Thursday October 7, 2021
I grew up in the United Church of Canada. It’s a rational church. It likes to think things through. Most of the time, at least. It’s open to the insights of science, psychology, and technology. It’s largely white.
So it was a new experience for me to attend an all-black evangelical congregation in Barbados back in my working journalist days.
My host, the Rev. Kortright Davis, was a senior staffer at the Caribbean Conference of Churches. Davis was sent to encourage The United Holiness Church to support the CCC’s social justice program – which was, I would guess, anathema to a denomination deep into personal-salvation theology.
As we drove up, I could hear what sounded like a riot down the street.
As we got closer, I could see that the riot was at the church. The white building was packed, with people in white shirts and white dresses and wearing white hats... or lace, or knitted white tuques.
They had a drummer. And a full brass band.
When someone started a familiar Holiness chorus, the band would to pick it up by ear. First the drummer. Usually he drove the tempo up. The trombones and the trumpets would start rolling, setting up riffs and improvisations... The guitarists joined in, one with a driving bass rhythm, the other doing riffs that would make Jimi Hendrix envious.
While 800 people (if I include those outside on the lawn and leaning in through the windows) clapped their hands and stamped their feet and shimmied their shoulders and hips.
And sang. Lordy, how they sang!
Kortright Davis introduced me to the congregation. It occurred to me, as I stood for their applause, that I was the only white person in that entire gathering.
I worried what a social-gospel minister might say to an obviously evangelical congregation.
He played them with their own familiar responses.
He might say, “For God so loved the world...” and they would finish for him, “that he gave his only begotten son...”
Or perhaps, “What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world...?”
And the answer came back, “... but lose his soul...”
He picked up their own “born again” refrain, over and over, with the Amens and the Hallelujahs growing more enthusiastic each time.
Each one, however, pushed his his point – that we have a responsibility for action in this world, not just in some far-off heaven. And that when we become God’s people, we are new people giving of ourselves to love our neighbour.
Words, and actions
I moved on, the next day, to visit some of the CCC’s projects across the Caribbean: day cares, boys’ and girls’ clubs, music workshops, affordable housing, women’s rights groups…
Also lobby groups, negotiating with island governments for better treatment of the poor, the malnourished, and marginalized.
The people leading these projects didn’t talk evangelical. They LIVED evangelical. In two weeks, I didn’t hear an Amen or a Hallelujah. But I saw “love your neighbour” in action.
What I learned from Kortright Davis, that night at a church somewhere outside Bridgetown, is that if you want people to hear your message, you have to be willing to speak their language. Even if it’s not your own.
*****************************************
Copyright © 2021 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups, and links from other blogs, welcomed; all other rights reserved.
To comment on this column, write jimt@quixotic.ca
*****************************************
YOUR TURN
It turns out that quite a few of you also remember the Ripple Rock explosion of 1958.
Don Gunning’s father was actually there – “in the viewing bunker -- a memorable event indeed! He had done some consulting on the project.
“I fished in the narrows there in the mid-seventies, with a guide !!! The riptide through there [JT: ven 20 years later] was far more than a ripple! Exciting small boat outboarding in and out! I believe that larger vessels do try and pick slack tides. However, I know that the Alaska Cruise Ships go through anytime.
“Very good undercurrent metaphor…”
Kim MacMillan endorsed Don’s comment. Ripple Rock, he said, “is a great metaphor for the grieving process. Any short answer to the ‘how are you doing?’ question can only be a little piece of the real answer, and it would be too exhausting (and often unwelcome) to give the real answer in full.”
Isabel Gibson has also been out to the viewpoint for Ripple Rock – “the place that overlooks the place where the rock is not placed any longer. I had never heard of Ripple Rock [before] but my 6-years-older husband remembers watching the 1958 coverage of the explosion on TV, probably at his grandparents' home.
“To your point about Damocles' sword, yes, you could be next. And yes, given ‘85 years and counting’, most of your life is undoubtedly ‘what used to be.’ That's true for me, too, although it's not something that occurs to me every day.
“I won't presume to suggest you try to re-frame your undercurrent of anger at what's lost into gratitude for what was. Actually, I think you do a pretty good job of that all on your own. But just knowing those rocks are under the surface is likely a good thing, eh?”
Audrey Brooks offered words of consolation: “You describe the explosion of the dangerous rock area 63 years ago, as a parallel with the explosion of your life after the death of your wife.
The hidden danger was responsible for the wreck of both boats and lives, as the hidden danger of death is responsible for the wreck of your equilibrium as husband and person in grief. Death is a shadow that accompanies us all our days. Though my mother died 12 years ago, I still go to the phone to tell her something. Four months after she died, I had heart palpitations, and had to have tests. It was grief pounding in my whole body, even though mother died as she wished, with all her children singing hymns and her favorite old songs. She died, with a smile and an, ‘I love you, I love you.’ It was perfect.
When I told my daughter that I felt like a truck had run right through my body, she said, ‘Mom, you just lost half of your bond with your mother, and that’s a very, very big loss that you can’t rationalize away.’
“There are no words that make up for loss. Maybe grief and even anger are the only ways we have left to honour our beloveds who die.”
The column brought back memories for Frank Martens, who “served in the RCN from 1955 to 1960 and was stationed in Esquimalt for part of that time on the minesweeper HMCS Fortune. I remember the Rock and seeing the explosion on CBC. During my Navy time, we must have circumnavigated Vancouver Island half dozen times.”
Others focussed more on the “used to be” metaphor.
Jim Hoffman wrote, “As I note and remember what ‘used to be’ in my life, there are many things I wish were still there (people, structures, landscapes, etc.). Things of humanity and the world do change and are constantly changing. There are also things that I'm glad have changed. I myself have changed. I am no longer what I used to be, and I need to remember that every morning that I wake. What doesn't change is God. God is not ‘used to be’. God IS.”
“Things that used to be still seem to continue, particularly here in rural Australia,” Rob Dummermuth wrote. “Many of our properties are still known by the name of the original settlers. ‘Jim's place’ was left to his son, who gave it to a cousin, who sold it to a neighbour, who sold to an agricultural company, but it is still known as ‘Jim's place’.
Then there is the old ‘Post Office corner.’ I don't think there ever was a building there but it is the intersection of 6 roads where the mail truck stopped and every one gathered to collect their mail and parcels.
“From the perspective of today in retirement, those ‘good old days’ are probably a lot more comforting than they ever actually were. (And I loved the Psalm 8 paraphrase.)”
Tom Watson: “The older I get there are more and more ‘what used to be.’ Trouble is I can't live there anymore; I can only live in ‘what is now.’ It's fraught with more undercurrents than I recall from former years, but maybe I'm remembering selectively.”
Jayne Whyte got the joke about Rod Booth’s directions: “I've heard all over the prairie a similar story, ‘Turn north at the barn that burned down about 1959…’”
Jayne also sent along a quote from Adrienne Rich, put to music by Carolyn McDade.
“My heart is moved by all I cannot save:
so much has been destroyed
I have to cast my lot with those
who age after age, perversely,
with no extraordinary power,
reconstitute the world.”
Steve Roney had a short follow-up to last week’s letters, in which John Willems asked what colour prayer would be: “That's easy. Buddhist prayer is saffron; Muslim prayer is green; Jewish prayer is blue; Catholic prayer is maroon.”
*****************************************
Psalm paraphrase
Psalm 22 is a ghastly psalm of misery, even if it ends with a rousing affirmation. I tried to get at that cry of pain in this paraphrase.
1 Alone -- I'm all alone.
There is no God; there are no friends; I'm all alone.
2 I call all day, but no one calls me back;
I cry all night, but no one comforts me.
3 Could any God create this rotten world?
Could any God watch this happen, and call it good?
4 Our ancestors were deluded.
They trusted God; they thought that God changed the course of history for them--
5 They actually believed it!
6 With scientific detachment, I know that I am nothing;
Nothing I do makes any difference;
7 Universes and social systems roll inexorably onward;
They mock my pitiful efforts;
8 They laugh at my lofty ideals.
9 Yet still I talk to you, as if you were real.
I argue with you, as if you had a mind to change.
From the moment of my conception, I have conceived your will
surrounding me like the waters of my mother's womb.
10 You are my umbilical cord, my source of life.
12 The ways of the world seduce me;
with honeyed visions they draw me downwards.
13 I would run in fear from a raging lion,
but I cannot resist the lure of luxury.
14 I would brace myself, but my bones have turned to water;
I would stand tall, but I have become a puddle,
15 a fleck of fluff, blown about by every wayward breeze.
16 When the sun comes out, I will dry up;
When the wind roars, I will vanish into the night;
I will not exist anymore.
17 I am nothing.
You can find paraphrases of most of the psalms in the Revised Common Lectionary in my book Everyday Psalmsavailable from Wood Lake Publishing, info@woodlake.com.
*******************************************
TECHNICAL STUFF
If you want to comment on something, send a message directly to me, jimt@quixotic.ca.
To subscribe or unsubscribe, send an e-mail message to jimt@quixotic.ca. Or you can subscribe electronically by sending a blank e-mail (no message or subject line) to softedges-subscribe@lists.quixotic.ca. Similarly, you can un-subscribe at softedges-unsubscribe@lists.quixotic.ca.
I write a second column each Sunday called Sharp Edges, which tends to be somewhat more cutting about social and justice issues. To sign up for Sharp Edges, write to me directly, jimt@quixotic.ca, or send a note to sharpedges-subscribe@lists.quixotic.ca
A brief note about poetry. I send my poems out to a mailing list. The last two times I tried to send to that list, it rejected the message. Flat. So if you’re interested, please check my webpage .https://quixotic.ca/My-Poetry And If you’d like to receive notifications about new poems, write me at jimt@quixotic.ca, or subscribe yourself to the list by sending a blank email (no message) to poetry-subscribe@lists.quixotic.ca (If it doesn’t work, please let me know.)
********************************************
PROMOTION STUFF
To use the links in this section, you’ll have to insert the necessary symbols. Some spam filters have blocked my posts because they’re suspicious of the web links.
Wayne Irwin's “Churchweb Canada,” an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. http://wwwDOTchurchwebcanadaDOTca He’s also relatively inexpensive!
I recommend Isabel Gibson’s thoughtful and well-written blog, wwwDOTtraditionaliconoclastDOTcom. She also has lots of beautiful photos. Especially of birds.
Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” -- ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at tomwatsoATgmailDOTcom (NB that’s “watso” not “watson”)
ALVA WOOD’S ARCHIVE
I have acquired (don’t ask how) the complete archive of the late Alva Wood’s collection of satiric and sometimes wildly funny columns about a mythical village’s misadventures. I’ve put them on my website: http://quixotic.ca/Alva-Wood-Archive. You’re welcome to browse. No charge. (Although maybe if I charged a fee, more people would find the archive worth visiting.)