Another warm bright spring day to lift the spirits. I walked to St John's and celebrated the Eucharist again. It was the Parish's Mothers' Union Corporate Communion day, so I used the scripture readings for last Monday's Feast of the Annunciation. I spoke about the risk agreed to by Mary in accepting to become a mother, in an age where stillbirth and dying in childbirth were much more common than now. It was hearing a morning news item about authorising Coroners to investigate still-births that triggered this line of thought, plus recalling of the MU's maternal health care and educational work in the Anglican Communion. From the looks of recognition I observed, it seems talking of pre-natal loss struck a chord with some of those present. As someone said to me afterwards; "You never forget it, not even decades after."
I cooked lunch when I got back, to coincide with Clare's arrival from school, then a siesta with the lunchtime news playing on the radio. I woke up just after the afternoon drama started in Radio 4. It was about a man transported in a dream to Britain a hundred years from now. It was a post brexit post apocalyptic world which, for a change was not dysfunctional or savage. It was more like a rural paradise in which everyone lived in peace and harmony, seeking each others' welfare before their own, working as much or as little as they chose.
It portrayed a post capitalist world in which money, competition and consumerism were irrelevant and redundant, a world in which technology was the servant of all, not the master. It was a dream of Utopia or maybe Erewhon, given the New Age idealism in action wryly portrayed, how selfishness anxiety and greed were successfully abandoned for a better way, was glossed over. Perhaps it was beyond imagining. How do you get from the agony of the Great Tribulation to an ideal realm with no struggle or suffering birth pangs? Well, it was an idealist's fantasy I suppose, quite entertaining too, but how strange that I should wake up like that into a dream.
I then went for a walk around Pontcanna Fields and Bute Park to enjoy the sun and revel in the birdsong. So far, no ducklings on the river Taff however. It's lovely to see so many people, even on an working weekday afternoon, taking time out to sit on the grass and chat. Most make an effort to take their empty cans bottles and cartons to the nearest rubbish bin. It's such a pity these are quickly full to overflowing and not emptied often enough in the day. It only encourages people get lazy and leave a mess rather than take their cast offs home with them.
As I was passing the Summer House Cafe in Bute Park, I was accosted by a man, who noticed that I was wearing a cross. He asked if I could tell him about Jesus, declaring he knew little about religion. We sat on a bench in the sunshine and talked for half an hour. He told me that he was a Kurd and had been in Britain for the past twenty years, an exile from the time of the Iraq war. His father had been a Jew by birth and his mother a Muslim, but he'd been raised to know neither religious community, perhaps because of the unsettled lives they'd had over the years. He said he was searching for a way of peace and goodness to follow, and had a horror of Islam from what he knew of its extremists.
So what could I tell him about Jesus? He vaguely knew that Jews had crucified Jesus, but seemed unaware that Jesus was a faithful Jews whose teaching was resented by some who sought to kill him, though not all. I told him how Jerusalem and the Temple Mount were holy places common to all three religions, that stories of Jesus were found in the Qu'ran and in the four Gospels, and that Jesus was acknowledged as a teacher and prophet in Judaism.
He told me he spoke Kurdish, Turkish, Arabic, Farsi and English and was aware that in Kurdish areas, Christians, Muslims and Jews co-existed peacefully, but he was not aware this is reuw in most moderate societies in the MIddle East and beyond. He didn't know and struggled to grasp that Jesus worshipped in Hebrew and spoke Aramaic, which isn't the same as Arabic. His own background was evidently one of diversity of cultures, but didn't realise that other regions had their own histories of diverse culture. What you pick up from the media headlines rarely reflects everyday grass roots reality.
I think if you're coming from knowing nothing about the setting of Jesus' life, there are a few things like this it's helpful to understand from the outset. I advised him to google on his smartphone 'The Gospels in Kurdish' to find texts he could read in his mother tongue, assuming that his early learning to read would have been in Kurdish, and move on to reading them in other languages later when he's hungry for it. Reading the same story in different languages can give you a much richer idea of what the message of the story is, an take you beyond words too.
For me, reading for oneself about 'all that Jesus did and said' is the place to start, even though it can be a difficult path to start with. Getting to know Him through scripture opens the way to making a relationship with Him and God. You can take it at your own pace, and if ever you have questions, there'll be Christians around to ask not to far away, even kurdish Christians maybe. He was making a tentative first step, and impulsive move to approach a stranger in a park. He wasn't looking for a follow up meeting, I thought, just a little encouragement to start the journey.
Such an encounter is a rarity for me, and thrilling too. It's something I like to think I'm ready for, starting from who we are whenever we meet. But, out of the blue like that, this also had a dreamlike quality to it, only I wasn't in the audience listening to the drama, but rather on-stage being myself.
As I was passing the Summer House Cafe in Bute Park, I was accosted by a man, who noticed that I was wearing a cross. He asked if I could tell him about Jesus, declaring he knew little about religion. We sat on a bench in the sunshine and talked for half an hour. He told me that he was a Kurd and had been in Britain for the past twenty years, an exile from the time of the Iraq war. His father had been a Jew by birth and his mother a Muslim, but he'd been raised to know neither religious community, perhaps because of the unsettled lives they'd had over the years. He said he was searching for a way of peace and goodness to follow, and had a horror of Islam from what he knew of its extremists.
So what could I tell him about Jesus? He vaguely knew that Jews had crucified Jesus, but seemed unaware that Jesus was a faithful Jews whose teaching was resented by some who sought to kill him, though not all. I told him how Jerusalem and the Temple Mount were holy places common to all three religions, that stories of Jesus were found in the Qu'ran and in the four Gospels, and that Jesus was acknowledged as a teacher and prophet in Judaism.
He told me he spoke Kurdish, Turkish, Arabic, Farsi and English and was aware that in Kurdish areas, Christians, Muslims and Jews co-existed peacefully, but he was not aware this is reuw in most moderate societies in the MIddle East and beyond. He didn't know and struggled to grasp that Jesus worshipped in Hebrew and spoke Aramaic, which isn't the same as Arabic. His own background was evidently one of diversity of cultures, but didn't realise that other regions had their own histories of diverse culture. What you pick up from the media headlines rarely reflects everyday grass roots reality.
I think if you're coming from knowing nothing about the setting of Jesus' life, there are a few things like this it's helpful to understand from the outset. I advised him to google on his smartphone 'The Gospels in Kurdish' to find texts he could read in his mother tongue, assuming that his early learning to read would have been in Kurdish, and move on to reading them in other languages later when he's hungry for it. Reading the same story in different languages can give you a much richer idea of what the message of the story is, an take you beyond words too.
For me, reading for oneself about 'all that Jesus did and said' is the place to start, even though it can be a difficult path to start with. Getting to know Him through scripture opens the way to making a relationship with Him and God. You can take it at your own pace, and if ever you have questions, there'll be Christians around to ask not to far away, even kurdish Christians maybe. He was making a tentative first step, and impulsive move to approach a stranger in a park. He wasn't looking for a follow up meeting, I thought, just a little encouragement to start the journey.
Such an encounter is a rarity for me, and thrilling too. It's something I like to think I'm ready for, starting from who we are whenever we meet. But, out of the blue like that, this also had a dreamlike quality to it, only I wasn't in the audience listening to the drama, but rather on-stage being myself.
No comments:
Post a Comment