As well as dispensing waffle and
rubbish parsons listen to a great deal of it.
One of the most common nuggets of nonsense they have to bear comes from
those privileged enough to have been to a church school: "I was forced to go to church so much as
a child, I can't bear to go now."
Throughout my youth I went to church
twice at least on Sundays, and on weekdays, when at home, I said matins and
evensong with my parents every day as well, sometimes encouraged into it,
sometimes cajoled, occasionally forced.
For all that I was often bored witless at worship I look back on those
hours and hours of it in my youth with affection and nostalgia.
Cow dung church floors! Judiciously
diluted with mud and then smoothed and dried, cow dung polishes up to a gold‑flecked,
shiny, greenish‑brown floor that is less obdurately and cruelly resistant
to a worshippers unkneelered knee than is harsh
concrete. Many of the African mission
out‑station churches of my youth had such floors.
There were termites in the rafters,
occasional chunks of their dried spit‑and‑mud runnels dropped on to
our heads during long prayers. There were lizards on the walls. There were
crowds of people, acrid smells, shuffling and whispering bare feet, wailing babies. The liturgy was incomprehensible, the
readings were incomprehensible, only the sermon was comprehensible because my
father always preached in English and was translated.
The singing was magnificent, rich in
harmony, stirring, thrilling and accompanied by drums and homemade gourd
maracas. When the women became excited they began shrilly to descant and then
ululate, sometimes shuffling into the aisle in little impromptu dances.
People came and went throughout the
services. There was little pretended
piety. Most of the members of the
congregation gawped open‑mouthed at whatever happened to be going
on. The arrival of the white priest and
his family at an isolated mission out‑station was a fascinating and rare
event and so we were always well gawped at throughout a service. This used to worry my brother who hated being
stared at, even by our pet dog at meal times.
Worshippers scratched their heads,
fiddled with their ears, eyes and noses, rarely closed their eyes, walked in
late, very late and too late, suckled their bright‑eyed, shiny‑faced
and lovely babies. There was no tut tutting, no
censoriousness. It was all shamelessly
off hand and casual. The services
rambled on and on interminably.
As well as experiencing this African
worship, I experienced European worship, for my father took services in white
farming areas, in pretty little English‑type churches or in homes or
clubs. This provided an interesting
contrast. There seemed to be an
authenticity and naturalness to the African worship that was largely absent
from the European. The delicate little transplant from
This, I think, was because the African peasant still
lived in a largely undemythologised world, a world in
which God, spirits, angels, demons and ghosts had not yet been elbowed out to
life's periphery. In their world
spiritual beings were experienced realities, not merely unexperienced,
theoretical possibilities. Worship to
African peasants was an activity that came naturally. This is why people like me enjoyed it so much,
found it so invigorating, heartening and authentic.
We live in a very different world
from the African peasant. Where is your
God? Where is mine? Where do we encounter him? We can only point to a few strange
experiences, if any at all, and they are ambiguous and doubtful. There are a few blessed primitives among us
who assure us of demons, angels, ghosts in their actual experience, but
although sincere, primitives they are, retrogressives,
clinging to a world that knowledge and learning have destroyed. Our world has been demythologised. This is why worship to so many of us seems
unreal. We worship what we do not know
or experience, and so we have to pretend, strike pious poses, look and act
devout when only puzzled, mystified, bored.
We cannot afford to be casual and natural at worship like the African,
because it might give the game away.
This contrast between the African
and the European worship of my youth is what more than anything else has driven
me to sacramentalism.... God known
and revealed, to those with the eyes to see, in the ordinary, in bread and
wine.
For worship to be as authentic and
vibrant as African worship, more than assent to propositions or to a moral
force and code, more
than nostalgia or an expression of community and belonging, there has to be a
real God to experience even in a demythologised world. Elizabeth Barret
Browning joins forces with the African peasants of my youth and helps:
Earth's crammed with Heaven,
And every common bush afire with
God;
And only he who sees takes off his
shoes
The rest sit round it and pluck
blackberries.
Gerard Manley Hopkins joins forces
with the African peasants of my youth to help:
The world is charged with the
grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from
shook foil;
Henry Vaughan joins forces with the
African peasants of my youth because he
...felt though all this fleshly
dress
Bright shoots
of everlastingness.
African peasants, poets, musicians,
bread and wine all help me as a parish priest to encounter the reality of the
Divine in my demythologised world, helping make genuine my genuflecting and
authentic my worship. God bless them
all.