Christian Aid: A Bigger Splash

Everything in India is bigger. Driving through Hyderabad assaults the senses with its seemingly endless miles of heaving humanity in all its expressions, diversity and colour. How small it makes the field on which I play out most regular work seem. In 42 degree heat a small group of us hone a development plan for a school based on Jesus’ principle that the child is greatest in the Kingdom and only the best is good enough for the poor. 

This is no time for half measures or empty gestures. World citizens clever enough for the social and technical way we’re evolving but morally grounded enough to make it worth living in do not grow in trees. Each child gets one opportunity to grow and learn, and there are no dress rehearsals. Here, beyond gestures, for some of the poorest people int he world, We are trying to capture Jesus’ vision of life in all its fulness. Nothing less is worthy of our highest endeavours, even if it means being real but also radical about everything, including ourselves. 

But how?

The question brings me back a particular conversation with a City trader. He’s a good and decent man, who well understands the virtues of capitalism and has pursued them. He is no fool. He knows that our present system, worked by autopilot, has no long-term future. It has produced wealth, but also tremendous debt. It relies on half a billion partying in first class whilst everybody else lives a less enriched life. The arrival at the ball of another two billion aspirant middle class partygoers from Brazil, India, Russia, and China (to name but a few)has to change everything radically. It calls for a new kind of ingenuity. Finally the rape of the pant has consequences.

So what we need, he says, is beyond economics. 

Economics is often treated as a science but in fact it is no such thing. It manages inequalities according to a set of assumptions about worth that go beyond its own capacity to examine them. 

Economics draws its basic premises from choices we make about what we see as a good life. Questions about those bring the doctor and the priest in their long coats, running over the fields. 

What we need, my trader friend and I say, is beyond the secular principle — life pursued pragmatically, free from the imposition of particular religious dogma in its narrowest sense. It’s a precious hygiene factor in any free society, but does not exhaust the possibilities of being alive. Without is we cannot run a decent and humane society, and it has serious comment to offer on how the ship is running, but can have no idea of where the ship is going.

I wonder about a slogan I saw a few years ago, painted on the side of the South Karnataka State Legislature in Bangalore — “Government business is God’s business.” They don’t mean any particular god among the thousands India holds. But they do means what they say. Not only is the ultimate subject matter the stuff people engage with in community by faith, but these things that really count can only be pursued radically with courage and confidence. Pure pragmatists are only tinkering, and more is being demanded of us all than mere tinkering.

How is God calling us to do this? By grace through faith that is committed enough to

• be Real and open to what is — not to tart things up, because faith is beyond pretending
• be Positive about what might be — because what proceeds from faith is faith, and Anglicans above all should know that all you get from fear is paltry squabbling, however worthy and genteel
• Get Engaged — to get right out of its comfy seat and engage, remembering that because of the incarnation the only bass for true and fruitful engagement is equality
• be Honest — taking every thought captive to Christ because otherwise we are stuck in no more than a religious hall of mirrors

That’s enough down and dirty agenda for a lifetime, is it?

We have work to do. Over the next three days the newly honed school development plan needs to go back to its originators in the school, and we work with them to make it happen. 

The jeep calls at 11.00. 

Under the weather?

Today saw probably the most concentrated snow we have experienced here in our time. The best part of 12 inches has landed, and almost everything has ground to the usual halt such weather induces in Southern England. I know we don’t carry the gear because it’s only this bad a few days a year, but we lost about 30 days last year to such snow, and you’d think if the total losses were grossed up over a few years, it would be worth someone’s while to kit up for days such as this.

Just for the record, another feature of this week has been me staggering around like Frankenstein’s monster with a wooden leg, thanks to an enterprising Indian critter unspecified that managed to infect a sac in my rght knee. Sad Sac is not over blessed with blood supply, so two batches of big chunky antibiotics have gone down the hatch — come next Wednesday we may have a result. It’s the only time in my life my knee has had a temperature without the rest of me having it, too. Insane or what?

India Oscar Kilo

Ten very productive and profoundly moving days with colleagues working in the Nandyal Diocese in Andhra Pradesh. It’s now three years since Lucy and I first visited, and it was good now to be among recognizable friends in places that now mean very much to us. Our hosts looked after us wonderfully. The four of us were profoundly struck by the warmth, dignity, hospitality and commitment to Christ of our hosts, often in circumstances that would easily drive others insane. Working results still need to be agreed and actioned, but the country was, as ever, crowded, beautiful, raw, elusive and subtle...

Do not adjust your set

Every year I encourage colleagues to offer a week’s ministry to a majority world Church. This includes ARchdeacon Karen and me, with great joy and I have not died, but am simply away in Nandyal, India (leaving a houseful of grieving Children and colleagues rocking on with friends behind) for a few days. Pictures etc. are sure to follow...

India: Legally Hung Over?

My children are amazed as I tell them I worked in a prison long enough ago to have met a clergyman who had officiated at a hanging in England 30 years before I knew him. I remember there being an execution suite in HMP Wandsworth in the 1980’s, just in case.

“Suspended sentences,” as one POA wag used to call them, struck my children as an extraordinary survival from an age of barbarism, like witch trials or the Iron Maiden. I promise my children, to stares of disbelief, that this grotesque carry-on, happened (but only just) in my lifetime, and was only finally abolished in 1998.

But there seem to be two distinct ways to abolish the death penalty. You can pass laws, as in the UK, or just leave it to the moral instincts of potential hangmen. In India no-one is willing to do it any more, according to this week’s Delhi Open magazine:

In Pune’s Yerwada prison, there are 11 convicts who have been condemned to death by hanging. Kept in solitary confinement in the barracks close to the gallows, some of them have languished there for nearly a decade. Their mercy petitions have been rejected by the President. But it is unlikely that they will be hanged anytime soon. Maharashtra does not have a hangman. The two prisons in the state where hangings are carried out—Yerwada and Nagpur Central—have sought executioners from other states but no one has responded. It seems there are no hangmen in the country. They are all retired or dead.

To kill a man, the Indian Government pays Rs 150. The job of a hangman is not a full-time government post. He is a sanctioned volunteer, his pay a special allowance. Hanging involves techniques and procedures very simple to learn, simpler than probably learning how to drive a car. Senior police officials are willing to teach them to anyone who comes forward, but no one does.

Officials at various central prisons across India confirm that they are unable to find hangmen even though the candidate need not have any previous experience, nor does he have to be literate. It is a strange situation in one of the few countries in the world that still have capital punishment. India has about 300 prisoners on death row.

For the princely sum of £2 a go, you’d think someone would be interested, but apparently people are afraid of stoking up bad karma. In a sudden rush of public disgust at terrorist attacks in Madhya Pradesh one man actually came forward and offered to hang Afzal Guru. Unfortunately he was 82 years old, and died before the job could be done. So, with a whimper rather than a legal bang, hanging seems to be finally on the way out in India.

Funny Old World.

Nandyal Ahoy!

A busy week, with Bishop Lawrence of Nandyal visiting, and various meetings scoping the way forward for the relationship between our dioceses.

Historically, Nandyal was an Anglo-Catholic diocese that refused to go into the Church of North India in 1947, and only arrived in the Ecumenical Church of South India in the seventies, but is now fully integrated. I caught up with the Bishop after sharing Mothering Sundy at Chalfont St Peter:
It looks as though a developing Church link would have distinct themes:

1. Mission and Evangelism
   
   
2. Clergy spirituality development
   
   
3. Education at all levels
   
   
4. The renewal of a historical relationship
   
   
5. Leadership development
   
   
6. Concern for one world
   
   
7. A mixed economy in terms of brands of discipleship
   
   
8. an structurally Ecumenical partner diocese (with Methodists, Presbyterians and others)
   

India: resilience and hope

It was surreal this evening to step from village India into a fine hotel in Hyderabad, after being on the road. We feel like we have just come ashore from a long journey, contrasts enhanced by the intensity of our programme of visits and meetings with educators, clergy and children. We have met some amazing, courageous people, and our group is beginning to see a new way forward for our link with schools in Nandyal.


There were moments it was hard not to choke up — blessing children at the children's centre in Kurnool was one. They are so vibrant, and funny and responsive. Yet the way of the world will strip them of hope unless someone finds a way to support them to achieve their hopes and dreams. Unless we know better and are prepared to work to make it so. The four of us (two teachers, two clergy) have been banging away scoping schemes for early years village education to prepare village children for English medium work later. We hope to be able to come up with something really usable by the end of the year, if we can find someone with the Telugu language and teaching skills to make these ideas fly.


Another particularly moving moment came when we visited Pastorate 7 in Kurnool, where the floods were worst, and spent time with people in a new Church that is rising up, which will include a children's centre underneath the sanctuary. I wish Lucy had been with me, because when we last visited she was such a natural at drawing out these children. After all the speeches and formal part people just came to be blessed and prayed with. I came away feeling there is so much to be hopeful for, as this community regenerates after the floods. I wasn’t going to write anything, but we're all full of India — all I wanted to post, as we prepare to fly home tomorrow, are some preliminary pictures from this visit...

The Sweet Taste of India

India for a few days, with all its beauty, colour, warmth (31 degrees!), need and vibrancy. I’m travelling with friends and colleagues from Chalfont St Peter, Charles the local Vicar, John the Head of our School, and Chris the school secretary. Chalfont has responded in a really exciting way to the schools development and networking project we went to Andhra Pradesh to inaugurate in 2007.

This isn’t just a money thing — although when floods struck Kurnool last winter I was thrilled by the almost instantaneous way our network was able to get thousands of pounds of aid straight out and onto the streets where it was needed. It reminded me of the way I was told many in Milton Keynes were able to throw themselves into support for Haiti with the help of RC nuns at Thornton College, who have working sisters there.

That kind of direct two-way relationship is really important. Of course we need big NGO’s and government agencies, but the guts of giving isn’t money, but a giving attitude, a focussed will, the good samaritan thing. The local Church is the hope of the world, in various ways, including the fact we have people on the ground. It’s a real joy to be hands-on in this work with Chalfont St Peter taking the lead.

There are four purposes in this very brief visit

1. to meet some of the people caught up in the floods, encourage them in the work of reconstructon and, if we can, to see if we can design a scheme for small school to school basic infrastructural support packages for which we hope to drum up support among our own 288 schools in the Thames Valley.
   
   
2. to scope the future of our Oxford/ Nandyal relationship, and see how it can be developed in the fields of sharing technology, passion and vision together with Bishop Lawrence and his colleagues.
   
   
3. to share an assembly, if we can manage it, between two schools, one in Nandyal and one in Chalfont — Chris has a bag of gubbins! It’s not only a dry run for the kinds of linkages we think could open up all sorts of possibilities for students in the UK and India, but it will bring the whole relationship to life,w e hope, on both ends.
   
   
4. to spend a very short, but I hope quality time praying and studying with clergy in Nandyal.
   
   
5. I hope we can really grow in ways that are mutually beneficial, and am much looking forward to renewing friendships and sharing visions with sisters and brothers in India.

As a colleague was asking me tentatively whether he could be excused from his parish to minster abroad as part of a parish link, I want to reiterate that I believe it’s a really good thing for clergy to commit a few days ministry regularly to the majority word Church. I know Bucks colleagues who are ministering in Nigeria, South Africa, Sweden, India, China, the Middle East, Germany, Sudan, Uganda, Pakistan and South America. If 150 Bucks clergy want do this kind of thing, I’m delighted. The growth of such activity among my colleagues really excites me. There are various ways of wiring up this kind of service, and for any PCC’s wondering what they will lose if their vicar commits to a regular element of this kind of ministry, I want to say there is no down side. It refreshes and renews people as well as giving tangible expression to the Catholicity of the Church. It takes a whole world to know Christ!