Stephen Hayes's Blog, page 83

Holiday travels continue

We continue on our holiday travels, and are now in Port Elizabeth. This is the first time I have had decent internet access since we left home. Val's computer seems more sensitive, and she has been able to connect more often. We've posted some of our photos on our family blog and on Facebook.

David and Mary MacGregor, Port Elizabeth, 14 May 2011

When we arrived on Saturday we went to see David and Mary MacGregor, whom we had not seen for many years, though I have followed David's blog. David was Dean of the the Anglican Cathedral in  Pretoria in the early 1980s, and we worked quite a lot with him then. Now he's retired and living next to St Saviour's Church in Walmer, and God has told him to visit the law ministers in the parish.

Church of the Dormition of the Theotokos, Parson's Hill, Port Elizabeth

On Sunday we went to the Divine Liturgy at the Church of the Dormition of the Theotokos in Parsons Hill, and were invited to lunch by a couple in the parish, Dimitri and Gail Marguerite Paizis, and found we had not exhausted all topics of conversation, so we went to their home for coffee after lunch and spent the whole afternoon chatting, and swapping sorties about church and mission and the like. Their priest, Father George, is leaving soon, but the seemed to be quite a big parish and should have enough people who could be priests and deacons and have other ministries.

Gail Marguerite and Dimitri Paizis

It was a very busy but good weekend, meeting friends old and new. Now we move on to Stutterheim, and head homewards.

Touring Western Cape

After spending fourdays at Volmoed, near Hermanus, mainly talking to John de Gruchy about our charismatic renewal book, we spent a couple of days at Villiersdorp, where Val's sister Elaine Machin has been living with a friend for 6 months.We took Elaine and her friend Avweil Anderson to Genadendal and Greyton, where the misty mountains looked like something out of Middle Earth.

Misty mountains at Greyton, Western Cape

We went on to Cape Town, and spend the days in the archives researching family history, and eveniungs visiting family and friends. Internet access has been patchy, so it has been hard to do live blogging of our trip, but here's a memento of Cape Town:

Table Mountain at sunset

Yesterday we came to Knysna, and tomorrow will be travelling to Port Elizabeth.

At Volmoed near Hermanus

Where hasa it put the picture?

Oak Cottage at Volmoed, where we spent the last three days

I don't know nwhaty happened to this post it vanished

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Steve Hayes and John de Gruchy

Trying to put in this picture for the sixth time, but the text has vanished too.

Volmoed near Hermanus in the Western Cape

Will It post the pictures this time?

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Oak Cottage at Volmoed near Herma\nus where we have been staying for the last three days

WEordpress is doping somethiung really weird and losing everything I type and I've uploaded the pictures about 6 times. I've been meeting John de Gruchy to  discuss the book we are wrting on the charismatic renewal. Tomorrow we are going to Villiersdorp but haviung spent two hours trying to post this, I'm going to bed.

Orthodox centre at Robertson, Western Cape

On Bright Tuesday (26 April) we left on holiday, travelling from Pretoria to Clarens in the Free State, then to Graaff Reinet in the Eastern Cape and Barrydale in the Western Cape, seeing friends and relatives along the way. On Easter Saturday we travbelled from Barrydale to Robertson via Swellendam. At Robertson we visited my third cousin Sandy Struckmeyer, and went to Vespers and spent the night with Fr Zacharias van Wyk at the Orthodox Centre there. Macrina Walker, who visited us last September, and is now living and working in Cape Town was also staying there.

Orthodox Centre at Robertson, Western Cape

The centre is a most amazing place. We walked into a large hall, which felt like something out of Tolkien's novels, the hall of the elven king, or the last homely house. There was a pervasive smell of woodsmoke. On the right was the door to the chapel, and on the left the kitchen and stairs going up to the guest bedrooms, with banisters made of old barrels In the opposite corner, by the foot of the stairs, was a fireplace.

The whole place was originally a packing shed, and was also reminiscent of the Monastery of St John the Baptist at Tolleshunt Knights in Essex, England, where the refrectory won a prize as the most creative conversion of a chicken shed.

Danie Loubser, Fr Zacharias & children

At 5 pm we went to Vespers, in Afrikaans, served by Zacharias. There were only a few of us there, In addition to Val, Macrina and me, there were Danie the reader, and five coloured children aged from about 9-12, who sang along and behaved very well, in marked contrast to those we have known from Eldorado Park.

Several more people came to the Divine Liturgy in the morning, for Thomas Sunday, about 20 in all. Matins was in Afrikaans and Dutch, while the Divine Liturgy was in Afrikaans, though much of the music was unfamiliar to us.

Outside there is a beautiful view across the vineyards in the valley to the mountains.

Holy Saturday 2011

We went to St Nicholas in Brixton for Holy Saturday Vespers.

Holy Saturday Vespers at St Nicholas (photo by Jethro)

After the Epistle reading the colours are changed from dark (purple or black) to white or gold, and the priest comes bursting out of the Royal Doors scattering bay leaves and shouting "Arise, O God, judge the earth, for to Thee belong all nations",

Arise, O God, judge the earth, for to Thee belong all nations (photo by Val)

and then we sing the whole of Psalm 81/82, with that refrain between the verses, and everyone bangs on benches or stamps on the flooor, to symbolise the foundations of the earth being shaken, and the earthquake at Christ's resurrection. The children love it. They are sometimes told to be quiet in church, but now they are encouraged to make as much noise as possible, so they jump up and down and stamp their feet.

And then on the way home, we saw this:

We have seen the enemy, and he is us

Mirror, mirror, on the wall…

Good Friday Vespers at St Nicholas

We've just got back from Good Friday Vespers (preceded by the Royal Hours) at St Nicholas Church in Brixton, and have a couple of hours before going off to Matins. It was very good this year.

For those who don't know, Vespers is actually the service of the taking down from the cross, done in the morning by anticipation. The body is taken down from the cricifix and put on the altar, and the burial shroud (epitaphios) is brought out in procession, held over the head of the priest, who carries the gospel book. It is placed on a table in the middle of the church,  decorated with flowers, and the book of the gospels is placed on top of it.

Procession with Epitaphios, St Nicholas, Brixton. Good Friday 2011 (photo by Jethro)

People spend most of Thursday, between the morning and evening services, decorating the Epitaphios table with flowers.

Procession with the Episaphios (photo by Jethro)

The Epitaphios on the table in the middle of the church

Deacon Stephen Hayes, Archimandrite Athanasius Akunda, Deacon Irenaios MacDonald, serving on Good Friday

When Thou, the redeemer of all, wast placed in a tomb

all hell's powers quaked in fear

Its bars were broken, its gates were smashed

Its mighty reign was brought to an end

for the dead came forth alive from their tombs

casting off the bonds of their capitivity.

Adam was filled with joy!

He gratefully cried out to Thee, O Christ!

Glory to thy condescension, O lover of man.

Book and thesis ready to go

I've been trying to get a lot of stuff finished before Holy Week, and going on holiday in Bright (Easter) week.

One of the projects at last nearing completion is the book African initiatives in healing ministry, which I've been working on for more than 10 years, and my coauthors have been working on for considerably longer. I've just signed off the final page proofs, and the book should be available in the next couple of months.

The core of the book is a study of healing ministry in four churches in Zimbabwe, one Anglican, one Roman Catholic, and two African Independent Churches, each of which has developed a slightly different response to health and healing.

As if to emphasise the urgency of this, someone I knew died of Aids last week. But he would not face up to the fact of his illness, and insisted that someone had been trying to poison him. His mother persuaded him to visit a sangoma, and to stop taking antiretrovirals, and to take traditional medicine instead. A bad decision, but for which he might have been alive today. This is one of the important health and healing issues in Africa today, and to grapple with it we need to understand attitudes to health and healing in Africa, and also the different Christian responses, and the attitudes that lie behind those responses. Hence the need for the research that led to the publication of this book.

Another task was the final indexing and proof-reading of the doctoral thesis of my colleague in ministry, Fr Athanasius Akunda, with whom I'll be serving at the Good Friday liturgies later today.

I've been trying to get a lot of stuff finished before Ho...

I've been trying to get a lot of stuff finished before Holy Week, and going on holiday in Bright (Easter) week.

One of the projects at last nearing completion is the book African initiatives in healing ministry, which I've been working on for more than 10 years, and my coauthors have been working on for considerably longer. I've just signed off the final page proofs, and the book should be available in the next couple of months.

The core of the book is a study of healing ministry in four churches in Zimbabwe, one Anglican, one Roman Catholic, and two African Independent Churches, each of which has developed a slightly different response to health and healing.

As if to emphasise the urgency of this, someone I knew died of Aids last week. But he would not face up to the fact of his illness, and insisted that someone had been trying to poison him. His mother persuaded him to visit a sangoma, and to stop taking antiretrovirals, and to take traditional medicine instead. A bad decision, but for which he might have been alive today. This is one of the important health and healing issues in Africa today, and to grapple with it we need to understand attitudes to health and healing in Africa, and also the different Christian responses, and the attitudes that lie behind those responses. Hence the need for the research that led to the publication of this book.

Another task was the final indexing and proof-reading of the doctoral thesis of my colleague in ministry, Fr Athanasius Akunda, with whom I'll be serving at the Good Friday liturgies later today.

All is grace – shameless plug

This is a shameless plug for Jim Forest's new book All is grace – a revised and expanded edition of his biography of Dorothy Day. As Jim says on his web site:

Dorothy Day was a person of contradictions: activist and contemplative, political radical and a theological conservative. Intending to found a newspaper, The Catholic Worker, she ended up founding a movement. The most important monuments to her are the many houses of hospitality that stretch from San Francisco to Amsterdam, places of welcome for many who have been treated as throwaways, but also centers of work for a nonviolent, sharing society. Dorothy Day continues to open doors for many, in terms of spiritual life, community building, the healing of division, service of the poor, and the renewal of churches.

"All work," she wrote, "whether building, increasing food production, running credit unions, working in factories that produce for human needs, working in the handicrafts — all these things can come under the heading of the works of mercy, which are the opposite of the works of war."

Many regard Dorothy Day as one of the saints of our time; her official canonization process is now underway.

All is Grace offers a richly illustrated biography of Dorothy Day. Jim's earlier biography, Love is the Measure, published several years after Dorothy's death, is now replaced by this much expanded edition that draws on her letters and journals. The book is now twice the size — 350 pages — and includes more than 250 photos, many never published before.

You can see my review of Jim's previous biography of Dorothy Day at Love is the measure: Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker | Khanya.

On keeping the faith

In 1960 an Anglican bishop, Ambrose Reeves of Johannesburg, was deported from South Africa, and the following Sunday the Dean of Johannesburg, Patrick Barron, preached a very powerful sermon in St Mary's Cathedral on the text of Amos 7:10-13:

Then Amaziah the priest of Bethel sent to Jeroboam king of Israel, saying, Amos hath conspired against thee in the midst of the house of Israel: the land is not able to bear all his words. For thus Amos saith, Jeroboam shall die by the sword, and Israel shall surely be led away captive out of their own land. Also Amaziah said unto Amos, O thou seer, go, flee thee away into the land of Judah, and there eat bread, and prophesy there: But prophesy not again any more at Bethel: for it is the king's chapel, and it is the king's court.

The Dean, in his sermon, made it clear that in deporting the bishop the government had, in effect, declared war on the church, and that Christians in South Africa must expect to face increasing persecution.

Bishop Reeves had been a controversial figure. He had left the country semi-secretly six months before. Some said that it was because he feared that he would be arrested, but he said that it was because he had eye-witness accounts of the shooting at Sharpeville, which he feared would be confiscated by the Security Police. Many white Anglicans did not like him for his criticism of apartheid, and hoped he would resign. In September 1960 he returned, and was deported within 48 hours. That act, and the dean's sermon, helped to conscientise many Anglicans, including me. It made me realise that South Africa was becoming a totalitarian state. If the Christian faith was in conflict with government policy, then, as far as the government was concerned, the Christian faith would have to be crushed.

But the church leaders then generally decided to play it safe. The Anglican Diocese of Johannesburg elected Leslie Stradling as their new bishop, whom they felt would keep his head down. When he arrived (he had previously been Bishop of South-West Tanganyika) he was far too busy catching up with the backlog of confirmations to take much notice of his South African surroundings, and it could be said that the leaders of the Anglican Church in South Africa really wanted a bishop who would be a confirmation machine, one who would be seen and not heard.

The government in the mean time was churning out more and more repressive legislation, increasing state control of just about everything, and church leaders had very little to say.

In 1963 a friend and I were discussing the increasingly muted response of South African Christian leaders to apartheid and state repression, and my friend said that they were gradually sliding into apostasy, for fear of sticking their necks out. They would not be asked to do anything dramatic, like being put into an arena of wild beasts and asked to deny the Creed. But the Christian faith was being chipped away, little by little, and eventually there would be nothing left.

The danger, as we saw it, was that through fear and cowardice, the Christian leaders of South Africa would eventually reach the point where they had effectively denied the Christian faith.

What, then, is one to make of this – Creedal Christian: Dumping the Nicene Creed for Easter:

I read with sadness recently about the plight of a blogging/Facebook friend who attends an Episcopal Church where the leadership has decided to dump the Nicene Creed from the liturgy beginning on Easter Day. In its place they plan to use some faith statement crafted by the Iona community. According to my friend, this replacement 'creed' downplays things like the Incarnation and the Resurrection. I can tell he is deeply unhappy about this decision, and I certainly don't blame him!

I've written before about instances of letting go of the Creed, clergy who charge that the creeds are defective, and a Church of England chaplain who banned the creed to be inclusive. Perhaps this is more common than we realize?

Back in the 1960s we expected that even the most timid and cowardly church leaders, the ones who tried to keep a low profile, would stand firm if they were put in an arena full of wild beasts and told to renounce the creed. But fifty years later, here are church leaders doing that voluntarily and of their own accord, without any state pressure whatever.