Fragmentation

When the establishment of our Cordate Community, without using that name as yet, was first talked about, it was in the context of secularisation. Western Europe was in the process of profound change. Organised religion experienced a steep decline and what remained of it was pushed back to the privacy of the home. It even went further than that: not just organised religion was affected but faith as well. Secularisation represented no less than a crisis of faith. Our community was envisioned as an attempt, however small, to confront the challenge of secularisation.

With this in mind, it is quite astonishing to walk through Aston in Birmingham, a neighbourhood in the second largest city of England, where you would expect secularisation at work in full force. But what you see in going around its streets is many mosques and many churches. I counted at least twelve mosques, big and small - the smallest not bigger than a house -, and eight churches of different Christian denominations. Apparently Aston is a highly religious neighbourhood and organised religion is still very much alive.

Fortunately our project was not only given the purpose of confronting secularisation, it was also meant to build bridges between different religions and different persuasions. Modern Western Europe was not just characterised by secularisation, it was also a fragmented society with all the dangers to peaceful coexistence which division implies.

Well, Aston is clearly a fragmented neighbourhood along religious lines, coinciding to a large extent with racial backgrounds as well, so plenty of work to be done. So far, apart from the very welcoming Catholic community, I have met representatives of only one mosque and one Christian church. Contact building is a slow and time-consuming process.

But how to build bridges? Just outside Aston near a large shopping centre is a hairdressing salon called "The Hand of God". I could not believe my eyes the first time I saw the name. I found it very funny and imagined the owner believing that the hand of God was guiding his hand in providing the most perfect hair care to his customers. Of course, the claim is outrageous if it were meant seriously.

Perhaps, religions should learn some modesty too. They often claim to know much more about The Other than is warranted. After all God is the one "whose home is in inaccessible light, whom no human being has seen or is able to see" (1Tm: 6,16).

Ton

Moving house

I lost track of how many times I moved house in my life. I estimate it to be more than twenty, once every three years on the average. Still, this time while we are in the process of moving from Princethorpe to Aston, there is a huge difference.

In the past I just moved from one furnished house to another being appreciative of what my fellow MSCs had prepared for me. I just moved my personal belongings and that was all. The frequent moves helped not to collect too many of them.

This time we ourselves have to furnish our house and for each piece of furniture I am asked: what do you want? Do you feel comfortable with this? What do you prefer? The questions force me to consider a range of product possibilities which I had the good fortune not to be bothered about before. Until now I had been spared the multitude of choices that modern capitalism offers to its consumers.

Of course, this is prosperity, the luxury of choice. wealth exhibited in many types of materials, shapes and colours. But for me it is simply overwhelming, confusing and it makes me long for a simpler age, where freedom of choice was limited and all that you expected were one or two alternatives. You did not feel any the poorer for it, because you had no idea about the subsequent explosion of possibilities.

This blissful ignorance is no longer with me. Times have changed and a nostalgic looking back at the past will not do. Yet, I cannot feel grateful either for everything that our consumer society has on offer. It is simply too much and no amount of advertising has as yet been able to convince me to the contrary.

Ton

Culture

Living in another country is a healthy experience. Everyone should have the opportunity to do so for a shorter or longer period of time. Ostensibly it is beneficial to widen your horizons and to realise that the world is bigger than the small territory that you have set your sights on up to now. In fact, contrary to expectations, self-knowledge may be the more important outcome of a confrontation with another culture. If everything goes well, you may discover that much of what you considered as natural and a matter of course is not that at all. It is plain home-grown culture, just one local way of looking at things and experiencing the world, but not the only way possible and certainly not the only logical way.
What we have learned by living together, even as three Western Europeans, is that we have to be careful in assuming that logic is on our side. Just take the example of language. English is a notorious language for pronunciation and spelling. All logic seems to be absent: you don’t pronounce words consistently in the way that they are written and you don’t write them in the way that they are pronounced. For a foreigner it is quite a bewildering experience.
It would be wrong, however, to conclude smugly that your own language, Flemish and Dutch in the case of Mark and myself, is the more logical means of communication. Such a conclusion is based on a false comparison: by taking inconsistencies in the English language and putting them over against cases of consistency in your own language.
Self-knowledge is to be gained when you dare to search for inconsistencies that are part of your own language as well. The only thing that is needed is honesty and you surely don’t have to search very far.
It may seem unsettling at first, your nice self-image gets a bit dented. But what is really happening is that you arrive at a commonality of inconsistency, a togetherness in accepting that our different languages, written and spoken, are just inadequate ways of expression. They don’t tell the whole story.
Ideally, this awareness becomes a source for a common search for meaning. As long as we acknowledge that no one has the full story, the basis is there to look together for the missing parts.

Ton

Stranger

Who will be the stranger when we finally move into Aston?

Chances are that we, the white Western Europeans, feel the most out of place. The reason is sheer numbers: we shall be a minority in a neighbourhood where the other strangers, those usually called stangers because of their colour of skin or the way in which they dress, far outnumber those of our complexion and appearance.

The first feeling may be defiance: “WE out of place? ... but we belong here more than THEY do, don’t we? We are not going to allow ourselves to be reduced to a remnant of the past. We shall show them what quality we are made of.”

The trouble with feelings is that you don’t have full control over them. They just arise out of some hidden depth in you, without you knowing how, and they make their point, whether you manage to put them into words or not. They may even be the more insidious, the less you succeed in naming them.

Nobody is above racism, it is said, and I’m afraid that it is true. Nobody with a fair amount of self-esteem is above a feeling of superiority. Your own culture, your own religion, is always the best. You are rightly proud of them and you are not prepared to settle for second place.

One advantage of our moving into Aston is that we do not occupy a position of power in that neighbourhood. It means that we have to earn our respect, and if we did not know it already, we shall soon find out the hard way, that respect is only shown to those who are respectful of others.

Respect and strangers go very well together. Respect does not take differences away, on the contrary it thrives on them.

Ton

Explaining our presence

Three white guys moving into, and not out of, a multicultural neighbourhood requires some plausible explanation to take away the inevitable suspicion. It remains to be seen whether we shall succeed.
We would love to simply tell the truth, that we are Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, a religious community of mostly priests, like ourselves, in this part of the world, but we fear that these words won’t do us any good.
‘Missionary’ is the first difficulty. The missionaries that are most active are the evangelicals and the pentecostal churches. They have the image of an aggressive type of evangelisation. We don’t want to be put into the same bracket as them. For us ‘mission’ is dialogue, it involves as much listening as talking, trying as much to understand as to be understood.
‘Roman Catholic priest’ sounds a bit better but runs into another difficulty. We are priests without a parish and do not represent in any way the local parish church. We need to explain that for us the neighbourhood and all its people are important, not just or primarily the Catholic part of it. We are precisely interested in how the different cultural and religious groups live alongside one another and cope with their differences. If possible we would like to be involved in building bridges.
The words ‘Sacred Heart’, for Catholics and those in the know, point to universal love but for others, Muslims and evangelicals alike, it smacks of idolatry: God may not be represented in an image of any kind. Even for many Catholics the Sacred Heart may appear too sweet or something of a bygone age.
All these associations prompted us to look for different words. Finally we came up with ‘Cordate Community’, knowing well that ‘cordate’ (which means ‘heart-shaped’) is not self-explanatory either. There is no way in which we can explain ourselves honestly and succinctly without running into difficulties. One advantage of the word “cordate”, however, is that it does not carry other connotations, other baggage. Hopefully it will encourage people to ask about its meaning. That itself provides an opening for dialogue and conversation.
And so we have chosen to be known as the ‘Cordate Community’, a community that has heart for the neighbourhood and for all the people living there. But we realise that it is not within our control to have this name accepted. We can only hope that in the end our deeds speak louder than our words.

Patience

Waiting to move house is a tough job. You are itching to make the necessary arrangements and the only thing you can do is to sit back and be patient. The uncertainty is the worst. Because you have no idea when you will finally get the key of your house, you can’t make any definite plans, not just for moving house but for any other activity as well. After all, you may receive the sudden notice to pack up and get going.

If there is one thing I have learned during the past six months, it is that assurances of house builders do not count for much. One of their promises was that we could surely start moving house before Christmas. As matters stand now, we shall be happy if we are reasonably installed by Easter. If you are that far out in your timing, I feel justified to say: ‘You don’t really know what you are talking about, do you?’, hoping that my impatience does not come through too clearly. In England you have to keep your feelings in check and you have to learn the art of expressing your annoyance in a polite way.

A horrible thought struck me: moving into Aston may not be the end of our waiting, but actually the beginning. The problem is our ministry of presence. It turns on seeking to establish contact with our neighbours and other people nearby and then waiting for their response. Without gaining their trust we shall never get beyond small talk and sterile conversation. Trust takes time to develop; it depends on many fleeting encounters, in which gradually familiarity puts us at ease with one another. Unfortunately for me, there is no way of hurrying up the process.

Ton Zwart msc

Reflections

Our new house in Aston will have a prayer room, one of the five bedrooms designated for that purpose. We like to have our daily Eucharistic celebration and we pray together after supper and the washing up in the evening.
I feel that our prayer room should somehow reflect our presence in a multicultural and multireligious neighbourhood. This can be done by not only having Catholic religious symbols displayed in our chapel but also representative objects of other religions. It would be lovely if these were given to us by our very neighbours. I don’t expect them to do so on their own initiative, however. A little prompting or soliciting may be needed, taking care that the size of their objects do not dwarf our traditional Catholic symbols. We would not want the picture of Jesus to be relegated to a subordinate position!
Actually it was he who shows the way how to deal with religious reality. He could be quite critical of basic aspects of his own Jewish religion, the Temple and the Law, and got into conflict with their keepers, the priests and the scribes. At the same time he praised the Samaritan leper, a person of another so-called inferior faith and the only one of the ten healed lepers who returned to thank him for his cure. The Parable of the Good Samaritan comes to mind too. He is is a truly outstanding example of compassion for all who pride themselves on their own faith and misjudge the heights to which other religions can bring their followers.
Ton

New Year, New Beginnings

Well, all three of us are back at base now after some holidays - Mark with his family in Belgium, and Ton and I with my parents in Devon.
As the New Year opens, so we are really looking forward to finally beginning our presence and ministry in Aston. The last few months have been very frustrating and difficult for us as we have had to accept one delay after another with the building of our house. It is totally out of our control and all we can do is watch and wait. We had initially expected to be moving some time in August, and here we are now in January still facing delays of another few weeks.
We have been trying to keep ourselves busy with some supply work and more reading and study, but the time has long since come and gone that we just want to get started. The one thing the last few months has honed in is is patience! We first placed an offer on the house last May. At the beginning of February it will be nine months - my first real insight into what waiting for the birth of a child is like!! I am just hoping that nine months will be the limit!
We have been very lucky to have such a good period of preparation. But all the preparation in the world won't take away the need to move very gently when we finally do take up residence in Aston. The patience we have been acquiring recently will need to be sustained - resisting the urge to make up for the lack of ministry these last few months by going mad and jumping into anything and everything. The first priority is to build relationships with neighbours and key people in Aston, taking care to listen and learn what life is really like there.
As we have been celebrating the incarnation of God in human flesh these last few weeks, we pray that we may take care to allow oursleves the same vulnerability when we finally pitch our tent in Aston.
Carl