Meeting John V Taylor's daughter

Yesterday Joanna and Charles Woodd came to lunch. This was very exciting, because, Joanna is the daughter of Bishop John V Taylor, who was Principal of Bishop Tucker College from 1943 to 1954. Joanna was 1 year old when her family moved to Mukono, and 13 when they left. She herself went to work in Kumi as a nurse later on, and has made a few trips back to Uganda since then, although her most recent visit to Mukono was about ten years ago. From her description it seems the family lived in what is now the Owors' house. She agreed with us that Mukono was an idyllic place to be as a young child, and she had very fond memories of racing about the grassy campus, in and out of other people's houses, and of the freedom and safety for children there. She told us that she went to school in Kampala, although she couldn't remember the name of the school, but they used to stay with an English family in town during the week, and only travel home for the weekends. Hmm, we did think about that from time to time... Mind you, she said Kampala was beautiful, uncrowded and leafy back then...

Joanna brought to show me a fascinating book made in 1950, about a Passion Play which her father put on with the Bishop Tucker students. It contains beautiful black and white photos of tableaux from the play. The students were in Biblical style costumes, and interspersed the drama with negro spirituals which, according to John Taylor's book, they sang beautifully. Just the expressions on their faces convey the solemnity, reverence and beauty of the play The play was acted out in the chancel of the old chapel, and was performed for the local community, which is described as the college, the three schools and the parish church all on the hill. Sadly no names are in the book, and carefully as I looked at the photos I did not recognise any faces - but I suppose these students from 1950 would have been at least 80 when we arrived in Mukono, so I shouldn't quite expect to!


I read two of John Taylor's books while I was in Uganda: The Go-Between God, which I loved, and The Primal Vision which I thought was fascinating. Apparently he wrote The Primal Vision not when he was principal of Bishop Tucker but when he made a return visit to Uganda some years later in 1963, specifically for research, when he was head of CMS in the UK.


Its full name being, "The Primal Vision: Christian presence amid African religion," it was one of the earliest attempts to describe African philosophy and religion, and to see how Christianity can be understood in Africa, and in fact how we can understand it better with the help of the African worldview. It was criticised at the time for being a bit too sympathetic to and positive about African religion, and leaning towards syncretism.

John V Taylor went on from heading CMS, to being Bishop of Winchester. He is described as being a "liberal evangelical rather than a conservative one" and was clearly greatly loved and respected wherever he worked.

We had a wonderful time chatting away with Joanna and Charles. They still do a lot to support Uganda, Charles being treasurer of an English organisation called the "Uganda Church Association", which sends out a yearly newsletter about goings-on in the Church of Uganda to a list of 230 interested people in England - many of them former Bishop Tucker missionaries, and many Ugandans who now live here. In the latest edition, for example, is an article written by Monica Ntege! Needless to say, we are delighted to have made this great connection, and hope to have more contact with UCA.

Joanna and Charles Woodd

We also discovered recently that John Taylor's grandson, Jonathan, (Joanna's nephew), is a lay assistant at our church in Exeter, St Leonards! He approached us at the mission weekend we spoke at in March. What a small small world...

Running for Uganda?

Today Dan and Alex took part in a nationwide annual event called Sport Relief, in which sports celebrities, many schools, TV personalities, and anyone who wants to join in, participate in sporting events to raise money for children's charities. On Friday night there was a 12 hour TV extravaganza along the lines of the original Live Aid - with film clips of celebrities visiting orphanages, hospitals and slums in poor parts of the world, meeting children, and then begging viewers to phone in and make a donation to help these and others like them - usually with tears. It was really strange watching Miranda (a relatively new British comedian) visiting Mulago Hospital, meeting a 17 yr old mother of two whose newborn baby was dying of malnutrition. Another comedian visited a hospital in Sierra Leone, where again children were dying from diarrhoea because of lack of medicine. Another befriended a street boy in one of Kisumu's slums and later paid his school fees. Gary Lineker (a well-known British footballer) was filmed in Bangladesh interviewing a mother whose 12 yr old son had died of drowning - apparently 50 children die every day in Bangladesh from drowning, because it is such a watery country and yet people generally don't learn to swim. So the money was going to go to a program teaching children to swim. So, you get the idea. It felt very strange watching these emotive fundraiser videos, knowing the realities of the situations so much better than the vast majority of viewers, and yet still feeling the heart-strings tugged...

Today there was the annual "Run a Mile for Sport Relief" - the publicity urges everyone to participate in either running or walking just a mile - with the line that anyone can do that - but you can also opt to run three or six miles. And get sponsored to do it to raise money.

According to the Sport Relief 2012 website, the amount pledged and donated this weekend, so far, is 52,070,587 pounds!!!!! Wow. Alex raised 25 pounds, but they don't know that yet...! That is a lot of money.

I remember after Live Aid, there were a number of hitches with the way the money was given, often to projects where there was no sustainability or follow-up, and so on. I hope and would like to believe that lessons have been learned by now, and that the money given by Sport Relief will be put into sensible hands and into projects that have a proven track record etc etc. I don't actually know.

I do think that it is fantastic to see so many British families out on a sunny morning, putting in a bit of effort, or a lot of effort, to do something active and to raise money for charity. In a society which is on the whole very cynical and often very lazy (the most common pastimes being those which involve sitting down...) it was refreshing this morning to witness the "Run a Mile" event. And to see the many people out there manning the water stall, the kind parking guy who helped us park in a hurry as we arrived late, and many others ... all volunteering their time for this event. 

Money...

I am not yet qualified to say much about wealth, poverty and contentment. Let's say I am still working on it... I would say it has been a testing point for me, for ever. Probably one day I'll be able to write a book about it.

When I decided back in 1992 to go to Africa for the long term, I didn't worry about money, or think about it, or the lack of it. It was not part of my decision. I think money became a worrying thing for me when we had children, and when we were living in Zimbabwe with incredible inflation - so that prices went up and up and up. So did the amount of Zim dollars we got for our pounds as well, though, and in fact we got richer as far as spending power went. But, for the last year or so, we could only get money there by exchanging our pounds for people's Zim cash, in huge bricks and chunks. Or at the tills of supermarkets, at the end of the day, by arrangement with the shop manager. At first when inflation got bad, we would buy ten one hundred dollar notes clipped together into a 1000 dollar wad called "one pin" (because of the way it was pinned together). But the pins soon clumped together into three inch bricks, and you needed a ruck sack or cardboard box to cart them around. We actually bought one friend's entire Zimbabwe savings from him over the course of a few months, with our pounds. Within another year or so if he had kept those savings in Zim dollars they would have been worth virtually nothing, so he kept assuring us we were saving him from certain penury. But it all felt very skewed, and more than a bit shady, although I am not sure it actually was - and we rationalised how we were managing, along with everyone else.

When we moved to Uganda, it was a great relief being able to use an ATM - although when we first arrived in Uganda there were only two ATMs in the country! Hard to believe now when they are found at every filling station. The two were in the very middle of Kampala, in places impossible to park near. So we still went mostly for our money to Downtown Forex. Even the hassle of getting to Downtown Forex felt simple and do-able after all the uncertainties and arrangement-making of getting money in Zimbabwe.

But we found the cost of living in Uganda almost double what it was in Zim, and we had to ask our churches for more support and add on more churches as well. We did get the extra support we needed, but I hated getting the emails frmo Crosslinks saying we were under-supported, and being featured on the website as one of several mission partners who needed more support. I began to ignore emails from Crosslinks and refuse to open bank statements! Ignorance is definitely preferable... And then we had money stolen from our bank account through paypal. And then our house in England flooded badly, meaning a big loss of rent as well as huge bills for renovation - in the end all covered by insurance but it was such a worry to me.

I have often wished that I had tons of money, so that I could fly off on holidays to amazing faraway places, and eat out in amazing restaurants, dress all in pure linen clothes with long leather boots and wear gold jewellery. That is who I feel I am inside... as well as tall and slim with long sleek hair... Seriously, I am usually put to shame when we have those "If I won the Lottery" conversations - would you all really give it all away?! I am sure I would give some of it away... even most of it, but I would definitely have plans for quite a bit of it...   However, I have been living on missionary allowance for twenty years, and I have not won the lottery (I haven't entered it in fact), so, I am not that linen-clad person... Ah well. And you know what, I wouldn't go back and change a thing. Not one thing.

You would think that after living in rural Zambia, downward-spiralling Zimbabwe, and poverty-stricken Uganda for all these years, I would have a better attitude towards money, and a better perspective on it.

In fact, I have learned some basic truths about money. I  just have not learned to spurn it yet. I still have a way to go...

But this is what I have learned. Much as I could have compared myself to our better-off expat friends (and did) I know all too well that wealth is relative, and that I was incredibly rich in Uganda. Unpacking my weekly grocery shopping in front of Florence or Naomi certainly drummed that one home effectively. It was usually quite embarrassing. Bagfuls of food, for one week? Having a vehicle to swan around in at my leisure was another indicator of our wealth in Uganda. Eating meat almost every day, ditto. Having a home with a separate bedroom for each child, a good roof with no holes in it, a cement floor not a mud one, running water, electricity, ditto. Our own computers, ditto. Many changes of clothes in the wardrobe, ditto. A cupboard full of children's toys. Books, dvds!

I also learned that wherever one comes on the economic scale, almost everyone feels they do not have enough. I am sure that almost every Ugandan I knew thought I was very rich. Yet I worried about money and would tell people I couldn't afford to help them send their child to school. Meanwhile my better off friends worried about how to afford boarding school fees for their children when back in England. Other friends who were living back in England earning competitive salaries worried about paying their mortgages. I would love to get to the point where I am conscious of how rich I am in so many ways, where I learn that I do have enough, that God has provided and will provide for us. I would love to get to the point where I am simply content with what we have and what we can do.

Money symbolises security to me, more than luxuries, in spite of what I have been saying. But this recession has surely served to show us all in the West that our savings, pensions, and incomes are not ever secure. Aren't we actually foolish to put our complete trust in them, when banks go bust, and jobs get cut? This year while we live on two part-time jobs and wait for Dan's full-time job to start, we are experiencing how God is taking care of us, and it is humbling, and faith-building. Maybe I am learning at long last that our only security is in God, after all. And he has been faithful to us the whole way.

Goodbye Dr Williams

This week I have written up a long article for Crosslinks: "Notes for Returning Mission Partners". It is mostly directed towards people moving back to the UK. So unless anyone asks me to, I am not planning to put it on here. I could email it to anyone individually if you think it would be helpful.

But so much else has been happening!

I am not going to say anything about K-2012 - although I have spent a lot of time reading about it this week. I have a view, but I think it isn't simple. Anyway I don't think I could add to everything that has already been said.

But I thought of saying something about the resignation of Rowan Williams, because, as some of you know, he was one of my tutors at university back in 1985. I had one-to-one tutorials with him in my first year, on Early Church History. When I knew him, he looked like this:



I wasn't actually at his wedding, but this was taken in 1981 and I was his student in 1985. So he looked more like this than how he looks now...

He was my very favourite lecturer and tutor. He was so friendly, gentle, and easy-going. I was a brand new Theology student, and he was far kinder to me as a very green, young theologian than most of his colleagues, one of whom underlined all my essays in red and kept telling me "You're not in Sunday School any longer..." (That was one of the few evangelical tutors!)

I used to go to Rowan William's rooms in Clare College and read through the comments on my essay while he made me tea... The tutors didn't have fridges in their rooms so they all kept boxes of milk on the outside windowsills of their leaded windowpanes - and his milk was always sour! ... Not very nice cups of tea!

He also invited me along with a group of students to lunch in his Cambridge cottage - his wife Jane was very pretty, a bit hippyish, wore Laura Ashley and made a veggie lunch. I loved them.

Of course Rowan Williams himself had just been arrested for joining a CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) demo at a nearby RAF base, protesting against the storing of American trident missiles there.  He famously referred to himself as a "hairy lefty" once.

It has been interesting reading all the reactions to his resignation. He is going early - he could have stayed in office until 2020. I am not surprised he is stepping down now after ten years that must feel very long. He is returning to the academic life, to be Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, and to writing and teaching I gather. No doubt to his great relief.

He has clearly not been everyone's favourite Archbishop. I think any other man in his position in the last ten years would have overseen the Anglican Church splitting. I predict that the next one will. He was probably the only person who could hold it together, but he did it by keeping the discussion going, round and round... Everyone was frustrated with him at various points - the evangelicals because he kept bringing the TEC leaders back into the discussion, the liberals because although they thought he sided with them on the issue of ordination of homosexuals, he never led the church definitely in that direction. Woolly, maybe, but I think his desperate aim was to keep things together, to keep people talking. Like the hostage negotiator who can't actually bring the operation to closure. I understand that. Whether he was right to take that approach is another question.

He has also been described as the best archbishop the church has had for a century, and certainly the most intelligent. From what I have seen, everyone who knows him loves him. I think he has been an enigma: approachable and loveable, and yet often impossible to understand. Willing to dress up with druids, to contemplate shariah law in the UK, and yet upholding Scripture and Tradition in a very orthodox way. Apparently he has been loved in the parish churches and schools wherever he has visited. People in Africa who have met him also love him. He was highly praised after his visit to Zimbabwe where he confronted Mugabe himself. I know people who love him and who hate him. And some who feel he has lost his way. For myself, as I said, I liked him very much when I knew him, a lovely, Godly person, and I think he has done what he thought was best for the Church. But I think he has drawn out the time of impossible cohesion too long. I think most people wished he would have taken clear leadership in one direction or the other, but if he had, it would have led to certain schism.  He said of his successor: "I hope he has the constitution of an ox and the skin of a rhinoceros." Yes, he'll need it.

We ought to get an evangelical next, as the Church of England usually alternates between a Liberal and an Evangelical. So what will happen then?! We may get the Ugandan Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, although, true to form, he says he doesn't want it. But he is a frontrunner and would be a very popular choice here in England. Could be a very interesting few years ahead...

Setting a tree free.

There is nothing so English as getting out to do a spot of gardening. And to do it on a Sunday afternoon after a large roast lunch is even more English. We must be getting assimilated, as that is exactly what we did today. Actually, I have been wanting to adopt the tradition of making a Sunday roast ever since moving here, as we all love it so much. Today I managed it for the first time. A joint of roast pork with crackling and mustard, roast potatoes, carrots and runner beans, followed by a bowl of toffee ice cream... Something  subconscious must have happened after that, because never in Uganda on a Sunday afternoon did I feel like gardening. I would say, not once, ever. It was too hot, too overgrown, there were too many spiders and ants, and Baker was going to do it anyway...

Even though we are in a rented house, we think we will be here for quite a long time so we have to keep the garden under control at least, and we want it to look nice. I had been wanting to strip the encroaching ivy off the two big old apple trees, and Abby had been wanting to plant out some primroses and other flowers... So we visited the garden centre (another quintessentially English pastime), bought some pots of primroses and a huge blue anenome (my choice), and a welly-boot-puller-offer which we've been wanting, and came home and all four of us then set to it in the garden. It was sunny, warm, satisfying and fun. Honestly we could have been Adam, Eve and their first two children, working away in our own little Eden.

The trunk of the old apple tree felt warm, strong and good, whilst the creeping thin ivy felt evil, determined, and cold... The ivy roots went off into the ground far afield, and the ivy clung onto the tree by millions of little brown threads. The more you pulled at it, the further away and the tougher the roots and tributaries became. The parables were simply flying into my mind! It would be easy just to pull the ivy's leaves off, and the tree would look a lot better, but everything would just grow back. The satisfying thing was in yanking away at the ivy roots as they led away from the tree, even underground, right back to the edge of the garden - knowing that I was really setting the tree free, literally pulling away its chains. I also want to be freed like that. I bet we all do. But it might take some pulling and yanking. It might not feel that good. But so much better afterwards...

Moonshadows

In Uganda, walking home at night from a fellowship or from a friend's house, my eyes would always seek out the moon. Sometimes lying like a slice of rind on its back, sometimes a huge round disc, casting a bright aurora, sometimes rising in front of our house and in other phases behind it, above the giant craggy trees back up there on the hill. I tried to photograph it several times, but they never really came out. Because there is hardly any artificial light in Uganda (a sore subject...), the night sky is so very black so that the moon and stars shine out in glory. But here in England, whilst not so intensely bright, the moon is also stunning, peaceful, unmoved, mysterious, comforting...

I love the moon. I love that it belongs to our earth and circles around it, over and over. It is like a benign presence, overseeing us night after night. I was open-mouthed, like a child at a magic show when we were in the Space museum in DC once and saw real rocks from the very moon itself, lying on black cloth. I would jump at the chance to go there - please may it be possible during our lifetime, and not for a million dollars!

 In Uganda I used to point out to whoever I was with, that in the southern hemisphere, the moon has a rabbit in it, a large one with its ears flying back. But here in England, in the northern hemisphere, it has a face. Today I will prove it once and for all, with two photos from Google:




Face...  

Rabbit...











Until today I hadn't realised that the man in the moon looks pretty shocked about something, but you can stretch it to look like a smile...

Anyway, Alex is doing space at the moment and has to make a moon diary, drawing it in all its phases this month. What a great project. Tonight is a full moon, sailing over the rooftops of Gloucester. I tried again to take a few photos and will put them here, but once again they are just a feeble attempt...

In this one, you can see the face, and he looks happy, I think.