Being away

Lots of things have happened since I published my last blog. I had troubles with our website mixing it up somehow, not knowing how to restore what I had done wrong.  In the end we decided to renew it altogether.  Our old website had still been designed by Carl some six years ago while we were still living in Princethorpe, no small feat for one not trained for the job. Now we are waiting for the first draft of a new design created by the son of a friend who has made computers his living. We will let you know when the new website is ready to be revealed.

What was most important for me personally was my trip to the Philippines. I had been a missionary there from 1968 till 1991 and had only be back for a short visit in 1998. The Parish of Buenavista, my first assignment in the Philippines, celebrated the 75th anniversary of its establishment in 1937 and I was lucky enough to be able to accept their invitation. I was a bit worried that my good memories of the past would be disturbed by the many changes that had taken place in the meantime. But my worries disappeared on the first day by the warm welcome we received.  I say We, because my youngest brother went with me on this wonderful trip. Of course, things have changed considerably and not all changes were to my liking, but the Church in the Philippines is very much alive and all generations are involved.

My trip to the Philippines was not my only trip lately, I have been to Germany as well. This visit was mostly work. For over ten years I have been a member of the Financial Advisory Board of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart. We meet twice a year, once in spring and then in autumn. We discuss the financial reports and budgets of our international leadership team and of entities directly under their responsibility.

Being away from Aston is not without its problems. I have been involved in English language classes with three groups of people: Bangladeshi men, Eritrean women and a mixed group of Roma people from the Czech Republic. The interruption is bad for their perseverance. Language study is a a hard job and learners need all the encouragement they can get in order to keep on it. A little difficulty is enough for many of them to stay away. After all, you don't see much of a difference if you miss a class or two. True, but it is easier to stay away than to come back.

Ton

Multicultural

Our Sacred Heart church in Aston is becoming more and more multicultural. The Easter weekend was telling in this respect. We had four baptims: a man and a boy from Nigeria, a girl from the Gambia and a baby from Vietnam. After the Sunday morning Mass I was approached by a family from Ethiopia who wanted to introduce themselves having newly arrived in the parish. They were followed by two Roma women from Eastern Europe, each carrying a bunch of red roses which they wanted to leave as an offering.

The increase of people from all over the world is not typical for our Aston parish. It happens to all innercity parishes. On the one hand it is encouraging to have new blood coming in and see young families lowering the average age of our elderly church congregation. On the other hand, I wonder what the future will bring. The Diocese of Birmingham is about to start a consultation about the restructuring of the diocese and I am afraid that the innercity parishes  will be more than equally affected by it.

For one thing innercity parishes are relatively close together with no more than a mile or two separating one church from another.  Moreover, public transportation (busses, ring and ride) is widely available in the city area and many parishioners make use of it already. It will be more troublesome to travel farther or even to change busses, but it may be argued that these difficulties are not insuperable.

Financial considerations may play a big part too. Innercity parishes are poor parishes located in deprived neighbourhoods which cannot afford the services of a full-time priest. It is rather striking that the Sacred Heart parish together with the two parishes of Nechells have priests with a double function. Apart from their parish ministry they are active as a diocesan functionary or as a school chaplain.

In short,  innercity parishes seem strong candidates, if it becomes necessary in the future to combine parishes or to close some altogether. Nevertheless, what should not be lost in the process is the opportunity offered by the presence of parishioners of diverse cultural backgrounds.  They should be more than welcomed. They are a Godsend to give new vigour to an old church and to make it truly “Catholic”, meaning “universal”.


Ton

   

Buildings closed and reopened

It has been some time– actually back in October 2010 - that I wrote a blog about four monumental buildings in Aston that had been closed or were about to be closed and I wondered what would happen to them. Would they just be boarded up and pose a challenge to local boy groups to break into them? Or would alternative uses be found transforming the buildings once more into something alive and not just derelict?

Well, I can report now that three of the four buildings have reopened or are presently being refurbished for re-use.  The first to do so was the former City Academy, a building only constructed in 2004 and in good condition.  It is now being used by the Birmingham City Council. The offices of the Birmingham Adult Education Service are there, as is the Aston Community Learning Centre and the Aston Library. There were fears that the Aston Library would be closed altogether or be replaced by a mobile library going around not just in Aston but in the adjacent neighbourhoods as well. Fortunately , this did not happen and the Library just moved to its new location, even though it has  less opening hours than before. Somehow cuts needed to be made.

The second building that has reopened is the old Aston Library and Aston Council House. It is being transformed by the Mohiuddin Trust, located nearby at Victoria Road, into an international college for girls, the second all girls school in Aston, both owned by sections of the Muslim community. The Trust acquired the building at a public auction and reportedly paid the amount of £450,000 for it.  Parts of the building are in good condtion but other parts need a lot of investment to make it into a functional  school.

The building that has been left boarded up longest is the M&B Guild Arms, the former pub at the corner of Witton Road and Ettington Road. It was already closed before we arrived in Aston over four years ago and our house has in fact been erected, as one of six, on the former parking and play ground of the pub. At present, construction work is going on both inside and outside and according to the new owner the pub will be remodelled into apartments.

That leaves the old Broadway School Annexe at Whitehead Road. The Area Action Plan of Aston, Newtown and Lozells, September 2009, lists the building together with the Firestation which, the report says, is programmed for closure and relocation.  Two options are given for the whole complex: the one is community use, for instance an education centre, and the second is conversion of the buildings into residential housing. Nothing has happened so far. Perhaps the reason is that the School Annexe is in a bad condition and this may deter potential developers.

Even so, I must admit that the reopening of three out of four closed buildings is much better than I expected two years ago.

Ton  

Cigarette

Yesterday when I walked the streets near Broadway School, the biggest secondary school in Aston with about 1,300 pupils, I was asked for a cigarette by one of the students. He just stepped out of the group he was in and put his question to me: do you have a cigarette? I had never seen him before and the other way around is likely true as well. So, I assume that he made his request to a complete stranger.

I wondered a lot about this happening. Was there some intimidation going on? After all, he was not alone and meeting groups of boys in the street can be threatening. On the other hand, it did not seem to be a group decision to ask for a cigarette, just this one boy who wanted something from me. He did not glance around to see whether the others were listening and when he found them attentive put his question to me.

I happen not to smoke and that was my immediate answer trying to say it in a friendly way accompanied by a smile. I don’t think the others even heard my reply, they just walked on. It was only he who got my answer and he accepted it with a nod and that was all.

What was his real purpose? Was he truly after a cigarette or was it something else that he wanted? Was the phrase about the cigarette a kind of code for weed or other drugs? To be honest I have no idea and no way of finding out either. Whatever the purpose behind the little incident, I feel that friendliness should be the answer to any question, even to those that seem strange and out of place.

Ton

Survival

The St James Advice and Community Centre has a new name; it is now called CAN DO 4:13. The new name refers to the Letter of Saint Paul to the Philippians, chapter 4, verse 13: “There is nothing I cannot do in the One who strengthens me.”

The new new name does not mean that the Centre is full of confidence and making a new start. It rather means that the Centre acknowledges that it needs lots of help from Above in order to survive and to overcome its difficulties.

Funding is at the heart of the problem. In the course of its long existence of over thirty years the Centre had become more dependent on the financial support it received from  Birmingham City Council, roughly 75%, but this source of funds has now dried up.  There had been some hope that a new application would be favourably received. It involved moving away from advice on migration matters to advice on debt problems, as the Council demanded, but this change was not enough to get a slice of the new funding.

The Centre is still operating but at much lower levels of activity. It involved the painful process of making some staff members redundant and giving debt advice training to the remaining ones.

Will the Centre survive? The change of name is intended to make this possible. It makes of the Centre a charity in its own right,  no longer under the umbrella of the Parish of Aston. It is hoped that this change makes it easier for foundations and trusts to contribute to the funding of the Centre, especially those that shy away from religious institutions. After all the Centre makes a social contribution, even though the motive behind it is that of Christian service.

Ton

Roadworks

Ettington Road has been resurfaced. It took only two days to do so at a little inconvenience to the residents who had to put their cars somewhere else.

The actual work on the road  was preceded by a letter from the Project Director informing us, ahead of time, of what would happen and what would be expected of us. This is the correct and normal procedure, which should be no reason for surprise.

What was surprising, however, was that the letter of the Project Director was the third letter we had received about the resurfacing of Ettington Road. The first letter was quite some time ago. It announced the roadworks, but they did not happen, at least not on our road. Neighbouring streets were worked on instead. The second announcement made me frown my eyebrows. It did not come from the Project Director, but from one of the councillors of the Aston Ward. My thought was: what the heck does he have to do with the maintenance of our road? Is it not a decision of the whole City Council to award maintenance contracts to applicants? Can it be that this councillor is trying to gain electoral advantage out of a project that is not his own?

If this was the intention of the councillor, it backfired, because nothing happened on the days he had announced. Work only started when the Project Director sent out his notices.

The resurfacing had another twist. A few months ago the worst part of Ettington Road, that at the corner  with Federick and Witton Road, was repaired. It was not just filling in the potholes but it involved taking out the whole corner section and paving it anew. It took a day’s work.  When last week the whole Ettington Road was resurfaced that newly laid portion was taken out again and replaced with fresh asphalt.

Even in times austerity money is still being wasted and government departments do not seem to get their coordination right.

Ton   

Our Living Room

Visitors entering our house have been surprised to see two pictures with Muslim calligraphy on the right wall of our living room. The surprise has not been the same for Christians and Muslims. Muslim visitors are startled to see an attribute associated with Islam on display in our house and Christians wonder what we, a Christian community of Roman Catholic priests, have to do with a devotional object of the Muslim faith.

The two pictures in question are beautifully painted representations of two of the names of Allah. In Islam tradition Allah has 99 names or one hundred if one includes the name Allah itself. Recitation of the names is a devotional practice in Muslim piety using 99 or 33 prayer beads.

 

The two names we selected for our living room are Ar-Rahman, the All-compassionate, and Al-Wadud, the Loving One. We explain to our visitors that Muslims and Christians worship the same God, the Creator of all that exists and the Giver of all life. We may have our differences – and they are substantial indeed – but this does not take away that we have much in common as well. An acknowledgement of our similarities can bring us together. After all, we need each other, for all believers of whatever faith community live in a secular society in which faith itself is suspect, is considered irrational and even dangerous to human well-being.

The two names have been selected for a reason which we also explain to our visitors. They are closest to our own spirituality as Missionaries of the Sacred Heart. We try to live a spirituality of the heart, following Jesus Christ, who opened his heart to all kinds of people, especially those ignored by others. He was indeed a very compassionate and loving person, representing the Heart of God in this world.

We did not know it at the time, but by appropriating the two names we showed our ignorance as well. In Muslim tradition Ar Rahman is always taken together with Al Rahim. Both words are related to the quality of rahma, meaning mercy and compassion, and occur right in the opening verse of the Qur’an. Mistakenly we separated what Muslims keep together. Fortunately, no Muslim visitor ever pointed this out to us.

Ton 

Preacher

In the bus on my way home last week a guy stood up all of a sudden and started to preach. It was standard evangelical theology. We are all sinners, often doing the wrong things, unable to overcome our weaknesses, because of which we face punishment and eternal damnation. But there is hope, because thanks to God we have been given a saviour, Jesus Christ who died for our sins on the cross in his great mercy for us. So let’s confess him as our Lord and Saviour, and his healing power will renew our hearts and give us eternal life.

On the one hand I admired the guy. He was youngish, in his early thirties I think. You need some courage to get up in a crowded bus, raise your voice and proclaim your message. On the other hand he annoyed me, because he forced himself on people in a riding bus without giving them much choice than to listen to him. The alternative would have been to get up and leave the bus or to shout him down. Nobody did anything of the kind. They just remained in their seats for the five minutes or so it took him to finish his memorised message. They showed neither approval nor disapproval. At the end of his sermon the preacher asked the people to say after him in prayer and to confess Jesus as their Lord and Saviour. Nobody did and he finished the prayer as he started it, on his own. At the next stop he left the bus.

It would have been different if he had approached passengers individually and asked them whether they knew Jesus Christ and believed in him. Then they would have had the choice of entering into a conversation with him or declining it by telling him that they are not interested. This would have been more respectful of the freedom of his fellow human beings and of their right to be left alone. But I guess he felt such a strong sense of mission, such a strong urge to save people from hell and damnation, that he took the liberty to go a little too far.

I felt no inclination to get into a discussion with him myself, certainly not on a bus while trying to get home after a rather busy day. There are better times and places. But had a discussion taken place I would certainly have posed the question to him: what do you think? Would the Son of God have become man, even without the sin of Adam and Eve?

I wonder whether he would understand the question at all and grasp its implications.

Ton

Fasting

Last year during Lent I was asked to give a talk in the parish of Tamworth about Christian fasting or what remains of it and the fasting of Muslims during the month of Ramadan. The request prompted me to have a closer look at fasting in both religious traditions and to see what they have in common and where they differ. In doing so I was struck by the differences in particular, differences not just in law but in the ideas behind the fasting as well.

For one thing the Christian tradition, following in this the Jewish prophets, has an anti-fasting strand. The prophets criticise a kind of fasting which abstains from food and drink but is not expressive of a change of heart. Fasting should lead to conversion and to the practice of justice. If it does not, it does more harm than good.

Related to this is fasting as penance or as prayer. One fasts as an admission of one’s wrongdoings; one is sad about one’s sins and prays for forgiveness. The abstinence of food and drink serves as an atonement showing God that one is serious about mending one’s ways. At the same time one hopes that God will withhold his punishment and renew his grace. The fasting of Jesus can be seen along these lines; the only difference is that he does not fast so much for himself as for the whole people of God.

If I understand them correctly, Muslims would be wary of this kind of fasting. It resembles too much an attempt to change the mind of God, forcing his hand as it were by refusing to eat and to drink. God is above even the semblance of manipulation and He alone decides about to whom to extend his mercy and forgiveness. What his believers have to do is just to submit themselves to his will and trust that He will reward his faithful servants.

The fasting of Ramadan is foremost an expression of this belief. It is done not on one’s own initiative but in answer to God’s decree as revealed in the Qur’an. Fasting is an act of obedience and surrender to God’s will. It is an attempt to be on the side of God, not an attempt to get God on our side.

There seem to be different images of God behind the different traditions of fasting. The Christian God is that of a Father whose children may approach Him freely and almost playfully. The Muslim God is that of a Sovereign who is merciful as well but on his own terms.

Ton

Riots

Aston has a bad reputation; it is said to be unsafe and infested with gangs. It is therefore with some glee that I can report that by and large the recent riots in Birmingham have passed by Aston. There was some minor trouble in TESCO and a window of an optician was smashed at the roundabout near the supermarket, but those are the only scars of a neighbourhood that has remained peaceful on the whole.

This is not to say that we can shrug off the looting in the city centre as no concern to us. Disaffected youth are found everywhere, even though they express their frustrations in different ways and in different places.

What has happened reminded me of something I read a few years ago. It was an editorial in The Tablet, the Catholic weekly, of February 17, 2007. The editorial commented on a United Nations report, prepared by Unicef, about the treatment of children, which put "Britain at the bottom of a league table of 21 prosperous nations". The comment went on: "On a range of criteria, some economic but some directly measuring children's happiness and well-being, Britain's adults are failing to give the next generation what they deserve and need. This is a portrait of a nation that does not love its children enough. It does not bode well."

Alas, the prophecy has come true and the signs that were apparently there have not been sufficiently heeded. The Unicef report mentioned many economic and social reasons having to do with the family, the peergroup, education, employment etc., but for The Tablet these factors are not the only ones to consider. It surmises "a spiritual crisis behind the sociological one" expressed in these strong words: "Today British society is reaping what it sowed with its move towards a selfish consumer culture and focus on hedonism."

Is this too simple? Perhaps, but even so it is good to remember that the cultural and spiritual changes meant here do not occur in leaps and bounds. They are a continual process moving in small, nearly imperceptible increments over a considerable period of time, until a saturation point has been reached. The slow process makes it difficult to put the blame on anyone specifically. Somehow all are involved in the problem and likewise all should be involved in the solution.

Ton