POLITICS, SEX AND BRIDGE

I am certain that if one grows up with Gentle Jesus on one shoulder and a cute guardian angel on the other your entry to priesthood would be quite different to mine. God was not an issue in my home so I’m not sure whether my family were agnostic or atheist. Dinner table conversations tended to revolve around politics, economics, topics such as the Kinsey Report on male sexual behaviour and my grandmother’s latest ‘brainless’ bridge bid.



The tone was often heated but never boring.

THE END IS NIGH
Perhaps the reason I’ve remained optimistic about South Africa is that I’ve been hearing predictions about my homeland’s demise ever since I was five years old. As with so many diet fads, it just hasn’t happened.

How clearly I remember my grandfather, who’d just failed to win a United Party seat in parliament, declaring in 1948 that the end was nigh. The Nationalist Party, architects of legislated apartheid, had clocked a landslide win.

My grandmother was more concerned about being raped by black men. This did require a basic sex lesson over breakfast which went largely over my five year old head. But I loved the hat pin she gave me as my very own weapon to carry in my school satchel.

A RELIGIOUS SMORGASBORD
The nuns at the nearest convent had accepted me at ‘big’ school early because I could read and knew my times tables.

They also offered a smorgasbord of Mary, Jesus, God (in that order) and a host of useful saints. It is a credit to my doting family that there were no snorts of derision when I advised my grandmother to consult St Christopher whenever she lost her spectacles.

Ironically it was because I’d been taught by my elders ‘to think’ that  by 14 I was seriously questioning their politics and my own perception of black people. 

My first mentor was a ‘domestic helper’ who used to clean our bathrooms at the convent boarding school I later attended. How patiently she answered my questions about life in the township and her family.

We’d always had ‘help’ in our home but I’d never perceived them as having a life beyond my personal needs.

BEWARE GERMS
Although our domestic helpers (note the plural) lived on our property I was not allowed into their quarters. A while before I started school my mother had shown me a tiny bug in a basin and explained that germs were a thousand times smaller which was why we couldn’t see them. 

And, she added, there were lots in those rooms in the backyard. So I was never to visit them and never to eat off a helper’s plate or take mealie pap out of  a pot. 

 Oh, and it wasn’t a good idea to play touch tongues with the neighbour’s kids either – those damn germs were everywhere!

I wish I could tell you I’ll never forget the name of my first black mentor. I'm not sure if I ever knew it because the friendship ended quite soon. The Irish nun in charge of our boarding section forbade the friendship and the cleaning lady was allocated to another part of the school. As the sister explained, it was ‘a class thing’.

NO COUNTRY CLUB
Not that I had much social clout to spare.

Although my grandfather was a pharmacist, politician and intellectual he’d died when I was about six, having dropped while on a walk along the main Lyndhurst road. 

We had a large property and I still remember a ‘green mamba’, what we used to call the buses for black people, slowly winding its way up our long driveway. The driver had emptied the vehicle of passengers and brought his body to us.

My father inherited the family canvas business but left most of the shares in his mother’s name so that when my mother divorced him there wasn’t a very generous maintenance settlement. 

As a single-parent my mother couldn’t afford private school fees so a convent boarding school was our best option. 

I’m sure many who read this will horrified by the overt racism in this tale. Fact is even if we didn’t have Country Club membership, we whites were privileged beyond sensitivity. Even the  kindest, most religious folk lived in blissful ignorance of the cruelties of apartheid. 

Frankly, my dears, many were of the opinion that the early missionaries hadn’t done much to civilise the locals. 

Religious folk, including our Prime Minister, a pastor, were really clever at quoting the Bible to justify legislated segregation.

Most of us probably knew more about other planets than we did about the nearest township that provided our labour. Incidentally those townships were spatially designed so that if the ‘natives’ became troublesome they could be easily closed off with half a dozen tanks.

I’m not going to take you too deep down that atrocious pit. You may not be able to bear the pain. 

Suffice to say that by the time I matriculated my political genes had kicked in. I was, and still am, aware that sorry doesn’t do the trick.

BYE BYE PARTY POLITICS
As I look back on my priesting I am reminded of the pain of having to disassociate myself from party politics. I cannot tell you what it meant to serve as an observer in our first democratic elections in 1994. The hopes, the dreams, the path towards a rainbow nation. Our beloved Madiba.

Looking back entering the priesthood was much like matriculating. So many years focusing on a particular goal. Then you leave school and the door opens on another chapter in your life. The expectations are invariably unrealistic and reality can be harsh.

However, my years in Soweto were a privilege. 

In 2001 there was such a huge sense of new beginnings and of an emerging middle class. I’m often amused by those who are surprised by the growth of the cell phone industry in this country. 

What did they expect? By far the majority of our population had not been served by Telkom, our state owned telecoms provider. There were very few landlines in Diepkloof but I remember so well my first ‘Baptism class’. Of about 15, mostly young unemployed women, by far the majority owned a cell phone.  

For the first time in their lives my young parishioners were experiencing connectivity!

AN INTEREST TREADMILL
Meanwhile Archbishop Njongo was waging his battle to have third world debt cancelled. Among the many lessons I learned from him is that the debt incurred by emerging nations had already been repaid several times over. 

They were on a hamster wheel fueled by interest. 

More money was pouring into the global north than the other way round! Jongo’s allies included the world renowned economist Prof Jeffrey Sachs. They were both part of the Jubilee 2000 movement, named after the Biblical exhortation to observe a Jubilee year once every fifty years, in which debts would be forgiven. 

As they campaigned for the UN’s Millennium Development goals and cancellation of debt for highly indebted poor countries they were joined by U2 frontman Bono. (It was never boring working for Jongo.)

A FOUNDATION
At yet another level, Jongo had Ted Karpf serving under him as an Episcopal Provincial Canon Missioner. This was on a HIV/Aids project called Isiseko Sokomeleza (Building the Foundation). 

You may remember an earlier blog in which I mentioned how the then President of the United States, Bill Clinton had agreed that Ted should be seconded to Africa.

In 2001 Ted was funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to develop an international development pilot project under an initiative with the 10-million member Anglican Church of the Province of Southern Africa i.e. Jongo’s domain. (Angola, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland and St Helena)  

The project would run for nine years supported by the UK Department for International Development  and the US President's PEPFAR programme. These provided more than USD10 million a year. 

Two years later our ‘Big Gun’, as my son used to call Canon Ted,  was also named HIV/AIDS Coordinator of the world-wide Anglican Communion. He developed faith-based responses and community planning programmes globally. 

Traditionally the SA National Aids Council is chaired by our Deputy State President who at that time was Jacob Zuma. 

It may surprise you that in the midst of the Mbeki denialism and Health Minister Manto Tshabalala’s much derided beetroot campaign he provided Isiseko Sokomeleza with welcome support. 

This included addressing the All African Anglican Conference on HIV/AIDS in 2001.

Zuma lamented that the stigma attached to AIDS had resulted in horrific forms of discrimination and violence including rejection, ridicule and death. He spoke of the many families who had suffered untold pain and discrimination.

Jongo, who opened the conference warned the 130 delegates representing 34 countries, "We have an alarming tendency to be dazzled by statistics and a great need to put a human face to the people who are infected and affected."

It would become his mantra.

FORGET LEVITICUS
Ted was also a gay rights activist with a wonderful son and daughter from a marriage of 13 years. He'd ‘come out’ at age 40 in 1988, reporting that the role models were “few and far” between, but sexual liaisons were not. His partner for 12 years was HIV+ AIDS activist Warren W. Buckingham III.

At that conference I met another gay priest, Jape Heath. HIV positive, he was a founder of INERELA+ an international network of religious leaders, lay and ordained, women and men, living with, or personally affected, by HIV.

Jape with Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Both men would go on to earn global reputations for their work in the HIV/AIDS arena. Both would also underscore the invaluable contribution gay priests can make and why they deserve better from their Church.

Although my lifelong best friend was lesbian, she didn’t move in church circles so I’d never understood the unholy hurt religious lesbian and gay people experience.

In short, I’d discovered another insidious form of discrimination that still runs deep.

My friendship with Ted and Jape would add another dimension to my ministry as I increasingly counselled deeply troubled Christian men and women who had opted for heterosexual marriage in a desperate attempt to deny their sexuality and to please God.

I live in the hope that if we could stop quoting the Scriptures to justify slavery and apartheid this is also possible regarding lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and trans (LGBT) rights.

A QUARTER COW AND MOTHER'S PEARLS

Ever shopped for a cow? I hadn't and didn't know where to start. But if I wanted to celebrate my ordination to the diaconate properly I needed a mountain of meat. 

In Soweto egg mayonnaise sandwiches were not going to crack it.

We had this amazing butcher shop a few doors away from the church where you could braai (barbecue) your meat at a fire in the yard. 

A typical buy and braai set up in Soweto

Because services in the township end when the Holy Spirit decides I would emerge ravenous after as long as three hours.  Across the road from St James was a small supply store where I'd pick up a couple of lovely fresh buns. Next door was a tavern that stocked my favourite red wine. They'd sell it to me by the glass which I'd carry with my buns to the butcher where I could buy fillet steak for a song.  

My mouth waters as I write this. Those lunches were to die for dolls! 

I learned later that all the surrounding shops knew when I had preached because the congregation would emerge at least half an hour earlier.

Who needs a mic?
Speaking of preaching, I am always amused when wealthier parishes panic if the sound system packs up. We had a huge congregation but no microphone. So the norm was to trot up and down the aisle as you preached at the top of your voice. 

If you don't have a mic you trot up and down the aisle to preach

It's a wonderful way of connecting. One thing I never had the courage to do was to start a chorus while I was expounding on the readings of the day. My rector, another who has since become a bishop, would do this with such aplomb. 

What I did learn to do was worship with my whole body. I didn't have a singing voice but oh the joy of dancing to those choruses! Many year later when I was serving a traditionally white parish I was touched when a parishioner shared  that she had prayed for me before the service - until she added, "that you will stand still during the hymns."

Numbers don't count But, back to my ordination and the after party.  I still couldn't pin my rector down on the number of people I needed to cater for. Silly me. The system is to do the best you can. If the food runs out that's life. 

There was no way I could afford a whole cow even though my favourite butcher gave me a good 'clergy' price. So we settled on a quarter cow and several boxes of whole chickens. The Mother's Union, who volunteered to do the cooking, also gave me a shopping list for side dishes like rice and three bean salad. 

Wonderful township food

The feast they produced was memorable. 

More importantly the township approach to catering taught me an invaluable lesson. So three extra people pitch for Christmas dinner. Bring in extra chairs from the garden and share. It's the company that counts. There were times during those years when  I felt as if I was witnessing the miracle of the feeding of the 5000. 

You can imagine how I cringed on one of our ordinands' training week-ends. Held at another Soweto parish, the deal was that we would all bring lunch and share. We whiteys duly arrived with our cooler boxes, serviettes and cutlery but there was huge resentment when the rector invited his Mothers Union to join us. Horrors they hadn't brought any food!! Several indignant ordinands shunned the hall and took their cooler boxes to a spot where they could eat without sharing.  

I was so ashamed but the miracle was that we all had ample lunch that day and the fellowship made the event special. 

In these circumstances it would have been easy to romanticise the whole Soweto thing but God had given me Archbishop Ndungane to work for. Among the gems of his sage advice was to insist on punctuality "there's no such thing as African time". Another was to always stay on the right side of the Mothers Union in the parish. Often a good translation for "It's not in our culture" was "I don't want to do that."

Spectacular on a small  budget
Another practical lesson was how even a relatively poor parish (60 percent unemployment) could stage a spectacular event. Typically, when the archbishop visited our parish for an AIDS service the huge parking lot was carpeted with our congregants' finest rugs. Everybody, including pensioner grannies caring for their orphaned grandchildren, contributed. It was a feast of note.

In that congregation there was no discussion about whether tithing should be calculated before or after tax and I often witnessed the power of the widow's mite. My years in that wonderful community underscored what the archbishop was telling the world as he campaigned for the cancellation of the debt owed by the by the most impoverished African countries to the World Bank.  

He also argued that South Africa’s foreign and domestic debt, since it was incurred under the apartheid regime, “should be declared odious and written off”. 

An interest treadmill

Although I had been a political journalist I was surprised to learn that Africa was on an interest treadmill. Original loans had been repaid several times over. In an era when international handouts to our continent were the norm, more money was streaming out to the developed world than was coming in.

At a grass roots level I was learning that people aren't poor because they are lazy and choose to be.

Ordination
My ordination date galloped closer, there were stoles and to be designed and clerical shirts to be tailored. Invitations to print and distribute (Okay, I'll admit I was still a bit of a kugel.) 

St Mary's Cathedral

Buses were hired to take my congregants to St Mary's Cathedral in Johannesburg's city centre. Another was hired to transport my rather nervous white friends and family to the after party. They had to be convinced that they would emerge  from the township alive, their jewellery and handbags intact. (The effects of segregation were insidious and still are.)

Thank goodness those of us who were to be deaconed were placed in a conducted silent retreat at St Benedict's. I stepped off the merry-go-round into the oasis where I had first received my calling, where I was now a tertiary. It was a profound experience. 

I felt loved by God, loved by the nuns who I had grown close to, loved by my parish, my friends and my family. 

So often people who know I only really became a Christian at the age of 50 will comment on how I must have experienced happiness for the first time. Do they really think I was miserable until then? In fact I've been happy for most of my life. 

What I did experience at my ordination was unprecedented joy. Except for one small problem, I wore my mother's pearls for the service and, as we prostrated ourselves for the long litany, those damn beads really hurt - a touch of reality. 

Advice: Don't do this wearing a string of pearls!

PS: See my guest blog on TheologyMix 
http://theologymix.com/biblical-interpretation/its-time-for-christian-women-to-lean-in/

DON'T CALL THE ARCHBISHOP DOLL

The day of my interview loomed. 

Would the rector at St James in Diepkloof have me ? Was having a white, middle aged woman ordinand who needed a lot of training in keeping with his plans for the busy parish?

We set a time and he gave me directions. Along the way I took a wrong turn. No problem. Ask a policeman. 'Sure,' he said. 'Follow me.'  Which is exactly what a I did - through several suburbs. 

Sure enough we pulled up at St James but it was a Catholic Church. I explained that I was worried about being late for my important interview. 'Don't worry,' he assured. 'I'll ask another policeman.' 
Soon we were travelling through more suburbs in a convoy of two police vans and my Merc.


It proved to be third time unlucky. But, you've guessed it, we met another policeman and he had the the good sense to call my potential rector for directions. 

By now there was total buy-in to my future in the Anglican Church. I was going to be embarrassingly late so the lead van used its blue emergency lights.  I arrived at St James with three cop cars in attendance feeling like the Queen of England.

It was my first taste of what it would be like to work in Soweto. Those guys really cared.

You may recall that I had permission to only spend six months in the township but I knew there was no way I'd learn enough in that period.  Confession time. I didn't give the rector the bishop's letter which meant he could honestly say he'd never read it.

That afternoon marked the beginning of some of the best years of my life.

Another interview

There was another game changer.  

A friend in my original parish knew that I had counted among my PR clients the government of Lesotho. I'd conducted communications campaigns for two of the Mountain Kingdom's leaders besides various government departments. 

Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane had succeeded Desmond Tutu and needed a speech writer and media consultant. My friend recommended me.

This interview was at a classy hotel in one of Joburg's better suburbs. 

When Archbishop Ndungane was installed as archbishop one of our Sunday papers  ran a cartoon in which an extra large mitre (That high pointed headgear bishop's wear) was half way down his face. The implication being that he had a very large one to fill.  

As a huge fan of 'The Arch', as we still call the beloved Tutu, I must admit to wondering if there wasn't a great deal of truth in the cartoon. 

Archbishop Ndungane was very serious, quite shy and went to a lot of trouble explaining how the  Anglican Province of Southern Africa worked. 

While Desmond Tutu's focus had been on apartheid. His successor was deeply involved in a campaign to abolish the debt of developing countries and combating HIV/AIDS. 

He'd spent three years on Robben Island, was big on theological education and had formerly served as Bishop of Kimberly.


At one point in the interview I asked what I should call him. 'Your Grace or Archbishop.' was the reply. 

Now you have to understand that I'd been calling my chief executive clients 'doll' for years. I opted for 'Your Grace'. Initially it didn't roll off my tongue easily but growing respect helped.  

This was no Tutu. He was his own man

A hint to all ordinands, don't call your archbishop doll. It won't advance your career.

Understood by God

I got both jobs but looking back I see yet another God-incidence. 

As mentioned in my previous blog, ordinands sit at the bottom of the clerical pile. It was tough for someone who'd dealt with leaders of countries and major corporates. Archbishop Ndungane drew me into a world that included Bono, Jeffrey Sacks the world renowned economist and even (at arms length) the White House.

Bono

Prof Jeffrey Sacks

Writing speeches for him to make at the White House

                            
There was another great turnaround. 

PR practitioners have to stroke the media to get coverage for clients. I now had journalists clamouring for interviews with the Archbishop on every conceivable subject. 

Mind you, I did turn down a plea by one TV station wanting him to comment on a tagged penguin that had swum from Cape Town to Robben Island.


Indeed, working for Jongo, (which I didn't call him to his face) made my internship much easier.  Largely because I was experiencing Church in action.

I'd given up my HIV/AIDS work at the Joburg General Hospital in order to cope but  the infected and affected would remain part of my ministry. 

I cannot tell you what it meant to write speeches in which the archbishop declared 'We must shout from the roof tops that AIDS is not a sin.'  Or to be with him when the medical staff at a major AIDS research centre gave him a standing ovation.

It was the height of the AIDS pandemic and people were, as they are now, being destroyed by the stigma surrounding the immune deficiency.

A tattered spirituality

There was study, ordinand training, looking after my existing clients, working for the archbishop, serving in a new parish and finishing my house.  God was becoming a pinpoint on a distant horizon. Every now and again I'd collapse in a heap at St Benedict's, my favourite retreat house run by the Sisters of the Order of the Holy Paraclete (OHP). Filled with new resolve I'd emerge and jump straight back on my hamster wheel.

My Spiritual Director suggested that I  become an OHP tertiary. I needed the gentle, sensible, spiritual discipline. A thread to run through my perpetual busy-ness.

She knew that St Benedict, father of western monasticism, would appeal to me. He was the guy who broke ranks with the self-flagellants. Instead he embraced humanism, art and thought. His spirituality is all about balance between prayer, work and play. Hospitality is important. (Thank heavens I didn't have to give up my dinner parties.)

As a tertiary I would develop my own vows and my journey towards priesthood assumed a new rhythm and perspective. I learned to say, 'sorry I can't do that, I'm too busy.'  I knew that if God wanted me to be a priest  I would be one. 

Despite a new prayer discipline  (not too hectic but in place) my work diary worked better.

When I went through my formal discernment conference for priesthood the first question was: 'What will you do if you are rejected today?' 

The answer I once would have given (with downcast eyes) was:  'I'll accept God's will.'  Instead I was able to joke: 'I'll probably have a nervous breakdown.'  

The committee considering my physical well-being asked about my exercise regimen. I assured them that if ever I did feel that energetic, I lay down 'til the feeling passed.   

I hope St Benedict smiled when the conference voted to allow me to be ordained.  I had a permanent grin for at least a week. The ordination to the diaconate was barely two months away and I had an after party to organise. 

By then I'd learned that a genteel tea and cakes was not going to crack the nod in my new parish. Meat was essential. But I did make the awful mistake of trying to pin my darling rector down on how many to cater for. 

He kept avoiding the issue. Silly me. In Soweto you don't send invitations for an ordination party everyone is welcome (the parish roll must have had over a 1000 names). 

I had some serious shopping to do!
  

IT WAS THE TAX MAN NOT GOD

So there I was, in a process to discern whether God had called me into priesthood.  I was also putting loads of extra effort into my PR clients, driven by the conviction that Jesus had signalled that I would make a stack more money and be able to go into full time ministry. 

I would be 'Reverend Bountiful', fisher of men and women.

Oh, boy was I in for a shock.

I wasn't doing badly when I received my calling - nice house, a Merc, overseas holidays - but not enough to retire. Even if I could have lived on a stipend it didn't make actuarial sense for Church to employ people in their 50's  and then be responsible for them in their old age. Besides, I had a disabled son to support.

So why did I think I was called to full time ministry? You may remember that I'd felt called while meditating on the gospel story in which Jesus stands on the beach and sends the disciples to fish again after an unsuccessful night. They return with nets so full  that they can't even load the fish into the boats. Jesus then tells them that he will make them fishers of men.  

While I have no doubt that my priestly calling was in that meditation. I am just as certain of the dangers of taking the Bible too literally. 

There is real risk in reading the Scriptures as you would your  horoscope  in the daily newspaper. Somehow I'd heard Jesus promising me unprecedented financial success if I worked my butt off. 

But let's get back to the thread. 

Being an ordinand is no cake walk. One tends to shift from being a much pampered member of the congregation to the very bottom of the church hierarchical pile. It's like graduation from junior school to High School where you start at the bottom rung of the new ladder.

You have a living to earn and you have a new boss who expects you to work on week-ends. Your annual family holiday feels like a cardinal sin. Forget Lent. Forget Easter. Forget Christmas. That's like taking leave when there's annual stocktaking at work. 

You are desperate to be put forward for the discernment conference. This means trying to impress your parish clergy, the parish council, your bishop, your archdeacon the folk who run the discernment programme and God. (Probably in that order.)

In short, burn out looms. 

Women ordinands weep, much to the disgust of their rectors. 

Male ordinands see their doctors about stress symptoms.

Families make supportive noises but often feel neglected.

It's a war zone and I knew I had to work smarter at making my fortune so I pitched for a major government tender. Part of the process was to get a tax clearance certificate. 

'Ah!' said the grim man at the Receiver's office, 'We've been looking for you. You haven't paid VAT or tax for years.' 

My accountant, who handled all those matters, had paid himself instead of the Receiver. He'd dust-binned all warning correspondence so I didn't have a clue. He eventually went to jail but the backlog, the penalties and interest were humungous. 

 Like so many middle class South Africans our lifestyle had been financed by easily obtained credit. I was more than broke. I was insolvent.

That wasn't Jesus I'd heard from a beach. It was the tax man calling from his miserable cubicle.

This begged the question. What if my calling to priesthood had also been wishful thinking? If not, would the Church still have me? 

There was a meeting with the bishop and my former rector who was the bishop elect. They decided that I should stay in the ordinand's programme. 

Meanwhile I was still in my working class parish in a suburb that had seen better days. My rector had calmed down and I am still grateful for the training I got from him. Not that there was a great deal of love, it was more of an uneasy truce. 

As the bank reclaimed my home in Sandton there was another one of those God incidences I'm always so grateful for. Not far from my parish was a house that had been vandalised - no floors, not fittings, no windows, no doors. The bank that owned it was in despair. No one would buy it. 

Except me. 

I got it for a song which happened to be all I had. We boarded up the holes and, may God forgive me, for the first month we hijacked electricity from a street pole because we couldn't pay an electrician  or pay utility deposits. A neighbour put a long hose pipe over the fence. We boiled water in a kettle and bathed in our dogs' zinc bath. 

Sounds awful doesn't it?  In a strange way it was fun.  I've always loved to build and I shop in hardware stores the way other women shop for clothes. Every little bit of effort, every light switch, every floor tile had a disproportionate impact on our new home. It was a blank canvas. I found labourers who were used to being dropped off each day by their builder bosses and getting on with the job. 

I couldn't pay much but put them in charge of themselves. Between us we cooked basic food every day. Often the workers would sleep on the floor in an unfinished room. 

I'd picked up an old bath and basin and a hob at a pawn shop. Life was getting better by the day. Looking back I realise that there was one big bonus. My life had been stripped to the bare bones of reality and I've never felt as close to God.

Of course there were times when I missed my false nails. Hair tints and highlights were a distant memory. As were quite a few friends who did not want to venture into my low class suburb.

The house took shape, I had faithful clients.With no funds to socialise I was whipping through a theology diploma. There was food on the table, the house was becoming more than comfortable. 

And I was still an ordinand.

It was on one of our training  week ends in Soweto that I realised that I didn't know enough about the majority of Anglicans in our diocese. I asked the bishop to transfer me to a black parish.

I must explain that even today, 21 years after our first democratic elections, few white South Africans have set foot in a township. You cant blame them. Apartheid wasn't just about racism is was also about spatial segregation. 

The only township pictures we ever saw prior to 1994 were of violence and unrest. Most whites still genuinely believe that to go into a black area is to risk your life or , at the very least to be hi-jacked. 

But Soweto, home to a third of Johannesburg's population, is a mix of suburbs good and bad. 

The diocese gave me a letter giving me permission to work at St James in Diepkloof Ext 3. There were caveats. It would be for six months only and on condition the rector would have me.

The job interview is a whole other story. Watch this space.

  
Listen to Archbishop Desmond Tutu speak about prayer from his hospital bed (the family is hoping he will be discharged soon)  The link is ow.ly/RMCnd

SEE COMMENT BUTTON BELOW

SAINTS PROSTITUTES AND BAD BRANDING

As a divorcee, a single mother, successful business woman and an adored only child brought up to believe I was a genius, I was soooo switched off by the church’s branding of biblical women. The tendency to place them in three categories – temptresses, saints and prostitutes.

There I was, 50 years old, voraciously reading and studying the Scriptures for the first time and sans the influence of Sunday School or decades of paternalistic preaching from the pulpit. It didn’t take long to pitch my tent in the Mary camp – having enjoyed domestic help all my life, there was no way I could identify with Martha.



However, as I looked to the Scriptures for inspiration I knew I wanted to do more than learn. My activist genes were kicking in. I was impressed by the likes of Rahab who hid two spies from the king’s men among the stalks of flax which were used for her rope-making business. I was inspired by Deborah the judge and gobsmacked by Jael who hammered and a tent peg through Sisera's temples and into the ground while he slept.

(Batwoman eat your heart out.)


Mary tame?
I still fume at how Mary, mother of Jesus, has been tamed by Church. Was she really a doe-eyed humble teacher’s pet with an electric light behind her head?



Or a feisty female who raised her kids in a village which would have called her first child a bastard. All this at a time when honour was everything and she was still a teenager. We get a glimpse of the Yiddishe mama at the wedding of Cana. As in ‘Boychick make wine.’

She’s there for her boy throughout the crucifixion and then mothers his disciples. Dare I suggest that she played a meaningful role in the Early Church, along with other women so often overlooked? Still in her late forties was she just a frail granny for young John to look after?

We insult women as much by presenting them as floppy saints as assuming, without evidence, that they were temptresses and prostitutes.

Just as David and Peter were complex humans so were the biblical women. The point is, they leaned in and made a difference.

The Magdalene conspiracy
It was in one of my New Testament assignments that I stumbled on the massive gender discrimination perpetrated by Church against Mary Magdalene.

It continues. Only last week I asked my congregation what she did for a living. Yes, you’ve guessed it. A prostitute! Who says? All I have ever found in the bible is the fact that Jesus chased seven devils out of her. And Luke 8:1-3 tells of how she, along with several other women supported Jesus’ travelling ministry from their resources.

She’s a main player during and after the crucifixion. She’s mentioned in all four gospels but none say she is a lady of the night. If she was, so what?

St Augustine, despite his weird ideas about marriage and sex, declared her the ‘apostle to the apostles.’ No matter what she was before she met Jesus, let’s acknowledge her leadership role.

Okay, I’ll get off my soapbox but let’s give the woman a break. Seems our Catholic cousins are just as remiss. There’s a great blog by Phyllis Zagano, a senior research associate-in-residence at Hofstra University and author of several books in Catholic studies, http://ncronline.org/blogs/just-catholic/what-would-mary-magdalene-do

First apostle?
While we’re at it, I’d like to see ‘the woman at the well’ honoured as an apostle, the definition being ‘an early follower of Jesus who carried the Christian message into the world’.

By the way, does anyone ever notice that Jesus doesn’t instruct her to leave her lover?

Although I jump ahead in my story I must mention the sage advice I received from Archishop Njongogonkulu Ndungane when I was placed in a Sowetan parish while training for the diaconate. ‘Whatever you do, don’t get on the wrong side of the Mother’s Union in your parish.’



August is Women’s month in South Africa. We honour the 20 000 women who marched on the Union Buildings in 1956 to protest against the abhorrent Pass Laws of our apartheid regime. It is also the month when we beat our breasts about gender inequality.

The month comes. The month goes.

WERE THEIR KIDS DEAD OR ALIVE?

I’m going to cheat and jump ahead to my first June 16 in Soweto – the anniversary of a march by thousands of school children to protest against the introduction of Afrikaans as a teaching medium. That fateful day in 1976 when Hector Pietersen was the first to be fatally wounded as police lobbed tear gas, set dogs on the children and then fired at them.

The Madiba jive
In 2001, I was training for priesthood at St James Diepkloof and having a ball. My ‘black’ parish had made me so incredibly welcome that I would often forget my ‘whiteness’. I was learning to sing choruses (very badly) and developing my own version of the Madiba jive.

I loved Sundays in the township. After the morning service I could cross the road, pick up a couple of buns, head for the nearby butchery to collect a piece of steak and cook it on the fire outside. The tavern next door had taken to keeping a good red wine for me. I was getting to know the community. I was making friends I still have today.

Because I was ‘entering the church’ I’d had to give up my ANC membership card and resign from my branch committee but I still felt I had decent political cred. What an idiot! It took a wonderful man, Lekgau Mathabathe, to gently teach me two important lessons.

A retired headmaster of the famous Morris Isaacson High School, Ntate Mathabathe was a hero. He’d unequivocally rejected government’s instruction to teach in Afrikaans. He had also played a crucial role in providing direction and support to students, parents and the community before during and after the protest.

He’d risked his life and been detained. He also knew a great deal about jazz.

As a former political journalist I had written much about what we called ‘the 76 riots’ – the outcomes, the implications. Now I was in a parish close to where major events had unfolded. Many of my parishioners had been involved. My political genes were in overdrive.

Lessons
The first life lesson came when I complained to Ntate Mathabathe that our youngsters seemed not to take our ‘Struggle’ holidays seriously enough. His gentle response was that perhaps it was what true liberation was all about – a life in which our children weren’t burdened by the oppression their parents had lived under.

My second lesson came as I sat with him and some of our parish grandmothers discussing the awful June 16 events. Looking back I’m not sure our little gathering near the tea urn in the church hall was as coincidental as it seemed at the time. The old man knew I needed educating.

Mothers' heartache
Several of the women had been domestic helpers back in 1976 and they shared their stories. It was stuff I’d known but hardly thought about in my cocoon of white middle class privilege.



In those days ‘the girl’, as even grandmothers were referred to, lived in. Her accommodation in the back yard would have been just big enough to hold a single bed, a chair, a cupboard and a side table. If she was lucky there was hot water in the small adjoining toilet/shower.

Invariably she was allowed no visitors in the evenings, especially not by the man in her life. She started at about 6.30am and finished when the supper dishes were washed.

Her day off was Thursday, usually after she’d finished making the beds and washing the breakfast dishes. If she worked in the leafy northern suburbs of Joburg it would take an hour or more to reach her own home in the location. So there wasn’t much time to attend to it and her family in what was left of the day.

There were no cell phones and few were allowed to use their employer’s landline. TV, introduced in January 1976, was in its fledgling stage. News, always heavily censored, tended to travel via radio and over backyard fences.

On Wednesday June 16, 1976, the first clashes between police and children happened at about 8am. An hour later 10 000 pupils had converged on Orlando West High School. Many years later witnesses would speak of the township being 'on fire'.

South African history had been irrevocably set on a new trajectory.

As news of the march slowly filtered through to the leafy suburbs. Frantic mothers didn’t know if their kids were dead or alive. But there were houses to clean, meals to be cooked, washing to be done, dogs to be fed.

Geographically, socially and politically, life in their employer’s homes was a world apart from the townships. Even the slightest indication of interest in struggle politics meant, at best the loss of much needed employment. Moreover, whites were often as fearful of the regime as blacks were so a domestic helper with a child in the march could be reported to the security police. The few who were given compassionate time off couldn’t get into Soweto.

It was awful even for mothers who were in the townships. The unrest spread. When Mrs Masenya of Alexandra Township, east of Sandton, went to look for her children she was shot in the back by the police whilst crossing an empty stand.

As the St James women told me of the agony they’d gone through - the desperate furtive phone calls, the fearful speculation over fences not being allowed to rush home – they wept, so did I. It was as much for myself as for them.

Despite coming from a family that discussed politics and railed against apartheid at the breakfast table, I had never considered the diabolic effect that June 16 had had on domestic helpers caught up in my world. It was the beginnings of my understanding of why my black friends used ‘white liberal’ as a derogatory term.

A true benchmark
That day next to the tea urn I finally understood that the measure of oppression and political violence must not just be about bullets, body counts and political analytics. A mother’s heartache is among the truer benchmarks.

The women also told of how, despite the township being a cauldron of unrest and the powerful government response, Ntate Mathabathe had risked his life by going to the hospital and the morgue to identify dead and injured kids. It was he who gave them the news all South Africans were being deprived of by an inhumane system.

I will always be grateful for the sharing that day.

Okay, I’ll get off my soapbox, June 16, now called Youth Day, always affects me and I pray that I will never stop learning.