Dear Friends
God bless Africa, protect our children, guide our leaders, heal our communities, restore our dignity and give us peace, for Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen
I have found great solace in this adapted prayer of Trevor Huddleston, CR, in the tumultuous events of the last few weeks as the silence around gender-based violence has been shattered, and foreigners in our urban communities have again been targeted. For many of us, living in the leafy suburbs of Cape Town, it is often all to easy to be asleep to the harsher realities of our wider society, which include the scourge of gang and drug-related violence in many of Cape Town’s communities. Uyinene Mwretyana’s murder at the Clareinch Post Office broke through the illusion that gender-based violence is someone else’s problem.
As South Africans we have become inured to violence in general, and somehow Uyinene’s death has pierced the protective shell we build around ourselves. It leaves us feeling overwhelmed – the reason we constructed our shell in the first place – and unsettled, fearful. The temptation to run, to hide, or just to ignore, is strong. In the midst of all our reactive emotion there are moments of lucidity in which we pray; and what is our prayer? God bless, protect, guide, heal, restore!
The original version of Trevor Huddleston’s prayer was for Africa’s children to be protected, giving the word “child” a broad inclusion of all of Africa’s people in God’s protection. We need to discover that original intent as we pray for “our children” in these times.
I’ve been aware in my preaching over the last while that I often return to the theme of our needing to wake up to God’s purpose for us, wake up to the machinations of our social milieu; and become conscious animators of goodness in our world. The Christian Gospel requires of us that we be different: different in our perspective, our attitude, our action. The curse of our time is that too often we mirror our society, asleep to the call upon us, unconsciously carried by the narrative of our world; and the standard teachings of the Church, sadly, do not often inspire us to wakefulness and action.
I was introduced recently by a friend and colleague to the Celtic spirituality of the Rev’d Dr John Philip Newell, a Church of Scotland minister. In his book Christ of the Celts: the Healing of Creation (2008) John writes, “To say that the root of every person and creature is in God, rather than opposed to God, has enormous implications for how we view ourselves, including our deepest physical, sexual, and emotional energies. It also profoundly affects the way we view one another, even in the midst of terrible failings and falseness in our lives and world.” The doctrine of original sin, formalised by St Augustine in the early 5th century, has too often had us believing humanity is rooted in opposition to God; it is refreshing to be reminded that humanity is actually rooted in God. It gives us that necessary difference in perspective.
I also find the writings of Anthony de Mello, SJ, a Jesuit priest and psychotherapist, helpful and inspirational. In his book One Minute Wisdom (1985) Anthony writes,
SLEEPWALKING
The Master’s expansive mood emboldened his disciples to say, “Tell us what you got from Enlightenment. Did you become divine?”
“No.”
“Did you become a saint?”
“No.”
“Then what did you become?”
“Awake.”
Let us become “Awake” to the realities of gender-based, xenophobic, gang and drug-related violence and criminality; and not shy away from the hard questions this raises for us as people of Faith and as people of Africa. Let us allow the disturbing death of Uyinene to inspire a renewed and lasting respect for the women in our midst, to befriend the foreigner, to stand with communities bereft by the influence of gang and drug-related violence: and to embrace the belief that humanity is rooted in God, not in opposition to God.
Blessings
Mark
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