A Very Different Christmas Day

Because we were working on the night shelter through Christmas morning, I was tired and fell asleep for a few hours and Christmas Day just slipped away. So, the family decided to celebrate Christmas Day on Boxing Day.

What should we cook for Christmas Lunch? Usually, we roast a turkey or chicken. I remember that one year She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed asked the boys what we wanted for Christmas Lunch and with one voice we replied 'SAUSAGES!'

So, that Christmas we had nothing but sausages: beef sausages, pork sausages, venison sausages, chicken sausages, British organic sausages, hearty German bratwurst and bockwurst, even some Spanish chorizo. We ate sausages for Christmas Day, Boxing Day and for a couple of days afterwards. At the end, we were heartily sick of sausages.

This year, we decided to have a Chinese 'steamboat' (Hot Pot).

 
There was chicken and thinly-sliced beef, pork, lamb, prawn, fish balls, squid balls and fish cakes, eggs, wan tun, rice noodles, bean curd, spinach, tung ho, turnip and Chinese leaf.

The basic stock was water, salt, chicken stock (from a reduced chicken carcass), ginger, turnip and bean curd with Chinese leaf. The food was dipped into the simmering stock using wooden chopsticks or fine metal scoops, cooked, and then dipped into bowls containing soy sauce, chili oil and white pepper before being popped into the waiting mouthes - wonderful!

After a leisurely cooking and eating session (accompanied by a nice bottle of chilled Sauvignon Blanc and some cans of Barr's Irn Bru) we retired to the Christmas Tree for the traditional present opening.

Happy Christmas!

,

Christmas, the Homeless and Midnight Mass

On Sunday 22nd December Pope Francis, prompted by a banner in St Peter's Square that read 'The Poor Cannot Wait,'  compared the difficulties of homeless families to that of the Holy Family, when the Lord Jesus was born in a stable and the family was then forced to flee to Egypt. The Pope called on everyone to do everything possible to ensure that every family has a place to live. A few days earlier he celebrated his 77th birthday by inviting four homeless men to breakfast. This is a Pope who 'walks the talk.'

We had the opportunity and privilege to offer - in a very limited way - good food, a safe and warm sleeping space and companionship to several homeless men last night - Christmas Eve - at the Sacred Heart Church's night shelter.

It was the work of a couple of hours to erect the folding beds, haul the men's bags (containing their duvets, sheets, pillows) from the van, set up and lay the tables, put out reading material, snacks, set up the kitchen and do the necessary admin. There were chocolates on the side table, a Christmas tree and seasonal table decorations.

The beds are ready

and the tables are set

As there are a number of charities that help the homeless in Brighton & Hove, we assumed the men would have taken advantage of a free lunch offered by several churches at this time of the year, so we decided against the traditional fare of turkey, Christmas Pudding and mince pies. Instead, Rachel and Tara and their team cooked a beef stew with dumplings, mash and veg, followed by tiramisu and cloud cake. Under the watchful eye of maestro Georges, assisted by Cathy, the kitchen became an orderly bedlam of steam, smells, bubbling liquids and shrieks of laughter. The only tears came from Tara who stood furiously chopping onions, wiping her eyes, wet streaks running down her cheeks.

Tara sheds a tear or two

but soon recovers from the onions!

Before dinner, we gave each man a Christmas card signed by all the volunteers on duty, together with a Boots Gift Card for £10 (- thank you SVP!) At dinner we pulled crackers, told jokes and stuffed ourselves. Father Kevin roared at this joke from a cracker:
What is an Ig?
It's an Eskimo house without a toilet...(I suspect he will find a way to use it in a homily).

After dinner, a dozen guests and volunteers sat down to puzzle over Lynne's annual Christmas Quiz. There were questions on geography, movies, famous personalities and so on, all lavishly illustrated. Phill won the huge box of chocolates and Patrick moderated the debate over the answers in his usual urbane way.

A couple of the men asked if they could attend midnight Mass so three guests and four volunteers hurried off at 11.20 pm to listen to the carols before Mass began. One of the men told me that he had last been to Mass when he was about five or six years old and was very keen to experience it again. Another couldn't remember when he had last been and was a little unsure whether he should go, but his curiosity overcame his caution. (When I spoke to them this morning, Christmas Day, they were still enthused about the experience. When I told them that they had been away from the shelter for two hours, they did not believe me - but it was true; half an hour of carols, an hour and a half of Mass. It must have flown past for them. One of them described the choir's singing as 'Heavenly...it sent goose-bumps up my spine').  

Speaking of the choir, by kind permission of Jane I was able to take my camera and perch on a chair in the corner of the choir loft, taking a few (discreet) photos of the Mass. It was the first time I had observed the choir in action - and the volume of sound is scary! Thundering organ, soaring violin and raised voices made the space vibrate. It was beautiful, haunting and powerful. Jane even invited me to sing with the choir - I think she must have a good sense of humour.    

The choir 

 Mass began on the dot of midnight as Fr. Kevin processed down the aisle with five servers (including the accomplished Georges who had just finished his shift cooking with the homeless shelter, and his daughter Cassie, another shelter volunteer.)

It was a special night. Thanks to all the wonderful selfless night shelter volunteers and to the guests who let us become their family for a few brief hours. Deo Gratias!

A Perfect Epidemic of Brass Bands

Yesterday I drove north to Durham (a seven hours journey, including an hour at motorway service stations) and drove back home today, another seven hours, transporting our elder student son - and a huge load of dirty laundry - for his Christmas break.

It’s always a joy to visit Durham...even when the visit is only for 17 hours - and it was dark for 12 of these - even when it’s cold and wet.

It was Saturday night so Geordie revellers in skimpy outfits were flooding into town, heading for the night clubs. There was lots of laughing and banter.

 

By the bridge a lonely busker in a red hat was playing loudly. But everyone wanted to be indoors on such a night.

 

We did too. At Oldfields’ restaurant, after a steaming pea and ham soup, a decent glass of merlot and a fish casserole, the evening was transformed.

 

In the distance, high above the trees, I saw the twin towers of the cathedral loom out of the inky darkness, dominating the town.

 

Walking carefully over the flagstones and rain-slicked cobbled stones, past the old half-timbered buildings, I progressed upwards until I finally reached the 900-year-old cathedral, splendidly floodlit. The castle beside it was in darkness, the faint outline of its battlements just visible in the darkness.   

I moved forward to take another photo – and then disaster. I stumbled over a kerb, the camera flew out of my hands and hit the ground with a tinkling sound that suggested it would be a long (and expensive) time before it worked again.

It’s tempting to remember the trip as the occasion that I destroyed a camera. Instead, I remember it for the perfect epidemic of Salvation Army brass bands in the city and surrounding areas. Their jaunty carols lifted the spirits and reminded me that Christmas is both a holiday and a holy day. A big thanks to the various bands I saw in the motorway service station, the city centre and in the Durham Tesco’s. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen ... Joy to the World...Once in Royal David's City...brilliant!   

Israel: Thoughts From Afar

             It’s been two frantically-busy weeks since we returned from Israel, enough time for the humdrum of daily life to flood back, dulling the system - but also enough time to see the Israel experience in some sort of perspective. It was a massive experience, not the sort that you can easily forget and, in the quiet of an evening or lying awake at night, my thoughts occasionally drift back to the Lake of Galilee.

            Some random reflections follow, none of them particularly new or profound...     

            I think it was Father Pixner, a Benedictine monk in Jerusalem’s Dormition Abbey, who first suggested that the land of Israel is itself a Gospel, the ‘fifth Gospel.’ The four Gospels tell us of Jesus’ life and teaching; they speak of lakesides, deserts, hilltop towns, roads from here to there, wildernesses, mountains. The fifth Gospel is the holy land itself, the land where the Son of God was born, raised, walked, worked, preached, healed and died – and we can walk in His footsteps, in the same locations, marvelling.

            We all use our imagination to visualise the people and places of two thousand years ago, sometimes it is easy, sometimes it isn’t. Not having many deserts in fertile and green Sussex, I used to imagine the Judean Desert as a Sahara-type desert, perfectly flat with waves of sand - perhaps a French Foreign Legion fort lying beyond the next dune! Instead, the Judean desert is hilly, very rocky, lots of sand with shrivelled scrubs, a few mountains, some canyons – and occasional streams.

            It was easier to imagine the Lake of Galilee. If you have seen the West Coast of Scotland or the Lake District you will have a good idea what the Lake of Galilee is like (except the weather is much better – semi tropical in fact.). The lowest freshwater lake on earth, Lake Galilee is only thirteen miles by seven, surrounded by hills, and it is easy to believe that air moving from the cool Golan Heights down to the semi-tropical waters can cause sudden fierce storms  - as the Apostle Peter could well attest! (A storm in March 1992 sent waves 10 feet high crashing into downtown Tiberias – which is situated on the lakeside - causing significant damage).

            For me, Galilee spoke volumes. It is on a human scale with little villages and towns surrounding the Lake. It is easy to imagine the crowds of listeners forcing Jesus to retreat to a boat for his safety and to preach from a hundred yards offshore. It is also easy to imagine the apostles walking along the shore, from village to village, as Jesus taught in the local synagogues. Indeed, Jesus and four apostles (Peter, James, Andrew and John) lived in Capernaum, and when we were there we visited some of the ruins of the first-century synagogue where Jesus would have taught, and saw what is credibly believed to be the home of Peter. That is what the ‘Fifth Gospel’ means to me.  

            Speaking of geography, I had not expected Israel to be so small. It is only 263 miles long and between 9 and 71 miles wide, about 8,000 square miles in area – almost exactly the same size as Wales. Bethlehem is only 6 miles away from Jerusalem. Nazareth (which is between the Lake of Galilee and the coast) is about 65 miles north of Jerusalem, as the crow flies. Observant Jews (like the Holy Family) would travel from their home in Nazareth to the Temple in Jerusalem three times a year. To avoid Samaritan territory, they could not take the direct route and would have to go a circuitous route via the Jordan Valley, adding 50% more distance to the journey. Walking (through bandit-infested mountains, deserts, valleys in horrendous temperatures or wading through snow) they would take a week each way. They probably didn’t need to go to the gym to work out...

            The sheer antiquity of Israel is staggering. At Jericho, allegedly one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world, the first with city walls, we saw ruins of 23 different civilisations – basically piles of old stones – that archaeologists tell us may be dated as far back as 9,000BC – in other words they could be 11,000 years old. They may or may not be that old, what is clear is that there was a city here in ancient times, maybe the one where, in the worlds of the old gospel song, ‘Joshua fit de battle of Jericho, and de walls came a tumblin’ down.’ All over Israel there are ruins and archaeological digs that evidence both antiquity and the destructiveness of humans – Jerusalem was destroyed twice, besieged 23 times and attacked 52 times.    

            And that is one of the dilemmas facing the tourist - what is real and what is hokum?  Since there has been so much destruction, so much re-building, so few historic records from 2,000 years ago, can we really rely on the location of supposedly holy sites? Is this really where Jesus was born, where he died, where he performed the miracle of the loaves and fishes, where he prayed with the disciples, where he was tempted by the Devil, was transfigured, ascended into Heaven and so on? 

            The answer is probably that we cannot be sure for any individual site. However, there is a very good chance that many of the holy sites that we visit are indeed holy. The reason is that there is a trail of ancient writings and ancient churches (typically Byzantine and then Crusader) pointing to one particular spot.

            For example, consider the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. The New Testament says that Jesus was born in a ‘manger.’ However, early writers such as Justin Martyr, writing in the second century, say he was born in a ‘cave.’ This makes sense as many houses in these days were built adjoining caves and the cave was used to keep livestock and for storage. Third century writers such as Origen record that a particular cave was venerated as the birthplace of the Lord. When Emperor Constantine made Christianity the state religion he and his mother (Saint) Helena rushed about building churches on top of all the holy places they could find. So, in 339AD the first church was built directly above the cave. Emperor Justinian knocked it down in 530AD and built a larger one. Then the Crusaders in the 11^th century did their own re-modelling and, although the Ottomans nicked much of the marble, the church survived until modern times. So, the rule is, if your holy place has the ruins of a very, very old church stuck on top of it, it’s probably genuine. (The Church of the Nativity contains quite a lot of Constantine’s original church, including pillars and mosaics, and the ancient altar is over an ancient cave.)   

            One of the challenges the pilgrim faces is whether to be a pilgrim or a tourist. I’m a great camera buff, happily snapping away at the least excuse. At home, my first action on entering a church would be to genuflect, observe a moment’s respectful pause, and then kneel or sit in prayer (or, at least, in prayerful silence). In Israel I found myself barging into churches, wielding my camera like a weapon, looking for the best camera angle, trying to figure out what exposure and white balance was required...Maybe I wasn’t the worst behaved but I certainly wasn’t the best. As Chaucer revealed many years ago, pilgrims are not necessarily as holy as the places they visit. Enough said!

            Our tour guides were Palestinian Christians. There is concern at the numbers of Palestinian Christians leaving Israel to find work abroad and our tour agency had a policy of supporting them economically, to generate work for them within Israel; thus, we used guides, transport and hotels supplied by Palestinian Christians and were directed to their cooperative shop in Bethlehem.

            The Separation Wall (also called the Security Wall by the Israelis) is a blot on the landscape. It separates Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied areas of the West Bank so that they cannot enter Israel without authorisation. Whatever the rationale for its introduction, history tells us that apartheid and segregation carry the seeds of their own destruction and, as we celebrate the life and achievement of Nelson Mandela, let us pray that there is a Nelson Mandela in Israel today who will reconcile Jews and Arabs. The Palestinian Christians who were our guides on the tour identified themselves first as Arabs, as Palestinians, as oppressed subjects rather than as fellow-traveller Christians. Interesting, but also potentially concerning.