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Day 1: Travel, Rosettenville
by Fr. Michael Greene
24 Jan 2010

This was the day we’d been counting down to. The mission trip started at the main Eucharist at St. Luke’s. There was a bigger than average crowd, but it felt strange. Bigger still than just the people in attendance, somehow. After the sermon, there was a commissioning service, and the wardens anointed the hands of the mission team with chrism. The commissioning produced a visceral emotional response in an unexpected way. People were in tears. During the sermon, but especially during the Eucharist, I felt like we were on another planet, there was an ethereal sense about it all. I felt like my words were echoing down a luminous length of copper tubing that gave everything a strange resonance and echo. All of the words of the prayers and the hymns, especially during the Canon of the Mass, took on special significance, the last hymn was also full of Spirit-guided meaning. It was more than just the feeling of ‘what if this is the last time?’ The Spirit was present and speaking through the very words we’d chosen. “Jesus shall reign wherever the Sun” spoke to a congregation that was literally sending its ministers out into the world for the first time to serve in His name. “His name like sweet perfume shall rise” rang in the middle of a church that was drenched in Oil of Chrism. “Infant voices shall proclaim their early blessings on his name” as Aidan, Gabe, Jocie, Davonte, and Deaaron frolicked in a church that they know belongs to them better than most old-timers do.

Coffee Hour had a peculiarly valedictory feel to it, but not much actually happened there. Mostly it was focused on last details, and getting things together. It was clear that when those who weren’t going on the bus had their last chance to say good-bye, there was some particular fear and excitement. The ‘RockStar Tour Bus’ lived up to its name. It was comfortable, and spacious, and everyone who went along had a very good time. Everyone except Aidan, who didn’t want Daddy to go at the end, but, as I found out from a texted photo in the airport, he was given a blissful moment of sleep to make it back home, and I trust he’s plugging along. The gate check was more complicated than it needed to be, because we were misinformed by KLM’s counterparts at Delta about the check-in rules. In the end, one bag of fairly manky shoes and some books had to be jettisoned, but before you knew it we were waiting, and waiting and waiting inside terminal 5, which has no shopping, no restaurants, no bars, just a TV with the Bears-Packers game. We just sat and watched the Bears slowly lose. Once we finally got on the plane, all was well. We had oodles of space, and could spread out as desired, to sleep and do our respective things. The only trouble was, nobody could sleep, and we all kept checking in with each other about new ideas that we’d had. We landed early at Schiphol, and I found myself wishing the layover were either longer or shorter: 4 hours is almost, but not quite, enough time to leave the airport and find something fun to do in the city, and it’s way too long to sit at the Schiphol McDonalds. But we made in through, and got on the next plane in good time: a smaller, more crowded version of the previous night’s trip. All in all there was nothing to complain about with KLM, but by the end of the trip, all of us were ready to be done with airports for a while.

Highlights from that trip included flying over the Alps, Rome, Tunisia (and strange black columns of smoke), The Sahara, Darfur, Lake Tanganikya, Bulawayo, and Praetoria. Africa is big. The Sahara is big. The oceans of corn in the Midwest have nothing on the oceans of hot, flat, sandy death that slowly ripple through the Sahara. Staring out at the sand made me feel strangely sick, so I turned my attention to my sparkling water and my video player’s rendition of ‘In Bruges’ and ‘Inception'.

We landed in Jo’burg after what seemed like an impossibly long flight, and were met at the airport by Fr. Thabo, the chaplain of the St. Augustine’s school which is what most of the old CR Priory in Rosettenville has become. We were loaded up with bags and looking for lockers, or storage faclilities where we could leave the bags overnight, but Fr. Thabo wouldn’t hear of it. He was driving a Vauxhall Corsa hatchback which would have strained to fit all of us without our luggage, and instead of showing us to the (very pricey) left luggage desk, he made several trips back and forth, starting at 11:15 at night and not getting us all in until after 1 (a question about a supermarket led to an unplanned U-turn and a negotiation to buy Simba Chips, chocolate bars, and diet coke for his very important American guests from a filling station that had closed at midnight. The poor fellow was due back at work at 7 a.m., but nothing was more important.

But then, here we are, in St. Peter’s Lodge—the old CR priory, full of unmistakable CR sights and smells. This was the place where Trevor Huddleston CR leapt into action and started taking ministry to the impoverished and abused black community seriously; the place where Rayomd Raynes CR and Aelred Stubbs CR were shot at for protecting black students, Steve Biko among them; the place where Abp. Desmond Tutu was dropped off as a teenager in the hopes that something would ‘click’ for him. We got dropped off here. And it didn’t take any pushing from me for things to ‘click’ for the group. A bottle of duty-free wine and a packet of Simpa Crisps led to some spontaneous prayer and awe-struck-ness at 2 in the morning. Awestruck about the fabulous hospitality we had already received. Awestruck about the fact that of all the hundreds of things that might have gone wrong, the worst one was that a bag of second-hand-shoes was left behind. Awestruck that here were were sitting in the place where God made a handful of people’s skin crawl and their spines tingle when they heard the word ‘apart-hate’ and they knew that the only thing to do was to change the world, which had clearly fallen short of the vision of the glory of God that has been revealed in Jesus Christ.

Tomorrow morning, we’ll wake up early, launder ourselves in those unmistakeably CR tubs and showers, stretch over instant coffee in the summery smells and sounds of the courtyard, and then, offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in a way that perhaps falls less short of the glory that has been revealed to us than most of what we do, in spite of the fact that it’ll done without books, bells, or birettas, or that it’s done with duty-free wine and a wheat thin by people who haven’t really got the foggiest idea what they’re doing here. It will fall less short than usual because all of us who worship there will know that it is tied to the One Sacrifice that finally brought down apartheid, it is tied to the worship and prayers of the people of St. Luke’s and everyone for whom this mission trip is so important; it is tied to the work of countless thousands who have suffered and died so that Christ’s work might be made more present in the world. After that, we’ll enjoy some more hospitality, and get on the plane one more time, to go and see what’s waiting for us with Nicolas in Harare.