Cathedrals And House Churches -- Lessons Learned.
Our week in Kenya began with worship at All Saints Cathedral where I was to give the sermon for Sunday worship. At this point you may be expecting me to marvel at the joy and enthusiasm of African worship. Actually not so much. The service was clearly designed with that in mind. At times a worship leader tried mightily to get the group energized, but frankly it fell flat. The music was intended to be lively, but the people just didn’t feel it. My sermon was well-enough-received by those who stayed awake, but some dozed on the front row. It seemed altogether like a frozen chosen assembly.
Only later did I find out what was really afoot. It was the first day that the new Provost (similar to a Dean) was at the Cathedral. He is appointed by the Bishop – not called by the congregation. So it was his first day and he wasn’t preaching. I was. In addition, they normally worship in a quaint old English style church building – one that had been Whites-only until 1962 when the Whites exited in the wake of independence and the present congregation moved in. But now they are constructing a large modern Cathedral that will hold hundreds more people than the old building. It is far from complete. Beams and rafters are still exposed. The windows have no panes. This was their first day in the new building and they had not been warned in advance that they would be worshiping in there that day. They just arrived at Church and were directed into the new intimidatingly large unfinished structure. So: surprise! New Provost. New building. Musungu preacher. (They may have thougth I was the new Provost!)
What I had taken for boredom was a state of shock. How many Anglicans does it take to change a diaper? You can’t change that diaper. It was given in memory of my grandfather. Same thing would have happened here. Still I felt privileged to give the inaugural sermon in the new All Souls Cathedral and the people, though discombobulated, were gracious and devout.
After the Eucharist, we went to the Bishop’s house for Home Bible Church. This is one of the main things Fr. Lloyd had wanted me to see. It was like a house church or a cell group. It was a Bible Study with prayer and songs. The topic was the role of Godparents. People were challenged to find scriptures that informed the question of how to be a good Godparent. Generally, Kenyans have the same challenges we do in choosing and preparing Godparents. The discussion was intelligent and their ability to connect scriptures to the topic was impressive.
This is what I took away from Home Bible Church: We need our Sunday morning worship services alright. We need public worship in God’s house, a sacred space. I could not disagree more with the Emergent Church Movement more on that point. We need that basic gathering to publicly constitute us as a community of faith. Most of us will not go deeper than what happens there. But the large scale public worship of the Church draws its life from those who do go deeper in small groups meeting to study and pray in more intimate settings, especially homes. That is where the spiritual bonds are forged; the heart of the church, strengthened.
If a Church is medium to large, it needs several small church groups gathering at other times in other places to sustain its intimacy. But what if a congregation is already small – say 12 people gathered for Sunday morning worship? I believe even small churches need that gathering of a few to go deeper. Maybe it will only be two or three meeting to pray and study, but their gathering will provide the energy that will sustain and perhaps grow the larger group. Look back on my previous blog post about 80/20 rule in which I argue that we cannot build the church by extending its circumference; we have to grow the core within and the circumference will expand to keep the balance. Home Bible Church is a way to grow the core.
Each church could create its own format. It can be a spiritual book club meeting at an Indian restaurant, or a Bible and Brew class engaging scripture at a bar, or it can be a meeting for contemplative prayer and spiritual story telling. The key is the small group gathering – somewhere away from the church property – to connect with each other on the basis of our common bond in Christ.
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
My Life In Kenya: A Musungu Memoir -- Part 1
“Musungu” is the Bantu word for a white person. It comes from a longer word meaning someone who travels around.
First Surprises and Learnings.
Thanks to the moral encouragement and financial support of Fr. Lloyd Rupp and the hospitality of Melvin Stringer (St. Tim’s/ Kenya Keep) who squired us around the country and the fellowship and grace of the Rt. Rev. Joseph Kanuku, 2nd Bishop of Machakos, we have experienced an eye-opener of an African sojourn.
After an arduous flight – Las Vegas to Los Angeles to Amsterdam to Nairobi – and a drive from Nairobi to Machakos, we met Bishop Kanuku and his wife Josephine. That is when the surprises began.
Relations with Islam.
The first surprise was the relationship between Anglicans and Muslims in Kenya. Interfaith hostility is at the heart of violence and discord along the 10th Parallel to the North – running through Nigeria in West Africa and dividing Northern and Southern Sudan in the East. (See Griswold, The 10th Parallel) Things I had heard here and there led me to believe similar tensions beset Kenya.
So we were quite surprised to learn that Josephine Kanuku (the Bishop’s wife) teaches Christian Education as a faculty member at the Islamic School in Machakos. It turns out Bishop Kanuku and the local Imam are good friends. During times of drought, the Anglicans have come to the aid of Muslims. When I sent money for crop seed during a drought, the Anglicans shared the seed with the Muslims. Bishop Kanuku and the Imam talk about the “fundamentalist” Muslims and Christians who are each other’s enemies, each disavowing the hostility of either brand of religious intolerance. The Anglicans and most Muslims are friends. Since building bridges across the religious divide is essential to peace and prosperity in Africa (and in much of the world), I was just delighted to find that our Anglican Communion partners are at work for harmony and understanding. Well done Diocese of Machakos.
Status of Women.
I came away from Lambeth Conference (2008) with the impression that women are not doing well in Africa. I still know that is often true. The struggle for equality has not yet been completed in Kenya as it has not been completed here. But I was quite surprised to find how much Kenyan women have achieved both inside and outside the Church.
Understanding the place of women in Kenyan society has to begin with Wangari Muta Mary Jo Maathai who won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize for “her contribution to sustainable development, democracy, and peace.” A member of the Kikuyu tribe, Mrs. Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement and linked women’s rights to environmental sustainability.
It took me awhile to figure out why Bishop Kanuku is obsessed with planting trees. He goes about doing it himself all the time. And when he meets with his clergy, he wants to know “how many trees have you planted?” The answer had better be in the thousands! I cannot count how many trees he showed me that he had planted with his own hands. He and I each planted a tree at the second school we visited. It turns out planting trees was Maathai’s signature symbolic political act as weaving cloth was Gandhi’s. So as not to sugar coat the truth, Maathai’s efforts were vehemently resisted by the single party government of Jomo Kenyata and even her own family. But her courage has opened doors to Kenyan women in politics and the economy.
The Diocese of Machakos has been ordaining women since 1998. We met a good number of women clergy and other women in the ordination process. At meals and other times in the home and church, women often lead the prayers. Women are active participants and sometimes leaders in Bible Study. Many a school or community service project traces its beginnings to The Mothers Union.
As important as the status of women in the Church may be, what matters more is what the Church is doing about the status of women in society. Problem one: female genital mutilation and forced marriage. In traditional Kenyan culture, girls of 12 or 13 are “circumcised” and married off to older men. The government now opposes this practice, but people still do it. I saw no evidence of Child Protective Services stepping in to protect these girls. But the church funded schools do. They operate “Rescue Houses” on the school campuses where the girls receive sanctuary. It was my privilege to dedicate the cornerstone of the ACK (Anglican Church of Kenya) Kyandote Bulwa Girls’ Hostel in a remote mountain area – where there are no foster placements, group homes, or other government facilities to protect girls from FGM and forced marriage or other abuse – but the Diocese of Machakos is building a home where they will be safe, nourished, and educated. We met rescue girls sponsored by Kenya Keep and saw several rescue houses on school campuses. Yes, we have decided to sponsor a rescue girl ourselves. It cost $250 per year and can be easily arranged through Kenya Keep in Henderson.
Problem two: economic independence. Those engaged in economic development as part of the Millenium Development Goals have learned through experience that the key is equipping women to operate small businesses to support their families. In Kenya, 80% of the population subsists on less than $1 per day (that is in actual buying power). So this is where the rubber meets the road for MDGs. The gender factor exacerbates poverty everywhere, but it is most obvious with the Masai tribe. The Masai are the cowboys of Kenya – only they are on foot, not horseback. They are nomadic herders of sheep, goats, and cattle. But changes in agriculture and the climate have compelled Masai families to settle. The problem is that the family settles, but the dad doesn’t. Men tend to marry, father children, then just wander off on a walk-about that could be a year or a lifetime – and they do not mail back a child support check. Equipping women to earn a living for themselves and their children is essential to alleviating poverty. More on this later. For now, let me just say, the Church is in that struggle up to its elbows.
More than anything else we did in Kenya, we visited schools. I spoke to lots of children, but the lights really turned on when Linda spoke to them. The girls were transfixed by the sight of a woman who is a lawyer, a professor, and an author. It was amazing to see how excited they were by her example. The church women were pretty taken with her as well. One young transitional deacon couldn’t get a word in edgewise in the clergy conversations – the Church is doing better than I expected, but it does have a way to go. I tried to open up space for her to speak, but it was Linda who really brought out her smile and her voice.
Security and Stability.
Our trip to Kenya had been planned for last November but was delayed by a terrorist threat. So a number of folks were worried about us going now. I don’t mean to say there was nothing to worry about. The day we arrived, there was a fatal grenade incident in Nairobi. And the crime rate in the slums is bad; hence, the local habit of referring to the capital as “Nairobbery.” But on the whole, I felt safer in Kenya than in any developing nation I have visited. Kenya is the anchor of political stability in East Africa. That is why it got so much press and caused so much international concern when there were riots and ethnic violence after the contested elections in 2008. That is not the norm in Kenya. There is corruption and the politics are not what the people would hope. The rich few live behind barbed wire crowned fences protecting them from the poor. But Kenya is not a violent place. There are neighborhoods in Nairobi that it is better not to go. But outside those neighborhoods, there is not much risk from criminals – and more importantly, not much risk from the police or military who are sometimes the more serious danger in some developing nations.
The threat in Kenya is not homegrown. It is a spill-over from the failed government in Somalia. Just as there are Somali pirates on the seas, there are gangs that adopt a political pretext for what is really just lawless hooliganism. Operating out of Somalia, they cause problems in Kenya and other neighboring countries as well. The military of several East African states is at work fighting the gang known as Al Shebab. The people in Kenya hope to see a stable government in Somalia so that the whole region can experience security.
First Surprises and Learnings.
Thanks to the moral encouragement and financial support of Fr. Lloyd Rupp and the hospitality of Melvin Stringer (St. Tim’s/ Kenya Keep) who squired us around the country and the fellowship and grace of the Rt. Rev. Joseph Kanuku, 2nd Bishop of Machakos, we have experienced an eye-opener of an African sojourn.
After an arduous flight – Las Vegas to Los Angeles to Amsterdam to Nairobi – and a drive from Nairobi to Machakos, we met Bishop Kanuku and his wife Josephine. That is when the surprises began.
Relations with Islam.
The first surprise was the relationship between Anglicans and Muslims in Kenya. Interfaith hostility is at the heart of violence and discord along the 10th Parallel to the North – running through Nigeria in West Africa and dividing Northern and Southern Sudan in the East. (See Griswold, The 10th Parallel) Things I had heard here and there led me to believe similar tensions beset Kenya.
So we were quite surprised to learn that Josephine Kanuku (the Bishop’s wife) teaches Christian Education as a faculty member at the Islamic School in Machakos. It turns out Bishop Kanuku and the local Imam are good friends. During times of drought, the Anglicans have come to the aid of Muslims. When I sent money for crop seed during a drought, the Anglicans shared the seed with the Muslims. Bishop Kanuku and the Imam talk about the “fundamentalist” Muslims and Christians who are each other’s enemies, each disavowing the hostility of either brand of religious intolerance. The Anglicans and most Muslims are friends. Since building bridges across the religious divide is essential to peace and prosperity in Africa (and in much of the world), I was just delighted to find that our Anglican Communion partners are at work for harmony and understanding. Well done Diocese of Machakos.
Status of Women.
I came away from Lambeth Conference (2008) with the impression that women are not doing well in Africa. I still know that is often true. The struggle for equality has not yet been completed in Kenya as it has not been completed here. But I was quite surprised to find how much Kenyan women have achieved both inside and outside the Church.
Understanding the place of women in Kenyan society has to begin with Wangari Muta Mary Jo Maathai who won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize for “her contribution to sustainable development, democracy, and peace.” A member of the Kikuyu tribe, Mrs. Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement and linked women’s rights to environmental sustainability.
It took me awhile to figure out why Bishop Kanuku is obsessed with planting trees. He goes about doing it himself all the time. And when he meets with his clergy, he wants to know “how many trees have you planted?” The answer had better be in the thousands! I cannot count how many trees he showed me that he had planted with his own hands. He and I each planted a tree at the second school we visited. It turns out planting trees was Maathai’s signature symbolic political act as weaving cloth was Gandhi’s. So as not to sugar coat the truth, Maathai’s efforts were vehemently resisted by the single party government of Jomo Kenyata and even her own family. But her courage has opened doors to Kenyan women in politics and the economy.
The Diocese of Machakos has been ordaining women since 1998. We met a good number of women clergy and other women in the ordination process. At meals and other times in the home and church, women often lead the prayers. Women are active participants and sometimes leaders in Bible Study. Many a school or community service project traces its beginnings to The Mothers Union.
As important as the status of women in the Church may be, what matters more is what the Church is doing about the status of women in society. Problem one: female genital mutilation and forced marriage. In traditional Kenyan culture, girls of 12 or 13 are “circumcised” and married off to older men. The government now opposes this practice, but people still do it. I saw no evidence of Child Protective Services stepping in to protect these girls. But the church funded schools do. They operate “Rescue Houses” on the school campuses where the girls receive sanctuary. It was my privilege to dedicate the cornerstone of the ACK (Anglican Church of Kenya) Kyandote Bulwa Girls’ Hostel in a remote mountain area – where there are no foster placements, group homes, or other government facilities to protect girls from FGM and forced marriage or other abuse – but the Diocese of Machakos is building a home where they will be safe, nourished, and educated. We met rescue girls sponsored by Kenya Keep and saw several rescue houses on school campuses. Yes, we have decided to sponsor a rescue girl ourselves. It cost $250 per year and can be easily arranged through Kenya Keep in Henderson.
Problem two: economic independence. Those engaged in economic development as part of the Millenium Development Goals have learned through experience that the key is equipping women to operate small businesses to support their families. In Kenya, 80% of the population subsists on less than $1 per day (that is in actual buying power). So this is where the rubber meets the road for MDGs. The gender factor exacerbates poverty everywhere, but it is most obvious with the Masai tribe. The Masai are the cowboys of Kenya – only they are on foot, not horseback. They are nomadic herders of sheep, goats, and cattle. But changes in agriculture and the climate have compelled Masai families to settle. The problem is that the family settles, but the dad doesn’t. Men tend to marry, father children, then just wander off on a walk-about that could be a year or a lifetime – and they do not mail back a child support check. Equipping women to earn a living for themselves and their children is essential to alleviating poverty. More on this later. For now, let me just say, the Church is in that struggle up to its elbows.
More than anything else we did in Kenya, we visited schools. I spoke to lots of children, but the lights really turned on when Linda spoke to them. The girls were transfixed by the sight of a woman who is a lawyer, a professor, and an author. It was amazing to see how excited they were by her example. The church women were pretty taken with her as well. One young transitional deacon couldn’t get a word in edgewise in the clergy conversations – the Church is doing better than I expected, but it does have a way to go. I tried to open up space for her to speak, but it was Linda who really brought out her smile and her voice.
Security and Stability.
Our trip to Kenya had been planned for last November but was delayed by a terrorist threat. So a number of folks were worried about us going now. I don’t mean to say there was nothing to worry about. The day we arrived, there was a fatal grenade incident in Nairobi. And the crime rate in the slums is bad; hence, the local habit of referring to the capital as “Nairobbery.” But on the whole, I felt safer in Kenya than in any developing nation I have visited. Kenya is the anchor of political stability in East Africa. That is why it got so much press and caused so much international concern when there were riots and ethnic violence after the contested elections in 2008. That is not the norm in Kenya. There is corruption and the politics are not what the people would hope. The rich few live behind barbed wire crowned fences protecting them from the poor. But Kenya is not a violent place. There are neighborhoods in Nairobi that it is better not to go. But outside those neighborhoods, there is not much risk from criminals – and more importantly, not much risk from the police or military who are sometimes the more serious danger in some developing nations.
The threat in Kenya is not homegrown. It is a spill-over from the failed government in Somalia. Just as there are Somali pirates on the seas, there are gangs that adopt a political pretext for what is really just lawless hooliganism. Operating out of Somalia, they cause problems in Kenya and other neighboring countries as well. The military of several East African states is at work fighting the gang known as Al Shebab. The people in Kenya hope to see a stable government in Somalia so that the whole region can experience security.
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Smoke Rings In The Dark: Karaoke Night In Elko
After a day full of humanity and conversation at St. Paul’s, I had dinner at Elko’s famous Star Hotel. Basque food still confuses me. It is familiar items served in strange combinations – pasta and French fries. But I am more than fond of it. I am committed to it. As I ate the cabbage soup I remembered that my older daughter’s first boyfriend was Nacho (Ignacio – as in the greatest Basque saint, Ignazio Loiolakoa a/k/a Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits) – his name, I say, was Nacho Larracochea. It was not a great romance. They were only in the second grade. But Basque food makes me sentimental for times, people, and places left behind. Yes, friends, I had my first Picon Punch and was briefly confused by the grenadine, fearing there might be gin in there somewhere. Gin and I had a falling out 40 years ago and never made up. But there was no gin. So I enjoyed my Basque dinner very much indeed.
Then I made my annual pilgrimage to J. R’s Bar for karaoke night. I love J. R’s Bar for ineffable reasons even I do not understand. But tonight it was a special study – karaoke night. The first performer after I arrived was a big ugly guy in shorts and a t-shirt who did violence to Billy’ Joel’s song Honesty that would have been outrageous except that such a schmaltzy preachy song – music and lyrics equally reprehensible – deserves whatever it gets.
But then things took an unexpected turn. The DJ, an obese decidedly unattractive woman sitting behind her console took the mike and sang the 1955 Eddy Arnold hit (given definitive expression by Ray Charles and current expression by Michael Buble) You Don’t Know Me. Her voice was pretty good, but the thing was, I believed her. I believed she lived unknown and the loneliness was palpable.
The next singer was a larger woman who sat in a corner to sing, I imagined, because she was ashamed to stand in front of people. She was not alone at her table. She was with a young man who was probably attractive in a shaved head, ear ring, goateed sort of way. But she sat there in the corner so obscurely that it took me awhile to find where the voice was coming from as she sang,
Take the ribbon from my hair
Shake it loose and let it fall . . . .
And all the times I have ever heard that song in its contrived sexiness were exposed as a sham. Her voice was rich, expressive without pathos, just real, keeping the un-self-pitying loneliness between the notes. I noticed my face was wet and I was glad for the darkness of the bar and wondered if my feelings were coming from the bourbon in my glass, the emotional challenge of this past month, or a lifetime of encounters with the loneliness of others and sometimes my own.
The next performer was the young man who sat with her, Scotty, clearly a favorite at J. R.’s. He had a splendid voice for Western singing – to be distinguished from country. Country singing calls for “a cry in the voice like Haggard” – but Western singing is a train whistle in a canyon. It is not about loneliness. It is loneliness, without self-pity, for it is the sound of a humanity that knows no home but the desert. Such was Scotty’s voice as he sang that most curious of neo-ballads about past life regression, El Paso City – a déjà vu remembrance of the story line of El Paso, a narrative somehow haunting the pilot who suspects he is the dead cowboy reincarnated.
Scotty was in his late 20s. Marty Robbins, whom I remember quite well – whom I remember from the days of El Paso, long before he sang El Paso City “I don’t’ recall who sang the song” he sang ironically – Marty Robbins had been dead a good long while before Scotty saw the light of day. Scotty would think of Marty Robbins the way I might think of the whistling brakeman, Jimmy Rogers. But his performance was just superb; his voice the soul of the West and it was for me a déjà vu about a déjà vu. As he returned to his table with the large young woman, someone called from the back, “Who was that by?” – they were not joking – they actually asked who El Paso City was by – and Scotty answered quietly as if the question were perfectly natural, “Marty Robbins.”
Another man followed Scotty, a 50 something bald guy who was the epitome of ordinariness in his appearance, but his voice was smooth as Gentleman Jack as he crooned Amarillo By Morning and I found myself loving Texas “pure and chaste from afar” – I love Texas best at a safe distance. Then came a particularly handsome young man, in a Tom Cruise sort of way, who rapped a song in such a blatantly white style that I was embarrassed for my race.
Then Scotty returned to the stage and sang country lyrics this time, but still with that train whistle in the canyon voice,
The rain falls where it wants to
The wind blows where it will
Everything on earth goes somewhere
But I swear we’re standing still
So I’m not gonna wake you
I’ll go easy on your heart
I’ll just touch your face and drift away
Like smoke rings in the dark.
I finished my drink and walked back to my room though the cold dark night with a Taurus moon.
Then I made my annual pilgrimage to J. R’s Bar for karaoke night. I love J. R’s Bar for ineffable reasons even I do not understand. But tonight it was a special study – karaoke night. The first performer after I arrived was a big ugly guy in shorts and a t-shirt who did violence to Billy’ Joel’s song Honesty that would have been outrageous except that such a schmaltzy preachy song – music and lyrics equally reprehensible – deserves whatever it gets.
But then things took an unexpected turn. The DJ, an obese decidedly unattractive woman sitting behind her console took the mike and sang the 1955 Eddy Arnold hit (given definitive expression by Ray Charles and current expression by Michael Buble) You Don’t Know Me. Her voice was pretty good, but the thing was, I believed her. I believed she lived unknown and the loneliness was palpable.
The next singer was a larger woman who sat in a corner to sing, I imagined, because she was ashamed to stand in front of people. She was not alone at her table. She was with a young man who was probably attractive in a shaved head, ear ring, goateed sort of way. But she sat there in the corner so obscurely that it took me awhile to find where the voice was coming from as she sang,
Take the ribbon from my hair
Shake it loose and let it fall . . . .
And all the times I have ever heard that song in its contrived sexiness were exposed as a sham. Her voice was rich, expressive without pathos, just real, keeping the un-self-pitying loneliness between the notes. I noticed my face was wet and I was glad for the darkness of the bar and wondered if my feelings were coming from the bourbon in my glass, the emotional challenge of this past month, or a lifetime of encounters with the loneliness of others and sometimes my own.
The next performer was the young man who sat with her, Scotty, clearly a favorite at J. R.’s. He had a splendid voice for Western singing – to be distinguished from country. Country singing calls for “a cry in the voice like Haggard” – but Western singing is a train whistle in a canyon. It is not about loneliness. It is loneliness, without self-pity, for it is the sound of a humanity that knows no home but the desert. Such was Scotty’s voice as he sang that most curious of neo-ballads about past life regression, El Paso City – a déjà vu remembrance of the story line of El Paso, a narrative somehow haunting the pilot who suspects he is the dead cowboy reincarnated.
Scotty was in his late 20s. Marty Robbins, whom I remember quite well – whom I remember from the days of El Paso, long before he sang El Paso City “I don’t’ recall who sang the song” he sang ironically – Marty Robbins had been dead a good long while before Scotty saw the light of day. Scotty would think of Marty Robbins the way I might think of the whistling brakeman, Jimmy Rogers. But his performance was just superb; his voice the soul of the West and it was for me a déjà vu about a déjà vu. As he returned to his table with the large young woman, someone called from the back, “Who was that by?” – they were not joking – they actually asked who El Paso City was by – and Scotty answered quietly as if the question were perfectly natural, “Marty Robbins.”
Another man followed Scotty, a 50 something bald guy who was the epitome of ordinariness in his appearance, but his voice was smooth as Gentleman Jack as he crooned Amarillo By Morning and I found myself loving Texas “pure and chaste from afar” – I love Texas best at a safe distance. Then came a particularly handsome young man, in a Tom Cruise sort of way, who rapped a song in such a blatantly white style that I was embarrassed for my race.
Then Scotty returned to the stage and sang country lyrics this time, but still with that train whistle in the canyon voice,
The rain falls where it wants to
The wind blows where it will
Everything on earth goes somewhere
But I swear we’re standing still
So I’m not gonna wake you
I’ll go easy on your heart
I’ll just touch your face and drift away
Like smoke rings in the dark.
I finished my drink and walked back to my room though the cold dark night with a Taurus moon.
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