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

The cost of immigration

Last Saturday I attended an Immigration Seminar in the Anglican Church of Birchfield, the border area between Aston and Perry Barr. The seminar was organised by the Jamaica Diaspora for the West Midlands and attracted an attendance of over a hundred people. It was not surprising, given the name of the organising group, that mostly people from Jamaican descent attended the seminar. What was amazing to me, however, was that the seminar ended by singing the national anthem of Jamaica!

I learned a lot during the seminar. The main speakers were from the UK Border Agency [UKBA] and a barrister from London and not to forget the voices from the audience who had their questions ready and made their comments. An MP was also present but after a short speech he disappeared prompting the reaction: why is it that politicians never stay around to answer questions? The reply was: it is one of those days with plenty of events to attend and, please, here is my phone number, don't hesitate to call me. In the meantime the politician had revealed that 60% of the people calling on him during surgeries bring up immigration issues and that their greatest grievance is the high fee for citizenship, over £800 for a single adult and over £500 for children under 18 years of age. These amounts are simply too much for a family with a number of children.

Two other main issues surfaced during the discussions: overstaying or becoming an illegal and problems in bringing in dependents from Jamaica. It turned out that the barrister and the representative of UKBA were not always on the same line. UKBA is an enforcement agency and implements government immigration policy. Within this framework it tries to be of service to people who have got into difficulties because they failed to extend their visa or did not renew their passports. It takes into account that lack of money may be the underlying reason for not applying again for these documents, but it cannot extend a leave to remain for reasons of poverty. It cannot do more than act humanely because of family circumstances, as the law allows, or provide assistance in case of voluntary return to the home country.

The barrister represents clients and fights for their interests by challenging the rules and regulations of the government in court. One weapon is article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which is stronger than paragraph 395c of the Immigration Rules. Both consider the importance of family and private life, but the one in the context of human rights and the other in the context of humane treatment by the Border Agency, which is discretionary.

Money again emerged while talking about bringing in one's dependents from Jamaica. Two requirements make it difficult for poor people to be reunited with their families. They need to have a sufficient number of rooms in their house to accommodate children of different gender ten years and older who require separate rooms by law. And they need to have a weekly income high enough to maintain their dependents without recourse to public funds. To bring in a spouse would need an income of no less that £101 a week. The audience was told in no uncertain terms: get your mathematics right before you make an application.

The vicar of the church where the seminar was held had her own contribution to make. We have to listen to what people in the street have to say and: the church is meaningless without addressing the issues of the underclass.

Ton

Take That

Monday and Tuesday, June 27 and 28, saw the biggest crowds ever flocking to Aston. Nearly 1000,000 people, mostly women, attended the two concerts given by Take That in Villa Park, the football grounds of Aston Villa.

Weeks before the event all residents of Aston received and A4 in their letter-box advising them about the invasion that was going to happen and apologising in advance for any inconvenience it may cause. In our area it was not bad. We could hear the music in the distance but for people living closer to the stadium it must have been a lot worse. Walking over to the football grounds through Aston Park I could feel the vibrations of the bass tones in my body while still on the slope downhill. But then the concert was not an all-night affair: the official opening was at 7:00 o'clock and all had ended before 11:00.

What was more disturbing, at least to some residents, was the closure of roads around Villa Park, not only on the days of the concerts but also before and after to build up the huge stage and take it down again. The traffic was diverted along alternative routes but these were not built to accommodate the number of vehicles in such a short time. The problem was mainly felt after the concerts, when everyone wanted to rush home. It took a few hours to clear the traffic, longer than is the case for Aston Villa at home matches.

It may seem strange but I had never heard of Take That before the events of this week. I did not live in England when they first gained popularity in the nineties and besides my interest in pop and rock music has never been great. Anyway I was told that the band broke up and has been reconstituted, so to say, the last one joining again being Robbie Williams, who "was fabulous", according to my spokeswoman.

Concerts like these do not come cheap. The woman just quoted paid no less than £55 for a ticket, which was neither the cheapest nor the most expensive. All in all the concerts generated an awful lot of money and I wonder how much of it ends up in Aston. Taxi drivers had a busy evening; there were plenty of them going to and fro Villa Park. Also the eateries had lots of customers. But I guess that these are just the crumbs that fell from the table of the rich. This is not to complain: Aston was in the news and what is more it was in a positive way.

Ton

Whose the future?

One of my English students is quite a talker. He does not formulate his sentences grammatically correct, but he gets his ideas across, all the time scrutinising your face and looking for signs that he has been understood. When he concludes that you did not get him, he tries again in a different way. He is not easily put off.

His English is clearly of one who has acquired enough knowledge of the language to get by but who never advanced beyond the stage of throwing nouns and verbs at you without connecting them in the right way. He knows his deficiency and one day he confessed to me that he had made a big, a very big mistake. At asking what he meant he replied that he should have attended English courses 25 years ago, when he first arrived in the UK. Now his memory was full and it was very difficult for him to unlearn the broken English which he had picked up during all those years of trying to converse with neighbours and colleagues.

His big mistake would not have mattered so much, he added, within 50 years time or so, but alas he would not live that long. I did not know whether I understood him correctly, but apparently I had, because he continued to explain half-jokingly that by that time the UK would be mostly populated by Asians and he would not need English anymore. I started to say that migration was getting more difficult, but he cut me short and made it clear that he did not have migration in mind. "We big families", he said, "many children". And making a wave with his hand indicating a few generations he said half-jokingly again: "the UK will be ours".

I did not begrudge him his little enjoyment of being in power one day, even though I don't believe for a second that it will ever happen. I rather expect birth rates of cultural communities to fall with the rise in education, particularly of the women, as has been the case everywhere in the world. But why bring in sobering remarks? After all, as a member of a minority grouping he is rather powerless and he knows it: his limited English is a constant reminder.

Ton

Royal wedding

The wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton last Friday was a great success. According to the BBC 24 million people in the UK alone tuned in to see the wedding on TV and another 10 million viewed at least part of the ceremony. The streets of London were busy too: it is estimated that a million people took the trouble to go out in the streets and catch a glimpse of the newly-wed couple and the royal family. It was great entertainment indeed.

Still these figures do not tell the whole story. It was obvious to me that in the Westminster Abbey most of the people present were white, with black and in particular Asian people being underrepresented. Perhaps this comes as no surprise: the elite of British society are still mostly the old ensconced classes, in spite of Kate herself being of middle class origin and further down the line of miners’ descent.

Changes are indeed taking place. Not just that one day a commoner may become the queen consort of the King, but also a shift is taking place in the ownership of economic enterprises. From steel makers (former Corus is now Tata Steel) to football clubs (Blackburn Rovers) investors from the Indian subcontinent have come in to make their economic clout felt in the home land of their former coloniser.

I wanted very much to estimate the Asian portion of the people lining the streets of London. It was simply not possible: the camera’s, not surprisingly, had another focus. My hunch, though, is that the Asians among them were very few and not only that but also that they did not watch the TV coverage of the event in great numbers.

My hunch is based on two small incidents which took place some months ago. During one of the English classes I’m assisting in the tutor asked the learners: who is the head of state of the UK? To my astonishment the learners, all Asian of long stay in England, did not come up with the answer. They only knew it was a woman, it was a queen, but even their combined effort did not provide the name of the queen!

The other incident involved primary school children of Asian descent. A few of them came into our house and right at that moment the queen was shown on TV walking towards her car to go back to Buckingham Palace. We asked the children: do you know that lady? Their faces showed it all; they had no clue whatsoever. They did not even know that they were watching the queen.

These incidents made me think that Asians seem to have their own media from which they get their news and entertainment. These are not in the English language and apparently their contents are far from the English scene as well.

Ton

Walk of Witness

It has been a tradition in Aston - I don't know for how many years now - that the Christian churches in the neighbourhood publicly show their Christian faith on Good Friday. They hold a Walk of Witness going from one church to another and conducting short services in front of each church. They don't enter the church buildings but remain outside emphasising that the Walk of Witness is meant to reach out to the largely non-Christian population of Aston.

Aston Churches Together (ACT) is behind the Walk of Witness. It does not represent all the churches in Aston, not even half of them. The reason is that a number of Christian denominations are not interested in any kind of cooperation with other Christian churches. Perhaps they see it as a threat to their own identity or they feel that the truth, as they profess it, cannot be compromised.

The Walk of Witness does not suffer from this lack of cooperation, as the attendance this year was better again than that of last year. The glorious weather no doubt was a factor in bringing over a hundred Christians to the streets of Aston but it is certainly not the only one. I have participated in the Walk of Witness three times now and I noticed an increase in attendance every time.

The participating Christian churches are clearly from different traditions and hold different views about sin, grace and salvation. They also have their own particular style of reading scripture texts, and of preaching and praying. Still, these differences are overcome in the desire to commemorate the cross of Christ together and acknowledge him as the living Lord.

The common act of worship binds the participants together. They see through the differences that divide them and sense the sincerity by which each denomination reveres Jesus Christ. The Walk of Witness is an enriching experience and this may be the true reason why it enjoys a still growing attendance.

Ton

The Common Good

I may be wrong, but I can't help feeling that my understanding of what organisation is all about is different from that of my neighbours.

Recent experiences are the cause of that feeling. Together with some others I'm involved in setting up two different organisations here in Aston. Organisation means influence, power if you like, and that is a scarce commodity in a deprived neighbourhood. Organisations are rather crucial in having one's voice heard.

In preparing for the two organisations it was unavoidable to discuss frameworks and constitutions. The discussion brought home to me two concerns I had not really thought of before. One said that great care should be taken not to exclude anyone and certainly not persons with a kind of following. They may turn against you if they are not properly acknowledged. The second concern was even more interesting. It had to do with the possibility that one particular group of people, a large family or a network of family and friends, would try to hijack the organisation for its own particular ends.

These concerns struck me, because so far I had thought of my organisational efforts as an attempt to bring people of different backgrounds together. It was all about bridge-building for the sake of the community as a whole. But apparently, this is not how my partners in the discussion looked at things. Perhaps, they thought me rather naive, as they had stories to tell of how organisations have been used not to serve the common good but to benefit the leaders.

It brought home to me that the 'common good' is very much an abstract concept. In a community that is fragmented, there is no such a thing as the common good, at least not in an experiential way. It is all about your own group, your own particular community, your own culture and religion. And even if the different groups would get together, they are not in it for an overarching purpose but to promote their own interests. It is the politics of the temporary alliances: you scratch my back and I scratch yours. Until, that is, when I grow strong enough to do without you.

The 'common good' may not seem to be part of the 'real world'. Still, there is joy in getting to know each other, to explore each other's backgrounds, to share each other's experiences and to set common goals. Both realists and idealists have their place; together they may make a difference.

Ton

The Birthday of Muhammad

Not all Muslims celebrate the birthday of their prophet Muhammad and not all who do, celebrate it on the same day. The Shiites celebrate it five days after the Sunnis do. This year the celebrations took place on February 15 and February 20 respectively.

Walking about in Aston it is easy to see which mosques take part in the celebration; they have their facades adorned with strings of little lights. The lights are not simply there to call the attention of passers-by. They have to do with the meaning of the feast itself. Light signifies wisdom and those Muslims who celebrate the birthday of Muhammad consider him 'the best of all creatures', a guiding light of God's wisdom.

They believe more; they also believe that the celebration of Muhammad's birthday brings blessings to those who honour his achievements, his moral conduct and his way of life. They experience the good influence of his eminent example of 'the last and greatest of all prophets', as they call him. It is this belief that makes ordinary faithful hang banners in their windows. They witness to Muhammad's importance in their lives and open themselves up for his benevolence.

Other Muslims frown on this kind of piety. They call the celebration of Muhammad's birthday an 'innovation', which was added to the true faith and deviated from it. What is at stake is the pre-eminence of the Qur'an, the holy book of the Muslims, that came straight down from heaven. Muhammad is just the messenger who passed on the divine words without adding anything of his own. Consequently, the birthday of Muhammad has no importance; after all he received his first revelation only at the age of forty.

The believers in Muhammad are not deterred and they celebrate his birthday with great joy. To them Muhammad is not just a prophet who passed on the divine words to others but he lived them himself to the full. This makes him special, a kind of saint, one who preceded them to where they hope to go themselves.

Ton

Advice Centre

The St James Advice and Community Centre is in danger of closing down. It has been in existence for 33 years and provided a great service to the migrant communities of Aston, mostly on issues of immigration and social benefits.

It all started very simple. The local vicar of the Church Of England was asked by recently arrived migrants to help out with their paper work. He did so with the help of a young man from Bangladesh who later studied law and became the director of the Centre. So from the beginning the Centre not only involved the Church of England but representatives from the migrant communities themselves. This is still very much the case, both with respect to the staff of the Centre and the Management Team. The Centre in its very heart reaches across ethnicity and across religion.

The reason for the imminent closure is the Birmingham City Council, the main sponsor of the St James Advice and Community Centre and of many other similar centres across the city. Times are bad and spending cuts of 20% or more were expected, but what was not expected was the interruption of subsidies altogether. Last December the City Council announced formally that its funding will stop by the end of March. It allows reapplication by July but for the intervening period the advice centres are on their own. What this means in fact is that the smaller centres with less financial capacity are forced to stop operations and lay off their workers. This is exactly what the St James Advice and Community Centre did: it sent redundancy notices to its seven staff.

It did more than this. It also collected 500 signatures of local residents who protested the way the City Council had made its funding decision and it involved the Birmingham Mail to put pressure on local politicians. One problem is that Aston is Labour territory, whereas the councillor and cabinet member for local services is Lib Dem. Political strife may be involved in another way as well: one of the two Labour councillors in the area is the former director of the St James Advice and Community Centre who built his reputation by his long-standing service in the Centre.

Attempts are on their way to continue the advice service on a voluntary basis, at least until the time that reapplication for funding can be made. But there is a hitch or two: Funding in the future may not be on the basis of an individual advice centre but only when they are grouped in clusters. What is more, advice centres should move away from face-to-face meetings with their clients and operate mainly via the internet and telephone connections. This would be disastrous for Aston: whether the Council likes it or not, migrant communities function mostly on the basis of face-to-face encounters.

Ton