Quakers celebrating Africa Day in Johannesburg. Photo: Alex Kuhn.
Living Adventurously
Central & Southern Africa Yearly Meeting has written its own faith and practice. Hans Noak, who lived in Southern Africa for many years, reviews it.
‘Before we love others we need to love ourselves. How do we treasure our own Light and gifts. How do we learn to share what we have to offer? Do you seek to find the place where your own talents and the world’s needs meet?’ This is number one of the Advices and Queries (A&Qs) adopted by Central & Southern Africa Yearly Meeting. They wrote their own Quaker faith and practice: Living Adventurously to meet their needs. It is an inspiring story of small groups of scattered Friends – a story of worship and of listening to the spirit of Christ in prayer and obedience to the inner prompting of Love. Living Adventurously is a record of individual lives lived in a stressful political environment. I glanced at the names of contributors and recognised among them personal friends and fellow workers.
The book deals with worship: ‘A Ministry, which is the revelation of God, communicates to the members of the meeting’ (Kholeke Tshange). ‘I had found in Quaker meeting something that was absolutely right for me’ (Rory Short). ‘All forms of worship that give glory to God are good’ (Joanna Sankey). ‘It seems that much ought to happen, but what does happen depends largely on our state of readiness and the quality of our response’ (Olive Gibson). ‘Quaker worship is spiritual not sacramental. It is mystical worship, direct connection with the Source… We are not creatures learning to be spiritual we are spirits learning to live’ (Jennifer Kinghorn).
The book deals with the experience of community: ‘The fellowship of Yearly Meeting has once more been a source of joy both to old hands and first time attenders. Our meetings are small and widely scattered and we badly need to meet with one another to be nurtured and renewed. At this time we may hold the world record for hugs per day.’ (YM Epistle 1999)
The book deals with many other areas of Friends concern and work during the time of apartheid rule and now under a black government: ‘My concern is for the inward being from which the concern for outward action grows’ (Rosemary Elliott).
The story is one of peaceful protest against the apartheid policies of the SA government. It is one of building bridges between women and men across the divide of colour, race and politics. ‘Our guide told us… that many whites such as he, working with friends in Soweto, simply refuse to get the required government passes to travel in a black township. Why should we be required to have government permission to visit with our friends just because their skin is a different colour?’ (Marjorie Nelson).
Jennifer Kinghorn was invited with other church leaders to take flowers to a grave deep in Soweto. She writes: ‘The purpose was to express sympathy and respect towards the thousands of parents in Soweto who had lost children during the ten years of student unrest… A state of emergency had been declared. We expected to be arrested so we had warm socks and toothbrushes and Bibles in our pockets and I got permission from my children.’ The soldiers prevented them reaching the graves. They held a prayer meeting outside the hospital and left the flowers there. As they left the soldiers trampled on them.
New tensions have to be faced. Nozizwe Madlala Routledge, a Friend, became deputy minister of defence in the first government formed by Nelson Mandela; a role very difficult for SA Friends to accept. Nozizwe gave the Richard Gush lecture of 2006: ‘Speaking Truth to Power – Peace is a Struggle’. She tells us: ‘Through a creative Quaker process we produced a “Quaker Statement on Peace in Africa”.’
Blacks are no longer victims – they are proud. Whites are no longer all powerful – They can be discriminated against. All are grappling with deeper meaning. ‘God in the other person’ ‘God is the other person’ proclaims a new poster in Johannesburg Meeting House. All are challenged to perceive God in the other, the poor and the squatter, the refugee from Zimbabwe or far away, the new rich, the new powerful and the new profiteer. The mothers who lost sons and husbands want to be remembered. The millions living in shanty towns. The old and particularly the youths whose hopes have come to nothing. All are waiting.
From a poem:
‘Now. Yesterday has gone,
but what has it left behind?
Tomorrow we are not sure about.
We may not see its dawn.
All that we can be certain of
is the minute we call ‘now’.’ (Sue Farren)
HW van der Merve spoke: ‘The Truth and Reconciliation Commission failed to meet the deep needs of a large part of the population to see justice done towards the major policy makers and implementers of apartheid. I became especially conscious of this need through my friendship with Winnie Mandela and the contrast with her ex-husband. Like Winnie, there are thousands, no millions of black people who are not ready to forgive the whites, especially the Afrikaners, as Madiba (Nelson Mandela) has done. That deep-seated need for retribution has not been properly acknowledged in the Truth Commission by our churches and our political leaders. To put it in popular terms: Mandela has leaned relatively more towards peace and reconciliation and less towards justice than I would have liked to see.’
‘Being Southern Africans we are well placed to be a beacon to the world on how men and women, black and white, young and old, citizens and refugees, people speaking dozens of languages and being of varied ethnicities can recognise our common humanity by working towards economic equality for all.’ (C&SA Yearly Meeting 2007)
As I reflect on the stories here published I have a sense of a ‘people of God’ growing spiritually and some of this growth has been recorded here. The way forward will lead through wider understanding and searching for deeper personal ways of forgiving. Spiritual growth is ongoing. A new South Africa is asking of Friends to develop a new perception, both of the physical world in which we live where each one is different from his neighbour and the real world, the Inner world, God’s world in which we are one in Spirit, in God.
Living Adventurously is published by Central & Southern Africa Yearly Meeting. PO Box 7205, Johannesburg, 2000, South Africa. ISBN 978 0 620 458320. £5.
