Manali Missives 49/2014
The First Timeout was Time On
Lena and I are back in Manali after our first “Timeout”, 6½ weeks in Australia with contradictory goals: rest and reflection, and meeting, informing and inspiring people about what we are doing in India.
It was wonderful! It was exhausting! It was, in fact, almost entirely “Time On”. We met old friends for morning coffee, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner, supper, golf, breakfast, Saturday morning cycling before breakfast. We made wonderful new friends who put us up overnight, sight unseen, in a strange city, and with whom we bonded instantly, sharing stories of life as ministers’ families, praying together. In less than 24 hours it felt like we’d known each other for decades. We also met the man whose extraordinary generosity has underwritten our whole project, but whose humility is such that he does not wish to be recognised in any way. It was enough for him to come to a strange church to hear and see our presentation of what we are doing, and to shake our hands. I had long discussions at public bars with old schoolmates whom I had barely known then, but whom I’ve got to know through Facebook over the past few years. Almost best of all, we deepened friendships with neighbours, developed trust into love with in-laws and, by dint of going home to mum and dad, received, opened and enjoyed the gift of knowing them as friends, adult to adult, white-haired as all four of us now are! My home congregation, Gordon Uniting Church, received us with open arms, immediately and enthusiastically taking on Lena’s suggested project, knitting beanies for new-born babies.
Then there was the ministry that just crops up: encouraging the young couple struggling in his first placement as a minister; visiting an old friend and onetime employer 2 hours before travelling to the airport and 2 days before he died), catching up with colleagues and friends from our previous employments. And both of us met our respective professional supervisors for significant debriefing sessions.
We also checked in with our current sending agency, UnitingWorld. They had arranged our dozen or so speaking engagements, the first of which was 2 days after we arrived, for us to communicate our project. These were great occasions; we felt well received, and able to tell our story effectively, but at coffees with our supervisors, whose function differs significantly from that of our professional supervisors’, we agreed that next year we’ll go into hiding for some days as soon as we arrive home. We did have a couple of days off in the middle of our stay, at a schoolfriend’s Bed & Breakfast in Katoomba, but this was not nearly enough. We also attended and spoke at a long overdue (not for us but for some who served overseas decades ago) but no less welcome thank you lunch UnitingWorld hosted for returned missionaries from the era when they were still sent out for years at a time, and for more recent volunteers such as ourselves.
There was seemingly endless household administration: major bills that had to be paid, new credit cards to be received and tested, an application to Council for the removal of trees encroaching on our house, and many doctors’ appointments to check whether our bodies, now in late middle age, are holding up to the rigours of life and work in India. (They are, more or less!)
There were also some occasions of particular significance. Of several family get-togethers the most important was my father Alf’s 85th birthday party. I’m not sure which of two other occasions I feel prouder about: organising a boys’ night out to the amazing final of the annual Super 15 championship, a rugby competition between the 15 best provincial teams from South Africa, New Zealand and Australia, which the New South Wales Waratahs won in the last minute; or participating in the annual “City To Surf “, the world’s largest community run years after being told I should never run again.
In summary, we failed entirely in the quest for rest but took some valuable opportunities for reflection. Meetings with professional supervisors, our UnitingWorld supervisors, and our closest friends and family, and the work of preparing and delivering presentations were particularly helpful in this regard. And we have succeeded in meeting, informing and hopefully inspiring people about what we are doing in India, the life of the Church of North India and its Amritsar Diocese in particular, and a rejuvenated UnitingWorld.
One of the last meetings I held was with two fellow ecotheologians. One of them is a retired electrical engineer, eminent enough in his field to have helped the Chinese develop their power supply. His PhD topic has to do with developing a theology of power. In the way of these things this topic sounded unlikely until he started speaking about it. We had a fascinating discussion about the science, technology and ecology of power supply, the state of the transition the world is making from “old”, carbon-based energy supplies, principally coal, oil and gas, to “new”, renewable energy supplies such as solar and wind power. Eventually I asked “Where is God in all of this?” At that point our conversation plumbed new depths.
Lena and I really need to ask this question of ourselves. For a year now we have been engaged in a blizzard of activity which our “Timeout” in Australia only exascerbated. She has been thrown/ thrown herself into the work of a chronically under-funded and under-resourced hospital doing wonderful healing in a highly diverse, remote community. Twice she has been the hospital’s acting chief medical officer. She has been stretched to the limit of her capabilities, has periodically fallen ill as a consequence, but has helped many, many people and has grown into her role as the hospital’s paediatrician.
I’m starting an “Eco-Care” project in a Diocese that stretches across 3 states. This involves getting to know and to be trusted by many people for whom ecological care is a relatively new concept, and stimulating their interest in ecology, ecotheology and ecopraxis (the practical out workings of the first two). Consequently I have been learning Hindi, their major language, and have driven thousands of kilometres in highly diverse, hazardous conditions to meet them. I’ve worked with or at least contacted 11 schools, a number of congregations and their pastors, several hospitals and Manali’s local tourism authority. While Lena’s work has been focussed upon the hospital, with the occasional outside clinic, for me the hospital, and the school and church which share the compound with it form my community from which I travel. Lena focusses upon healing people (she calls what she does “Lena’s Healing Ministry”); I try to teach and encourage people to participate in healing the environment in which they live. Our work is highly complementary.
But where is God in all of this? My now deceased mentor, Rev Dr John Mallison, used to encourage me not to get so caught up doing “the good” that I neglect “God’s Best”. Discerning the specific will of an invisible God is part of the fine art of being a Christian. But discernment must be based in part upon good theology, the study of God. The reverse is also true: discerning specifically how God would have me live my life, in day to day, even minute by minute decisions, expressed attitudes and actions powerfully affects my theology.
Here, summarised, are some of the theological themes that have developed for me over the past year:
- Ecotheology has powerfully affected the way I understand the Gospel, the Christian Good News. When I was a young Christian I thought God’s plan was about rescuing from this earth those who put their faith in Jesus. Now I think that God’s plan, of which the critical part was the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, is to restore God’s rule on this earth. That incorporates my previous concerns, but so much else as well. The Swiss theologian Hans Küng has put it succinctly: “God’s kingdom is creation healed.”
- The key verb in my enhanced understanding of the Gospel is “restore”. God is restoring God’s reign on planet earth, fixing what is broken. Other images fill this out. In his great passage in 2 Corinthians 5:16-21 St Paul enjoined his readers to be “reconciled” to God. The Bible and Christian theology use a number of words starting with “re-“, including, first and foremost, “resurrection”, to describe the Gospel.
- This changed perception of what the Gospel is does not alter what Brian Medway calls “the primary purpose” of the Church. Every Christian is charged by texts such as “The Great Commission”, Matthew 28:16-20, to proclaim the Gospel by our words, our deeds, our whole lives, individually and corporately. But it does alter radically what we think we’re doing. I still believe the classic evangelical doctrines (though just what I think they mean might provoke discussion) but I no longer think that intellectual assent to a set of propositions is what produces salvation. On the other hand, although working for social justice (and that includes the kind of eco-care I’m involved in) is doing the work of God it’s not enough by itself. There are many secular agencies and groups inspired by other religions doing wonderful social and environmental work, thereby participating, even if unwittingly, in God’s restorative work on planet earth. But the essential restoration is restored relationship with God, and Christians are convinced that that is done through Jesus Christ. Without that restored relationship no other restorative project will ultimately succeed. And while that restored relationship can be enacted, it must also be explained. We must “walk the talk”, but it’s just as important to “talk the walk”.
So what are we - Lena and I; all Christians - doing here? Well, in 2 Corinthians 5:20 St Paul called himself [an] “ambassador[s] for Christ”. Earlier, in chapter 3, verse 3 he called the Corinthian Christians “a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.” And in 2:15 he wrote, “For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing.” There’s a “sentness” about each of these images. Ambassadors communicate and act on behalf of the sending agency. Letters communicate. Aromas communicate too, but different way pointed to by Rev “Bunu” Samantaroy, Bishop of Amritsar Diocese. When asked why it would not be better to send the Diocese money instead of people, with all the cross-cultural complications we entail he replied, “When you send people,” he said, “we know that you love us.”
I’m aware that some who read this blog do not identify themselves as Christians. I’m really grateful for your interest, and invite your comments as well as those “of the household of faith”. But now, tired though Lena and I are, we begin our second year of this project. Time On for some more loving! We wonder what this month will bring.
With good aroma!
Lena and David Reichardt
