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

Welcome

Welcome to the first post on our new Cordate Blog. In addition to our existing website (www.cordate.org) we hope that this will become another means of keeping in contact with our many friends, fellow MSCs and supporters.
We are new to the world of blogging but we hope that the interactivity of this medium will bring a fresh dynamism to our communication and conversations. Please do add your own comments to our posts on this Blog.