Jesus' face

It was not an accident that Jesus' incarnation happened at a time and in a culture where there were no portrait artists, and no cameras. Jesus came for all people - so the fact that we can give him a Middle Eastern or British or African or American or Ethiopian or Russian or Japanese appearance is good and important - he is incarnated into all our cultures. But sometimes I really do wonder what Jesus actually looked like - the historical Jesus. The face above was an attempt to reconstruct the face of a 30 year old Palestinian man from the first century AD, by building up layers on a skull. It doesn't quite work though - because he looks vacant maybe? And I am pretty sure the hair is wrong.

Below is a painting based on the image of the face on the Turin Shroud - for a very long time this was thought to be the real shroud Jesus was buried in, and so the marks on it formed a picture for us, if we believed it,  of the real Jesus. But the Turin Shroud was proved by carbon-dating to be a fake.

















So we are left guessing. I began to think about this again when reading Silence, by Shusaku Endo. The priest in the book spends days and even weeks on his own, in hiding, secretly meeting Christians, then being arrested and paraded through a town in chains, then imprisoned in solitude, hearing others being tortured - and what gives him the courage to keep going is an image of Jesus he had in his mind, from a portrait of him he had back at home. The memory of the face stayed constantly with him, and through it, Jesus helped him endure.

I realised that when I think of Jesus, I am left without a face - or it is kind of vague. I do think of him as he is portrayed in famous pictures, or as the shepherd with lambs in his arms as in a childhood painting we had, or sometimes as one of the movie Jesus-es. But none of them are quite right. One friend not long ago said when she sees Jesus, he is in jeans. Hmm. That made me think of the very American bro Jesus with the tool belt and jeans of William Young's The Shack. But that isn't quite my Jesus.

Maybe I should settle for the image that was on my laptop long ago when I was first in Uganda... I was in the old tiny computer-room at UCU (which is now the Archives), where we all went to send emails back then. I had a picture of Aragorn from Lord of the Rings as my screen saver. Emmanuel Gatera came in and glanced at my screen over my shoulder - "Ahhh, Jesus!" he said. I didn't feel like putting him right!

I think this could work don't you?

As always, open to any other ideas or suggestions...

Some faces from the past. And, did they really use to travel like that?!!

We are putting together a book of old pictures of Bishop Tucker, hopefully in time for the centenary event this year. Rev John Hunter sent us this one, and I thought a lot of you might enjoy seeing it. John Hunter was a principal of the college from 1962-65, and he visited again in 1993 which is when this photo was taken. So I can name a few of the staff from 1993 but not all of them. The ones I know, l - r, are,
-----, ----- , Eliphaz Maari, ----, Elisha Mbonigaba, ----, -----, Lusania Kasamba,  John Magumba. John Hunter was here with his son Christopher. Any filling in of names appreciated...

This shows John Hunter's mother, who had lived in Uganda long before her son, travelling from Kampala to Toro circa 1909, in what they called "landies". Incredible. The road on the other hand, doesn't look much different...

Uganda Partners

A few days ago the Uganda Partners UK, for whom Dan has been working one day a week this past year, met again at Graham and Fiona Carrs' home near Oxford, and I was voted in as a trustee! So exciting! But one of the first proposals was that every trustee should aim to raise two thousand pounds and my heart sank... - you mean I have to do fund-raising?? But fortunately that idea got nixed pretty quickly - phew! Well of course the idea is to do some fund-raising... and I really will... but a hard and fast goal like that was just a bit scary (pathetic I know.)

The first newsletter to be emailed out to our database of supporters has been written by Dan (blood sweat and tears...), and after it has been circulated around the trustees, I will post a copy on here.
There is also a website for the Uganda Partners UK, and this is the link to it:

http://www.ugandapartners-uk.org

It looks great, but it is not quite finished yet I believe. But you can check it out if you are interested.

This is the current group of trustees, minus Tudor Griffiths who could not make it to this meeting.
The other new member is Julius Mucunguzi, a Ugandan who now lives in the UK and is the Communications Officer for the Commonwealth Secretariat, and a great guy. We are so happy to have him and his expertise on board.

l to r, Julius Mucunguzi, Roger Marsden, Chris Dobson, Graham Carr, Me, Dan

One plan already being worked on is to have a parallel centenary celebration event in Oxford on June 1st next year.

Whilst I feel more and more settled here in Gloucester, it also feels good to have a real connection with UCU and to feel we are still involved even in a small way. Recently I have reconnected with a couple of university friends, and got to know someone who was in Zambia at the neighbouring mission station to ours at the same time as me, and with my same mission (AEF), so we knew all kinds of friends in common - so I feel as though the threads from my former lives keep multiplying. I suppose the key is not to feel pulled in different directions by those threads, but to enjoy the sense of being in a tapestry which is still being sewn, growing and becoming fuller and richer, as it all interweaves over and over.