I concluded that it must have been one of those things that the Holy Spirit does.

The Security Police used to follow us around in those days, and we got to know some of them by sight, and we were on speaking terms with some of them. One in particular was Warrant Officer van Rensburg. I found his home address and when I was overseas I used to send him Christmas cards. Once they followed us to a meeting in a rural area, and when crossing a stream water got into the car’s distributor, and we were stuck in the middle of the stream. A couple of us went on to the meeting on foot while the rest stayed and we took our time about cleaning the distributor, and the SB could not get past, and were furious with us, as they never made it to the meeting.

On their way back, however, their car got stuck on a ridge of rock, so that it was rocking with either the front or back wheels touching the ground, but not both. It also holed their petrol tank. We waved at them as we passed, and some of our party were gloating from schadenfreude, but I thought it was inappropriate, and said so. If we hadn’t been late for the next meeting, I’d even have stopped to help them and pour some burning coals on their heads. They were victims of the system too, and were just doing their job. I don’t think the ones I met were the ones who actually tortured anyone. They just watched people, tapped their phones, opened their mail, and interpreted what they saw and heard in terms of the demonic ideology that held them captive, and sent off reports coloured by that view to Kompol in Pretoria. And Kompol would in turn report to the Minister of Justice and say “Ban this one, remove that one’s passport, detain that one, and charge that one with high treason.” If I encountered any torturers, I didn’t know it. I did know people who did encounter torturers, of course, on both sides of the conflict. But I got the feeling that the “healing of memories” part of the book was for them, not for me; for the tortured and the torturers, the bombers and the bombed. The closest it came to me was the sackers and the sacked.

Later, in 1972, a banning order did catch up with me. But I thought of it rather as a badge of honour than as something bad. The worst thing about it was a telegram I received from a Methodist minister friend, “Deep shock and anger at arbitrary action against you.” It would have been more appropriate, it seemed to me, if he had said something like, “Congratulations! You’ve made it.” Great is your reward in heaven, we are told (Matt 5:11-12). Why should a reward in heaven cause deep shock and anger?

So in all this, I could not think of anyone that I needed to be reconciled with, anyone who had caused a festering memory that needed healing — at least not in relation to apartheid and the struggle against it.

But as I read the book more things came to mind. Some names came to mind. And I thought, yes, with those people there may still be some unfinished business. Interestingly enough, the names were all German. One was Jürgen Meinert, who in 1971 fired me from the Windhoek Advertiser, which he owned, along with the Allgemeine Zeitung. He hadn’t hired me — the editor had done that — and I’d never met him and didn’t even know who he was. I met him for the first time the day he fired me. On the same day he fired my friend Toni Halberstadt who was also involved with the Anglican Church in those days.

There was also Kurt Dahlmann, the editor of the Allgemeine Zeitung, who, some of my colleagues on the Windhoek Advertiser told me, had been gunning for me, and also wrote a lying editorial about me. He it was, they said, who asked Jürgen Meinert to fire us. But then in 1978 Kurt Dahlmann got a taste of his own medicine when he himself was fired by a new boss who was even more right-wing than he was. Perhaps it was Mrs Bedonebyasyoudid.

The third one was a Mr Klingenberg, a farmer of Commondale, near Piet Retief. He was the absentee landlord of a farm in the Utrecht district, on which there was a small Anglican Church, and one day, just as we were about to start a service, he came and closed the church at gunpoint. We thought that the SB had probably put him up to it.

So perhaps I do have some memories that need to be healed after all. And Michael Lapsley’s book has made me think of them.

But then I think about it again, and think no, that is too trivial. I can say yes, I’ve suffered human rights abuses, but they weren’t too gross; perhaps they were God’s way of teaching me to sympathise with those for whom they were gross, like Michael Lapsley himself. Whatever human rights abuses I suffered were merely temporary inconveniences, for him they were permanent disabilities. When South Africa became free in 1994, my temporary inconveniences ceased; but Michael Lapsley’s disability will last for the rest of his life.

____

The book launch of Redeeming the past was a very interesting affair and you can read about it at Redeeming the past: book launch | Khanya. The launch of the book is also the launch of a conversation that we in South Africa need to be having.

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Urban ministry live and plugged in

“I love it when a plan comes together” said Hannibal in the 1980s skiet en donder TV series The A-Team. But today’s story isn’t about a plan, or at least it’s not a human plan, though I’m sure it’s God’s plan. And apologies to my blogging friend Thomas for taking the name of his blog in vain (his blog is Urban Ministry Live And Unplugged).

This morning we went, as we usually do on alternate Sundays, to Christina Mothapo’s house in Mamelodi East for the Hours and Reader’s Service. It didn’t look promising when we arrived. The gate was locked, and there was a drunk bloke staggering around outside. But we were greeted by Christina’s great grandson, Vincent, aged 23, an unemployed school dropout. But he told us he at last had a temporary job, for about 3 weeks, and so we went in to the sitting room where we usually have the service.

Vincent led most of it, and suddenly he was reading fluently. He has occasionally read bits before, but often haltingly. Now he was reading with new confidence. And today the singing sounded much better than usual. It was more tuneful, and people wewre singing together.

Then at the end the grannies, Christina Mothapo and Mary Nthite, wanted to give a report on their visit to Atteridgeville ten days ago.

Service at Atteridgeville to commission Angelos Mokau for his new work there

I had taken them to Atteridgeville where we had a similar service. The children’s home had more or less closed, when Fr Frumentius moved to Tembisa. Angelos Mokau had told us that he saw his future ministry as helping the poor, and especially the old people and children, and so we installed him as the new warden of the children’s home, with a mandate to work with the local leaders and try to rebuild the parish as well. The local leaders, Artemius Mangena and Demetrius Mahwayi, are also unemployed. This is not a high-powered, high-profile project. It is the poor helping the poor.

But the grannies were impressed.

What they proposed was that we in Mamelodi should give our Sunday collections to help the Atteridgeville project. They said they would try to collect clothes that their grandchildren and great grandchildren had grown out of, and give them to the children’s home.

It was my turn to be impressed.

But I remembered when, a few years ago, we sometimes took street children to Mamelodi, and the people saw that some of them had no shoes, so they found them shoes. These are families where many members are unemployed. And, perhaps inverting the usual expectations of social order in South Africa, this black congregation in a black township found a pair of shoes for one of the street kids who happened to be white.

The Church that meets in Christina’s house

So, plan or not, something is coming together, the vision of the church as a community, and this is not the attitude I have found in many parishes, where they say things like “Charity begins at home” and resent any suggestion that they help other parishes. Or, in the case of one congregation I know, go to the bishop and complain about lack of “service delivery”. But here are the people coming together and saying how can we support the parish in Atteridgeville who are doing something.

People sometimes like to have conferences and write learned articles about “the church and the poor” as if the church is one thing and the poor are another. But the church is the poor, and to talk about “the poor” as if they are not part of the church is horribly demeaning.

Vincent and his young cousin, Anna, then say, when will there be another youth conference? They really hope there will be one. The last one we had was at the end of 2006.

Vincent says he is learning all kinds of things in his temporary job — plumbing and installation of stuff in houses. Perhaps the experience and skills make it easier for him to get another job. I hope that, in the times when he is unemployed, I can arrange for him to stay with a couple of priests, tag along with them, and see what they do.

And then they tell me that Maria, Christina’s daughter, who had been ill for a long time, and for whom we have been praying, has been taken to hospital. She has Aids, and has suddently taken a turn for the worse. Lord have mercy! Please pray for them and for us all.

Redeeming the past: book launch

Last night Val and I braved the rain and the traffic to travel to Johannesburg for the launch of Fr Michael Lapsley’s book Redeeming the past. It took us three hours to cover the 85 kilometres, but it was worth it.

Michael Lapsley was a New Zealander who went to Australia at the age of 17 to train to be an Anglican priest. He joined the Society of the Sacred Mission (SSM), an Anglican monastic order, and when he was professed as a member of the order they sent him to South Africa, for further study.

When he arrived in South Africa in 1973 the SSM had fairly recently opened a house in Durban, where they were collectively chaplains to a group of higher-education institutions in Durban, the main ones being the University of Natal, which was all white, except for the medical school, which was all black, and the University College of Durban-Westville, which was intended for Indians. Fr Michael Lapsley was both a student and a chaplain. And that was when we met him, when he came to speak to our parish youth group in March 1974, and a few months later he preached at our wedding, but that’s another story.

One of his discoveries on coming to South Africa was that he ceased to be a human being and became a white man. The most important thing about him became the colour of his skin. He spoke out against this, and was in a better position to observe this than many South Africans, as a chaplain to three segregated educational institutions.

He was deported to Lesotho, where he joined the African National Congress (ANC), the largest of the exiled opposition groups, and later moved to Zimbabwe. In 1990, some months after the National Party government had unbanned the ANC and other opposition groups, Fr Michael Lapsley was injured by a parcel bomb sent by agents of the apartheid regime. He lost both his hands and the sight in one eye.

When he had recovered from his injuries his bishop, who had prayed for him in hospital, apparently not believing in the power of his own prayers, said that he could not serve as a priest with no hands. Desmond Tutu, then the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, said “I have a blind priest and a deaf priest, why not one with no hands? Come.” So he moved to Cape Town, where he opened an Institute for Healing of Memories.

All South Africans suffered under apartheid, which dehumanised everybody in one way or another. It dehumanised those who had sent him the bomb — they had sent him the bomb because they were damaged human beings. Unlike some people, though, he did not advocate that we forget the past, and try to pretend that it did not exist. But rather that we should understand the past, redeem the past, and heal our memories, replacing anger and bitterness with forgiveness.

Trying to forget the past, and pretending that it did not happen, can be disastrous. It was attempts to forget the past that allowed the anger and bitterness to build up that led to the Wars of the Yugoslav Succession that raged through the 1990s. I have tried to recall the apartheid past in the Tales from Dystopia series on this blog.

Fr Michael Lapsley says that we need to disinfect the past, not obliterate it. We need to attend to our damage so we don’t pass on the poison to the next generation. We are all in need of healing, because of what we have done, what we have failed to do, and what has been done to us — and that is what this book is all about.

The launch was chaired by J.J. Tabane,  and Stephen Karakashian, the co-author of the book, explained how it was written. He as acted partly as a prompt, and partly as a scribe and an amanuensis.

J.J. Tabane then introduced the main speaker, the Minister of Planning, and former Minister of Finance, Trevor Manuel. What we need is a Minister of Implementation, JJ quipped.

After the main introduction, there was a kind of symposium, with the two authors, a governmet minister and a former government minister, and the Chaplain-General of the Defence Force, and J.J. Tabane asking them awkward questions. And in the symposium they spoke of the need for a conversation about redeeming the past, and the present, and the future.

Stephen Karakashian, Fr Michael Lapsley, Trevor Manuel, Tito Mboweni, and the Chaplain-General of the Defence Force

Tito Mboweni said that South Africa had lost its vision of non-racicalism (reported more fully here). He also noted that language had tended to obscure the ideals on which our democratic South Africa had been founded. People spoke of “service delivery” as if the government was simply a great provider.

He told the story of a young man who told his father he wanted to get married. “Where will you live?” asked his father. “Here at home, of course,” replied the son. “Oh no,” said the father. “First you build a house to live in, then you get married.”

But today’s young man would get married first, and then get his wife to toyi-toyi to demand an RDP house.

I think he was being a bit unfair on the original vision of the RDP. I have a copy of it, produced by the ANC before the 1994 general election. It was not all about “service delivery”. It was about concerted acti0n by government, business and civil society to rebuild South Africa. There was even a Minister of Implementation, Jay Naidoo. The problem was that the post of Minister of Implementation was abolished within a year, and all that was left of the “RDP” was a term for a jerry-built house, with enormous profits accruing to corrupt builders and corrupt government officials  — but that too must be part of the conversation.

The whole thing took place in the shadow of the Marikana Massacre, which made it seem somehow more urgent.

Fr Michael Lapsley described Marikana as a kairos moment, a moment of make or break. We can either pause to re-evaluate where we are doing, or we can go on into a future in which we will have learnt nothing from the past, and slide back into what we were just beginning to emerge from. He quoted Chief Albert Luthuli as saying that people who see themselves primarily as victims tend to become victimisers, and a similar saying from Paolo Freire, the Brazilian educationist, that the oppressed tend to internalise the image of the opporessor, and so see only oppressers as truly human. So we need to redeem the past to rebuild a better future.

I found the whole thing tremendously encouraging. In a way, I felt that I was back in those hopeful days of 1993, when the ANC, unhampered by the cares of office, was encouraging debate and discussion of a future in which anything was possible.

Now, if one reads the press, there is no vision, no hope, no policy. The image they give of politicians is people motivated purely by greed for wealth and power, whose sole concern is to get ahead of their rivals. So it was good to see that there were still some people, like Trevor Manuel and Tito Mboweni, who retained those ideals. And as long as there are still people around who are saying such things, there is hope. There is also sadness, because twenty years ago people were saying those things in a slightly different way, as ideals to be achieved. Twenty years have passed, and they have not been achieved. They look different after 20 years of failure, symbolised by Markikana. But the ideals have not been abandoned, so there is still hope.

There were speakers from the floor, too, mostly young people. And what they said also gave me hope. The media image may be true, but it is not the full picture.

There was quite a lot of discussion on the need for education, with comments about teachers planning to go on strike on 4th January, but not noticing until June that textbooks hadn’t been delivered. And while the teachers planned to go on strike, they were sending their own children to private schools.

Trevor Manuel said that surely someone, teachers, parents, pupils themselves, should have noticed in the first week after schools opened, that the textbooks were absent. After all, part of the ritual that children and parents go through at the beginning of every school year was covering text books and exercise books. It was no use just pointing out that the government should have noticed these things — everyone should have noticed, and made a fuss about it. And that is part of the mentality that has been inculcated by the use of terms like “service delivery”.

As we were going home Val pointed out that that was not quite fair. In rural areas, people are not used to text books. In rural schools, many children come from homes where adults do not read, and where there are no books. Urban parents may cover text books and exercise books for their children, but perhaps rural parents have never done that.

So perhaps the conversation last night was a bit middle-class. But it doesn’t matter too much, at least not at the beginning, because the conversation has to start somewhere, as long as it doesn’t stay middle-class. But there is another danger, because the Marikana miners are having their own conversation, and that is anything but middle-class. There is a great danger that these two conversations may never meet.

 

British pro-life protesters found guilty

Three British Catholic activists who scrawled pro-life slogans on a government building have been found guilty of causing criminal damage.

The Tablet – Pax Christi trio found guilty:

Three Catholic activists who wrote pacifist slogans on the wall of the Ministry Defence headquarters in London have been found guilty of causing criminal damage.

Dr Ray Towey (68), Henrietta Cullinan (50) and Katrina Alton (44) admitted to defacing the building in Whitehall but they denied intending to cause damage that the Ministry of Defence said amounted to �400.

Henrietta Cullinan told the court that they had used charcoal that they had blessed to write phrases including “Choose life” and “Repent” before being arrested. She said that the direct action, which took place on 2 April, had been a part of her Lenten observance. They were taking part in a peace vigil organised by Pax Christi.

Dr.Ray Towey (68) missionary doctor who has spent most of the last 20 years in East Africa. Dr Towey has been involved with these actions for the past 30 years.Henrietta Cullinan, (50) from the London Catholic Worker; Katrina Alton (44) from London.

The Catholic Worker said on Facebook:

Twenty-five supporters joined Ray Towey, Henrietta Cullinan and Katrina Alton* for a time of prayer outside Hammersmith Magistrates’ Court today before a three-hour hearing which found them guilty of causingcriminal damage.

The three offered clear and moving accounts of their peace actions at the Ministry of Defence during Holy Week 2012 when they marked the building with blessed charcoal using words such as Trident Crucifies the Poor and Disarm Trident. Reports from arresting officers were read out in court which affirmed that there actions had been totally nonviolent and that they had not resisted arrest in any way. While not disputing the fact of their action, they all argued that they had lawful excuse and moral convictions for what they did.

Ray, Henrietta and Katrina explained the relevance of the time and symbols used: Lent, a time for reflection and repentance at both personal and community levels and charcoal, a known symbol of that repentance that is used within the Christian faith community. The protection of life and people was at the heart of their actions and they all stated that these were more important than property or buildings. Their intention in marking the Ministry of Defence building was to engage the Ministry and those who work there in critical reflection on the UK’s nuclear defence policy and the Trident programme in particular in order to change it and prevent nuclear weapons from ever being used. Judge Susan Williams acknowledged her understanding of this in her questioning of Ray Towey, and again in her summing up saying that these were profound means used to highlight the folly of humankind.

The three, who defended themselves, were given substantial time to present their own evidence and outline why they did what they did. The Judge said that she needed a good amount of time to reflect on what she had heard and the legal implications and adjourned the hearing for almost two hours. Before adjournment, Ray Towey made a short intervention inviting the Judge to discharge them and to stand outside the normal boundaries of the legal institution and set a precedent. On her return she gave a fulsome summary – showing that she had listenedwith great care to all that she had heard – but ultimately finding them guilty of criminal damage. They were each charged with paying £200 court costs. While the Ministry of Defence had put forward a claim for£400 cleaning costs the Judge refused to enforce this. The three were given an absolute discharge. All of them made it clear that they could not in conscience pay the court costs. Their action was supported by the London Catholic Worker, Catholic Peace Action and Pax Christi

Boycott Woolworths, bring in Sainsbury’s

Last week I posted a tweet on Twitter suggesting that people should boycott Woolworths because of their labour practices. Woolworths staff face retrenchments | Labour | Mail & Guardian:

About 600 Woolworths workers face retrenchment or early retirement if they choose to not sign the new flexible-hour contracts.

Human resource officers from Woolworths visited stores in KwaZulu-Natal last week to inform fixed-shift staff that in order to accommodate the company’s 365-days-a-year trading policy staff would be switched to flexible shifts, the Star reported on Monday.

I commented on Facebook: “Remember the Market, to keep it holy! Seven days shalt thou labour, for I am the Market thy god, which led thee into harsh bondage.”

And Macrina Walker commented: “Indeed. It will be interesting to see if the sort of Christians who made a big noise about Halaal hot cross buns will also kick up a fuss about this.”

Well, I don’t know if the kind of Christians who made a fuss about Halaal hot cross buns have made a fuss about this, but there has been a bit of a fuss about it, from a rather surprising quarter.

In Britain, the Sunday trading laws were relaxed for the period of the Olympic Games, in the hope, no doubt, that it would boost profits. Apparently it failed to do so. Though most Brits seemed to feel good about the Olympic Games, feeling good didn’t seem to make them want to rush out and buy something at any hour of the day or night.

The British government, however, is now thinking of making the relaxed Sunday trading laws permanent. And opposition to that proposal has come from a British equivalent of Woolworths: BBC News – Sainsbury’s chief attacks plans to reform Sunday trading:

The head of Sainsbury’s has attacked government plans to make temporarily extended Sunday trading hours permanent.

Chief executive Justin King said: “Maintaining Sunday’s special status has great merit.”

This is not neccessarily purely out of concern for the workers, but there are also sound business reasons for it.

In a separate, joint letter also to the Sunday Telegraph, the general secretary of the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers (Usdaw), the Bishop of Oxford and the chief executive of the Association of Convenience Stores said they had been “alarmed” to hear that ministers were considering making the change permanent.

“With margins being squeezed and sales flatlining, the last thing the retail sector needs is increased overheads for little or no return…

The Keep Sunday Special campaign said: “David Cameron came into government promising to make this country the ‘most family friendly in Europe’ but over one million families have at least one parent working on both weekend days, meaning they have little time to spend with their children.”

So perhaps the time has come to boycott Woolworths, and encourage Sainsbury’s to open up their shops in South Africa, since they seem to have better labour practices. And perhaps Cosatu should take a closer look at what firms like Woolworths are doing.

Modern business practice seems to be to regard workers as sub-human. They are not seen as people, but merely as “human resources” — a dehumanising term that denotes dehumanising labour practices.

Marikana and Bulhoek

The Marikana massacre of two weeks ago has been compared with many things, but one of the things it most resembles is the Bulhoek Massacre of 1921, when the followers of a prophet, Enoch Mgijima, refused to move from a mountain they regarded as holy, and were shot down by police and soldiers.

Mgijima had joined an American-based denomination, the Church of God and the Saints of Christ, which had been founded by William Saunders Crowdy in 1896. Its basic theology was Seventh Day Adventist (rather like that of those involved in the Waco Massacre in Texas).

The Church of God and the Saints of Christ was brought to South Africa by Bishop John James Msikinya, a former Methodist, vut Enoch Mgijima soon became the leader of the South African branch. Enock Mgijima was sentenced to six years imprisonment for his part in the “disturbance”.

In the light of these events it is interesting that Nightingale, the Superintendent of Natives at Kamastone, wrote to the magistrate of Queenstown, recommending the appointment of the Revd Enoch Mgijima as a marriage officer. He described Mgijima as “a very respectable man, of good character and repute” and “honest and straightforward in all dealings I have had with him”. The church was growing rapidly, and the passover ceremony at Kamastone had more than 1100 people present.

You can read more about the Bulhoek massacre in this article on The Bulhoek tragedy by Joan Millard, a lecturer in the church history department of the University of South Africa.

A taste of their own medicine?

A group of Orthodox protesters attempted to give Pussy Riot supporters a taste of their own medicine: Pro-Church Activists Interrupt Pussy Riot Event | News | The Moscow Times:

A group of Orthodox Christian activists accompanied by an NTV camera crew burst into a theater event about punk band Pussy Riot and scolded those present, the show’s director said.

The activists shouted “Repent!” and “Why do you hate the Russian people?” before being hustled out, Teatr.doc artistic director Mikhail Ugarov wrote on his Facebook page late Monday.

They attempted to mount the stage at the tiny theater near Patriarch’s Ponds but were stopped by audience members and tossed out after about 30 seconds, Novaya Gazeta reported.

But, as one commenter notes, Pussy Riot foes adopt its tactics | FP Passport:

In case you were wondering if the activists were arrested for “hooliganism” and imprisoned, they were not — and also appeared to be followed by a camera crew from state-controlled NTV.

And there’s the rub.

At the Teatr.doc event, participants talked about Pussy Riot band members and answered questions about the trial

As with the original event back in February, we aren’t told exactly what happened — one gets the impression from the picture here that it is the protesters who are sitting on the floor engaging in dialogue with those seated on chairs, and it doesn’t look very much like “disorderly conduct”. But perhaps the picture is not very much related to the story.

If the picture does show what happened, then perhaps that would be a good way of engaging in dialogue, using the methods of Pussy Riot themselves, to some extent. But the arrest, trial and imprisonment of the Pussy Riot members takes away that possibility. If Orthodox Christians can engage in hooliganism and disorderly conduct with impunity, then it is better that they should stay silent and say nothing at all.

For those who disagree with Pussy Riot to adopt their tactics is fine, provided there is a level playing field. But the arrest and trial of the Pussy Riot members, and the absence of such action against those who oppose them shows that the playing field is not level.

If we read the Church Fathers and Mothers, there is no warrant for such behaviour.

“It is good not to get angry, but if this should happen, the Apostle does not allow you a whole day for this passion, for he says ‘Let not the sun go down’ (Eph.4:25). Will you wait till all your time is ended? Why hate the man who has grieved you? It is not he who has done the wrong, but the devil. Hate sickness but not the sick person” Amma Syncletica.

” Do not rail against anyone, but rather say, ‘God knows each one.’ Do not agree with him who slanders, do not rejoice at his slander and do not hate him who slanders his neighbor. This is what it means not to judge. Do not have hostile feelings towards anyone and do not let dislike dominate your heart; do not hate him who hates his neighbor. This is what peace is Encourage yourself with this thought, ‘Affliction lasts but a short time, while peace is for ever, by the grace of God the Word’” St Moses the Ethiopian.

“What are the passions in themselves? They are ‘a certain hardness or insensitivity of being.’ Their causes are to be found in the things of life themselves. The passions are the desire for wealth and amassing of goods, for ease and bodily comfort; they are thirst for honor and the exercise of power; they are luxury and frivolity; they are the desire for glory from men and fear for one’s own body. All these passions have one common name – ‘the world.’ The world means carnal conduct and a carnal mind. The passions are the attacks of the world on man by means of the things of the world. Divine grace is the only power capable of repulsing them” Fr Justin Popovich.

And it seems, from the media reports, that the behaviour of the “Orthodox activists” was dominated by the passions. We cannot demand that others repent when we show no signs of repentance ourselves. There is a mandate for mission and evangelism, that we should proclaim the good news of the Gospel to every creature, including Pussy Riot and their supporters, but it is counterproductive if we proclaim the good news as if it were bad news, because we are controlled by passions rather than by the Holy Spirit.

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For more on the Pussy Riot affair and its missional implications see:

Pussy Riot — the verdict
Orthodoxy and culture
Pussy Riot: a cultural revolution

Book launch: Die Onsienlike Son

Die Onsienlike Son by Jacobus van der Riet

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Today we went to the launch of a new book, a book of Afrikaans poems on the lives of the saints.

That in itself is a fairly unusual thing.

There was a time, not all that long ago, within living memory of some of us, when those in power defined an Afrikaner as someone who was white, spoke Afrikaans, was a member of one of the three Dutch Reformed Churches and supported the National Party.

Fr Kobus chatting at his book launch

Back in those days, none of the Dutch Reformed Churches did saints, though things may be changing now. Some of them do candles nowadays, which they didn’t do back then, so can saints be far behind?

But these poems are by Fr Kobus van der Riet, an Orthodox priest. Or, to give him his full title, Archimandriet Jacobus van der Riet. At the back of the book are brief hagiographies of the saints who are the subjects of the poems, and who go back as far as Abraham, but also include 20th century saints like St Nektarius of Pentapolis and St John of San Francisco.

The book is also illustrated with ikons painted by our daughter, Julia Bridget Hayes.

Fr Kobus signing copies of his book “Die Onsienlike Son”

Fr Kobus was originally from Harrismith in the Free State, and was educated at Stellenbosch. He was receiuved into the Orthodox Church in 1994, and was ordained as a priest in 2002. He has visited Greece, Russia and Romania, and spent about a year at a monastery in the Peleponese, and about 3 months at monasteries on the Holy Mountain. He studied theology at St Tikhon’s Seminary in Pennsylvania in the USA.

In introducing his book of poems he said that he had written mainly about saints in countries he had visited, so that he could get a feel for their lives and circumstances.

People asked questions about the role of saints in the life of the Orthodox Church, and the place of ikons. Fr Kobus explained that people were recognised as saintsa in the Orthodox Church because people could see the glory of God in them, either in their life and ministry, or sometimes even after their death. For example, there is St Phanourios, who was a lost saint, and was rediscovered when people found an ikon of him. People ask for his prayers when they have lost something, and sometimes make cakes, which he asked people to make for his mother, and pray for her, since she lived an immoral life. He is commemorated on 27 August.

The saints are thus like friends, whom we can ask to pray for us, and, as in the case of St Phanourios, we can sometimes honour their prayer requests too.

These kinds of themes and subjects are unusual for Afrikaans poetry, so it will be interesting to see how the book is received, and whether it makes a lasting contribution to Afrikaans literature. There is some very good poetry written in Afrikaans, which is in some ways much more expressive and poetic than English, which seems more suited to prose than poetry.

There were about 40 people there for the occasion, at the premises of the Protea Boekhuis in Clydesdale, Pretoria. Some came from St Nicholas Parish in Brixton, Johannesburg, where Fr Kobus was received into the Orthodox Church in 1994.

Fr Kobus with some of the Orthodox Christians present at the book launch: Dn Stephen Hayes, Marios Joseph, Carol Hamman, Fr Kobus, Rita Sullivan, Zoe Joseph, Val Hayes

I’ve written about this in English, though really someone should write about it in Afrikaans, and I hope one or more of my Afrikaans blogging friends will do so — there is one blog mention here. You can find more about the book here: Jacobus van der Riet bespreek sy gedigte oor heiliges in Die onsienlike son. And you can buy a copy in various bookshops, or here: loot.co.za or in other online book shops.

Fr Kobus speaking at the book launch

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The secrets of pain — book review

The Secrets of Pain by Phil Rickman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Phil Rickman now seems to have settled in to a formula for writing his novels, with Merrily Watkins, Vicar of Ledwardine on the Welsh border, as protagonist, and the usual cast of supporting characters — Merrily’s daughter Jane, Gomer Parry of Gomer Parry Plant Hire, Lol Robinson the folk-rock musician trying to make a comeback, the Hereford police and a few others. The main villains are different, but a few of them continue from previous books.

There’s nothing wrong with that; if you set stories in the same place, then it would be strange if the same characters did not appear again and again. The plot is, as in most of Phil Rickman‘s books, based on a crime that turns out to have religious or supernatural overtones, which is how Merrily Watkins, the diocesan exorcist, or, rather, “deliverance consultant”, for the Diocese of Hereford gets involved.

In spite of these similarities, I must admit that I am hooked on books by Phil Rickman. If I see one I haven’t read, I buy it. No ifs, no buts, no “I’ll go home and think about it”. It’s an impulse purchase, immediate and compelling.

If I try to analyse why I like Phil Rickman’s books, it becomes a bit more difficult. Perhaps it’s because I also like the books of Charles Williams which have been described by some as “supernatural thrillers”. In War in heaven Williams describes how supernatural evil manifests itself in a quiet English village, not unlike Rickman’s Ledwardine. Williams has far greater theological depth than Rickman, but Rickman also gives a picture of at least a part of English society, which seems to me to be fairly true to life, and gives a picture of how social and intellectual trends affect ordinary people, with such things as fox-hunting, gentrification of the countryside, and even the trends in the Church of England reflected in the change of name from “diocesan excorcist” to “deliverance consultant”. I’m not sure that any English diocese has actually done such a thing, but it is certainly the kind of thing they might do.

One of the trends that this book deals with is the macho military style of doing things, fostered by the wars that Britain has got involved in over the last few years, not reluctantly, but with a very macho eagerness. And so the book deals with the kind of spiritual problems that might arise at a military base, and especially one of the SAS, and what kind of spirituality might result.

This is one of Rickman’s better novels, and I might have given it five stars were it not for a few quirks that were distracting, if not annoying. One was his habit of making the subject of the opening dialogue of many chapters (and sometimes sections within chapters) obscure. You simply have no idea what the characters are talking about, until a hint may (if you’re lucky) be dropped about 10-15 lines down. And then you have to go back to the beginning again to make sense of it.

Another, and perhaps more minor quibble is the way Rickman treats St George. St George’s Church, Brinsop, seems to be connected by leys to some of the events that take place. Merrily Watkins thinks that St George was “Turkish” and “Middle Eastern”, and somehow being used to justify the crusades — yet it was probably the crusaders who brought the cult of St Geoorge back to England, after encountering it in Palestine. And there were no Turks in the the Middle East in St George’s time. At that time, in the Middle East, as one of Rickman’s characters might have said, Turks were from Off. It was only much later that they took on the role of Incomers.

One of the pictures in the church shows St George dressed as a Roman soldier, and this is regarded by one character as very strange. Yet to all accounts, St George was a Roman soldier, so why should it be strange that an ancient picture in a church should depict him as one? One of the interesting things about St George is his very widespread popularity. He is one of the most universally popular saints of the Christian Church, from India to England, and from Russia to Ethiopia.

But desipite a few flaws, it’s still a good read. And the next time I see a Rickman book I haven’t read in a bookshop, I’ll buy it, without hesitation. The greatest danger in readi ng it is that it has a tendency to shape my perceptions of England, English society, and the Church of England. Apart from the minor exceptions noted above, Rickman’s descriptions are almost too credible.

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Manic street preachers

To day a group of us had to go to downtown Pretoria to check some things about church land in the municipal and government offices. I went with Fr Athanasius Akunda, Fr Elias Palmos and Reader Angelos Mokau. We were wearing cassocks, as we usually do when on church business.

This attracted some attention, and a few people were sufficiently curious to ask who we were and what church we belonged to. A couple approached Fr Athanasius in the municipal property office, and a couple more approached us as we were walking down the street. They were all young guys, apparently in their twenties, wearing baseball caps and shades.

A couple of them asked if we were Christians, and then what church we belonged to. And then they said, but aren’t Christians supposed to be joyful, shouldn’t you we wearing bright colours? Fr Athanasius explaned that the black showed that Christians were supposed to be dead to the world. If they wanted to see the bright colours, we explained, then they should come to one of the services, and then they would see the bright colours, because then we were in heaven. But ther all remarked that they thought it was cool the way we were dressed.

They asked if we had any tracts or anything like that. We didn’t. We just had title deeds and zoning certificates and things like that. But we thought that perhaps we ought to do the street preacher thing, wander round town with a few tracts. No hard sell, not approaching people, just waiting for them to approach us, like these guys did.

Manic street preachers: Angelos Motau, Fr Athanasius Akunda, Dn Stephen Hayes, Fr Elias Palmos

And then, of course, we get greeted by Muslims with “Salaam alikum.”

We just need to equip ourselves with a few tracts.