God Is Not Here

Meditation on the Fourth Word from the Cross

Good Friday 2008

A woman lies in a hospital bed in Philadelphia, even as we speak, finally being consumed by the cancer she has fought for two years. She is in the hospice ward where they struggle to manage her pain. She has been given days, if not hours, to live. She is only 29 years old.

Pause

A family lives on the banks of a small river in central Colombia, cultivating a small plot of land. One day, a heavily armed group comes and demands food from them. Of course, they surrender it. The next day, another heavily armed group comes and accuses them of collaborating with the first group. They turn over more resources to demonstrate their allegiance. In the end, they are forced to flee or be destroyed.

Pause

Contrary to popular opinion, the primary theological question is not “does God exist?” No, the primary theological question is “where is God in the midst of all of this?” Certainly, the latter question implies the former, since locating anything requires a thing to be located. But the latter question demands more. It demands relationship. It demands accountability. It demands context. “Where is God in the midst of all of this?”

How are we to answer this question in the midst of personal and structural tragedy? To be sure, we must answer honestly. Our answer must reflect our vulnerability and our openness, our pain and our loneliness. It must be both legitimate and authentic.

To give voice to such an answer is risky. Risky first because such an answer will likely be unacceptable to friends, family, colleagues; it may even appear blasphemous or heretical. Risky second because our answer means admitting to ourselves our pain and vulnerability and so deepening and ingraining them.

“Where is God in the midst of all of this?” Our answer, arising out of the depths of the human condition, in all of its honesty and authenticity, must be that God is not here.

Pause

But wait, what happened to that gospel of grace and freedom? It is true that grace is God’s response to sin and fallenness and that freedom is God’s response to oppression and fear. We celebrate these gifts no more extravagantly than on Easter Sunday when they are bound together in the reality of resurrection.

But that is Easter Sunday. Today is Good Friday. From the cross, Jesus asked, “My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me?” The question is both accusation and call to account. It is not new on either score; those who regularly read the psalms or the prophets are apt to recognize it. God is not here. Why?

There is plenty of time, three days in fact, for God to answer. But those three days are important. It is important to acknowledge and feel pain, loss and vulnerability. It is important to sit with our woundedness and not move on from it too quickly. It is important to hear the resonance of our authentic, legitimate and honest answer; God is not here.

Tahlequah Day 5

We woke up in the morning to discover that the supposedly purple dye actually left everyone's hair pink. Such is life.

Our first event of the day was rafting down the Illinois River. What started as a rather uneventful trip ended up quite interesting when about half way down the river we encountered a tree that had fallen across the river. Each of the three rafts took a different approach to getting past it. One portaged their raft around the tree. Another got over at a place where about an inch of water was running over the trunk. My raft got out, stood on the trunk, lifted the boat over the trunk, and piled back in. We reported the fallen tree when we got back to the raft rental and they sent some people out to clear it.

We went back to the community center in Four Corners to change and then went to lunch at Katfish Kitchen. Everyone was amazed at how much food was available. The people there were very friendly and happy to have a large group at lunch time. The hushpuppies were a particular favorite along with large glasses of sweet tea.

After lunch we headed to the Cherokee Nation Courthouse to talk with the Assistant District Attorney and some others about legal issues the Cherokee face. The three biggest issues involve land, substance abuse, and membership. The land issue revolves around the fact that while Cherokee were guaranteed 110 acres of land when they moved to Oklahoma from Georgia and so some people have land scattered about at great distances. Substance abuse includes alcohol, marijuana and crystal meth. It is especially problematic amongst young people. The good news is that the Cherokee are finding effective ways of addressing these issues out of their cultural heritage.

The issue of membership in Cherokee Nation is especially prominent at the moment. There is a CA congresswoman who is attempting to take federal funds from Cherokee Nation because they are not including freedmen, slaves who were freed by the Cherokee during the Civil War before the US freed its slaves, on the grounds that they do not have Cherokee blood. The Cherokee feel that they have been grossly misrepresented in the press on this issue and are deeply concerned to preserve one of the only rights left to the Cherokee as a people, the right to self-determination.

Next we visited the Cherokee Heritage Center where they have a full scale Cherokee villiage set up as it would have been during the 15th century prior to Columbus getting lost on his way to India. As part of the tour we were shown how to use a blow gun. I was asked to demonstrate. I missed, but only just! Then we were shown how to play stick ball. This is a really interesting game because it was how the tribes resolved conflicts without going to war. The idea is that the winner of the game probably would have won the war anyway! The game is played by taking two sticks with baskets on each end and using them to hurl a small stone at a plaque hoisted about four stories up in the air on the end of a pole. There is a really interesting catch to this game though. Men, women and children all play, but only men get sticks. Women get to use their hands to throw the ball. Women also get to hit, kick, scratch and bite the men, but the men cannot strike the women. I was asked to try to hit the fish using the sticks to throw the stone. I missed. By a long shot. And I didn't even have a hundred other people trying to stop me! It's a fantastic model for resolving conflict. Wouldn't the world be a much more peaceful place if the Olympics determined disputes as opposed to going to war?

After stopping at the gift shop, we went to do our last bit of service for a woman named Lisa who is disabled. We cleaned up her yard and washed down the front of her house, which was quite a mess but was the off-white color it was supposed to be when we finished.

When we got back to Four Corners, we made and ate dinner and then spent a long time debriefing the week. There was general agreement that we have formed long-lasting friendships. I am deeply grateful to the ASB-Tahlequah team for letting me be a part of their week, both the service and the fellowship.

On the van-ride back to Boston, we stopped for breakfast on Sunday morning in Seneca Falls. My dear friend, mentor and colleague Allison hosted us at the Women's Interfaith Institute. As the team ate, Allison gave a brief overview of the history of Seneca Falls, womens' rights, and the work of her institute. The team was very receptive and glad to see some of the historic landmarks in Seneca Falls. I am extremely happy that my connection with Allison allowed this to come about.

Apologies for this last post being so late. On Monday night, the day after we returned, I came down with the flu and am just today returning to something resembling normal life. I also have sun burns and poison ivy to show for our efforts on the trip. Nevertheless, pictures are forthcoming in the next few days. In the mean time, have a blessed Triduum and a happy Easter.

Tahlequah Day 4

Mary had asked us to meet her at her office at 9:30AM to receive our marching orders for the day. This would require leaving no later than 9AM. Given that our last ASBer didn't get out of her sleeping bag until 8:40AM, we didn't actually leave until 9:10. That was okay as we arrived and things were not as well planned as we had hoped.

Thankfully, Warren and Sam jumped in and helped us partner with the University of Miami trip in the morning. We drove about a half hour outside of Tahlequah to a project that Cherokee Nation was developing a series of cabins for groups like ours as well as retreats to use free of charge. Our project was cleaning up a bit and helping get the water line laid. We set to work with shovels and rakes and made fairly short work of getting a lot of small stones cleared out of a roadway and getting a lot of leaves raked up to be burned. After lunch we got the soft dirt to cover the water line so that it would not be broken by large rocks when the backhoe came along and filled in the ditch completely.

Warren came up with another project for us in the afternoon. We left Sam with the University of Miami group and headed back into Tahlequah where we worked in a school that Cherokee Nation had bought and converted into a charity distribution center for clothes and household items. We got one room full of stuff sorted out, a number of clothes into gender and size order, and about fifty bags of bedding and curtains folded and sorted. It was a thoroughly rewarding sight to see it all completed.

Tyson, who had invited us to work on the project, also had another project for us the next morning. He wanted us to head over near Tulsa to help him unload some lumber and sheet rock. The group was divided as to whether we wanted to do it or not, given that Friday morning was scheduled for rafting down the river. The group discussed it and worked together with Tyson to find some kind of workable compromise. The initial decision was to do the project early in the morning and then go rafting later in the morning. By evening, that had changed and we finally decided to skip the unloading in favor of a potential project helping an elderly woman clear her yard later in the day.

We went and had pizza at the Pizza Hut in Pryor, OK, thanks to the generosity of Maria from the Zoo Safari on Monday. Maria, John and August have been truly gracious to us while we've been here and we are deeply grateful to them. We also highly recommend visiting Zoo Safari if ever your are in the Tahlequah region.

After dinner we headed back to Four Corners so that the girls could spend the evening streaking their hair purple. I served as photographer for the occasion. I was strongly encouraged to get a streak or two in my hair, or maybe do my beard, but I refused. Of course, purple is the appropriate liturgical color for Lent... but no.

Tahlequah Day 3

Wednesday morning involved getting up just in time for Warren to arrive and inform us that our primary contact, Sue, was very sick and so he would be organizing our day along with Mary, his counterpart at Cherokee Nation. I had just finished toasting the bagels in the oven (the first batch got a little crispy) and suddenly everyone scrambled to get ready and out the door as quickly as possible.

Our first stop was the Cherokee Nation administrative building in Tahlequah proper. We got a tour during which we learned about how the Cherokee government operates and the services they provide. One of the things they do is to run a Cherokee language immersion school. They have developed the curriculum through grade 2 at this point and plan to go all the way through high school. As we were leaving, the chief came by and spoke with us briefly and took a picture with us.

We had lunch at a small park along the lake. It was a beautiful day with sunshine and clear blue skies. After another round of picture taking, we headed to Marble City to spend the afternoon with the community there and the group from the University of Miami that was doing an Alternative Spring Break trip like ours. We learned to play Cherokee marbles, which is more like bocce balls than what I would have thought of as marbles. Then we played with a group of local children; duck-duck-goose was the favorite. We ate dinner with the community; Cherokee tacos with a base of fried dough and piled with beans, lettuce, tomato, onion, salsa and cheese.

We had been invited after dinner to join the community for a service at the church where the day's activities were taking place. It is a pentecostal church and I was very much aware that several of our members are Jewish. I spoke briefly with the trip coordinators about what the service might be like and suggested we gather the group to discuss it and how we wanted to participate. Several members of the group expressed discomfort at the idea of participating. Others thought it would be a good thing to at least observe. As the group conversed, the idea emerged to stay for the beginning part of the service, when the children would sing and then a band would play, to say "thank you" to the community for having us, and then to head home. Even in these initial stages of the service, the pastor was very involved, offering a number of prayers and speaking about Jesus as the only way to salvation, both in this world and the next. The children sang "Amazing Grace" in Cherokee and then performed several praise and worship songs in American Sign Language. The band was actually quite good, especially the guitarist.

It was notable on the hour+ ride home that no one even mentioned turning on the radio. We spent the entire ride unpacking the trip. There were a lot of questions about what we had experienced together, and several expressions of discomfort. There were also many expressions if intrigue and curiosity about this expression of religious fervor. Throughout the ride, I was asked many clarifying questions and then to give an account of all of church history! It was good to see the group unpack the experience together and to move deeper in relationship to one another out of the confusion brought on by this encounter. I was glad to be a part of it and to be able to be helpful. I am also very much aware that not every one of the 2 trips BU sends each year has a chaplain on it.

Tahlequah Day 2

We woke up very cold on Tuesday morning. The heat had gone out over the night (ran out of gas) and it was below 50 degrees when we crawled out of our sleeping bags. Once everyone finally got up, the cold did have the side effect of encouraging people to display some alacrity in getting out the door.

We arrived at the site for the day and were warm within minutes. At the Downing Cemetery, we hauled brush and logs into piles to be burned and generally got the place cleaned up. Between the hauling and the burning, we were all quite toasty after an hour of work. By the end of they day, many of us (myself included) were a bit sunburned. As we sat amongst the gravestones, listening to John tell us about his family history who were buried there, I could feel the sun sinking into my already burned shoulders. By night, I was quite sore; from the burns as well as the scrapes from the pricker bushes.

We got back to the community center and had some down time before dinner and then heading into town for bowling. Unfortunately, neither the first nor the second set of directions we had were correct. We called the bowling alley and they gave us some rather uninterpretable directions ("We're just past the Walmart, but not really past the Walmart") so it required three more phone calls to finally triangulate our way there. The bowling was great fun, and everyone improved greatly in their technique, especially those we discovered toward the end of the first game were holding the ball wrong!

Bowling was followed by a trip to the store to stock up on a few missing essentials (milk!) and then an apparently obligatory stop by Sonic for shakes and snacks. This was especially fun pulling up to a drive-in fast food restaurant and having to order for 13 people! Great hilarity ensued.

It was an excellent day, and our reflection at the end of the day demonstrated this. We all turned in about 12:45 and are starting to get up and get ready for another day of service!

Tahlequah Day 1

12 first-year and sophomore women and one monk. This should be interesting.

We left at 7AM on Saturday, March 8th and drove for 36 hours straight from Boston to Tahlequah, Oklahoma. Several interesting incidents marked the drive down. First, one person got sick while I was driving. I heard from the back, "someone threw up! Pull over!" Everything was fine after we got her re-hydrated. Then another person started talking in her sleep. She sat straight up and insisted that we pull over, immediately! Then nothing else she said made sense and we realized that she was talking in her sleep so we continued on. The most interesting event was getting pulled over by an overzealous Tennessee State Trooper. He got all bent out of shape because one of most conscientious drivers had gone past him in the right lane when he had pulled over a truck, instead of moving to the left lane. He gave us a lecture and let us go. Since when is asking a full 15 passenger van to change lanes unnecessarily a good idea?

We finally arrived, bought groceries for the week, and got to the community center where we are staying. We had dinner, some people took showers, and we went to bed.

This morning we woke up and headed out to our first service site. We were helping Rev. Fred, a 90 year old pastor, clear some brush and broken trees that had come down in an ice storm. Sam, from Cherokee Nation, came along with his chain saw to cut up the branches. In the middle of it, Sam found a big piece that would make a great three-legged table. He sawed a flat piece off the top and loaded in his truck as a project for us throughout the week. Many of our number are animal lovers and so Rev. Fred's dogs and cats provided great joy and amusement. This afternoon we are going to a local animal park to clear more brush and check out the goats.

The group is really bonding well and learning to work together. It's great being able to just be along for the ride. Liz and Giovanna have things so well planned that there's really nothing for me to do. Which is great! I love being able to defer all the questions from the people we work with to them. I think it surprises some to learn that these college students really have things well in hand. Go BU!

Do You Have a Puny Jesus?

STH Community Worship

Wednesday 28 November 2007

Celebration of Christ the King

Jeremiah 23: 1-6

Psalm 46

Colossians 1: 11-20

Luke 23: 33-43

Do you have a puny Jesus?

When I ask this, I am not so much concerned about the height of your Jesus.  Jesus lived in a time when the stature of human males was somewhat diminutive in comparison with present demographics.  If you believe the Shroud of Turin, Jesus was about 5 foot 7 inches.  Here at Marsh Chapel we have three Jesuses, one in the rear stained glass window, one in the altarpiece and one in the Rose window.  I think the one in the rose window is probably the tallest although he is seated so it is somewhat hard to judge.  The moral of this story is that if you find the height of your Jesus to be a topic of existential concern for you, you can see Dean Hill and I’m sure he would be more than happy to loan you one of ours.  Just be sure to have filled out your pledge card.

I, for one, am not particularly concerned about Jesus’ height but about Jesus’ depth.  I am concerned, on this celebration of Christ the King, that perhaps our Jesus has become puny and shallow.  So I ask again, do you have a puny Jesus?

The Lord be with you.

And also with you.

Let us pray.

Sovereign God, ruler of creation,

we come before your throne

in meekness before the mystery of your majesty.

We pray you send your Spirit, the holy comforter,

to enlighten our hearts and minds

in the glory and power of your Son, Christ the King.

May the words that we speak and the meditations we offer

be a prayer of sweet smelling incense before you,

who reigns with your Son Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit,

now and for ever and unto ages of ages.  Amen.

There are two ways in which we make Jesus puny.

First, we make Jesus puny when Jesus becomes for us merely Christ the King.

The soldiers hanging out near the cross certainly saw Jesus as merely Christ the King.  They placed the sign that read “This is the King of the Jews” on the cross and then demanded of Jesus that he save himself.  They had a view of kingship based on the Roman imperial model.  The idea that Jesus, if indeed he was a king, was also God would not have been strange to them who worshipped the emperor as a god.  But, if indeed he was a king, and thus a god, he should have been able to get himself down from the cross.  And yet, there he hung.  Apparently, Jesus was not merely a king, or even a king, let alone a god, at least according to their test. 

The people standing by, who mere days earlier hailed Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem as the coming of the king who would redeem Israel, now demanded the same sign from Jesus to prove that he was Messiah, the anointed one, the king.  Get yourself down from the cross!  Save yourself as you saved others!  Bah!  How dare you call yourself a king!

The first thief had more hope.  Of course, he had more at stake.  Please Jesus, be the Messiah, the king, because if you are king you can save yourself and me!

Either/or; one or the other; all or nothing.  Jesus hung on a cross between two thieves, reduced to the dichotomy of king or bandit.

In our day kingship is not the reduction we most frequently hear demanded of Jesus.  Much more frequent is the image of Jesus as savior.  If you pray the right prayer and assent to the right beliefs Jesus will save you from your sins.  Other times it is Jesus the healer.  If you only pray hard enough, Jesus will heal you or your loved one.  Of course, all too frequently, Jesus fails the test.  Some of the most sinful people in our society are also the most convinced that they are saved, and the recovery of our loved ones is equally likely predicted by the flip of a coin as by the intensity of our prayer.

But even when it works, even when lives are changed by commitment to an ideal of goodness, courage, and righteousness and when people are healed from their diseases, conditions and infirmities, still Jesus is impoverished.  Jesus becomes uni-dimensional.  Jesus is king.  Jesus is savior.  Jesus is healer.  Either/or; one or the other; all or nothing.

What happened to the expansive vision of Jesus advocated by the author of the letter to the Colossians?  Image of the invisible God!  Firstborn of all creation!  Creator of all things in heaven and on earth.  Creator of all things visible and invisible.  The one before all things who holds them all together.  Head of the church.  Firstborn from the dead!  Dwelling place of God! 

Where is this Jesus who is before, above, below, beyond?  Such a Jesus certainly cannot be stuffed wholly or even partly into a single image or symbol.  Such a Jesus cannot be reduced to either/or.  Such a Jesus defies one or the other and transcends all and nothing. 

Do you have a puny Jesus?  Or does your Jesus burst the bonds of narrow categories and images?  Does your Jesus fit neat and tidy in a carry-out box to be toted home and conveniently stored in the refrigerator until he is convenient for consumption?  Or does your Jesus demand a rich panoply of overlapping and interrelated symbols that impinge upon your every thought, belief and action merely to be present to you in the various ways relevant to your existential situation but still and beyond the needle-eye scope of your imagination?  Is Jesus merely Christ the King, savior from sin and healer of infirmities, or is Jesus also Lamb of God, the Cosmic Christ, Prince of Peace, Lord of Lords, second person of the Trinity, historical figure, liberator, judge, prophet, priest, bread, wine, water, oil, soldier, sage, saint, black, white, brown, yellow, red, male, female, gay, straight, tall, short, broken, whole, lover, enemy, master, servant, stranger, friend?

Do you have a puny Jesus?

Second, we make Jesus puny when Jesus is stripped of his kingship entirely.

Kingship was an important symbol for ancient Israelite religion.  Our reading from Jeremiah points to this first in reference to David, the quintessential image of the ideal King for Israel.  Jeremiah then goes on to draw a line from David through the present and projects it on into the future when a new king, a “righteous Branch,” will be raised up.  The suggestion that this king will “deal wisely” is a reminder of Solomon, the penultimate expression of Israelite kingship, or the ultimate depending on whether you are reading Chronicles or the Samuel/Kings narrative.  The reading appears in the lections for Christ the King Sunday as we Christians have a penchant for reading Jesus back into the prophetic tradition.

The symbolism of kingship is also a frustrating one for the Israelites, however.  Not that they hadn’t been warned!  All the way back in First Samuel, God declared:

‘These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots; and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plough his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers. He will take one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and his courtiers. He will take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle and donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the Lord will not answer you in that day.’

They had indeed been warned, and yet were somehow surprised when it turned out exactly as God said it would!  The Book of Kings is a rehearsal of the kingly reign over Israel, many of the depictions including the line, “He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, just as his ancestors had done.”

In the prophetic tradition, kingship has been transformed, as terms are wont to do.  Terminology – theological, liturgical, scriptural, and ordinary – is transformed as it is specified to particular contexts and then transposed, along with its specified meaning, into other contexts.  In the new context, the meaning of the term must expand to encompass the new situation along with the old, but also leaving something of the old behind.  Over time, such as the period from the end of the kingly rule to the rise of the prophetic tradition in the context of exile, terms are adapted for present use, even as they seek to carry over the best of their prior meaning.  Such an historical link is important for the value of the new meaning of the term, even if the history carried forward is only partially representative of the facts of the past.  Jeremiah looks back at David and Solomon, the progenitors of kingly rule in Israel, and highlights their qualities of wisdom, justice and righteousness, overlooking their indiscretions and minor transgressions.  Just as Jeremiah overlooked the indiscretions of his primal leading figures in the face of national travesty and destruction, so too we may overlook the indiscretions of our not-too-distant leaders for hope and courage in the face of economic recession and humiliating moral collapse.

The importance of kingship for Israelite religion is not justification in itself for keeping the symbol in contemporary practice.  Symbols can be, and sometimes are, excised from traditions.  We no longer live in a medieval feudal society, and so it may be that the image of the king is one that is up for such erasure.  More frequently, however, symbols are transformed from the context in which they were initially introduced to have altered meanings such that the value of the symbol is carried over.  Such is the case with the very feast we celebrate today.  The feast of Christ the King was instituted in 1925 by the papal encyclical Quas Primas as a means of combating the virulent –isms of its day – communism, Marxism, fascism, and above all secularism.  The encyclical announces a kingdom not of this world.  “It demands of its subjects a spirit of detachment from riches and earthly things, and a spirit of gentleness. They must hunger and thirst after justice, and more than this, they must deny themselves and carry the cross.”  Doubtless, however, is the fact that such a kingdom will indeed have an impact in mortal, finite, temporal life.

Of course, the carryover of value in the symbol from the past along with the finite creation of value for the symbol in the present inevitably brings with it unintended referents.  Kingship derives from an inherently masculine word and so risks the continued exclusion of women.  Kingship implies the unrestricted ability to exercise power and so invokes the very reasons democracy has developed as the hallmark of modern western civilization.  Kingship, looking all the way back to First Samuel, risks oppression and enslavement, which would be a crushing blow to the achievements of freedom and universal human rights.

What then are we to do with kingship?  Some, no doubt, would advocate its erasure.  But eliminating a symbol is not so easy.  Symbols are the bearers of meaning and value in religions and in all aspects of our lives.  They should not be cast aside without great care and consideration.  To do so risks throwing out the baby with the bathwater, a cliché with perhaps greater resonance as we look toward Advent and Christmas.  And we should give our symbols a second look, a second glance, a second chance given their propensity for transformation.  You never know, it may just turn out to be ourselves who are transformed.

Do you have a puny Jesus?  Or is your Jesus so deep that no symbol alone is large enough to contain him and even a plethora of symbols are only able to mediate him in the relevant respects?  Are you willing to risk an engagement with your creator, the one who gives you life, love, hope and courage, the very ground of your being, with all of the attendant baggage of unintended consequences?

Christ is the king who hangs upon the cross and does not save himself, and so reconciles all things to God.  Hosanna to the son of David.  Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.  Amen.

Cape Town Day 9

Emily had to go in to her internship on Thursday morning so I got up early, ran a few errands nearby, and then took the taxi into town. My first stop was the District Six Museum which commemorates a neighborhood of Cape Town that functioned very much like Harlem in New York City, a center of culture and cosmopolitanism, before Apartheid policies kicked everyone out and the entire neighborhood was razed to the ground in the name of urban planning. In some of the historical material leading up to the displacement, I was surprised to discover a reference to the Society of Saint John the Evangelist, an Anglican monastic order that has a monastery in Cambridge, MA. The plaque in part read thusly,

Lydia was a young woman when, on 1 December 1834, bonfires lit up the slopes o Table Mountain and Signal Hill, announcing Emancipation Day and the end of slavry. The law required slaves to serve a further four years as 'apprentices.' Freedom of movement only came in 1838 and slaves flocked from the countryside into Cape Town. Included in this flight from the rural areas was Lydia, on whose back were the scars left by the sjambok of her master. She was one of the thousands of the city's poor. She was baptised and became a Christian, living in a cottage situated in the vicinity of 2C in Cauvin Road. Years later a school was built on the site of Lydia's cottage. It was known as Lydia's School.
The first monks of the Society of St. John the Evangelist (SSJE), Fr. Puller and Fr. Sheppard, arrived in the summer of 1864 to start the Mission of St. Philip's. They held their first service in Lydia's cottage. She is remembered standing in her doorway, ringing the bell calling congregants to worship.

I also discovered that the building the museum inhabited used to be a Methodist church that was started for the descendants of former slaves. During the displacements in the 1960s, the church became a focal point of resistance efforts to the displacements and to Apartheid generally. Congregants commuted back to District Six to worship from the sometimes distant places to which they had displaced and the congregation continued until the late 1980s. Throughout this time, the congregation maintained its commitment to working on behalf of the people and so started a children's center and remained a focal point for anti-apartheid meetings and events. When displaced, the congregation placed a plaque on the church building that remains there today:

All who pass by remember with shame the many thousands of people who lived for generations in District Six and other parts of this city and were forced by law to leave their homes because of the color of their skins. Father forgive us...

After the museum I took a walking tour of the city. I stopped for a cup of tea at a café to get my bearings on the map and then set out for the Bo Kaap neighborhood of Cape Town which is a historically Muslim quarter. The neighborhood is distinctive for its extraordinarily colorful homes. There is a mosque on virtually every block and they are as colorful as the homes that surround them. Someone had a sense of humor because there is a mosque built right on the corner of Church Street! Walking further there was a driveway area between some of the colorful homes and tin and wood shacks could be seen down the way, just as colorful as the homes that lined the streets but obviously inhabited by the poor. The poor are never far in Cape Town. My next stop was the Lutheran church which has a grand high pulpit and a beautiful organ. The church was originally started when religious practice was severely restricted by law and so the church was initially disguised as a barn. Later, when freedom of religion became established, a German artist was brought in to beautify the space. I found it ironic that they were playing the Misereri Mei by Allegri over the sound system. A Renaissance setting of Psalm 51, the Allegri was for centuries thought to be too beautiful for the populace to hear and so was reserved to the Pope's hearing in the Sistine Chapel. A precocious young Mozart recognized the beauty of the piece when he happened to be in Rome during Lent and so he asked the choirmaster if he could look at the music whereupon it was explained that the music was reserved to the Pope's ears. Indignant, Mozart simply went and wrote the whole thing out from memory! Regardless, the piece is hardly contextual in a late 18th century Lutheran Church in South Africa! I stopped and grabbed a sandwich on my way back to the taxi stand and then made my way back to Rondebosch and home. Interestingly, the taxi let me off at the opposite end of the block from Emily's street and as I stepped out I looked up and saw a sign through the trees, “C.G. Jung Center.” Intrigued, I looked at the sign on the gate and discovered that the library had open hours just then. I walked around the building to the library entrance and was met by the curator who explained that this was the central place for training Jungian analysts in southern Africa. I looked around the library for a bit and found my friend Deirdra Bair's recent biography of Jung on the shelf. The little gems to be found just under our noses! After running a few more errands, Emily and I caught up with Jenn and her friend Steven who was supposed to have arrived a week earlier but got stranded in Cairo after his passport, money and other personal effects were stolen in Israel. Assured that he had arrived safe and sound, albeit exhausted, we headed off to dinner with Elliot at a gourmet burger restaurant called Royale that featured an extensive selection of vegetarian burgers. Elliot took his leave to go study a bit more while Em and I headed to the Green Dolphin, a world famous restaurant and jazz lounge. We hung out there for about an hour and a half and listened to a very good local band. It was a wonderful way to end my time in Cape Town as on Friday I depart for Johannesburg.

Cape Town Day 8

Wednesday morning I got up early and went into Cape Town in the taxi to buy my train ticket to Johannesburg for Friday. The taxi system is more like a minibus route that runs in and out of Cape Town from the various suburbs and townships. On board each minibus is a driver and a manager who collects fees, sorts everyone into seats, and rides with his head out the window shouting the route of the taxi to passersby who may want to catch a ride. The taxi stand in Cape Town is right next to the train station. I got out of the taxi and headed into the station and walked up and down both sides, unable to find the distance train ticket booth. I finally asked a security guard where it was and they said that I had to go back upstairs, through the taxi stand, and over to the other side of the train station. I made my way there, bought my ticket, and got back to the taxi stand only to discover that I had no idea which line I wanted to be in! Fortunately, another security guard was walking by, saw me looking confusedly at all of the options, and took pity on the stupid American. He asked where I was going and then pointed me in the right direction. The ride home was quick and easy. I got back just in time to take the shuttle up the hill with Em to UCT where I had a meeting with Professor Andre du Toit, one of Em's professors and a planner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). I explained to him that I was interested in the role of religion in the establishment, challenge, and end of Apartheid and then the establishment and implementation of the TRC. He explained that the planning of the TRC was really a secular process and that the religious element really only became prevalent once Archbishop Desmond Tutu was appointed to chair the commission. While not exactly hostile to the religious element, Dr. du Toit spent most of the conversation explaining why the introduction of religion into the process was problematic. He also introduced a distinction between official and unofficial TRCs, the dividing line being their sanction by secular government. I found this interesting because there are many people in the world who would find a religiously sanctioned, but not necessarily state sanctioned, TRC to be more official, or at least more legitimate, than a state sanctioned TRC. This notion of what is “official” and not is something I would like to pursue further. At the end of our meeting I thanked Dr. du Toit for his time and then went to find Emily down in the atrium. We walked back down the hill to get her car and then drove out to the International Center for Transitional Justice for a meeting with her boss, Alex Boraine. Dr. Boraine was the chief architect of the TRC and a former Methodist pastor. In our meeting he explained that he left the Methodist church when he felt it was not being prophetic enough in denouncing apartheid and so made his way into politics. Nevertheless, he maintains that his underlying motivation in working for justice and peace is theological and, at least in certain respects, religious. He cites Dietrich Bonhoeffer as one of his primary models in this. As a member of Parliament, Dr. Boraine denounced as blasphemous the invocation of God in support of Apartheid policies and legislation. In the formation of the TRC, Dr. Boraine maintains a distinction between Archbishop Tutu's stance and relation to the church and his own even as he has the utmost respect for Archbishop Tutu being able to maintain his prophetic voice along with his priestly and episcopal functions. Apparently, prior to the end of Apartheid, Dr. Boraine came to Boston and gave a lecture at Boston University but the lecture was protested by black Bostonians who assumed that as a white member of the South African Parliament he must have been pro-Apartheid. Dr. Boraine was most understanding, but I nevertheless suggested that perhaps arrangements could be made to have him back to BU and a more receptive audience might be arranged. After a brief discussion of the relationship between memory (and forgetting) and reconciliation, Dr. Boraine had to go to a lunch meeting but we agreed to remain in touch. It was a deep honor to spend even a short time with such a prophetic voice and an inextinguishably energetic practitioner of the gospel. Em and I had lunch and afternoon plans of our own so we hopped in the car and drove 45 minutes out of town to Stellenbosch, one of the premier wine regions of South Africa. It was the best day since I had arrived so it was perfect for wine tasting. We stopped for lunch at the Skilpadvlei winery and then went to our first tasting at the Asare winery. Em decided not to taste there since she was driving so I tasted five wines and did pretty well at discerning the various scents and flavors in the wines. I wasn't impressed with any of them enough to buy so we headed on and decided to stop at the Stellenbosch information center for some expert advice. Advice in hand, we headed out to the area we were told had the best views. We decided we would go to the Rainbow's End winery. We headed down the road which became a back road and then a dirt road and then potholes began appearing. After going through numerous potholes and bouncing over a number of rocks (Em's car's shocks got a good workout) we arrived at the winery only to discover that they only did tastings by appointment! Thankfully, the views that had been promised were indeed spectacular and we got to see a flock of guinea hens. After taking a few pictures, we headed back out and then stopped at the Le Pommier winery for our last tasting (it took us so long to get out to and back from the Rainbow's End winery that that's all we had time for!). Here we decided that we would have dessert in the restaurant after the tasting so Em decided to taste too. We each tried five wines and I decided to buy a couple of bottles to take home to the States (I imagine Dad is already reaching for the wine glasses!). We had a dessert of waffles with caramel and ice cream on the veranda and then headed back into town. I fell asleep for a good part of the way but awoke as we were driving through the township on the N2 back into Cape Town. We got home and got a call from Jenn that she needed us to pick her up and take her to pick up her new car. We did and discovered that it was exactly the same as Em's with the exception of the fact that Em's has a spoiler and leather seats! We drove back to Jenn's place to use the internet and chatted for a while before heading home to eat a snack and get some sleep.

More pics posted.

Cape Town Day 7

Tuesday began with a trip in to the International Center for Transitional Justice where Emily is interning to see if I could get a meeting with the founder, Alex Boraine, a former Methodist pastor and one of the geniuses behind the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He was not in that morning so I took the car and spent the rest of the morning at the internet café before heading on to a meeting at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) while Emily was working at her internship. I was quite proud of myself for not having any problems driving on the wrong side of the road; that is the left side of the road which in South Africa is the right side of the road which is to say the correct side to drive on. My meeting with Dr. Conradie at UWC went very well. We discussed the work of the Boston Theological Institute on ecclesiology in response to a request from the World Council of Churches for reflection on their new “Nature and Mission of the Church” document. We also discussed differences in ecclesiological perspectives between Africa and North America and agreed that ecumenical theology must take global perspectives into account. I am hopeful that there can be some collaboration between theological institutions in Boston and in South Africa in the future. After that meeting I returned home just in time to change clothes and head off to the Mount Nelson Hotel for afternoon tea. While the tea left a lot to be desired (Twinnings tea bags, which I use at home but would have expected loose tea at such a fine establishment), the atmosphere and food were spectacular. The desserts were served on what appeared to be a tray but upon further inspection turned out to be a very large bar of chocolate! Emily and sat, ate, drank tea and chatted for a couple of hours before heading home. We arrived back at the apartment with a bit of time to spare before we were picked up by her Rotarian counselor Don to go to the Rotarian dinner in Hout Bay. While the dinner was not particularly accommodating for vegetarians, (I can't really blame them since they didn't know about my dietary restrictions in advance), the presentation following dinner was a thoroughly stimulating discussion of the AIDS epidemic in Africa in general, in South Africa particularly and in Hout Bay most especially. Furthermore, it seems that the Hout Bay Rotary Club has become extremely involved in responding to the crisis, raising 75,000 Rand (a bit over $10,000 US) for emergency supplies that was matched by support from Rotary clubs in the US and now turning to more long term issues. They have a detailed plan for addressing the AIDS epidemic in Hout Bay and are now setting out to implement it. It was quite inspiring to see how a community can work together to better the situation of everyone. Clearly, there is still much to be done, but the people at the meeting were energized to continue working and so there is much hope for the future. After being dropped off at home, Emily corralled Emily and Elliot to go downtown for milkshakes again and to give me an opportunity to eat something that suited. All in all, quite a busy day!

Pics from Cape Town thus far.