I listened to Racheal Denhollander’s witness testimony. It was astonishing as it was harrowing. She spoke with such poise, passion and grace. I found it difficult and uncomfortable to listen to. The problem was I couldn’t quite distance myself from identifying with the man in the dock. He seemed ordinary and I squirmed when she laid out in full, but without prurient detail, the deliberate heinousness of his acts. When she spoke of how he took pleasure in the suffering he was causing, it gripped my stomach.

What disturbed me was that I could take no comfort, no solace in the thought that I was not like him. Of course, I am thinking, “I could never, would never, be able to do what he had done”. The idea was so repulsive, so revolting and detestable. My friends would be quick to bemuse me of that notion “there is no way that you are  like that.”  they would assure me. Some years I did just that, expressed this feeling to a friend over a recent horrific incident that scarred a close friend and the response was just that “But we all know that you are not that kind of person”.  It was good to know that my friend believed that I wasn’t “that kind of person”, but I could see that she didn’t quite understand. Deep down I knew that I was like that man. I belong to the same species. I am made of the same stuff. The reality that evil is not out there but in my own heart is the most terrifying and bleakest thought that there is. I suppose that is why we do our best to hide and cover it up. But it doesn’t always lie low and when it pops up and is exposed, it shakes you to the core. It dissolves all sense of pride and pulls the carpet of self-righteousness from right under your feet. It makes you so aware that the only thing you have is what has been given to you- Grace. It is only by the grace of God that I am not in that dock.

That was why the sermon preached this Sunday in our church was, for me, so helpful and so liberating. It was Romans 5:12-21 grappling with the two states: In Adam and in Christ, with the reference to 1 Corinthians 15:22  “For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.”  In Adam, I am in the dock in Christ I am free.

And that was why Racheal’s testimony was so amazing. In the context of her damning indictment she was able, and somehow knew, that the only thing she could offer was the Gospel of Jesus Christ: the promise of forgiveness and the hope of peace with God.

GETTING USED TO IT

It as amazing what you can used to. The dismal dribble of water from the tap in the hand basin, the hit and miss electricity, the teasing hint of WiFi, the dust and rubbish, the incessant thumb of dance music pounding out at all times of day and night and even the heat and humidity, which you think your body could accommodate to, given time. But there are some things you just can’t get used to.

I went with the  Pastor and Richard on my first, and only, home visit this time round. The pastor had identified some families who were particularly needy and so we purchased some food, a bag of rice, pinto beans, a tin of tomatoes, some biscuits, stock cubes, spaghetti and a jug of vegetable oil and took them to the home of a member of the church. I didn’t hear her full story but learned enough to know that her situation was desperate. We drove through the dirt streets, tightly packed with dwellings constructed from wood, corrugated iron, tarpaulin and rags and sometimes cardboard. It was shocking. We passed an open space piled with stinking garbage and smouldering fires, picked over by goats and chickens with a desultory donkey tied to a burnt out tree. Where there were flood drains at the side of the road, these were always full of rubbish, plastic bottles and polystyrene food containers. The smell at times was overpowering with slow moving and stagnant grey water and a strange black mould growing.

It was late in the afternoon, with darkness approaching and the air was tense. A group of young men gathered at the corner showing off the one possession they could boast of, an enormous speaker blasting out music. “We may have nothing, but we have noise” was the message. We left the car and followed the lady to her home up a narrow lane with all eyes on us and the odd cry of “Blanco”. When the children shouted to us in this way, it was with a smile and laugh. We laughed too. Now it carried just a hint of menace. There was suspicion in the eyes and a threatening body language. The home was the size of a garden shed divided into four for four families. We followed her round to the back squeezing through a gap in the corrugated iron. She parted a torn curtain and we deposited the food on the dirt floor. There was only a moment to take in the scene, a bench, a plastic bucket with clothes and a dish of beans. We spoke for a moment or two and then left. We didn’t pray with her and I am not sure why, but the pastor was anxious for us to be going. “This is a dangerous place” he said. I did wonder if picking her out for this food parcel might make her life even more difficult or if some of the watching eyes would pounce once we had left. I prayed that they wouldn’t. Earlier Richard said the visits are the best part. They were the worst. I was seeing things that I didn’t want to see.

Last night I slept in a hotel close to the airport transiting through the Dominican Republic. It was not the one I had booked but because of a mix up of dates the taxi driver found me another. I had a room to myself almost 10 times as big as the ladies home. (I measured it). I had free access to an all-day buffet, eat and drink as much as I wanted, beer and soft drinks in the fridge, a choice of three swimming pools and a private beach.

Watching the Caribbean dawn break spectacularly through the parting clouds of petrol blue, chromium and gold, I knew this grotesque divide was one that I could never ever get used to.

The Big Question

This is a great team. Richard, Ross and Vic were the trailblazers making contact with Pastor Rolex Poisson and his church following the devastating earthquake in 2010. They simply asked if they could help and under the banner of Mission International visited, offered practical help and over the past seven years established a bond with teams, visiting, sometimes three times in the one year. The whole issue of helping poor communities in the world (Haiti is the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere) is a vexed one. The tales of situations where aid makes matters worse are countless: teams coming to plaster and paint schools when there are good local artisans who could use the work, water pumps installed to villages that break down and the village women resort to carrying water for miles, the white man’s money buying some feel good merit being parachuted in and airlifted out and the crippling effect of aid like American rice which kills off the nation’s own rice growers who cannot compete with the low cost of the imported grain. These stories alone would make you reluctant to help at all, but that is not an option for the guys on this team. There is a sacrificial commitment that is humbling. They come at some cost to themselves and their families. The clear principle is simply one of enabling and encouraging the local church in its ministry within this benighted community. I think that is the right way. The work that is done will be by Haitians it will be the resource that they identify and they will own it.

Paul and myself who joined previous teams together with Dave make up the remainder of the team. In the long spells when nothing much is happening we sit and share our experiences and wrestle with the big questions laced with raw Irish, Yorkshire and Glasgow humour. These were special times. We were often expressing diverse cultural and political views, sharing differing theological standpoints, arguing about conspiracy theories, nationalism and Margaret Thatcher, yet all with a sense that when it came to what really mattered we were one. In a very short time I felt a wonderful bond was being fostered

A recurring theme of our discussions focused on our shared dismay at the sustained attack on the family in our society back home and the destruction of this singular foundational block of our society. It’s not new of course but we felt that the destruction was progressive and accelerating. There seemed to be an increasing sense that the civilisation known as Western Christianity will follow the other empires that preceded it and simply collapse in a spectacular manner. The possibility that somehow it will morph into a liberal world of justice, peace and equality, adrift from its Greco/Roman/Judeo/ Christian foundational base, seemed to me belonging to a fantasy of wishful thinking. It was against this back cloth of gloom that what we saw in Haiti sparkled with hope. When Richard declared to the 400 plus at the early church service. “You may think that you are poor, but you are rich” the congregation responded with a loud and assured “Amen” you could see it their faces brimming with confidence “Yes we are rich”. Europe may well be descending into a new dark age but there are places in the world where there is hope of a new dawn ripe with opportunities grounded in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Santo Domingo

There is always an anxious moment when you are finally released from the maternal care of the airline transit system, where you are told where to go and what to do, what to fill in and where to sign and while it is quite humiliating being herded around like cattle, zigzagging as if impersonating a snake, there is something comforting in it. So when finally discharged the thrill of being free doesn’t last all that long and is quickly replaced with a new anxiety. It is a strange wild and different world out there. It is outside the garden gate and all the reassuring sounds and smells, the signals the signs, the time and food and language engender an irrational unsettling fear. I was a proud solo traveller suddenly feeling not so proud and just a little foolish. Wondering how I was going to negotiate taxis, trust myself to the dark unlit streets, being driven in a rattling cab with thumping music at great speed through scary traffic, a much longer distance than I expected. The fears of course dissipated when the driver true to his word got me there. A hotel with clean sheets and the possibility of sleep 22 hrs after leaving London. When I paid the driver he called me his friend and gave me a big hug. That was when I knew I had really been ripped off.

Crawford Mackenzie

Between us there was significant distance in age and geography. We were seldom in the same place at the same time. In fact as a family we were only all together on, what could be no more than, three individual occasions. So the times when we were together and able to chat were limited. Often these were times when there was other issues and preoccupations or when Iain was distracted with various concerns he couldn’t share.  But in those special moments, when there was space and we had time to chat and to talk about what really mattered, a precious bond was forged and these times remain as gems in my memory. It was like the girl at school who hardly ever smiled but when she did, you know it was worth waiting around for. One of those was sitting outside in the picnic bench that Iain had rescued from the tip and rebuilt on a small plateau at the front of the house in Port Glasgow. It was a warm afternoon in the early summer, drinking homemade lemonade , looking down on the Clyde far below and across to Dumbarton and the Kilpatrick hills.

I was telling him about the recent death of a young women in our church that had deeply affected me, as it had all of our little congregation in the east end of Glasgow . She had struggled with cancer for some time and we had prayed seriously, earnestly and long, believing that God could and would heal her. She was so young. It didn’t seem right or fair. Her husband was bereft and we shared something of that grief. How could you make sense of this?  Ian responded in words that might at first seem harsh and uncaring but were anything but.

“..ah but you can’t tell God what to do….He is lord….He has his plan and we may never know the reason as long as we live…But it will be  for good…It will be for good”.

And he told me about Herbert Dickson. Herbert Dickson came from Port Glasgow and spent his life as a missionary in Nigeria, to the people who lived in the Que Iboe valley, in what was then known as the Que Iboe fellowship (now Mission Africa). It was founded in the late 19c by Samuel Bill who responded to a request from local chiefs in the delta region for a missionary to work with them. Herbert had spoken at our small bible study group on one occasion and I had read his biography “All the days of my life”. He was highly respected and greatly thought of for his work and commitment to the Que Iboe people for almost all his life. When he was old and quite ill he returned to Scotland confined to hospital and clearly dying. He was tired and weary and longed to escape. He prayed that God would take him and let him die. He had served his lord all his life, now he wanted to die, an absolutely reasonable request, by any standards.  But, to his dismay and frustration, that prayer wasn’t answered and he continued to live and suffer. His frustration turned to anger which almost consumed him until one morning, reading his bible, he was aware of God speaking  “Herbert… you know that 45 years ago you gave your life to me and said that I was the lord…that I was the Lord of your life… and I still am …and the time when you will end this life is not actually your business …it is mine.”  It was a moment of revelation when the blinds were lifted. His frustration and anger dissolved and he accepted whatever it was, it was in the hands of his Lord and it would be for the best.

I was with Iain briefly the night before he died.  He was distant and distressed and I was helpless. When I left my final word was “see you later”. It seemed almost flippant at the time, but I meant it. I still do and I can’t wait till later.

Crawford Mackenzie

For any prospective son-in-law, bringing the parents together for the first time was bound to be fraught with anxiety and apprehension. So much is at stake as a first impression can be pivotal.  In my case it was a matter of establishing confidence. Confidence that this son-in-law to be, who was wanting in most, if not all, of the social graces, with a haphazard slightly incomprehensible and unpredictable character, was going to be ok for their daughter.  So on a beautiful Acharacle morning with the clear cut silhouette of Ben Resipole hanging in the mist over loch Shiel, the banks of daffodils bursting in yellow and the house looking more alike a stately home than the rambling manse which it was, the scene was set.  I had done my best to make sure that everything was ready: the house was clean and tidy and Jeannie was busy organising lunch. But it was the meeting with Iain that clinched it. He welcomed the visitors from Perth, engaged them in conversation, enquired after their journey and although really a visitor himself, acted the perfect host. The test had been passed.  I was so glad to have a big brother who was a gentleman too. It was what my future in-laws needed to know. Maybe with a big brother like Iain, he would be alright after all.

The Watson Street flat was through a close and up a stone stair at the rear. Tuesday night was homework night and, surprising as it may seem, it was the highlight of the week. We were invited up to Iain and Anna’s new home. David was studying Latin, Jeannie on sums and I trying to polish up on spelling, but it was a fun night. There was more chatting and laughter than work being done, with the young ones listening in on Iain and David’s take on moral philosophy. It was here that the idea to write a weekly broadsheet  “The Gislet” was born.  Gislet was a cat left behind in Eigg and the sheet had contributions from all the family. For the first edition, my contribution was an ode to the lentil tin. “The lentil tin is empty, mourn for the lentil tin” but to make sense of it, you would have needed to have known that the lentil tin was where the household cash was kept. Iain had his own column “Gislet thinks” and the first, I recall was “ Gislet thinks… should the joiners work to rule?” It was purely for in house entertainment, but typical of the creative exercise we were slowly absorbing. The climax of the night was Anna’s wonderful suppers full of tasties we had never seen before. It was so much more exciting than saps at home. There was something grown up about it all. It made you want to study and learn, discover and create. It was so good to have a big brother who was not only a full grown man but a husband with a family and a home of his own.