On the window and the tree

I might be stationed in the most beautiful church in South Africa, at least on the Methodist side of things.

Like most great worship spaces I have seen, it has gracious space on the interior - it is large and roomy, it speaks to the spaciousness of God. Its high ceiling is a visible representation of the space God gives us to explore the full extent of his grace and mercy; that freedom to explore, one of the great gifts of Methodist theology.

It also has these two glorious windows - one front, one back - standing like sentinels and, in different seasons, serving as conduits for shards of light to penetrate the worship area, for good or ill. Sometimes in deep winter, that warm light zeroes in on the organ area. When I first arrived, I noticed the organist wearing a sponge-like peak, not dissimilar to a Las Vegas cards dealer, or a cricket supporter in the Eighties. It gave the impression the organist was running a tight schedule, cutting corners between playing the organ in church and hitting the Craps table after (no time to change!); not unlike bowls players who attend church in their whites and shuffle out quietly during the introduction of the last hymn or, if it's a big game, the first hymn. 

That cap was bright yellow and had NBS building society etched across it. It was quite surreal; it gave the impression our organist was sponsored, had signed an endorsement deal; just another indicator that free market capitalism was over-egging its pudding. She would also wear it at an angle to buffer directly the slant of the sunlight. This made her look even more, how can I say, urban? I half-expected her to stand before the sermon with her jeans precariously low, held up only by a chain, and to shuffle/limp to her seat not due to old-age but because that's how cool organists move.

Setting all that aside, the cap's sole purpose was indeed to keep out the softer, more mischievous winter rays. Those two windows aren't just windows in but windows out into the world. We are plagued by bird-life around here. Or, if you love birds, blessed. Hadedas interject in almost every intercessory prayer: fighting, slipping, playing who knows what on the roof of our sanctuary eliciting timid glances upwards when eyes should be closed. When it gets particularly bad, we send out a steward to throw things at them. His aim is quite bad and he hasn't hit one yet. Being a church, we have ordered him to use only the smallest and softest of pebbles. I do fear that one day he will miss the birds badly and plant a pebble in a dear old lady shuffling into the Anglican Church adjacent to us - as if ecumenical relations weren't frosty enough already. Well, if she was looking for a sign, she may well get one.

Every now and then an Egyptian Goose perches on the window up front above the preacher and looks down quizzically upon us, like a confused anthropologist trying to figure out why we all stand and sing into a wall. In my worst moments I imagine this to be God embodied in bird coming to me, that look of bewilderment being God's own as the Cosmic Ruler of all Things struggles to make sense of what I'm saying. 'Yes, yes God, I'm trying! Wait for my second point...'

Of course, in these moments it is useless even speaking as the entire gathered community's gaze is drawn to the bird above my head. Such wonder! As if at last the Apocalypse has arrived, or Batman. As the saying goes: don't act with puppies or children. Add to that Egyptian Geese. It does remind me that the Iona symbol for the Spirit is in fact not the dove, but the goose, being less polite and serene, and more noisy and out-of-control. I think God likes that. The giggles and stifled laughs when the goose visits reminds us not to be infatuated by decorum.

From the front I don't get to see this first hand, the bird and audience communicating while I stare on mostly unawares until things are completely out-of-hand; it has a pantomime-like feel to it: Look behind you! The bird! The bird!

The window I as the preacher get to look through - and only I - draws few birds but opens to the preacher a view of the topmost branches of the glorious Plane tree that lies in the centre of our property.

This tree speaks to me, and it speaks to me through this window.

My very first function in this church was a wedding. It was a strange affair, with huge lights and cameras flanking the front area of the church, making it look less like a wedding and more like a photo shoot for a Paris-based fashion house. The bride was sombre, the groom nervous and red-nosed; something was rotten in the state of Denmark.  The guy in charge of sound and music tumbled down the stairs at the back of the church and walked with a limp for nearly a year after. Sometimes these things happen and sometimes they mean something - the money is in figuring out which is which. A close friend of mine got married on the rocks of a beach drawing the rumination from another friend: do you think this is symbolic? They were divorced a year later. Sometimes, you really should see it coming. Heaven knows, Mother Nature taps us enough times on the shoulder. This first wedding in this church under those spotlights lasted tragically less than two years. But, as it was unfolding, I looked up through that window and that tree was being beaten back and forth by a hysterical wind. Leaves, branches, not a calm twig on its large boughs. Ever since then, I've listened to that tree.

I listen to it when it loses its branches. It does this at the same time as we journey into Lent, an austere season, a season of surrender. It has a stark beauty all of its own, does Lent, just as that tree does, the bare-bone structure revealed for this season to the world; the only time the blue sky beyond is visible to me, and the knots in the branches get to flex their muscle nakedly, that others might appreciate.

Sometimes it is calm as I am calm. It doesn't happen often but sometimes  I am so at peace leading this community - my soul is rested, the prayers flow through me like a live-charge, and I am at peace and I see that tree swaying gently, as if winking at me, as if we are in this thing together, me and that tree.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not prophetic - it’s more a reflection, an outer impression of an inner feel; a mirror allowing me for even just a moment to consider the state of things, in a pertinent moment, when I take up the mantle of leading others. As if it is saying to me: how are you doing Andrew? Few acts of God are as merciful as those that show us the true motive, graciously setting alight a question mark and sometimes leading us away, and back.

In balmy weather it flutters in a light breeze, green - it aches with life; children playing in and around it, on it, life dripping from its branches. One of the wonderful members of this church said to me the other day that instead of saying to God, 'I love you God' say, 'I love you too.' That is good. Actually, that is great and it is great theology: that is life, all of it, a response to the Lover's first advance - I love you! I love you too!

Sometimes the tree is saying that: I love you.

The clock for worship hides beneath the window, set into a recess, both cyclical, but the clock a quarter of the size of the window; I suspect my stewards have had clandestine meetings wondering if they can't surreptitiously change the sizes, making the window smaller and the clock bigger; and then maybe adding an alarm that gongs on the quarter-hour or orchestral music that strikes up once the preacher has exceeded twenty minutes, like the Oscars. What can I say, I'm getting old and I'm prone to wondering through.

The window and tree. 

You know, ministry is plagued by people trying to change the world. That's not a bad thing but you can get lost: our agendas, our programs and sometimes it is all a horrifically thin veil trying desperately to stretch itself out over ego. That is why, I sense, so many rants have far more to do with subject than object. I know, I've been there, sometimes I am there. And so we promote ourselves away from the first love; the calling professions harbour this danger: a head teacher stares longingly across from the admin block as a class is being run, now by another teacher. The life-blood is cut off. In ministry, if you have a modicum of talent for this gig (and I say modicum for congregations are ludicrously forgiving of their clergy) you might begin to think you're 'all that'.

The tree reminds me of my roots. Of its relative permanence alongside my transience; it will be there long after I've stopped attending to my work in Hillcrest, and by God's good grace it will strike up with the next person who deigns to stand in this place.

It is large. It is beautiful. It reminds me that I am a small part of a really big thing and when you are a small part just start by doing the small things well, and then never stop.

My absolute, most favourite-ist preacher in all the wide world, Fred Craddock, once remarked,

"When I was in my late teens, I wanted to be a preacher. When I was in my late twenties, I wanted to be a good preacher. Now that I am older, I want more than anything else to be a Christian. To live simply, to love generously, to speak truthfully, to serve faithfully, and to leave everything else to God."

I am learning to love that. The tree loves that. It waves its branches in high praise.